Food spoilage?

[sarudak]

Or not? Adding everything in as options or difficulty levels is a death trap for coherent, fun game design. If you have to account for every option people might be using you'll drive yourself mad trying to come up with a good experience for everyone. I think they should keep things as they are. No options and no difficulty levels.

[Buster]

… With that in mind I think a system with the following stages would make more sense :

Good to eat : No danger of food poisoning. This stage would last for most of the time it takes food to spoil say 80%.

Starting to turn : Starting to smell feel a little off. Slightly reduced food value with a low chance of food poisoning.

Definitely Not good to eat: Moderatley reduced food value but a good chance of food poisoning.

After that it turns into goop or whatever…

I agree completely. I don't think it would make much sense to have a lot of food stages, where the only food that you really want to eat is completely fresh food. Instead you should have some time before it suddenly turns for the worse. I'm more of a "the food is good, until it goes bad" guy - and at the first sign of it going bad, you throw it away.

Now, I think honey should be something that would last for a while, but perhaps go bad after at least a good deal of time. I think honey, instead of adding a lot of random items with only one purpose, could be the conserver in the food conserving process. Winter is coming - what do you do? You take your meat, fruits and vegetables and stuff them in a jar of honey. Never mind realism, I'd rather have multipurpose items than just a bunch of items with only one purpose.

This would of course mean that we would need something to conserve things in, like the jar.

..This food spoilage thing feels more for the seasoned veterans who've played this game for a while and have an abundance of resources they need. Its just a kick in the bum for newer players (or nooblets like me who have to restart constantly), making early game an even bigger (and a slower) pain to get through…

I agree to some degree. I’m also not very good at this game, and I’ve started over many times. I still haven’t got control over my food situation on day 25, but I’m moving toward the goal - but this idea would certainly set me back.

But what if it didn’t just happen right away? If I understand the story mode correctly, which I probably don’t, then you’ll continue to jump forwards to other islands. If Maxwell created this world, in which you must survive, then couldn’t he introduce that mechanic a bit later?

[Zoomreddin]

I love this idea, it makes me feel great inside thinking how I would have to overcome these problems.

[sarudak]

I agree completely. I don't think it would make much sense to have a lot of food stages, where the only food that you really want to eat is completely fresh food. Instead you should have some time before it suddenly turns for the worse. I'm more of a "the food is good, until it goes bad" guy - and at the first sign of it going bad, you throw it away.

Now, I think honey should be something that would last for a while, but perhaps go bad after at least a good deal of time. I think honey, instead of adding a lot of random items with only one purpose, could be the conserver in the food conserving process. Winter is coming - what do you do? You take your meat, fruits and vegetables and stuff them in a jar of honey. Never mind realism, I'd rather have multipurpose items than just a bunch of items with only one purpose.

This would of course mean that we would need something to conserve things in, like the jar.

Generally yeah most people throw away food at the first sign of it turning bad. That wouldn't hold true for you if you were up against starvation though. As to making everything simple it's certainly an option and as a rule of thumb simplicity is a laudable goal. However the game *is* called don't starve and so finding enough food to live should reasonably be expected to get a thorough treatment. I like the idea of some level of complexity in food preservation methods.

[Snarks]

I haven't done the math on it, but wouldn't it be possible for players to increase the total value of the food by raising the freshness through adding an additional item?

For instance, let's say there's a stack of 10 meat, and they're all at "bad" status (using the step function). Wouldn't it be possible to add one more meat and raise it to "kinda bad" status and create a net gain in food value (or even net loss)? It would be the difference between the value on that additional meat versus the additional value added of the stack raised to the next status.

[sarudak]

I think if you put good meat with bad meat you would just have more bad meat. You don't put a fresh fruit with some moldy ones and expect it to counter the mold. You expect the fresh fruit to mold faster.

[Moonkis]

I love this idea! I love that the game is actually taking a step towards more unforgiving and difficult horizons. As for Honey spoiling I'd like to see that, I always hated how easy it is going from one battle to another when you have a beehive set up ( since the honey it generates is insane ). I loved the time where two or three battles (with spiders) meant you needed to take it easy a few days before being a daredevil again.

This game is meant to be hard, unforgiving and brutal. It's what adds the challenging factor, just look at "Binding of Isaac" or "Desktop Dungeons" or any OTHER Rougelike. Where the player is forced to play again and again to learn new tricks and progress by actually LEARNING about the game.

