Thoughts on this "Hunger" system.

[Untrustedlife]

http://untrustedlife.com/2015/08/19/segfault-week/

How do you guys feel about how I am tackling this?

[Holsety]

As I understand it now you first run through Hunger/Thirst, THEN Starving/Dehydrated AND THEN the maxHp damage kicks in.
Better to have max Hp damage tick at the same time as the Starving/Dehydrated bar; you should be dead once you're fully Starved/Dehydrated, not become a mummy first and THEN take Hp damage 

I don't care much for having 0 str when both hungry and thirsty; multiplicative instead of additive, so it's 0,25 would be slightly more bearable I think. Perhaps have Str tick down at the same rate as maxHp, with a small up-front percentile/flat penalty. I get a little weak when I'm hungry, but I don't immediately turn into a vegetable when I get thirst+munchies.

So yeah, hunger system. The idea is there but you could/should tweak the numbers and mechanics some more.
Thought about having *any* potion FULLY restore thirst? That way you can "force" the player to quaff un-id'd potions. A clear reward, but with a nice risk (depending on whether you have potions/what they do).

Edit: Derp no wait, I think you didn't mean an immediate drop to 0 Str.
Also, the maxHp damage is permanent? I'd reconsider.

[Untrustedlife]

I did think of the potions but right no wthey only give you ten thirst, I will mak ethem completely hydrate you instead. Good idea

That seems very interesting about the multiplicative system as-well, I agree that 0 strength when you are dehydrated and starving is too punishing.

[CaptainKraft]

I'm not sure the hydration and starvation bars add much. Starting to lose health at 0 for either bar makes sense and would be assumed by most players I think. I do like the idea of experimenting with permanent debuffs for prolonged starvation and dehydration. You've got some good ideas there.

[Untrustedlife]

Its used as it was in the original rogue, to prevent players from hanging out on a level and grinding for too long (to keep them moving to new areas)  But, I do have another "hunger" clock which is a specific amount of time it will take until the demon awakens, so perhaps I dont need it.

We will see once the demon timer is properly implemented though.

[AquaTsar17]

There's also the issue of how you get food/water, and how much of it exists. In the original Rogue, food was a fixed resource; it was not infinitely generated. So it served as a clock against grinding and an overall game timer.

Alternating food and water per floor is fine, but this just means any one resource has to last two floors--their current one and the next one--or the player may feel rushed (which could be appropriate). Both of these clocks will fail if the resource is too abundant. Since thirst ticks down faster than food, the player has less time to spend on the food floors (since they need to get to the water floor faster). This is just something to keep in mind for when you generate food/water.

The colors you're using for the hunger bar also seems very similar to the background color. You may want to change that, or add a border around all the bars to more clearly distinguish them from the background.

While I like the idea of having two states (hunger then starving, thirst then dehydrating) do you think it'd be better to have two bars for this? Couldn't you have 150 hunger, and then when it gets down to 50 it changes to starving and drops faster? My concern is the difficulty interpreting the hunger bar at a glance, since it's in the same place. Maybe the two bars would be fine if the second bar was more obvious (e.g., it blinks or is a brighter/more obnoxious color).

[Paul Jeffries]

I'm not sure I see the point of having two separate bars when the effects of each seem to be basically the same.  Something like dehydration causing HP damage while hunger just reduces strength might be a bit more interesting.  Having two sets of resources also seems like something that would be more aggravating than fun.  In a typical roguelike if you can't find food on a floor (perhaps because it's been placed in a hidden room or something) you can decide to hurry down to the next one to get the food there.  With your system the risk of missing food/water becomes harder to mitigate because finding a resource of one type won't help you if you're low on the other.  That makes the player very dependent on the RNG providing both food and water drops in convenient places and intervals.

I also don't really see the point of having starving/dehydration starting at 50 and running out twice as fast.  Why not just start at 25 and run the normal speed?  The only difference I can see would be that with your system if food/drink added the same amount to the starving/dehydration meter as it did to hunger/thirst it would be much harder to recover from going into those states in the first place because you'd need twice as much food/water for each turn.  This sounds like a prime case of what I call a 'Fuck-You-Feedback-Loop' (of which I am not a fan).  I would say you should actually do the opposite - i.e. make starving/dehydration go down half as quickly as normal.  That then gives the player an interesting decision - by starving/dehydrating themselves they become weaker but can make their resources last longer overall, so 'rationing' becomes a viable tactic (with the added bonus that it also seems like a more realistic representation of the way human metabolisms actually work).

[Untrustedlife]

I'm not sure I see the point of having two separate bars when the effects of each seem to be basically the same.  Something like dehydration causing HP damage while hunger just reduces strength might be a bit more interesting.  Having two sets of resources also seems like something that would be more aggravating than fun.  In a typical roguelike if you can't find food on a floor (perhaps because it's been placed in a hidden room or something) you can decide to hurry down to the next one to get the food there.  With your system the risk of missing food/water becomes harder to mitigate because finding a resource of one type won't help you if you're low on the other.  That makes the player very dependent on the RNG providing both food and water drops in convenient places and intervals.

I also don't really see the point of having starving/dehydration starting at 50 and running out twice as fast.  Why not just start at 25 and run the normal speed?  The only difference I can see would be that with your system if food/drink added the same amount to the starving/dehydration meter as it did to hunger/thirst it would be much harder to recover from going into those states in the first place because you'd need twice as much food/water for each turn.  This sounds like a prime case of what I call a 'Fuck-You-Feedback-Loop' (of which I am not a fan).  I would say you should actually do the opposite - i.e. make starving/dehydration go down half as quickly as normal.  That then gives the player an interesting decision - by starving/dehydrating themselves they become weaker but can make their resources last longer overall, so 'rationing' becomes a viable tactic (with the added bonus that it also seems like a more realistic representation of the way human metabolisms actually work).

Interesting ideas there!
Also, I shall read your blog post about it,  Most food gives a bit water as well as food and potions become more interesting since they recover thirst as-well (reason to drink potions YEAH!), but i will definetly look into your ideas because you are most likely right! Thanks.