Eat My Rotting Meat

[Desertman]

Because it was requested, I made this its own thread.

1. In corpse becomes on corpse. This is doable with a simple check for the object type, and, if corpses have no code flag but container, then create a new object type for corpses so the code can check appropriately.

On the corpse of the tall, muscular man:
a sandcloth shirt
a pair of grey pants
a pair of worn boots
a nasty head gash
a horiffic many-toothed bite mark on the chest

2.Expanding on what you see when they are alive ...

This man is tall, and muscular. He has green eyes and red hair.
The tall, muscular man is in poor condition.
<on torso>               a sandcloth shirt
<on legs>                a pair of grey pants
<on feet>                a pair of worn boots
He bears:
A nasty head gash
a horrific many-toothed bite mark on the chest
He is carrying:
a large bag

Venomz is here having another great idea.

I would like to take your idea and apply the same sort of concept to food so that it could decay over time given the proper tag. Cooking food/drying food/salting food/preserving food in some way with the "cook" skill would reduce the rate at which it decayed. This would also make all of that salt everyone is digging in the south IC'ly useful and valuable. It would also make hunters in Houses a lot more valuable. It would also makes the cooking skill, cooks, and food in general more valuable.

It would also just be more realistic than everyone having apartments with fifty pieces of raw meat that are five IC years old that are still edible.

A meaty steak.
A fresh meaty steak.
A stale meaty steak.
A aged meaty steak.
A decaying meaty steak.
A rotting meaty steak.
Nothing.

Once something reached the "stale" stage you could still eat it without risking food poisoning, but you could no longer cook it/cure it/dry it to preserve it further.

Eating anything older than "stale" would result in a chance to be poisoned.

(Probably needs its own thread.)

[Taven]

I don't think this has been implemented for reasons of playability.

What is the time range you'd want between each stage of food decay?

[James de Monet]

I don't know, man...I've never found the food system in this game to be all that compelling, story wise.  Sure, it forces hunters to go out and hunt, means you can't just go live as a singular hermit in the way out without a certain skillset, but...how often do you find your characters just cramming down travel cakes to make the messages go away versus using food as an actual story point?

I'd say 95%/5%. It's cool when it happens, but making meat rot is not gonna improve those percentages.  I'm afraid it's just gonna add more grind-flavor to keeping characters fed.

Maybe I do food wrong.

[evilcabbage]

Dr. No becomes Mister Yes. I like this idea and support it thoroughly.

[Desertman]

I don't think this has been implemented for reasons of playability.

What is the time range you'd want between each stage of food decay?

Well, it is an extreme desert environment which I think would lend to food items, even food items such as meat, decaying more slowly due to a dry environment as opposed to a damp environment.

I would base it primarily off of playability and not necessarily realism in any case. The fact it goes bad is enough to make all of the above positive factors a reality.

Going bad too quickly for playability reasons would make this a bad idea I agree.

I would say something along these lines.

A meaty steak - Skinned right off the animal/bought out of the shop.

A fresh meaty steak - A food item would take on the "fresh" tag after being harvested/bought for 12 RL hours. It would remain "fresh" for up to 24 RL hours. This gives any hunter a full RL day of playing to either cure their kill or get their kill to someone who can cure it.

A stale meaty steak - A food item takes on the "stale" tag 24 hours after being harvested/bought. It would keep the stale tag for up to 48 hours. This means things like fruits, breads, roots, tubers etc....Would remain "good" for eating purposes for a couple of game weeks, which seems realistic and playable, and a couple of RL days. This may be pushing it for "meat" items in terms of realism, but, again, playability over realism. The idea is to add to the game, not make it "harder", just more realistic.

A decaying meaty steak - A food item takes on the "decaying" tag 48 hours after being harvested/bought. At this point you could potentially eat it, and depending on your endurance, you might not get ill. Only for the desperate and starving. The item would remain decaying for 72 hours before it started to rot.

A rotting meaty steak - A food item takes on the "rotting" tag 72 hours after being harvested/bought. At this point your stomach would refuse to eat that. The item would eventually rot into nothing after 120 hours (5 RL days).


I would say all of those timelines would be tripled for items that had been properly cured/cooked/dried/preserved.

This would mean that if you killed something/bought something to eat, and cured it properly within a RL day of having it in your inventory, you would then be able to safely store and eat it for up to 144 RL hours, or 6 RL days.

Basically, cooked/preserved food would stay "good" for 6 RL days, which seems more than playable, but still short enough that it would require people to not store 50 steaks in their apartment/find 50 steaks in their new apartment, and not buy/worry about food for RL months.  

[Desertman]

I don't know, man...I've never found the food system in this game to be all that compelling, story wise.  Sure, it forces hunters to go out and hunt, means you can't just go live as a singular hermit in the way out without a certain skillset, but...how often do you find your characters just cramming down travel cakes to make the messages go away versus using food as an actual story point?