I say let the newcomers have a hard time in the beginning, it's part of the learning circle, if they don't want that experience (like we had in the beginning) then a wiki would suffice.

That is just my opinion though, this game is meant to be dangerous and scary where you need to make every minute count, either looking for food, resources or overthrowing that Spiders nest that has been attacking you at night.

Keep up the work Klei and I hope you don't stray from the path of Rougelike.

[sirmentlegen]

But a meat effigy is a hunk of rotten meat already!

[sarudak]

I think the level of healing you get from cooked food and honey is way too high as it is. I liked it at the beginning when I didn't have cooked food or honey and I felt like I had to be very cautious about what fights I got into. But that's really off topic to this discussion.

[mobius187]

Wha-?!? So let me get this straight. I spend... forever... discussing ths topic in Suggestions and Feedback, and then you discuss it over here... where I hardly ever visit? You know I'm the man with the plan Kevin! I'll discuss all the past threads and what was discussed and everyone can decide whether these ideas are good (or not).

However I see 3 pages worth of posts now... and I'm gonna respond to them all! I'ma chargin' ma lazer...!

There has been a lot of talk on the forums about food spoilage, and it got me thinking.

Yes, this is one of the on-again/off-again hot topics found in Suggestions and Feedback. One of the main reasons for its continued discussion is the fact that rotting food would resolve the issue key to hoarding. The fact that once you reach an apex in food harvesting you are pretty much never going to starve. Rotting food however would knix this "exploit" in the bud.

But why am I telling you this, we both know you discussed it yourself a while back as you tried to work out how rotting food would affect the stack.

I think that spoilage is a good idea, because it would make the collection of food an interesting decision. Right now, it is always a good thing to get more food. More food is always better, so you get things like people grinding farms and berries. The game rewards grinding these resources by giving you an unlimited source of food.

Agreed. As a hoarder myself when I start a new game I'm keenly aware that I need food... or I'll die. So as I run around collecting supplies I'm also on the look out for food. It's pretty desperate at the beginning, but you've strategically placed carrots and berry bushes to help players out at the start so I can usually get by without serious issue. However once you create the hyper farms, ambush a few rabbits, and start collecting berry bushes... then honey from bee boxes... well. You know.

If foods expired (with properly tuned values), you would have to balance hoarding behaviours with your expected rate of consumption. Collecting more food than you can eat would be a waste of time, like it is in real life. Expiry makes grinding pointless, and makes it so that you can never have complete food security.

Agreed again. I think at this point I want to draw a comparison with the only other game I'm aware of that has dealt with this issue, namely rotting food in a survival game. That game is Project Zomboid. In it players also get a fairly easy start, the zombie apocalypse has left food lying around and players can run from house to house to grocery store collecting an abundance of food supplies. But all food in the game has a freshness counter and in time the player will venture forth and discover fridges, now devoid of electricity, filled with rotting meat and vegetables. Ironically junk food becomes a mainstay at that point, along with apples (and no, I don't know why zombies can carry apples...). A mod for the game added gardening (seed packets, tools, ect) which allows players to become self-sufficient to some degree, but that's another story.

The point is players need to play smart. You eat the meat and vegetables first, cooking them whenever possible to create better meals and using electricity (stoves/fridges) whenever possible until the power grid is disconnected. You also cook frozen food as well, since they need microwaves. Junk food should be saved for last and pop drink bottles refilled with water from the sink (at least until the water works fail). In Don't Starve it would work the same way, you eat what cannot be preserved first and then try to maintain a level of food supply that allows you to stay alive while not wasting it (due to rot).

If different foods last for different amounts of time, and there are ways to slow down expiry, it opens up a whole new set of strategies to explore. How will you survive winter if your food stockpile is slowly expiring? You'll have to rely upon hunting and resource-intensive prepared foods. Canning! Salting! Jam!

Agreed again (You've been reading my past threads...admit it). Project Zomboid had a similar system for their foods as well. Depending on the type of food it lasted a set duration until it spoiled. This system makes sense.

And yes, winter was one of the factors behind food rot hampering players and adding serious risk to their survival during the cold season. Of course you couldn't hope to survive winter with such a system in place without another system to help preserve foods. On the topic of seasons I felt having four seasons would work best, as players could start in Spring, when food is the most plentiful, and then head towards Summer, Autumn... and then finally Winter. Every player should come to realize the troubles associated with winter without being told. For example, crops wouldn't grow during winter... who actually needs to be told that? The whole idea of winter would no doubt fill the players with subtle dread and drive them to prepare for the worst.

