Food reform


Although the central place for design discussion is ##crawl-dev on freenode, some may find it helpful to discuss requests and suggestions here first.

Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 6393

Joined: Friday, 17th December 2010, 18:17

Post Tuesday, 4th October 2011, 21:37

Food reform

Trying the food reform trunk now.

The food game is a bit more realistic, but a little more micromanagey, in that you can only eat brown chunks when very hungry, so you have to think a bit more about which corpses to cut when. Perhaps an "auto-eat" option could resolve this.

Possible bug: Naturally green chunks that are white due to rPois are not eatable at Hungry.

Dungeon Master

Posts: 3618

Joined: Thursday, 23rd December 2010, 12:43

Post Tuesday, 4th October 2011, 21:52

Re: Comments about latest Trunk features (.10)

So far, only the mechanics are in. Interface will come next. The fact that brown chunks are inferior makes itself felt. Now you have first and second class corpses (formerly, the distinction was almost not present).
User avatar

Dungeon Master

Posts: 4031

Joined: Thursday, 16th December 2010, 20:37

Location: France

Post Tuesday, 4th October 2011, 22:25

Re: Comments about latest Trunk features (.10)

Grimm wrote:Trying the food reform trunk now.

The food game is a bit more realistic, but a little more micromanagey, in that you can only eat brown chunks when very hungry, so you have to think a bit more about which corpses to cut when. Perhaps an "auto-eat" option could resolve this.

those still work:
easy_eat_chunks = true
easy_eat_contaminated = true

and if you want to have fun with rotten meat, try:
prefer_safe_chunks = false

Grimm wrote:Possible bug: Naturally green chunks that are white due to rPois are not eatable at Hungry.

Good point. Fixed.
<+Grunt> You dereference an invalid pointer! Ouch! That really hurt! The game dies...

Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 6393

Joined: Friday, 17th December 2010, 18:17

Post Wednesday, 5th October 2011, 01:04

Re: Food reform

I am finding that I have to eat permafood a little more often than before. This seems to be because brown chunks only give nutrition at Very Hungry, and I thus hit Starving more than I used to.

Spider Stomper

Posts: 247

Joined: Friday, 5th August 2011, 13:18

Post Wednesday, 5th October 2011, 02:28

Re: Food reform

Similar thread on the advice board, but more appropriate here. Anyway my thoughts there in a nutshell were basically why not eliminate the roadkill game for normal and herbivorous characters and allow saprovores, carnivores, etc to eat corpses directly? Some amount of extra permafood would be needed, but it would eliminate a game aspect that's rather micromanagey.

Blades Runner

Posts: 546

Joined: Monday, 20th December 2010, 14:25

Post Wednesday, 5th October 2011, 03:25

Re: Food reform

Chucks are important to many parts of the game, not just food. Eating corpses directly would be fine, I suppose, as long at they implicitly butchered the corpse. Standing over a corpse and hitting "e" would yield the prompt "Butcher foo corpse and eat to satiety?" When full, any remaining chucks could be picked up. Off the bat I don't see any big issues with this. And it would eliminate a key press eat time a chunk is eaten -- probably several hundred over the course of a game.

For this message the author smock has received thanks:
mumra
User avatar

Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 5832

Joined: Thursday, 10th February 2011, 18:30

Post Wednesday, 5th October 2011, 05:43

Re: Food reform

Chunks are used for food and what, two spells (the draw energy one and simulacrum), right?
"Be aware that a lot of people on this forum, such as mageykun and XuaXua, have a habit of making things up." - minmay a.k.a. duvessa
Did I make a lame complaint? Check for Bingo!
Totally gracious CSDC Season 2 Division 4 Champeen!
User avatar

Vaults Vanquisher

Posts: 451

Joined: Sunday, 11th September 2011, 00:07

Post Wednesday, 5th October 2011, 08:13

Re: Food reform

First impression is that there's just a lot more hovering between "hungry" and "very hungry" with shorter intervals between hunger status changes (and therefore a lot more food/chunk management) for basically not changing the long-term food clock very much if at all (since you always get something from brown chunks - if you can/are allowed to eat one at the moment). Why put the players through an annoying minigame if it has barely any actual gameplay effects? Vintermann's original proposal claims first and foremost that it wants to "reduce player hassle", but creating satiation charts which you then compare to food charts which then you put through a chart of conditions to finally know what you can and what you can't eat before ultimately going through yet another chart to decide how much nutrition you actually get from what you end up eating is arguably increasing player hassle (interface being adapted accordingly should make this less horribly painful), and multiplying the amount of chunk-juggling needed because of more constant hunger status/chunk status changes (both now a bigger factor because of CHARTS) is certainly increasing player hassle.

Gourmand meganerf is also a bit intriguing but at least it has some immediate gameplay effects - it is no longer a substitute for, say, high INT+spellcasting or a staff of energy, which is an understandable direction to take. It does turn it into yet another useless amulet for most chars, though - and conservation becomes more and more of a pre-Zot:5 no-brainer each day. (This comment probably means a conservation meganerf in the future with the way things are being handled these days.)



galehar wrote:and if you want to have fun with rotten meat, try:
prefer_safe_chunks = false

I will play around with this, should theoretically remove (or at least reduce) one of the most common complaints: chunks you are carrying with you decaying at a faster rate than your hunger status changes allows you to eat them, nullifying the intended effect of the food reform. But since bad chunks are supposed to give you less nutrition, maybe it risks sending the hunger/chunk status change roulette into overdrive? Will need to do some testing.
Your warning level: [CLASSIFIED]
User avatar

Dungeon Master

Posts: 4031

Joined: Thursday, 16th December 2010, 20:37

Location: France

Post Wednesday, 5th October 2011, 08:52

Re: Food reform

ebarrett wrote:Why put the players through an annoying minigame if it has barely any actual gameplay effects?