I'd say 95%/5%. It's cool when it happens, but making meat rot is not gonna improve those percentages.  I'm afraid it's just gonna add more grind-flavor to keeping characters fed.

Maybe I do food wrong.

In a perma-death game that requires your characters to struggle to stay fed and watered, part of the game should be struggling to actually stay fed and watered. I would think this would add to that.

It would also lend its self to a more realistic economy. People work IRL to eat and stay alive. In game, food is sort of an after thought. "Oh, I will just store ten steaks in my pack and not worry about that for a long time and just eat when the message comes up."

We agree that right now the food concept is sort of a "Oh well, that is in the back of my mind and I just feed the code when necessary", I would think this would make people actually struggling to continue living due to a low resource environment more of a realistic issue.

Kind of bringing that "eating to survive" to the forefront, instead of the after thought we both agree it is now.

[Jherlen]

Food rot might help put some more stress on indie hunters. Might, I don't know. You wouldn't be able to just bank up a bunch of scrab or duskhorn steaks from all your kills to snack on when hungry. Do people do that? I'm not sure.  But at least it'd be a bit of a money sink for indies if they needed to buy food more often, which is good. It'd also have realism benefits.

The problem I have with food is that almost every clan has a free, unlimited (in terms of PCs) supply of food and water. If you join a clan, you instantly lose some of the danger of surviving in a harsh desert world right then and there, because you literally cannot die of thirst or starve. In my opinion these kinds of cooks are actually REALLY OVERPOWERED if you want a theme of the game to be about a constant struggle against the environment. They do belong in some places, in my mind maybe noble and merchant estates. But the estates ONLY - the barracks for the guards and hunters shouldn't have free food vending machines.

It'd be cool if NPC cooks needed to be supplied, by PCs, with fresh ingredients for them to be able to prepare meals. (Okay, for playability reasons maybe they are virtually supplied every so often -- the amount and quality of the virtual supplies would vary clan to clan.) And yes, those ingredients should rot after a time, too. I just think that there should still be some struggle for basic necessities, however lessened, even if you join a clan. If the above idea is too hard to implement, maybe we could just switch some clan cooks to food vendors that sell meals for coins - cheaper than city prices, but still not free. Free lunches should be the privilege of the 1% only.

And once again, yay food rot, too.

[evilcabbage]

Food rot might help put some more stress on indie hunters. Might, I don't know. You wouldn't be able to just bank up a bunch of scrab or duskhorn steaks from all your kills to snack on when hungry. Do people do that? I'm not sure.  But at least it'd be a bit of a money sink for indies if they needed to buy food more often, which is good. It'd also have realism benefits.

The problem I have with food is that almost every clan has a free, unlimited (in terms of PCs) supply of food and water. If you join a clan, you instantly lose some of the danger of surviving in a harsh desert world right then and there, because you literally cannot die of thirst or starve. In my opinion these kinds of cooks are actually REALLY OVERPOWERED if you want a theme of the game to be about a constant struggle against the environment. They do belong in some places, in my mind maybe noble and merchant estates. But the estates ONLY - the barracks for the guards and hunters shouldn't have free food vending machines.

It'd be cool if NPC cooks needed to be supplied, by PCs, with fresh ingredients for them to be able to prepare meals. (Okay, for playability reasons maybe they are virtually supplied every so often -- the amount and quality of the virtual supplies would vary clan to clan.) And yes, those ingredients should rot after a time, too. I just think that there should still be some struggle for basic necessities, however lessened, even if you join a clan. If the above idea is too hard to implement, maybe we could just switch some clan cooks to food vendors that sell meals for coins - cheaper than city prices, but still not free. Free lunches should be the privilege of the 1% only.

And once again, yay food rot, too.

If hunters stop bringing food in ever I can guarantee cooks would be changed to reflect that.

[Taven]

I would base it primarily off of playability and not necessarily realism in any case. The fact it goes bad is enough to make all of the above positive factors a reality.

I made a chart based off exactly what you said, for easier readability. Here it is!

Status	Time	Example
(No Tag)	Under 12 RL hours	A meaty steak
Fresh	12-24 RL hours	A fresh meaty steak
Stale	24-48 RL hours	A stale meaty steak
Decaying	48-72 RL hours	A decaying meaty steak
Rotting	Over 72  RL hours	A rotting, meaty steak

Time line for food that has been cooked/dried/preserved:

Status	Time	Example
(No Tag)	Under 36 RL hours (1.5 RL days)	A cooked meaty steak
Fresh	36-72 RL hours (1.5-3 RL days)	A fresh, cooked meaty steak
Stale	72-144 RL hours (3-6 RL days)	A stale, cooked meaty steak
Decaying	144-216 RL hours (6-9 RL days)	A decaying, cooked meaty steak
Rotting	Over 216 RL hours (9+ RL days)	A rotting, cooked meaty steak

[Desertman]

 

[LauraMars]

I'm in favor of food rot.

