Cutting Things Up

[creeper386]

Alright, just recently we had an added crafting ability to break large things into smaller things... And just recently I had an idea.

Although I don't know how well it'd work, I was thinking having some sort of script(or whatever) to be able to cut foodstuffs into smaller sections. This wouldn't require any new items or anything. Just some sort of command that gets rid of one item and replaces it with two items of lesser nurishment.

Something like...

>i

You are carrying:
A very large, neon pink tuber.

>cut tuber

You cut a very large, neon pink tuber in half.

>i

You are carrying:
A couple of half-eaten, very large, neon pink tubers.

Or whatever.


Creeper

[Frog Fairy]

What would be the use of this feature?

[creeper386]

Hm... Figured it'd be pretty obvious, but lets say you and your pal buy a big, neon pink tuber to split. Instead of one eatting part of it and giving it to the other, you break it in half and well... Split it.

There was also something about rationing. You can break up the food ahead of time. To allow for some planning. Also, say you get a big hunk of meat, you can cut it in half, store the other half away and eat the rest.

It's mostly a RP prop so that things match up alittle more, code/RP wise.

Sure there are many other reasons someplace... Probably more reasonable ones too...

But... SHRUG.

Creeper just came up with the idea... Didn't flesh it out or anything. Gosh.

[Summer]

You could share something without someone having to eat half of it right then and there. Thats about the only thing I can think of....

[Twilight]

I think its completely obvious, the truely devious reasoning behind this dastardly plan!

The lean, hungry looking gith tells the hunched, hunchback gith in heshrak:
Ok, we'll split it.

>Cut baby

You cut a blue-eyed baby in half.

>i

You are carrying:
A couple of halves of a blue-eyed baby.

[Frog Fairy]

Unfortunately I don't think this can be done that easily.
Your theory is based on that there are separate objects for every foods different state of "eatenness" - as in there is one object "half eaten steak", one object "small bite of a steak", etc.
However, this is to my knowledge not the case.
Which means that in order to implement this, you would either need to add some spiffy code to make craft-code affect the value for the original object's "eatenness", or create new objects for each "eaten-state" of each food product.
In other words, it seems to me like a small gain for a lot of work.

[Callisto]

Froggy said it right, a pile of work for a minor gain.

Would be a nice prop, but I'd never ask someone to code it unless I hated them immensely. Thats like three to five new objects for every current raw food object in the game, plus the code work to link them all together with a command set and such. Ouch.

[creeper386]

You don't need new objects. The food objects all have an eatten state. When you 'cut food' it purges the original and creates two of the same item at half of the eatten state. There should be already code set to create food stuffs at less then complete eatten status. All it needs is a code for the command and to purge and create the items.

If there isn't code to create half eatten food already... Someone was incredibly short sighted.

Creeper

[Lazloth]

As much as it pains me to say, I'm with creeper.  Putting this concept to code should be a trivial matter.

I too really enjoy it. If you haven't already man, 'idea' it.

[flurry]

I'm confused why this has to be a new command "cut" and not the "craft" command that can already do this in some cases.   What would be different about just making existing foods craftable into additional things (like two half-loaves of bread, or whatever)?

[Gorobei]

Because that would be a hell of a job.  You'd have to put in new items for each food, and crafting code for each of those.

[creeper386]

See... As far as I know, the crafting code requires new items. It'd be difficult with the crafting code. In the least require about as much work as a new command which would be less confusing.

How it'd work, is you create a new command, call it whatever. Then make it usable on food items that have at least two full sections of nurishment. Then you create abit of code, that purges the target item, and another bit that creates two new items of the same food type, just with the nurishment level reduced by half the targeted items value. Since all food doesn't have the same nurishment value, it's obvious there is some way to set that, that it's an item flag.

Now, not sure how Armageddon works. Or what exact value that determines how many bites are left in food, but thats basically it.


Creeper probably could code something like this in Smaug if it had an advanced food code like Arm.

[creeper386]

ALSO!!! It'd allow people that work for nobles something else to do!!!!

And it'd allow those nobles to take nice dainty bites that their servent cut up instead taking a bite out of a big old piece of meat. Or something.

Don't really know how it'd work with soups, or stews, or salads... Well salads would work somewhat... And other stuff like that... But thems the breaks.


Creeper

[DrunkenSalarr]

And... And... And....
:gets all excited
Drunken Salarr gets all excited.

And if the big piece is poisoned, the little pieces are poisoned too!

This might make coding it a little more difficult... but it shouldn't be too hard.  I guess if you just changed it to where instead of makeing 2 new food objects, you just halved the food value and weight and made a duplicate in the same location.

~Drunken Salarr, who just realized that other properties would have to be thought about as well, but loves the idea.

[flurry]

Because that would be a hell of a job.  You'd have to put in new items for each food, and crafting code for each of those.

Well I was thinking little by little, for items where it makes sense.    