It's a bit soon to make that kind of statement.

ebarrett wrote:Vintermann's original proposal claims first and foremost that it wants to "reduce player hassle", but creating satiation charts which you then compare to food charts which then you put through a chart of conditions to finally know what you can and what you can't eat before ultimately going through yet another chart to decide how much nutrition you actually get from what you end up eating is arguably increasing player hassle (interface being adapted accordingly should make this less horribly painful)

Well, you certainly don't need to read the charts. And yes, the interface isn't finished. I guess food description will have a phrase to describe preference. From then, the more you like it, the easier it is to eat it and the more nutrition it provides.

ebarrett wrote:chunks you are carrying with you decaying at a faster rate than your hunger status changes allows you to eat them, nullifying the intended effect of the food reform.

Actually, I think that's exactly what makes the new system much simpler. If you're hungry and have both a brown and a white chunk, you should simply eat the white chunk. You will rarely gain anything by waiting and try to eat the brown one. You'll eat brown chunks only when you reach very hungry and there's nothing else available. So basically, you always eat the best quality chunks available, which are conveniently the ones proposed first.
<+Grunt> You dereference an invalid pointer! Ouch! That really hurt! The game dies...
User avatar

Vaults Vanquisher

Posts: 451

Joined: Sunday, 11th September 2011, 00:07

Post Wednesday, 5th October 2011, 09:41

Re: Food reform

galehar wrote:
ebarrett wrote:chunks you are carrying with you decaying at a faster rate than your hunger status changes allows you to eat them, nullifying the intended effect of the food reform.

Actually, I think that's exactly what makes the new system much simpler. If you're hungry and have both a brown and a white chunk, you should simply eat the white chunk. You will rarely gain anything by waiting and try to eat the brown one. You'll eat brown chunks only when you reach very hungry and there's nothing else available. So basically, you always eat the best quality chunks available, which are conveniently the ones proposed first.

Which ultimately leaves the player at the old satiated/hungry comfort zone when there are plenty of clean chunks available, and constantly entering (but still only rarely getting below) "very hungry" when clean chunks don't show up every few turns.... which (theoretically) has one of three consequences depending on player mentality:

1. Player is the kind who only consumes permafood if there are no other nutrition sources, so he rolls with it and plays the invisible chart madness game, knowing or not if it exists/how it works. No changes to permafood comsumption habits.
2. Player is the kind who gets uneasy about hunger status and therefore panics a bit more than before since he's dropping to "very hungry" a lot more often and staying "satiated" a lot less every time he returns to that through chunks. More permafood comsumption, probably even in situations where it really necessary.
3. Player knows how the food system works and decides to dip into permafood more often because he knows there are metric tons of it in the game anyway and he can't be arsed to play the new food minigame which enjoys making his hunger status immediately change from "satiated" to "hungry" (and then to "very hungry" again) to stop his autoexploring/resting all the time because that's how brown chunks work now. :evil:

Now, every now and then some people start arguing in ##crawl about how hunger and food supplies are a problem. I honestly find it amazing that some people can have serious food issues in crawl (this is not some post-hive-removal thing either), but hunger status does spook some players - and they're the ones who'll get the most gameplay changes from the food reform, and it's for the worse. Most certainly they're a minority, and most certainly they should learn some Food Management 101, but I can see the reform being newbie-unfriendly as per theoretical example #2.

As for cases 1 and 3 - yes, I imagine you probably want everyone to be a type 1 and declare the food reform awesome, but minor annoyances add up, and hunger status change spam originating from a still unjustified weird rule influx sure is annoying. Is the objective to make the players just consume more permafood? And if yes, also why? To give permafood more strategical value? To put it at a premium? Good players won't have a problem with that because they just finish the game with dozens of rations to spare anyway. Is the food reform just the first part in some major changes to the food clock mechanics which demanded some preparation beforehand?

Or do the people behind the food reform just think they're "reducing player hassle"? I honestly think that's the case, but I'm yet to see someone who agrees with the "reduced hassle" part. I find the food reform an abomination, I want it killed with fire, I'm not against changing food mechanics but you have created an avoidable monstrosity.
Your warning level: [CLASSIFIED]

Dungeon Master

Posts: 3618

Joined: Thursday, 23rd December 2010, 12:43

Post Wednesday, 5th October 2011, 10:41

Re: Food reform

ebarrett: Instead of telling us how the whole system is inarguably awful and cannot work, what about thinking about how to improve the interface. (Of course, as usual in such cases, you focus on the bad parts and completely ignore the gains. In fact, you behaviour is common: I have seen exactly this when Slime walls got added or AC got nerfed or labyrinths were made self-changing.)

From my experience, it might be that emergency food does indeed provide too little nutrition. But it a bit too early to say.

Regarding interface: instead of using colours (as proposed on the wiki), we should add suffixes to food items.
User avatar

Vaults Vanquisher

Posts: 451

Joined: Sunday, 11th September 2011, 00:07

Post Wednesday, 5th October 2011, 12:10

Re: Food reform

dpeg wrote:ebarrett: Instead of telling us how the whole system is inarguably awful and cannot work, what about thinking about how to improve the interface.