Very highly in favor.

[Taven]

Food rot might help put some more stress on indie hunters. Might, I don't know. You wouldn't be able to just bank up a bunch of scrab or duskhorn steaks from all your kills to snack on when hungry. Do people do that? I'm not sure.  But at least it'd be a bit of a money sink for indies if they needed to buy food more often, which is good. It'd also have realism benefits.

The problem I have with food is that almost every clan has a free, unlimited (in terms of PCs) supply of food and water.

It also would make it harder for casual players to play. Generally, casual players don't join clans because they don't have enough time to devote to it. It would mean that someone who didn't play regularly would have to worry a lot more about food. If you only log in once a week you'd have to worry about food literally every time that you logged in. That would suck.

I don't think the rotting is necessarily a bad idea. I just am concerned about people who can't play a lot and don't have access to a clan for that very reason.

[WithSprinkles]

Well.. so long as there was a difference in the scale for different types of foods, I think decay would be alright. Some preserved foods can last longer than others, some maybe by a week or so. Some others don't last long at all. If realism is the goal.

[Jherlen]

Taven, I think if anything that clans would be more attractive to a casual player if food was more of an issue. Clans are more likely to have extra food available than an indie on their own would. Maybe the notion that clans are not a place for casual players might need to change some. Clans would probably have cooks and surplus ingredients if they were active, and so would probably have extra cured and salted foods in some sort of edible state lying around.

Anyway, yes, worrying about food would definitely be a bigger worry if this went in, and that's kind of by design. I think the question is, would we want the struggle for basic necessities to be a bigger struggle than it is now. Armageddon players are a sort of masochistic bunch, would we have more fun if food wasn't a guarantee always? I would.

[Delirium]

Pause the decay timer on a food object if a PC logs out with it. That way casual players aren't totally screwed - they can have a supply of food that they've virtually maintained.

This still allows a solution to the problem of 23849732 pieces of meat in the clan halls.

[WithSprinkles]

(stack meat chest)
(pick up chest)
(log out with chest)

[Delirium]

arrange couch is nailed to the ceiling

[Desertman]

I don't really want to fix things with this so much as add to the game with it.

Skilled hunters are in demand for more than shells and hides.

Clans without infinite magic food chefs actually need hunters now.

Cooks/chefs are now in actual demand.

Food preservation items/tools/solutions are now on the table as a needed thing.

People have to roleplay food realistically now.

People will now go to realistic economic lengths to ensure they don't starve in the "harsh" world of Zalanthas.

So on and so forth.

[Taven]

Taven, I think if anything that clans would be more attractive to a casual player if food was more of an issue. Clans are more likely to have extra food available than an indie on their own would. Maybe the notion that clans are not a place for casual players might need to change some. Clans would probably have cooks and surplus ingredients if they were active, and so would probably have extra cured and salted foods in some sort of edible state lying around.

Anyway, yes, worrying about food would definitely be a bigger worry if this went in, and that's kind of by design. I think the question is, would we want the struggle for basic necessities to be a bigger struggle than it is now. Armageddon players are a sort of masochistic bunch, would we have more fun if food wasn't a guarantee always? I would.

If someone only plays once a week, is clanned life really best? Clans have a hiring cap. If you hire people who only log in once a week, that can really be hard. The only way to change that would be to mess with caps based on activity, but if someone has 10 employees, 5 active and 5 who log on once a week, if the casual players suddenly start playing more, things could get out of balance.

I don't personally mind struggling more for food. I'm just not sure if decaying food would change things all that much. People would just be more likely to buy from shops rather then PCs, since if you buy from shops it will always be fresh.

Pause the decay timer on a food object if a PC logs out with it. That way casual players aren't totally screwed - they can have a supply of food that they've virtually maintained.

This still allows a solution to the problem of 23849732 pieces of meat in the clan halls.

This could be a solution, although I think you'd just see people logging out with copious amounts of food.

[Malken]

People who only plays once a week tends to play rangers and merchants, and, with those type of classes, finding foot to eat within 2 minutes of logging on is pretty easy/the least of their problems as a "weekend Arm warrior".

[Eyeball]

Salted, dried and/or smoked meats could have a much longer shelf life. Maybe indefinite. Same for dried fruits. This could make PC cooks more useful too.

[Potaje]

People who only plays once a week tends to play rangers and merchants, and, with those type of classes, finding foot to eat within 2 minutes of logging on is pretty easy/the least of their problems as a "weekend Arm warrior".

Because Zalanthan's are into sole food.. er soul food.

[Malken]

Yeah, English is my 2nd language, I meant feet, sorry!

[Potaje]

Yeah, English is my 2nd language, I meant feet, sorry!

Oh, my apologies, as well.

[MeTekillot]

potaje did you find foot fetish porn and photoshop out the person's legs or do you just have that image laying around by chance