In principle I like the idea of being able to cut or break up certain food items into smaller bits.  But cutting something into two "half-eaten" pieces just doesn't seem right.   Unless it's being cut with your teeth.   :shock:

[ShaLeah]

Anyone else see this as crafting with another name?

craft steak (as in mekillot)
You could craft a plate of thickly cut mekillot steak out of that. [Same amount of bites]
You could craft a plate of thinly sliced mekillot steak out of that. [+4 bites]

craft kalan
You could craft a few slices of fruit from that.
You could craft a kalan sliced in half from that.

craft brick
You could craft a shitload of spice from that.
You could craft lots of little

Anywhosoever...

You want things broken up?
http://www.zalanthas.org/ArmDocs/Community/format.html

ShaLeah
-who is missing the APM this year and is sad so she's posting all over the gdb.   :cry:

[creeper386]

Uh... No. I'm not talking about a new item. I'm talking about two new items. It WOULD work with the crafting code... But then new items well have to be made, for EVERY type of food everywhere. And then all the items original value would have to be checked and halfed for each item... Blah blah blah.

And it can be coded in much easier, and include all types of food, easiely.

The half-eatten could be rather corny... BUT... Right now I know I RP cutting food up and eating parts of it... So, THAT wouldn't be half-eatten either would it? It'd be cut up as well, but I can't cut it up, without eaten part of it as it stands now.


Creeper

[Anonymous]

Let me be presumptuous and try to clarify for him.

Basically you want a copy of the 'eat' command named cut.  However the cut command would work differently in that:

A. You character's hunger/thirst would not be affected.
B. Instead of a (presumably) auto-generated 'half eaten' portion of steak you'd get 2 auto-generated half-sections of steak.

Again, presumably this would not require dozens of objects being created.

That being said, and I'm not trying to piss in your cheerios here, I'm not sure the investment in imm time to code this up would be worth it since you can just RP cutting something up and  take a bite and pass it along.

Sure, that doesn't *always* work, but I'm not sure if the utilization this command would see would be worth it.

Yeah, I think everyone's really missing the point of the simplicity behind Creeper's suggestion. Just as in the 'eat' command, the 'cut' would remove a portion of the food (half as we talk about) and then duplicates the item. So you can cut food in half, without requiring a massive project. While it could be done with crafting, that would require much more work with only a slight added benefit. Also, what skill would it fall under with crafting? It's not hard to cut a piece of steak, or a fruit in half.

I'm very much in favor of Creeper's idea, and the various ways of implementing it. (I.E. saccing the original item and creating two "half-eaten" ones, or half-eating the first, then duplicating it)

[Frog Fairy]

Yeah, I think everyone's really missing the point of the simplicity behind Creeper's suggestion.

I don't think that most people are missing the point.
I think many people are less certain than Creeper is, of how easy this would really be to code.
However, there isn't really any point in going into detailed discussions of how easy or hard it would be, since only an Armageddon staff member/coder can answer this.
So, next step should be to seek a staff answer, no?

[creeper386]

Acctually, copying the eat command would probably take more time in deleting extra stuff then is truly necessary.

But in terms of how difficult it would be to code... Lets evaluate this.

1. It's been said that there is one food object, and the sdesc basically changes as the foods amount is depleted, and this is by people that don't think the idea would be easy. If this isn't the case, and there is more then one object per food, it'd probably just be as easy to do.

2. Using the above knowledge as correct, the eat command depleted a certain amount from the food, therefor changing the short description. So there IS already a way to change the amount in a given food object.

3. You use the above way to change the amount in a food object in the new command, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

4. By use of the craft code, there is already code in place to purge, as well as load objects from and to a characters inventory. This would also be used in a new command.

5. Making a new command is easy, probably easier on Arm then it is on others with their advanced scripting and ease of inserting the script into the code.

6. You use the command you made, make it purge the target object. Which as stated above is obviously possible and already exists in the code.

7. Then, as also is possible, you load two more of the same object into the players inventory, or one if you don't purge the target food object. Whichever way is done.

8. You then, use the code that reduced the amount of in the food object from the eat command, and reduce the amount by half the original, which can be done by a simple mathmatical equation included(OriginalValue/2), OR, reduce the target object by half, and the nearly loaded object by half.

9. It's pretty much done except for squashing any bugs.

10. You can then make it alittle more fancier, include several different mathmatical equations and be able to cut it up by more then just half. Like in thirds as well or something along those lines.

Now, perhaps I'm wrong in assuming the above, and perhaps I'm mistaking what other people say... But oh well. I could be way off and barring any odd quirks that prevent something of the sorts, it's unlikely to be some sort of major creation of code.

Creeper who already idea'd it, and was wondering about Player's opinions on the subject, not really rather or not it was possible, feasible, or a major waste of Staff time that could be spent on something better.

[Anonymous]

I don't disagree that it might potentially be a reasonably easy code.  But I have yet to see how it would be worth the time.  Sure, there's a wow factor, but how often would this get used per RL week?  RL month?

I cannot think of a single occasion in 3 years of playing this game where I would have used this command.  But maybe I just play greedy bastards who won't share.

Obviously my opinion doesn't matter in the end, since its up to some staffer if they wanted to do it.  But I don't think a strong case has been presented as to why they should.

[Lazloth]

Republican.

[Anonymous]

Republican.

Bzzzt.