Hard to do without even knowing the purpose of the food reform. All we know so far is that it changes little in theory at the cost of complicating the practice - the new system exists for the sake of changing the previous system to something more complicated, for all I know. Removing explore/rest/travel/etc interruptions at entering "hungry" status would fix all my interface woes for now (I'd just pretend "very hungry" is the new hungry even if at a net food cost), but that doesn't change the fact that the food reform has no apparent gameplay reason to exist (ok, ogres got a buff, and centaurs play sort of differently now, but these races were changed themselves - what about everyone else, barring being mutated during the game?), and that it is needlessly complicated (CHARTS EVERYWHERE, cannot unsee).

dpeg wrote:In fact, you behaviour is common: I have seen exactly this when Slime walls got added or AC got nerfed or labyrinths were made self-changing.

Yes, sometimes whining, I mean mass complaints happen when things get harder with changes. I would always expect people to complain when suddenly they have to learn new things/change tactics completely or die, no matter how good the changes are for the game - Slime was suddenly (even more) scary (and remember the first versions with slime walls would not give enough room to move around, autoexplore would move you next to walls, walls would corrode armour), AC was suddenly not god-tier, automatic victory stuff anymore (and everyone knows 0.6 initially made "heavy" armour completely useless as a side effect, so much that MDFi was demoted from god-tier to joke combo and everyone wore robes regardless of aptitudes), and labyrinths... well labyrinths are still free loot, I don't know what people could complain about that particular change, I must have been away from the game during that time. But the food reform just makes things more annoying, there seem to be no benefits or threats, nothing but a glorification of charts and message spam because you see, now you're very hungry instead of hungry and that means NEW RULE, and now you eat the brown chunk you're now you're allowed to, so you change the current rules again but don't ask why because if you do it means you hate the devs, seriously?, if the players don't eventually convince you that it's silly and pointless and irritating or at least extract what do you exactly want with it I'll just eat my hat ration for 1/3 the nutritional value and pretend I'll start a fork over it. As I said in ##crawl: the food reform is like dual wielding, except with bread.

Also, devs occasionally entering "fuck complaints I am a dev" mode when people disagree with something gets old after a while, too.
Your warning level: [CLASSIFIED]
User avatar

Dungeon Master

Posts: 4031

Joined: Thursday, 16th December 2010, 20:37

Location: France

Post Wednesday, 5th October 2011, 12:29

Re: Food reform

ebarrett wrote:
dpeg wrote:ebarrett: Instead of telling us how the whole system is inarguably awful and cannot work, what about thinking about how to improve the interface.

Hard to do without even knowing the purpose of the food reform.

dpeg wrote:The fact that there is too much food around is addressed by reducing numbers of chunks/corpse and nerfing "gourmand. The goal of the food reform is to turn the herbivore, carnivore and saprovore mutations into actual gradients; to _reduce_ the current brainlessness of eating (see wiki page); to make bad food useful in emergencies. Together with the Hive cut the food clock might actually make itself felt at times, but don't hold your breath yet.


ebarrett wrote:All we know so far is that it changes little in theory at the cost of complicating the practice - the new system exists for the sake of changing the previous system to something more complicated, for all I know.

You're just stating that it changes little in theory without giving any argument. What complication does it bring in practice? You have to be very hungry to eat brown chunks. Wow. That's complicated. Nutrition modifiers were already there, and they didn't make people go mental. We just changed the numbers.

ebarrett wrote:Removing explore/rest/travel/etc interruptions at entering "hungry" status would fix all my interface woes for now (I'd just pretend "very hungry" is the new hungry even if at a net food cost)

That's pure bad faith since this was already like that. Just set easy_eat_chunks and you'll auto-eat your chunks while travelling/resting instead of being interrupted.

ebarrett wrote:but that doesn't change the fact that the food reform has no apparent gameplay reason to exist (ok, ogres got a buff, and centaurs play sort of differently now, but these races were changed themselves - what about everyone else, barring being mutated during the game?), and that it is needlessly complicated (CHARTS EVERYWHERE, cannot unsee).

You keep repeating that the change has no reason to exist but you obviously haven't even tried to look for a reason. Yet, you must have stumbled on the dev wiki where you've seen all those frightening numbers in terrifying charts. Maybe try reading the text. And the purpose of the charts is to help us design the system and tweak the formulas, not to explain it to the players. Did you need to have this chart printed out next to your monitor to play with the old food system?

I'm not going to answer to the rest of your rant. If you want to be heard, stay civil and give arguments instead of whining and yelling. Otherwise, we'll just ignore your rants and delete your offensive messages.
<+Grunt> You dereference an invalid pointer! Ouch! That really hurt! The game dies...
User avatar

Blades Runner

Posts: 575

Joined: Tuesday, 18th January 2011, 15:11

Post Wednesday, 5th October 2011, 12:34

Re: Food reform

minor stuff: if you eat a poisonous chunk and suffer no bad effects while wearing an unidentified ring of rPois (the only un-id'd item), should the ring identify itself? it doesn't.

i haven't played much, but my impressions is that the effect right now is very strong, and i'm playing a fighter without rage or spells. i'm avoiding dipping into permafood, though. proper feedback later.
Wins: DDBe (3 runes, morgue file)

Dungeon Master

Posts: 1531

Joined: Saturday, 5th March 2011, 06:29

Post Wednesday, 5th October 2011, 14:29

Re: Food reform

smock wrote:Chucks are important to many parts of the game, not just food. Eating corpses directly would be fine, I suppose, as long at they implicitly butchered the corpse. Standing over a corpse and hitting "e" would yield the prompt "Butcher foo corpse and eat to satiety?" When full, any remaining chucks could be picked up. Off the bat I don't see any big issues with this. And it would eliminate a key press eat time a chunk is eaten -- probably several hundred over the course of a game.