Ahem. So now for details. Let's say that food health and hunger values are as they are currently, but we introduce a new value called "freshness" that decreases linearly with time. Combining stacks of varying freshness results in a new stack that has a freshness that is a linear combination of the two source stacks. Splitting a stack results in two stacks with the same freshness as the source stack. Freshness can neither be created or destroyed via inventory manipulation. You can hide one stale morsel in your stack of 10 morsels, but the overall units of freshness will remain the same.

Hmmm. Okay, so maybe an example would help. Say you have 5 hams. The first 3 hams are from pigs that died practcally within seconds of each other due to an angry treeguard, while another 1 is from a day ago, and the last 1 is from three days ago. You stack them together (3x 0 days old, 1x 1 day old, 1x 3 days old) into a stack of 5 hams. Now you say the stack is "linear", but is the freshest ham at the top or bottom of the stack? If you split the stack how would is determine which food would be placed into which stack? Is it by their freshness?

IMHO, I think the oldest food should appear at the top of the stack so players will eat it first and thus reduce the risk of food rotting away unseen fom the bottom of the stack.

Health and hunger values can be modified by some function of freshness. This might be linear (to a minimum percent of the original value), or it may be a step function, with distinct phases of freshness. I think I like the discrete phases method better: ie, something like:

100% - 80% : Fresh! full values! Yum!

50% - 79% : Almost fresh! 75% values!

20% - 49% : Stale! 50% values!

1% - 19% : Nasty! 25% values! Gross!

0% : The stack expires and becomes a stack of wet goop.

Freshness would be indicated on an item's inventory icon, either with a small iconic indicator for each step of freshness, or as a percentage (like tools).

In Project Zomboid food had only two values, "Fresh" and "Rotten". Food stayed fresh a set number of days and if consumed during this period restored/satiated that much hunger. Once expired, food became rotten and stayed in this state a number of days before disappearing. Each food had its own fresh/rotted icon, but I could see how this harkens back to the earlier issue. Namely, what do you do with food that becomes rotten? Based on your comments I assume all rotten food becomes "wet goop". Clearly this works in terms of stacking, as you would only need one inventory slot to collect rotten food (wet goop) rather than one for every type of rotten food.

That being said, I would suggest that rather than food becoming "wet goop" that we actually add a new food item, "rotten food". As I recall wet goop can be eaten without issue, but I would like to think that rotten food should have a negative impact on a player's health. Not literally, I'm not suggesting they lose Health like with monster meat. Rather maybe it could turn their Stomach icon green and have them puke, losing food (Hunger) as a result. Then after a short time the player would recover and the Stomach icon would return to normal (the nausea having passed). The icon for "rotten food" could be made generic enough so it works for all food types and stacks the same way as you suggested.

As for the freshness stages... I'm fine with it as it adds a degree of strategy to how Soon you should eat foods and the gradual downside of keeping food uneaten for too long. However I'm against a % marker on foods as that would detract from the atmosphere of the game. Rather, I suggest instead either having the food icon change to mirror its freshness or when the player examines the food (SHIFT + RMB) a verbal description is made, like, "As fresh as the day I killed it!" all the way to "Ugh! This smells worse than it looks!".

The total expiry time would vary depending upon the food type.

Raw Meat: ~5 days

Raw Veggies / Fruit / Berries: ~7 days

Fair enough. What about eggs? And what about crops that are fully grown, but not harvested, berries that are still on their bushes, and unharvested wild carrots?

If you're looking for suggestions, I say eggs last as long as meat (once taken from a tallbird nest) otherwise tallbird eggs eventually hatch into wild smallbirds, which in turn eat berries and eventually grow into new (wild) tallbirds. Berries could remain, however their growth cycle should be extended so once players do harvest them then they won't be able to get more for some time. And did I mention tall/smallbird should eat berries? As for carrots, after 5 days rabbits should be allowed to eat them, just like dropped vegetables. In no time they'll all be gone, but then again they're only there at the start to help the player out in the beginning. Crops should start "aging" the moment they reach fruition, which would mean they should be replaced with rotted vegetation after 7 days (if never harvested) and players that harvest them after that collect "rotten food".

