Food Aging -- Discussion Thread

[Bushranger]

Will fruit on trees, berries on plants, etc spoil on the branch when the game has been up for more than 36hrs?

[Ender]

36 hours (a day and a half) is short enough that the entire concept of food storage is going to be a thing of the past until code taking drying/curing/salting is in place.

That being said, I'm curious to how long those processes will extend the life of food.  Is this something the staff feels comfortable with sharing as to what kinda food life extensions we should expect?

Also, what are the staff's thoughts on high strength characters/half-giants/etc. loading themselves down with food to get around this?  Or PCs picking up ludicrous amounts of food before logging out.  Will this be considered cheating the intention of the code?

[Delirium]

Let's also take a look at the weight of food vs fulfillment vs actual size.

Strips of dried meat can be surprisingly (i.e. strangely) heavy!

[James de Monet]

Also, I didn't read this whole thread so I don't know if anyone else has said it, but can we have more rotten food vendors in the rinth/slums now?  Cheap eats!  Gone tomorrow!

[Malken]

Nice.

[nauta]

Hey staff,

I'm all sorts of for this change.

However, granted it is 36 hours (and in game right now!)...

I had some time to think about it, and there's a worry that some items might require multiple ingredients (some quite rare) -- but if each ingredient is itself food, then the ingredients will expire before you can make the big cake.  For instance, flour and ginka fruit, both of which are relatively hard to get, so I can imagine someone getting the flour, then waiting on the ginka, then getting the ginka, but having the flour spoil, so waiting on the flour, then getting the ginka, and [poooooof head just exploded].  (Generally, things that require many ingredients from many different places will be pretty hard to pull off.)

A simple example: I ran a bakery last year and made rat meat pies, which only required two things: rat meat and flour.  But it was hard to get both of those together -- either I had a flour shipment come in without the meat or the meat shipment without the flour.

I hope the worry is clear enough.

Perhaps we can bump the expiration up, or have no expiration until certain items can be flagged as more permanent (e.g., tubers and flour shouldn't spoil that quickly) or until preserving containers are implemented  -- that is, phase two or whatever?

[Large Hero]

Contrary to those expressing worry over incomplete additions or a lack of testing, I'm glad this went in as it did. The game needs a lot of changes, and this is one of them. I'm glad it got in "quickly." This isn't a hospital or a space travel engineering bay. It's fine to fix things later. Getting changes into the game now is good.

[manipura]

You have three days before the food spoils. Then cook it and you have another three days on top of that?

Don't forget it's 3RL days of logged in time.

While it's 3 days of RL time

Not sure where people are getting the "3 RL days!" number.  It's 36 hours. That's 1.5 real life days.

I was assuming that the 3 RL days being mentioned was in regard to having raw food for almost it's full shelf-life (1.5 days) and then cooking it to produce a new food item, which would have another 1.5 days before spoiling.
If that's the food that people are gathering for an event, which is what was being talked about, then it's likely going to be two-step food (aka cooked).


Edit: At the risk of asking another stupid question, what about items that are 'edible' but aren't typical food items.  Meaning...there are some items in game that are generally used for other things but also happen to be edible.  These are going to spoil as well, even though they are things generally used in say, making tablets or treating leathers?

[bardlyone]

idea: make the massive sack of flour a nonfood item so it will keep indefinitely. only when it's opened to portion into smaller bags, would it spoil. given the prevalence of the big bags vs small ones for purchase in the currently open game areas, that might be helpful?

[Xalle]

Also, what are the staff's thoughts on high strength characters/half-giants/etc. loading themselves down with food to get around this?  

'haha suckerz mai meat wont spoil'

[Synthesis]

Meh.  Stupid and pointless, but not too annoying.

[Lithium]

Also, what are the staff's thoughts on high strength characters/half-giants/etc. loading themselves down with food to get around this?  

'haha suckerz mai meat wont spoil'

There goes my bacon-wrapped HG concept.

[Lizzie]

I don't remember flour (the raw material in sacks or massive sacks) being edible at all. They're only craftable into edible things. Unless my memory is faulty?

[nauta]

I don't remember flour (the raw material in sacks or massive sacks) being edible at all. They're only craftable into edible things. Unless my memory is faulty?

Anyone in game got a big bag of flour they want to test this on?  

You might be right on the specific case -- although the ultimate solution would be to make flour into one of those super long decay food items in phase two or whatever --

But I can think of several other big ticket items that require a lot of little ingredients to make.  If you are working on your own, it'd be impossible to get them all together in the 36 hour window; if you were working with a hopping clan with hunters to get you the raw ingredients quickly?  Maybe... but even then the amount of coordination to get that fancy cake made seems a bit mad.  (In any case, I think you could count these cases on one hand and probably just work with staff to fix the recipes / find a solution.)

[Molten Heart]

This is great news for wine and cheese lovers.

[BadSkeelz]

Huh. About wine...

Does this apply to consumable liquids as well?

[nauta]

Huh. About wine...

Does this apply to consumable liquids as well?

As nesselin put it: "If 'eat' command works on the item, it is food, and will age."

Although, judging by your signature and gdb persona, I think I should be more specific: No, you do not eat wine.  

(I could be totally wrong, by the way.  I'm just assuming the liquid code is different.  Although... what if water did evaporate in barrels?  Ouch.  Survival mode times twenty.)

Oh, man.  Cheeses.  All those lovely cheeses will have to wait for phase two to outlive scrab steaks.

ETA: Sands!  My candy necklace!  (Candies should go to the top of the pile for the phase two stuff.  I'm not biased at all.)

[Bushranger]

What about food that is alive? Like wriggling grubs or sandhoppers?

[manipura]

I don't remember flour (the raw material in sacks or massive sacks) being edible at all. They're only craftable into edible things. Unless my memory is faulty?

Anyone in game got a big bag of flour they want to test this on?  

You might be right on the specific case -- although the ultimate solution would be to make flour into one of those super long decay food items in phase two or whatever --

But I can think of several other big ticket items that require a lot of little ingredients to make.  If you are working on your own, it'd be impossible to get them all together in the 36 hour window; if you were working with a hopping clan with hunters to get you the raw ingredients quickly?  Maybe... but even then the amount of coordination to get that fancy cake made seems a bit mad.  (In any case, I think you could count these cases on one hand and probably just work with staff to fix the recipes / find a solution.)

Well the things I was specifically thinking of are items you can technically 'eat' but are more often used in making other non-edible items.  I'm assuming that the items in question will poof into dust, even though they're typically kept and used for non-food purposes.  Which will be sort of annoying, in the case of a few specific items.  Now that flour is mentioned, I'm not sure if it's edible on it's own or not.

[Seeker]

What about food that is alive? Like wriggling grubs or sandhoppers?

If this new implementation ruins my Sandhopper Ranch plot, I swear I am writing the tartest staff complaint you ever did see.

[Desertman]

What about tablets?

You can "eat" tablets....

[Nergal]

Tablets won't spoil.

[nessalin]

What about food that is alive? Like wriggling grubs or sandhoppers?

While currently they will age like all foods, in the future they will not.  We had a pre-existing setting to indicate foods that were bugs (rather than meat, fruit, dried-fruit, etc...)

[LauraMars]

ETA: Sands!  My candy necklace!  (Candies should go to the top of the pile for the phase two stuff.  I'm not biased at all.)

shit the candy necklace. I love that thing.

when I played a noble I gave one to my npc guard and had him wear it. and when people commented on it he said his daughter gave it to him.

[Norcal]

You eat tablets. Does this apply to tablets?