Let's get rid of hunger

[Sphara]

(does anyone remember bargaining for a price?)

I do and I also remember being thrown out of the shop.

And on the food topic again:
It's hard for me to understand what do people get out of this flavor. Unless an unfortunate Glutton G encounter, the game opening offers enough food to go by. There's no meaningful decision to be made with food unless its exactly what I do, not carry it when inventory starts to get full.

I CERTAINLY do not wanna rush the changes and campaign the game to be changed towards my preferences. I desire for the game that is good and enjoyable for everyone. It's just weird to me some people do defend a flavorful minigame that has no impact if you want it so (disregard Glutton G). Just a minigame that you want to conserve a inventory slot for.

Just my opinion: If hunger is just a clock that periodically says 'now press this button and continue', it needs to be changed if not removed.

[Carnivean]

It's hard for me to understand what do people get out of this flavor.

You aren't a beginner player and have forgotten what it is like when you first start the game. Your thoughts about the game are not about the atmosphere or the flavour. But a beginner to the game sees these things, they see that they have to buy food, they die stupid deaths to starvation early in the game. Those that don't quit in disgust love the game for it.

Once you get to a certain point in your understanding of the game it ceases to be an issue, and for you and others has become a chore to be eliminated. The game has solved the problem by over-supplying food.

But the flavour and the complexity of the game from a newbie perspective is why I started playing it, why I am still here despite the plethora of graphically superior games. Diablo looked much better and had an actual narrative, but has no depth.

If you remove the flavour, the initial complexity, then you might as well just pick the best dagger and descend 5 levels at a time.

If you remove the things that make beginners love the game then you'll stagnate and die as a game, as no one will join and offer a different perspective.

So, do I think that hunger is a great game mechanism? No. Do I think that hunger adds to the gameplay for experienced players? No. Could it be changed? Maybe. It's already essentially solved with unlimited food and sensible gameplay, so does it need to add more value?

[fph]

Another possible "fix" is making food found in the dungeon slightly more interesting on average. Less vanilla plain rations, more shrooms, fear-preventing booze and elvish waybread.

For instance, why doesn't booze appear in the dungeon? There must be a few orcs down there who like a sip to get through the working day...

[Moving Pictures]

Well, hopefully Nick will, er, digest all this input ... Chew things over, and cook up an option that we can all stomach.

[Huqhox]

Another possible "fix" is making food found in the dungeon slightly more interesting on average. Less vanilla plain rations, more shrooms, fear-preventing booze and elvish waybread.

For instance, why doesn't booze appear in the dungeon? There must be a few orcs down there who like a sip to get through the working day...

This could be worth testing. Reduce the availability (or get rid of completely) rations of food in the dungeon (still available from town) and make mushrooms more nutritious.

It may be this just ends up with an inventory nightmare using up slots on different mushrooms but it could be that the player gets an interesting choice of which mushrooms can be consumed when the player runs across them

[fizzix]

This could be worth testing. Reduce the availability (or get rid of completely) rations of food in the dungeon (still available from town) and make mushrooms more nutritious.

The town should *never* be a requirement for beating the game. If you need food to survive, it should be found in the dungeon in sufficient quantities. The town is there to give you some key items earlier than you probably would find them, (_Tele is the big one), give you infinite access to basic consumables (arrows, ?phase), provide a limited expanded inventory (home), and provide a secondary method of solving equipment problems.

I wouldn't mind more varied consumables (the game is missing stuff like temporary str/dex/int/wis buffs, which could be a good early/mid game consumable). But I still don't see the appeal of tying these to a hunger mechanic.

It's not clear to me what hunger specifically adds, or ever added, for angband. It's a holdover from games like Rogue where it's used to force you to descend and provide a cost for resting. I don't even like hunger in these games, but at least I can rationalize it from a gameplay perspective.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

You aren't a beginner player and have forgotten what it is like when you first start the game. ....[T]he flavour and the complexity of the game from a newbie perspective is why I started playing it, why I am still here despite the plethora of graphically superior games.....

If you remove the flavour, the initial complexity,... you remove the things that make beginners love the game then you'll stagnate and die as a game, as no one will join and offer a different perspective.
....

+1 !!! This is my main concern over most of the current changes in contemplation. I reiterate and add my voice for call to be cautious with these changes.

[Nick]

So the maintainer's job here is to balance romantic idealism

If you remove the things that make beginners love the game then you'll stagnate and die as a game, as no one will join and offer a different perspective.

with brutal rationalism

It's not clear to me what hunger specifically adds, or ever added, for angband. It's a holdover from games like Rogue where it's used to force you to descend and provide a cost for resting. I don't even like hunger in these games, but at least I can rationalize it from a gameplay perspective.