It goes without saying (I think) that winter should remove and prevent berries from growing, remove all remaining wild carrots (bye) if any were still left out of the reach of rabbits, destroy all unharvested crops, and prevent tallbirds from laying new eggs (which in all honestly should probably be timed to end in Autumn). As mentioned before players wouldn't be able to plant new crops in winter.

Also, seeds can be eaten and cooked. Would seeds be treated as vegetables? If so, would they rot too? This would certainly put a crink in farming.

Cooking or crockpotting might reset the timer to a new value, which can be prorated based upon the freshness of the ingredients.

Cooked meat: ~5 days (with all fresh ingredients)

Cooked veggies: ~5 days

Special 'preserved' recipes: longer!

Makes sense, and this wasn't anything I've discussed before... odd. Well, we did discuss preserving fruits/vegetables by combining them with a jar (suggested as a found item from the Beach biome, i.e. "message in a jar") and when finished you had a jar of preserves (varying based on the fruits/vegetables used).

The same was true for meats, but it involved adding "salt" into a slot of the crock pot. As for where salt could come from... the most common suggestion was it should be found in a Desert biome. Another option, collecting sea water and boiling away the water to harvest the salt.

Not so sure about your canning idea... wouldn't we first need tin... and then to sodder them shut with (delicious) lead?

What?!? 12,000 character limit... a new post is required!

Edited January 5, 2013 by mobius187

[mobius187]

These base times are multiplied by the following multipliers depending upon where the food is:

On ground: x1

In claypot "fridge": x2

In other container / inventory: x1.5

Hmmm. I don't know. Maybe food left on the ground should be x0.5... I mean, it can't be healthy to leave it on the ground, especially meats. Then food kept in containers or your inventory would have the "normal" freshness rate, or x1. Refrigerated foods, either in your claypot or an "ice box", would be at x1.5 or x2... maybe both if you use both methods to preserve foods (claypot & ice box).

On the topic of the ice box maybe it could be an item that can only be crafted during Winter. In another suggestion thread I mentioned that ponds should become frozen during Winter, thus preventing the player from fishing. I would now suggest that a player can instead use an axe pick, axe, or shovel to break the ice and collect "ice chunks" to be used in crafting an ice box. Once crafted it would help preserve foods. Maybe a potential upside to winter's arrival?

So how does something like this sound? Would this make you think more carefully about your food production, or is it too micro-managey? I would probably also make crocked foods stackable as a part of the same change, to try to keep things simple.

I personally think it would work, but you need to keep the statistics to a minimum. If players have percentages on foods they'll likely obsesses over them.

Love it, and honey shouldn't spoil.

Agreed.

I think it definitely takes away the hoarding factor. But how long would the preserved foods last? Are we talking a couple weeks? Or just a few extra days? Because there are days when I need to go gather resources like wood and charcoal, or go on expeditions away from my camp to gather various materials (silk, pig skin, stone, etc.), and I must rely on my food surplus to get me through. Mainly because I don't have the inventory space or the time to gather food on the road. As it stands, it is way too easy to load up chests full of veggies and meat, so I like the idea of food not lasting forever, but I just hope there is a healthy balance. Especially with winter and longer nights coming.

I think food last several days works out just fine. In a real survival situation you wouldn't just pack a lunch and head off, rather, you would be hunting as you traveled, so supplement your supplies. This is where having berry bushes out there, in the wilderness rather than stockpiled at your base camp, becomes a boon. You find these bushes, harvest them for extra food along your journey, and keep going. As I suggested above, berries on bushes should stay fresh "forever"... at least until Winter arrives.

So I would say gathering food along your journey would become more important and it should be a welcome change in the game's overall difficulty. On the flip side you could also carry jars of preserves and salted meats, which I suggest should satiate less Hunger than the original food because they have lost their flavor/freshness, but last much longer before rotting. More so than cooked foods.

I really like your take on food spoilage, but an alternative to showing 'freshenss' as a percentage like on tools, you could identify the 'freshness' of a food by examining it like you would a campfire and then it would give you feed back as a sentance with a bit of personality telling you the approximate state of the food.

Agreed. Obviously (from above).

And yes, I didn't bother reading every post before I started replying... but it's good to see players with similar ideas.

Edit: just realized this would require a way to actually examine food...

Well we could use SHIFT + RMB on the food item. Of course this would mean the existing food descriptions would need to be replaced with generic ones associated with the freshness level. A shame...

...I'm hoping that such a system could come before or with winter, as it seems that the challenge of winter will partially rely on food being difficult to find. If the player can stockpile food then like they can now, that danger can be completely averted and the player could theoretically turtle their way through all of winter.