This can't be too hard to implement and would save a considerable number of keypresses over the course of a game!

Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 6393

Joined: Friday, 17th December 2010, 18:17

Post Wednesday, 5th October 2011, 14:53

Re: Food reform

Idea for reducing hassle (namely frequency of food-related actions): slow the food clock by half. Change the base hunger increase from 3 to 1.5 per turn, halve permafood and corpse generation, change spell hunger cost and other numbers as appropriate. This would preserve the food game as is but reduce the hunger spam, autotravel interruptions, etc.

ebarrett wrote:dual wielding, except with bread

Weaponised food. I'd vote for that. :D

Snake Sneak

Posts: 123

Joined: Monday, 3rd January 2011, 14:47

Post Wednesday, 5th October 2011, 15:39

Re: Food reform

One idea could be to remove the notification of hungry, very hungry etc. instead use a counter which is reduced by x every step depending on class, you can remove the autoexplore interruption as the players will see the clock winding down and will know when to stop and eat. (you could stop every 1/4 of the counter and give an option for the player to change this to every x food use.)

Each food type can be eaten at a certain time period or below, for example rations at 100 and below etc. and each food provides a set amount of nutrition 30 for bread etc. each spell has the hunger cost listed in numbers, so lets say casting a spell could cost 10 hunger. In tiles you can write on each food the number that it can be eaten at, so players can quickly assess what they can and can't eat.

This would give a much stronger sense of control and the counter winding down would add excitement to the game, it would also make the game more tactical, for example if you know how many turns you have until you go to starving you could plan the chain of actions to fit the time you have, unlike how it is now that toplayers starving lasts for an unknown period of time, forcing the player to eat or risk starving in the middle of a dangerous encounter.

You could even go as far as listing the amount of time a chunk has until it rots away.
User avatar

Barkeep

Posts: 4435

Joined: Tuesday, 11th January 2011, 12:28

Post Wednesday, 5th October 2011, 15:54

Re: Food reform

Grimm wrote:Idea for reducing hassle (namely frequency of food-related actions): slow the food clock by half. Change the base hunger increase from 3 to 1.5 per turn, halve permafood and corpse generation, change spell hunger cost and other numbers as appropriate. This would preserve the food game as is but reduce the hunger spam, autotravel interruptions, etc.


It's a nerf to Animate Dead & Company as well as Sublimation and Fulsome and Powered by Death and Fedhas and corpse-sacrificers -- so it doesn't quite preserve the game as-is. Also, it effectively alters spell hunger costs. It's probably balance-able, but changing corpse & chunk generation has a bunch of follow-on effects.
I am not a very good player. My mouth is a foul pit of LIES. KNOW THIS.

Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 6393

Joined: Friday, 17th December 2010, 18:17

Post Wednesday, 5th October 2011, 15:59

Re: Food reform

Good point. The basic idea though is: halve the frequency of eating. There might be a simple(ish) way to do that.

Dungeon Master

Posts: 553

Joined: Wednesday, 22nd December 2010, 10:12

Post Wednesday, 5th October 2011, 17:04

Re: Food reform

galehar wrote:You're just stating that it changes little in theory without giving any argument. What complication does it bring in practice? You have to be very hungry to eat brown chunks. Wow. That's complicated. Nutrition modifiers were already there, and they didn't make people go mental. We just changed the numbers.

I can't speak for him, but I can say how I feel the new system is more complicated.

For most races, eating a contaminated (brown) chunk requires you to be at "very hungry" instead of "hungry". This means there are essentially two "thresholds" for eating rather than just one, as was the case before. This doesn't sound like much, but it is still an increase in complexity.

This can lead to weird situations where if you have a brown chunk and a white one, it's optimal to wait until you are very hungry so you can eat the brown one. Then, when you reach "hungry" (which won't take long) eat the white one. This isn't really something I'd do in a normal game outside of a few rare cases, much like a bunch of the other "tedious, but optimal" tactics in crawl. Nevertheless, it's there.

I'm not quite as against the new food system as some people are. This aspect of it does bother me a bit, though.

For this message the author evilmike has received thanks: 2
pratamawirya, thenewflesh

Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 3037

Joined: Sunday, 2nd January 2011, 02:06

Post Wednesday, 5th October 2011, 17:59

Re: Food reform

ebarrett wrote:First impression is that there's just a lot more hovering between "hungry" and "very hungry" with shorter intervals between hunger status changes (and therefore a lot more food/chunk management) for basically not changing the long-term food clock very much if at all (since you always get something from brown chunks - if you can/are allowed to eat one at the moment). Why put the players through an annoying minigame if it has barely any actual gameplay effects?


Dealing with death yak packs as a caster in mid-Lair has always been a food-intensive activity. If you hold off and spam Throw Flame/Frost, you're never actually going to kill one successfully because they'll retreat before you can finish them off. Throwing Bolts of Fire/Cold, on the other hand, kills them just fine but you don't have the int and spellcasting yet to keep from hitting near starving before they're all dead. Before, you'd just eat back up to max, wait off the sickness, and resume. Now you can only get back up to hungry, which makes finding a second death yak pack a very dangerous proposition.

