Games that require basic necessities, Hunger, Thirst, Sleep Options

[wessel724]

I was wondering how people felt about games that require basic necessities like eating, sleeping, and water. I like it because it adds to the role playing aspect of the game, but at the same time it creates unnecessary headaches and takes away from the story line and game play.

I made a system that required the player to eat at least twice a day, keep their body hydrated and sleep at least 6 hours a day or it will cause stat penalties. I also put in an endurance bar that shows how much the player can effectively do, like if it drops so low the players walk speed would decrease, reaction time would be slowed and damage dealt reduced. I also put a body temperature meter in where the player would have to dress the hero in warmer clothes to face cold environments, and keep the hero cool in desert/warm environments.

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so opinions?

[LockeZ]

If it's just in one small section of the game (like the body temperature section when climbing the Great Glacier in FF7) it can break up the motonony of dungeon-crawling a bit. But in general I find dying of starvation is really underwhelming and awful.

I mean really, does it take these stupid adventurers more than a day to go through the Fire Temple? I generally assume that exploration in dungeons is in realtime, while battles are slowed down for the player's tactical benefit. But games with hunger/sleep meters seem to assume that the game is vastly sped up. Every five or ten minutes of real time is apparently one day of game time, if the rate that these meters go at is any indication. What the fuck, I walked for 120 seconds and have to eat again. Seriously people do not eat that much. If you eat a hamburger every two minutes you will not be fit for adventuring.

Final Fantasy 13 has a pretty realistic sense of time. The entire game takes place over the course of four days. You know this because after every few dungeons, there's a cut scene where they make camp for the night. The dungeons only take about an hour or two each, and you make camp 3 times during the 50 hour long game, which comes out to about 10-12 hours of gameplay per day. Some time is lost to cut scenes to fill in the gaps as well.

From a pure gameplay standpoint, ignoring the realisticness of it, to make such a system be any fun at all you would have to make sure there are always significant meaningful pros and cons to staying perfectly healthy, so that it creates actual decisions for the player instead of just monotonous crap to worry about. Like maybe you can't carry more than one ration at a time, so you have to fight extra battles as you search for food, which may or may not be worth it.

This post has been edited by LockeZ: Jan 7 2011, 06:48 AM

[heisenman]

I don't mind when a little realism is added to the gameplay in certain situations.
Like say, in TES games where you can't hold your breath underwater forever and you have to surface to fill your lungs once every couple minutes.
But honestly having six bajillion parameters bars that need replenishing everytime even outside battle is not exactly my idea of fun. Not to mention they unnecessarily clutter the screen.

[elliott20]

this is stuff that was present in just about every mid 90s RPG in the west. Don't believe me? Start with Ultima 5 and go all the way to Ultima 7. (Ultima Underworld required you to sleep, drink, and eat to survive) Might and Magic I believe from 3 onwards also featured a system where you have to make sure you heroes rest. (And have food, but they eat automatically when they rest)

Having this system is cool and all, but for it to REALLY work, you need to make sure they actually have an effect on the game play instead of just becoming another thing to nag the player with. Also, you have to make sure that the task of handling these things is not too onerous or else it will just slow the game down. So, if you have things like thirst, you better make sure water scarcity is an actual problem that is made front and center in some levels and always present in others. If food is an attribute, then food acquisition must also be considered and rationed. (Or heck, made fun. it gives you an excuse to put animals in for players to hunt) If you're going to do sleep, that's... well... make sure that there is also a benefit to sleeping. (i.e. regaining lost health) endurance is a pretty standard feature in a lot of games, since it basically acts like mana points in a lot of systems.

body temperature though... I'm not sure... that's starting to cross over into the realm of too much info, I think...again, it's about how well the attribute will effect game play. In this case, using body temperature means that the players must know how to regulate their temperature, either through clothing selection, spell selection, or some other thing. But that also means you cannot for any reason ever put in an element that allows the players to effectively ignore it.

[LockeZ]

Yeah, the ideas are all quite common and have been done plenty of times before... I'm just really glad game designers stopped doing them. I play old roguelikes or western RPGs and it's just unbearable sometimes.

I can't think of any commercial game since early PS1 that has attempted to do these things, and I'm pretty sure that's a good thing. Though I suppose MP and ammo aren't so terribly different, but I think the main difference is that you only use those things to kill enemies, not just to walk around. Though I suppose on the other hand, walking around is usually pretty boring, especially in a game where the dungeons don't have puzzles, and so sort of mechanic to make it more engaging isn't totally without merit.

But I guess what you didn't explain in the OP is why you're actually doing this. Why do you think the game would benefit from this, in detail? What hole in the experience are you trying to fill, or what problem are you trying to solve? I don't really know what you mean by "role playing aspect" since this system has nothing to do with role playing as I've ever heard it defined (usually it either means the player is in control of the character's personality, or that the player is expected to take on the character's personality).