Agreed. However if food rot is implemented we also should have food preservation as well. Elsewise players may all die after 7-14 days of winter. Assuming Winter will last 30 or more days.

Also, I think (think) that, in real life, honey only has the longevity its known for if certain precautions are taken, like sealing it in a jar. I'm pretty sure that if it's exposed to air for too long, it will still spoil. Perhaps long-term storage of honey in Don't Starve could require something similar to keep it from being stockpiled in massive numbers.

Agreed again. While I think honey should have a potentially permanent "freshness", it should require additional effort to collect it. I mean globs of honey filling in your pockets, backpack, and chests doesn't sound very... hygenic. Rather, going back to the glass jar (i.e. Beach biome and used to create fruit/vegetable preserves using the crock pot) maybe players should need to transfer honey to a jar in order to preserve it? In this way now the number of available jars could become a factor in just how much honey players can store away.

On a side note, another suggestion thread involving bears comes to mind. It's not good to have too much honey just lying around...

Can old food have mould growing on it; that can be used for health purposes like penicillan

Not sure about the need for penicillan, but as I suggested above, foods could show a visual cue that they've lost freshness should a verbal one not be used (i.e. SHIFT + RMB).

I like this idea. I do think it would be great to create a trash/garbage dispenser to dispose of rotten food quickly. (and anything else that cannot be burned, consumed or fed in science machine. example-backpacks)

Another forum member suggested that "rotten food" could be used to either create fertilizer (a new invention) that would help crops grow or to cut-out the middleman and just treat it as a lesser form of manure (i.e. 2 rotten food = 1 manure, for effect). I also agree that rotten food could become a potential fuel source, in a pinch. And what about pig men? Maybe feeding it too them makes them sick, but creates manure.

would this effects on meat effigy?

Good point. I suggest that it rot away and fall apart... (insert evil laugh).

1 . If i leave the berry,s on the berry plants ( will it spoil or keep fresh ? )

-cus i could leave the plants alone till i need the food-

-and if it spoils how can u make sure i can get berry,s ( cus they can be spoiled every where )

I had the same questions, I think my answer to this is good. They stay fresh until Winter (when they die/disappear from all the bushes). The growth cycle for berries should be extended to account for this fact.

2 . If i don't loot the farm ( will it spoil or will it be fresh for ever ? )

-cus i could leave the farms alone till i need the food-

Yup again. As I suggested maybe fully grown crops should have the normal fruit/vegetable freshness cycle... but the normal one (as they haven't been picked so they're not "on the ground" (well technically, but you know what I mean).

3 . How can i go out of my base whiteout getting a food shortage ?

-generally i stock food 5 day,s and leave for 10 day,s-

Catch food as you travel, harvest berry bushes along the way, and used preserves/salted meats. It would also give another purpose to fishing as a means of replenishing food while exploring.

for winter maby an idea to be able to make dried turky ( fresh for 50 day,s ) hard to get cus only turkey legs will do

I think 50 days is excessive, even if it were dried/salted. And I suggest Gobblers be unavailable during winter, as berry bushes will be without berries to harvest.

But Kevin that would only be a minor setback for me for if this is added my food will stay fresh forever. (My food source is a pig village)

I suggest that during Winter pigs stay safey inside their huts all the time. No pig servants. No hams. Life is hard...

How would this work in the winter part if that gets put into game play? I'm assuming some stuff won't grow at all or take longer, as it does in real life. However in real life farmers were able to can and preserve a lot of their food for over the winter months. I know my granparnts owned a farm. Will you be bringing in the ability to can food for preservation?

Yup. As I suggested crops wouldn't grow at all during winter and berry bushes would remain barren. However, as you suggested foods should be preserved. Hmmm. Is Kevin updating his initial post with these ideas?

I hate this idea.

Hate leads to the Dark Side young Jedi... be careful...

This food spoilage thing feels more for the seasoned veterans who've played this game for a while and have an abundance of resources they need. Its just a kick in the bum for newer players (or nooblets like me who have to restart constantly), making early game an even bigger (and a slower) pain to get through. (Good food is difficult to come by at times- monster meat tastes awful D:). Since the fun factor (again in my opinion) isn't really in the collecting resources/maintaining but more so in the combat and kicking the butts of the mobs that bullied you in early game.