Or how about Orc? There's almost nothing in there that's able to drop clean chunks, so unless you're dipping into permafood on a routine basis, that knight/warlord/sorceror/high priest you stumble upon will have to be confronted with a safe margin of just over 1,000 nutrition instead of 1,600, plus whatever's left over from the last chunk. That's a pretty significant gameplay difference, there. I can't always burn down a warlord and retinue with so few spells, can you?

ebarrett wrote:Vintermann's original proposal claims first and foremost that it wants to "reduce player hassle", but creating satiation charts which you then compare to food charts which then you put through a chart of conditions


Man, what? There's no need for the player to refer to the charts. The charts are for dev-talk. Eat food to get nutrition. You can only eat the more disgusting types of food if you're extremely hungry, and the more desperate you are the more indiscriminate you'll be about what you eat. The level of grossness of food is even color-coded for you! This is pretty intuitive to even a non-gamer.

ebarrett wrote:Gourmand meganerf is also a bit intriguing but at least it has some immediate gameplay effects - it is no longer a substitute for, say, high INT+spellcasting or a staff of energy, which is an understandable direction to take. It does turn it into yet another useless amulet for most chars, though - and conservation becomes more and more of a pre-Zot:5 no-brainer each day. (This comment probably means a conservation meganerf in the future with the way things are being handled these days.)


Gourmand is nowhere near a useless amulet. It changes the 1,600-nutrition margin for safe chunks into a 7,000-nutrition margin instead of an 11,000-nutrition margin. Oh no! What a painful nerf indeed, to only be able to store four times as much nutrition as the baseline, instead of seven times as much. I may need to sit down for a while, until I can fully grasp the magnitude of this incredible nerf.

If anything, the nerf hasn't gone far enough. I'll have to try playing with it more before I decide that, though.

For this message the author KoboldLord has received thanks: 2
galehar, nicolae
User avatar

Blades Runner

Posts: 575

Joined: Tuesday, 18th January 2011, 15:11

Post Wednesday, 5th October 2011, 18:46

Re: Food reform

evilmike wrote:This can lead to weird situations where if you have a brown chunk and a white one, it's optimal to wait until you are very hungry so you can eat the brown one. Then, when you reach "hungry" (which won't take long) eat the white one. This isn't really something I'd do in a normal game outside of a few rare cases, much like a bunch of the other "tedious, but optimal" tactics in crawl. Nevertheless, it's there.


this is what i came to post. it's confusing, and very micromanagey.

i think brown chunks should be allowed anytime white chunks can be eaten, but with a high risk of sickness and reduced nutrition. (i'd also allow rotting chunks when starving for some nutrition and guaranteed sickness.) i've felt this way since vintermann's original proposal. the rest (mutations by degrees, nutrition from bad chunks) is great.

if there's too much food, reduce corpse drops.
Wins: DDBe (3 runes, morgue file)
User avatar

Dungeon Master

Posts: 4031

Joined: Thursday, 16th December 2010, 20:37

Location: France

Post Wednesday, 5th October 2011, 19:05

Re: Food reform

KoboldLord wrote:Gourmand is nowhere near a useless amulet. It changes the 1,600-nutrition margin for safe chunks into a 7,000-nutrition margin instead of an 11,000-nutrition margin.

Good point. We might need to adjust some satiation levels to balance the new system.
<+Grunt> You dereference an invalid pointer! Ouch! That really hurt! The game dies...

Spider Stomper

Posts: 195

Joined: Monday, 25th April 2011, 20:48

Post Wednesday, 5th October 2011, 19:50

Re: Food reform

I'm somewhat confused about how easy_eat_chunks works. I turned it on, but it seems to let me eat a white chunk with one keypress only when I'm Very Hungry. Is this a bug, or is there something I'm missing about the option?

And when I'm Very Hungry and I have both a white chunk and a brown chunk, it selects the white one, which, as noted upthread, is not optimal behavior. How are chunks currently selected?
User avatar

Dungeon Master

Posts: 4031

Joined: Thursday, 16th December 2010, 20:37

Location: France

Post Wednesday, 5th October 2011, 20:24

Re: Food reform

ElectricAlbatross wrote:I'm somewhat confused about how easy_eat_chunks works. I turned it on, but it seems to let me eat a white chunk with one keypress only when I'm Very Hungry. Is this a bug, or is there something I'm missing about the option?

What version are you playing? This sound like this bug, which has been fixed in 0.10-a0-1120-gc6ffd80. I think CAO suffers from this bug right now.

ElectricAlbatross wrote:And when I'm Very Hungry and I have both a white chunk and a brown chunk, it selects the white one, which, as noted upthread, is not optimal behavior. How are chunks currently selected?

Well, that's the normal behaviour. easy_eat_chunks never eats contaminated chunks, even if the chance of sickness is low. Use easy_eat_contaminated for that.
<+Grunt> You dereference an invalid pointer! Ouch! That really hurt! The game dies...
User avatar

Dungeon Master

Posts: 4031

Joined: Thursday, 16th December 2010, 20:37

Location: France

Post Wednesday, 5th October 2011, 23:02

Re: Food reform

I've changed the hungry level from 2600 to 2800. Very hungry is at 2066. You can't go from very hungry directly to satiated with a brown chunk anymore.
<+Grunt> You dereference an invalid pointer! Ouch! That really hurt! The game dies...

Snake Sneak

Posts: 110

Joined: Monday, 20th December 2010, 21:11

Post Thursday, 6th October 2011, 00:08

Re: Food reform

I suggested this in ##crawl but i'll suggest it here too. There's some bug fixes in trunk which haven't reached CDO or CAO yet. People should really wait for those before judging the patch super harshly. There's probably still some room for additional interface improvements around the new changes and suggestions are a lot more likely to be received well than complaints about how every character you play is going to stave to death now.