I lean toward the former (and I'm planning to post on that soon in preparation for reworking races), so I need people like fizzix for the purely functional perspective.

[Derakon]

I think my current vote for how to handle food would be to simply disable regeneration for as long as the player is weakened from hunger. Then do away with storebought food, or at minimum make it substantially more expensive. After all, getting supplies in to Mordor cannot be easy! And push the Satisfy Hunger spell/scrolls further back so that most characters are level 15+ at least before they can stop worrying about food. You could still replicate food to some extent with Cure Light Wounds potions, but they'd be inefficient/expensive.

The biggest problem with this proposal is that it hits mages hard, since they spend so much time resting, and have slow starts, and thus need more food than other classes. As an inelegant hack fix, we could start them with Rings of Slow Digestion.

[fizzix]

The biggest problem with this proposal is that it hits mages hard, since they spend so much time resting, and have slow starts, and thus need more food than other classes. As an inelegant hack fix, we could start them with Rings of Slow Digestion.

I've also been a fan of increase regen rates so that you don't have to wait so ridiculously long for SP when you don't have many of them. It doesn't make early game mages or priests much more difficult, but it does make them a lot more tedious.

[Huqhox]

The town should *never* be a requirement for beating the game. If you need food to survive, it should be found in the dungeon in sufficient quantities.

That wasn't what I was saying, and in fact you agree with what wanted to say.

Rations of food are from the town because they are supplies from adventuring. Once in the dungeon you could survive on slime molds and mushrooms until magical forms of sustenance are available, so make mushrooms more nutritious to support this. Maybe get humanoids to drop food now and again.

Just an idea I'm throwing out, I'm not wedded to it

[Muscleguy]

My gut feeling (heh) is that it should be kept, but I'm struggling to articulate why. Here are a few of my thoughts:

• It does sometimes lead to interesting situations - I have occasionally run out of food when I still want to do stuff on a level, and had to forage/quaff healing potions;
• Ironman should IMHO be really hard compared to non-ironman, and this is a move in the opposite direction;
• The game should support a variety of experiences, and this is thinning out that variety.

This last one is something I feel strongly about as maintainer. It has always been a feature that the aim of Angband is to kill Morgoth, but that there's more than one way to do that. I want to be broadening the space of possible game trajectories, and I feel that removing mechanics like hunger is narrowing it.

The other thing is when you are Full or close to it and swallowing high level Heal, *Heal* and Life potions you risk getting Gorged which slows you by -10. Against some high level monsters this becomes a live issue. If you get rid of hunger than Gorging has to go as well and thus one part of the problem solving element of game play has gone as well.

But then I'm still playing 4.0.4 (dirty), the last usable version before big bang which I cannot abide, so you guys want to further bork the game, go right ahead, I will not be joining you.

[Derakon]

The other thing is when you are Full or close to it and swallowing high level Heal, *Heal* and Life potions you risk getting Gorged which slows you by -10. Against some high level monsters this becomes a live issue. If you get rid of hunger than Gorging has to go as well and thus one part of the problem solving element of game play has gone as well.

This was removed several versions ago -- potions still grant nutrition, but they can't make you gorged. I think this change predates 4.0.4, but I could be wrong.

[Nick]

But then I'm still playing 4.0.4 (dirty), the last usable version before big bang which I cannot abide, so you guys want to further bork the game, go right ahead, I will not be joining you.

The game has been being repeatedly borked since 1993, we're just carrying on the tradition

[Muscleguy]

This was removed several versions ago -- potions still grant nutrition, but they can't make you gorged. I think this change predates 4.0.4, but I could be wrong.

Just tested it, hadn't noticed it had changed. I think it's a shame since as I said it adds to the problem solving nature of the game. There are no healing scrolls just rods and magic/prayers. So if you are not a magic user or a priest/palladin and your ability to reliably zap rods is poor (and of course rods of Healing don't recharge quickly and they are rare, I've never had more than two).

Is all this change which makes the game easier driven by younger players who are put off by difficulty? or is it just change for the sake of change?

Anyway my feelings on the issue are clear. Had I realised gorging was gone I might have continued to use an older version. After trialling and rejecting the later ones I sought the latest non borked version and of course game files are not compatible between versions.

Still, I shall give it some thought and might revert further. It does show though that if you play assuming a feature is still live so operate with that in mind you may never realise it doesn't operate.