[wessel724]

I brainfuzzled an idea for a game when I was at work one day but never gave it much thought besides that one day, where the party is on the run and are forced to survive in the wilderness and undercover. But I never took action on the idea and just made the character creation and parameters, and that was the end of that.

But the reason I asked was I had the necessities system already made and I started my new project, but didn't know if I should include it or not.

The thirst meter was inspired by when Ryu and the party have to travel the desert in BOF3 and the body temperature was inspired by FF7

The days in the test demo lasted 120 minutes.I made a system that would calculate the heros max values and drain per action for each parameter based on various stats. For the fatigue it would drain 1 pt for every step the player would take, but every second the hero stood still his fatigue would replenish by a set amount based off the heros constitution. Resting also greatly restored the heros fatigue. Once the hero gets to 25% fatigue, his sleep meter starts to drain twice as fast as he is pushing himself, then once the hero gets to 10% fatigue sleep drains at 3 times the normal rate, While sleeping the hero gets hungry and thirsty at a quarter of the rate they normally would. The hero can go for 3/4 a game day without taking any penalties from not eating, if the player does not eat at all, hunger reaching 0, the max the hero can restore his fatigue is 50%, and he will only be 75% rested at all times until nourished. Thirst is the only parameter the hero cant go without replenishing. Without drinking any water the hero will experience elevated body temperatures and eventually die. The body temperature gauge was put in the demo to simulate when the hero is in a fast paced battle and starts to become hot and winded.

I don't think I'll ever actually use it in any game but I made it for fun, wondering how people felt about treating your valiant hero like a sim.

[elliott20]

in that case, I would just play the sims.

the reason why I wouldn't do this here is simply because... well... right now it doesn't add much to the experience for the game but merely just hampers the player's ability to do stuff. Truth be told, it's actually hard to say if this is REALLY a good idea or not without seeing how you integrate this mechanic into the game and level designs.

I mean, look, the sims can somehow make purchasing a toilet exciting, I'm sure you can figure something out too.

[Guinevere]

Worrying about the character's well being can ruin the game.
It makes it repetitive.
It also makes it hard to play.
Which is why I never play Virtual Villagers. It gets boring after time.
What kind of age range are you aiming at?

This post has been edited by annika sai: Jan 8 2011, 04:55 PM

[wessel724]

Worrying about the character's well being can ruin the game.
It makes it repetitive.
It also makes it hard to play.
Which is why I never play Virtual Villagers. It gets boring after time.
What kind of age range are you aiming at?

I never intended to make a game with it, I just made it to make it. I was just wondering how everyone felt about feeding your hero.

[elliott20]

like I said, depends on what you do with the REST of the system. If it's basically limited to "you gotta remember to feed your hero", it's boring and a chore. On the other hand, if you have an elaborate system where ingesting certain foods might give you some interesting effects, then now I have a reason to feed my player in addition to feeding myself. Like I said, it's about maximizing the subsystems usage in your game.

having said that, doing that would be a HUGE undertaking beyond just writing code.

[wessel724]

like I said, depends on what you do with the REST of the system. If it's basically limited to "you gotta remember to feed your hero", it's boring and a chore. On the other hand, if you have an elaborate system where ingesting certain foods might give you some interesting effects, then now I have a reason to feed my player in addition to feeding myself. Like I said, it's about maximizing the subsystems usage in your game.

having said that, doing that would be a HUGE undertaking beyond just writing code.

what could someone do with the system to make it more enjoyable?

[narutoall76]

make all the bars run down slower

[elliott20]

well, none of this is carved in stone, but here are some ideas, most of them cribbed off of Roguelike games.

-all "ingested" items like say, healing potions that are drank can contribute to the food bar. (It basically will count as edible)
-different foods obviously will have different levels of filling up the bar
-certain foods are poisonous or diseased. you can make a large number of items edible, actually. (i.e. killing something in the wild and not treating it's meat properly)
-certain foods, when eaten, gives you a temporary boons
-certain foods can cause mutations like wings
-certain foods give you permanent stat increases (i.e. say you have a fruit that is "the tree of life", fruit grown from it heals, but also increases your constitution/stamina stat.)
-since we're talking about brainstorming, I imagine you can have the following things: rations, herbs in the wild, meat from animals
-for meat drops by animals, if you roll with skill systems, this is a chance for you add in a "butcher" skill or some equivalent where it increases your chances of getting meat drops.
-make it so that there are LOTS of things you can eat. But also make sure there are certain "safe" foods that the player can always rely on like rations bought in stores. obviously though, to force the character to experiment, make the food in stores never quite enough to last all the way through.
-and obviously, don't make your meter drop too often. that'll just nag people

if you feel REALLY ambitious other things that can tie into the food mechanic
-a culinary system where you can prepare food to eat. (make sure there are LOTS of materials to play with)

that's all I got off the top of my head