Snake Sneak

Posts: 110

Joined: Monday, 20th December 2010, 21:11

Post Thursday, 6th October 2011, 00:52

Re: Food reform

At least in this thread, i don't see any complaints. There's a few suggestions, which is good, but generally they are pretty extreme suggestions. More modest change suggestions are probably more likely to get implemented.

Snake Sneak

Posts: 110

Joined: Monday, 20th December 2010, 21:11

Post Thursday, 6th October 2011, 01:04

Re: Food reform

I actually have a complaint. It currently doesn't present you with chunks you are eligible to eat like it used to. (When hungry: Would you like to eat a chunk of rat? Y/N/*) That might be one of the bugs you already solved, but if you didn't, that should be a high priority :D

Also, this worked when i submitted it :twisted:

Swamp Slogger

Posts: 131

Joined: Monday, 29th August 2011, 22:55

Post Thursday, 6th October 2011, 01:09

Re: Food reform

The only complaint I have is that I think that the food clock is there to prevent scummy behaviour and it did its job quite well before the reform, I believe. Food is probably one of the least interesting aspect of roguelikes and no matter how you try it's impossible to make it interesting without adding something from "won't implement" list, so I think the goal is that if you play normally, you should barely notice it's there. It's better when it's too much food, then not enough. Food isn't there to add to the challenge, it's to prevent certain kinds of behaviour. I'd go as far as to say that food cost for spells/abilities is an artefact of ancient times and should be replaced with something less fiddly, such as cooldowns or something like that, but that's probably too extreme for now.

Basically, I believe food mechanics should be as hidden as possible. So far, food reform does the opposite, but maybe if it's just an interface issue.
User avatar

Dungeon Master

Posts: 4031

Joined: Thursday, 16th December 2010, 20:37

Location: France

Post Thursday, 6th October 2011, 08:54

Re: Food reform

ryak wrote:I actually have a complaint. It currently doesn't present you with chunks you are eligible to eat like it used to. (When hungry: Would you like to eat a chunk of rat? Y/N/*) That might be one of the bugs you already solved, but if you didn't, that should be a high priority :D

You know, I wouldn't have bothered answering this for something like the 5th time in 2 days if it has been anyone else but you asking. It's fixed.

After some playtesting, I think the normal gameplay is barely changed. you eat brown chunks less often since they are harder to eat and give less nutrition. And since the sickness chance is reduced (from 1/3 to 1/5), you end up being sick much less often, which is an improvement.
When you're under pressure (being herbivore 1, or in orc for example) and have to rely on lower quality food, then you spend more time at very hungy and near starving, and have to eat more often. You have to be careful with your satiation level, and consume permafood more often. I think it's more interesting than simply stuffing yourself on brown chunks and waiting out the sickness.
Having to eat more often does increase the tedium a bit, but it's not that bad. With easy_eat_chunk and autopickup, eating a corpse is 2 keys: ce. And you also auto-eat during travelling and resting. Chunks are sorted by preference, then by freshness. We might bring some more interface improvements, suggestions are welcome. However, I'm not sure about pressing e over a corpse to butcher and eat it. You gain a single keystroke, and implementing it properly is harder than it sounds. Maybe you have edible chunks in your inventory you want to eat. Do we compare their quality with the quality of the corpse your standing over? Maybe there's several of them. In a simple case, it's a one key gain, and all other cases are complicated to code and might lead to user error. Not worth it.

Oh, and one last thing. When you're satiated, you shouldn't even bother chopping up contaminated corpse. They would rot before you reach very hungry. The lower your satiation, the less picky you are when looking for food. It makes sense and does play quite well I think.
<+Grunt> You dereference an invalid pointer! Ouch! That really hurt! The game dies...

Abyss Ambulator

Posts: 1131

Joined: Tuesday, 4th January 2011, 15:03

Post Thursday, 6th October 2011, 13:01

Re: Food reform

Since you can create a macro for 'ce' if you like, I think the autoeat corpse feature would not even spare one keystroke.

Not bothering with brown corpses when satiated is only true if you do not have a very expensive spell or ability (like berserk). Otherwise you may reach very hungry quickly, so the chunks still can be useful.

The food changes I good in my experince, thank you for implementing.

Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 2996

Joined: Tuesday, 28th June 2011, 20:41

Location: Berlin

Post Thursday, 6th October 2011, 16:26

Re: Food reform

njvack wrote:It's a nerf to Animate Dead & Company as well as Sublimation and Fulsome and Powered by Death and Fedhas and corpse-sacrificers -- so it doesn't quite preserve the game as-is. Also, it effectively alters spell hunger costs. It's probably balance-able, but changing corpse & chunk generation has a bunch of follow-on effects.


The former is completely nonsensical. It doesn't remove any corpses so it can't specifically affect these more than others. All it does is make them wait a couple hundred turns before they can eat a chunk which doesn't make gameplay any more fun or interesting but just adds some unnecessary tedium. As such it's a change that isn't worth implementing because despite the fact that it actually doesn't change gameplay deeply from an objective point of view, it does affect fun and entertainment value.


Regarding gourmand. I feel I can say a bit about new gourmand since I have won a primary caster using the new food system yesterday (and splatted one in Orc today) while both used Gourmand. It isn't quite useless, as KoboldLord pointed out, but Conservation is really an obvious choice by now because Gourmand still has a greatly decreased value (for your information, 7000 to 11000 is quite a a difference, not only because this might mean one fight where you spam medium to high-level spells more but also especially regarding berserkers.
All in all I don't think the new gourmand amulet is that great. Instead of another nerf (seriously, what?) I think a total change of the amulet might be nice. I would certainly approve of it no longer being "hey, you're a troll"-amulet but it contributing to another one's no-brainer status doesn't help.

Blades Runner

Posts: 546

Joined: Monday, 20th December 2010, 14:25

Post Thursday, 6th October 2011, 16:51

Re: Food reform

cerebovssquire wrote:All in all I don't think the new gourmand amulet is that great. Instead of another nerf (seriously, what?) I think a total change of the amulet might be nice. I would certainly approve of it no longer being "hey, you're a troll"-amulet but it contributing to another one's no-brainer status doesn't help.

Yes, I think !Gourmand is significantly weaker now. That's not a big problem, I don't think it was broken before. Taking away all food issues makes some builds much more powerful but for most it just makes eliminates food management concerns. If !Gourmand allowed two levels instead of one so contaminated chuck could be eased when sated I don't think it would break anything.

BTW, I love the food reform. It makes sense and it's simple. Very nice.
User avatar

Blades Runner

Posts: 575

Joined: Tuesday, 18th January 2011, 15:11

Post Thursday, 6th October 2011, 18:37

Re: Food reform

the amulet of the gourmand was very good before. it's just that there are better amulets.

i was going to suggest it could give you carnivore 1 and saprovore 1, but i'm playing an ogre on trunk and at XL17 i've yet to eat a rotting chunk. you have to drop to very low satiation levels, and the chunks are usually gone by then. i'm not sure it works very well within the new system.
Wins: DDBe (3 runes, morgue file)

Snake Sneak

Posts: 110

Joined: Monday, 20th December 2010, 21:11

Post Thursday, 6th October 2011, 23:10

Re: Food reform

galehar wrote:You know, I wouldn't have bothered answering this for something like the 5th time in 2 days if it has been anyone else but you asking. It's fixed.


I probably should have realized this bug was completely obvious and had probably been mentioned before and checked the git log before asking. Works great now!

Dungeon Master

Posts: 3618

Joined: Thursday, 23rd December 2010, 12:43

Post Thursday, 6th October 2011, 23:18

Re: Food reform

Interface improvements will come. Three hopefully simple ones:

1. inscriptions for food items:
d - chunk of giant frog meat {edible if hungry}
e - chunk of orc meat {edible if very hungry}

2. currently inedible (but edible when hungrier) food items coloured brown

3. The 'e'at command should work as before.

Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 3037

Joined: Sunday, 2nd January 2011, 02:06

Post Thursday, 6th October 2011, 23:40

Re: Food reform

dpeg wrote:Interface improvements will come. Three hopefully simple ones:

1. inscriptions for food items:
d - chunk of giant frog meat {edible if hungry}
e - chunk of orc meat {edible if very hungry}

2. currently inedible (but edible when hungrier) food items coloured brown


If this is a choice between the two, I like the second better than the first. The level of hunger you need to have before you can eat the food seems like it would fit better in the item description rather than as an inscription that clutters up the inventory list.
User avatar

Abyss Ambulator

Posts: 1249

Joined: Sunday, 18th September 2011, 02:11

Post Thursday, 6th October 2011, 23:42

Re: Food reform

KoboldLord wrote:
dpeg wrote:Interface improvements will come. Three hopefully simple ones:

1. inscriptions for food items:
d - chunk of giant frog meat {edible if hungry}
e - chunk of orc meat {edible if very hungry}

2. currently inedible (but edible when hungrier) food items coloured brown


If this is a choice between the two, I like the second better than the first. The level of hunger you need to have before you can eat the food seems like it would fit better in the item description rather than as an inscription that clutters up the inventory list.

Yeah, I agree. The inscriptions would be useful once and annoying forever afterwards; colouring currently inedible chunks brown is intuitive and unobtrusive.

Dungeon Master

Posts: 3618

Joined: Thursday, 23rd December 2010, 12:43

Post Thursday, 6th October 2011, 23:55

Re: Food reform

The list was meant to be inclusive, i.e. all three items.

The inscriptions have the advantage of getting the point across without any further references needed (like colour codes). I'd like to point out that randart inscriptions were also lamented about when suggested at first. It is not clear to me how they'd be annoying: food items come last in the inventory and have short names. Also note that a food item's value can change, e.g. depending on Gourmand or mutations.

Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 3037

Joined: Sunday, 2nd January 2011, 02:06

Post Friday, 7th October 2011, 00:22

Re: Food reform

dpeg wrote:It is not clear to me how they'd be annoying: food items come last in the inventory and have short names.


When I'm playing a necromancer-type character, I routinely carry around eight or more stacks of chunks and I don't care even a little bit about whether they happen to be edible at the time. It's more important to know which chunks are yaktaur chunks and which chunks are hydra chunks.

If I'm playing a non-necromancer character, I carry only one stack of chunks and care only about two boolean values: 'Can I eat it now?' and 'Does it hurt?' Color-coding already covers all the functionality I would find useful.

dpeg wrote:Also note that a food item's value can change, e.g. depending on Gourmand or mutations.


Item descriptions already vary depending on your status. God-forbidden items include that fact in their description, for instance, but only if you follow that particular deity. And fortunately, there's only a couple things that influence this value.
User avatar

Dungeon Master

Posts: 4031

Joined: Thursday, 16th December 2010, 20:37

Location: France

Post Friday, 7th October 2011, 06:05

Re: Food reform

dpeg wrote:2. currently inedible (but edible when hungrier) food items coloured brown

The only downside of this, it's that when you're very hungry, normal and contaminated chunks are both dark grey, you can't distinguish them easily anymore.
<+Grunt> You dereference an invalid pointer! Ouch! That really hurt! The game dies...
User avatar

Dungeon Master

Posts: 182

Joined: Saturday, 18th December 2010, 10:26

Location: Germany

Post Friday, 7th October 2011, 17:35

Re: Food reform

What's wrong with the existing colour coding?

So brown signifies both "sometimes makes you sick" AND "can only eat when very hungry", why would this be a problem? As far as I understand, those two effects not only actually apply to the same chunk type, but flavour-wise, their combination even makes sense. New players have to check the descriptions anyway to learn about chunk properties. Alternatively, the inscriptions could be "{edible when very hungry, can cause sickness}" which is quite a mouthful indeed.

However, there should be a message if the player tries to eat something and the chunks they carry don't qualify, both when they don't have any edible food (simple message) and when they do (short message in the menu header or footer).

Disclaimer: I haven't actually played recent trunk, so I'm solely judging the interface on the comments here.
Please report bugs to Crawl's bug tracker, and leave feedback on the development wiki. Thank you!

Dungeon Master

Posts: 3618

Joined: Thursday, 23rd December 2010, 12:43

Post Friday, 7th October 2011, 20:26

Re: Food reform

The advantage of the inscription is that it tells the player not just the current status (we use colour for that: yellow (preferred) > grey (edible) > brown (currently inedible) > darkgrey (never edible)) but also when a currently inedible item will be usable. Given the current confusion, that would definitely help. I still don't see how people could be annoyed by this. For actual release, we may reduce the inscriptions. For now, they'll help.
User avatar

Tomb Titivator

Posts: 832

Joined: Saturday, 30th July 2011, 00:58

Post Friday, 7th October 2011, 21:32

Re: Food reform

I know this is a little out there, but why can't Trolls eat boots? They're made of leather and Trolls are the goats of the carnivore world. Not a major issue but it could be a neat little thing for trolls to eat leather gear... Or maybe this idea is just too Yiuf.
KoboldLord wrote:I'm also morbidly curious now as to how Shatter is abusable for 'stealth tricks'. It's about as stealthy as the Kool-Aid Man smashing through the walls and running through the room
User avatar

Halls Hopper

Posts: 72

Joined: Wednesday, 5th January 2011, 21:48

Post Friday, 7th October 2011, 21:43

Re: Food reform

bobross419 wrote:I know this is a little out there, but why can't Trolls eat boots? They're made of leather and Trolls are the goats of the carnivore world. Not a major issue but it could be a neat little thing for trolls to eat leather gear... Or maybe this idea is just too Yiuf.


maybe a little too SLASH'EM, actually...

Mines Malingerer

Posts: 42

Joined: Friday, 7th January 2011, 01:41

Post Saturday, 8th October 2011, 02:05

Re: Food reform

Is berserk supposed to be used even when very hungry? Im using the latest trunk version and when I use the sword of Jihad when it berserks me it jumps from very hungry to starving.

Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 3037

Joined: Sunday, 2nd January 2011, 02:06

Post Saturday, 8th October 2011, 03:11

Re: Food reform

betamin wrote:Is berserk supposed to be used even when very hungry? Im using the latest trunk version and when I use the sword of Jihad when it berserks me it jumps from very hungry to starving.


The Sword of Jihad gives you *Rage, which is distinct from +Rage. +Rage is the good version you can evoke when you need it, while *Rage is the bad version that randomly afflicts you when you attack regardless of whether you want it or not. *Rage is perfectly capable of killing you, so if you can't block it with clarity you'll need another way to compensate for this serious drawback.
User avatar

Dungeon Master

Posts: 182

Joined: Saturday, 18th December 2010, 10:26

Location: Germany

Post Saturday, 8th October 2011, 08:05

Re: Food reform

dpeg wrote:The advantage of the inscription is that it tells the player not just the current status (we use colour for that: yellow (preferred) > grey (edible) > brown (currently inedible) > darkgrey (never edible)) but also when a currently inedible item will be usable. Given the current confusion, that would definitely help. I still don't see how people could be annoyed by this. For actual release, we may reduce the inscriptions. For now, they'll help.


To clarify, I don't think that temporarily inedible chunks should be treated as "useless" (in neither colouring nor '&' selection). So, for non-saprovores, rotting chunks would always be darkgrey, contaminated chunks (requiring very hungry) brown and normal chunks (req. hungry) always lightgrey. If the player presses 'e', only the currently edible foodstuff is listed, so the inscriptions would be completely pointless for that. Outside the eating menu (in the normal inventory), I'm worried that these inscriptions (especially such wordy ones) would clutter the screen and make chunks appear more important than they are. This is completely different from artefact inscriptions as the whole point of randarts is that they get a random set of a large pool of possible attributes, whereas brown chunks will always be contaminated. If food has been moved to the bottom of the inventory, it's less of an issue, but last I remember it was listed somewhere between armour and wands.

Again, if the player tries to eat (whether from floor or inventory, autoeat or menu) there should be an explanatory message if they currently have no safely edible chunks but do have safe chunks that are currently inedible.
Please report bugs to Crawl's bug tracker, and leave feedback on the development wiki. Thank you!
Next

Return to Game Design Discussion

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 24 guests

cron
Powered by phpBB © 2000, 2002, 2005, 2007 phpBB Group.
Designed by ST Software for PTF.