Well the fact is that veteran players who have dozens of 40 food stacks will get a kick in the nutsa-...errr... butt by this update. All that food would suddenly have a timer and most of it would rot away because God only knows we have too much food to possibly eat it all before the freshness limit expires. After that both veteran and new players would be on a level playing field. Now farming and berry bushes are one difference, but in all honesty whenever a new game is started players rarely keep food that long.

This idea instead of making me feel all YAAAAAAAAAAAAY I wanna play this game :3 !

is instead making me feel "ugh" another annoying chore to keep up with.

Well right now we have so few concerns and food, in a game called Don't Starve, should be a more important factor. Don't worry, watch Let's Play videos of Project Zomboid and you'll get a better feeling for how food rot works. And maybe preserves and salted meats could be the "junk food" of the Don't Starve universe... who knows?

It feels a ***** much since later one we have to juggle the sanity meter as well

I'll assume typos. And are you satying you're not looking forward to a Sanity meter?!? My God man! This is Cthulhu Mythos 101... we all need insanity as it reveals the truth behind the universe!

I like the idea overall, though (in my opinion), there should be a stage beyond 0%/Wet Goop, where if something hits -50% (or whatever percentage) the goop would turn into a 'creature' and attack you/everything or something. Not sure how well it'd fit in with the rest of Don't Starve, but it'd certainly be incentive to make sure you deal with spoiled stuff rather than just tossing it on the ground.

A player once suggested that rotten food should attract maggots/flies... of the monstrous variety. And give a reason to players cleaning up after themselves.

What?!? Another 12,000 character limit reached... a new post is required!

[mobius187]

Also, food during Winter should last 2-3x as long on the ground / in a chest / etc compared to their original values without doing anything, seeing as the cold would naturally do that realistically.

I considered this... after all a refrigerator is cold and it keeps food longer. But the question is the player doesn't handle cold too well (I assume) so he would want to stay warm and near a fire... which would heat food kept on him. So maybe winter wouldn't affect food kept in your inventory or (worn) backpack?

to preserve meat you can make it into jerky.

Yes. Yes you could.

I would like the ability to "Can" food, but maybe cost a lot of materials to make. And make it only to be stored if you take it and drop it, the glass jar breaks and the food spoils.

I prefer the idea of salting meats and preserving fruits/vegetables inside glass jars. I mean, metal cans would work too... but it seems odd only because the only metal we have right now is gold ore.

...With that in mind I think a system with the following stages would make more sense :

Good to eat : No danger of food poisoning. This stage would last for most of the time it takes food to spoil say 80%.

Starting to turn : Starting to smell feel a little off. Slightly reduced food value with a low chance of food poisoning.

Definitely Not good to eat: Moderatley reduced food value but a good chance of food poisoning.

A simpler approach would be to have it that food is fine to eat until it becomes rotten. Then, food poisoning.

Food poisoning could result in you throwing up emptying much of your hunger meter and possibly causing health damage. That way when you have food spoiling you need to make the decision of should I risk it or throw it away like you do in real life versus just eat all the spoiling food because there's no danger it's just less effective. Eating spoiled food should also have an adverse effect on your sanity IMO.

I agree that it should make you nauseous, which in turn should make you throw up food from your stomach in small amounts during which you are interrupted in the game (to throw up). This would add to the inconvenience until it passes. I don't think we need Health loss, as the reality of the situation is it doesn't cause physical harm in that sense. As for Sanity loss... maybe a small amount is lost. Has anyone ever gone insane from eating too much rotten food? Hmmm.

You could later add cellars that require a lot of work to dig out but can keep food fresh for a lot longer.

Also don't forget fermentation on your list of methods to preserve food. Nothing like some good old homemade kraut.

A cellar might be a bit much.

Or not? Adding everything in as options or difficulty levels is a death trap for coherent, fun game design. If you have to account for every option people might be using you'll drive yourself mad trying to come up with a good experience for everyone. I think they should keep things as they are. No options and no difficulty levels.

True. It's a tough call.

On a side note posts should have a 30,000 character limit. I'm just saying...

Edited January 5, 2013 by mobius187

[Wilson P. Higgsbury]

The mighty wall!

Dang Mobius, where have you been? I was starting to miss that avatar of yours.

[dbrunk]

I like this idea of "spoilage" ALOT, so the player has to be more methodical with he/she's gathering of foods. It adds to the whole survival dynamic and is one more thing to focus on. For instance we already have the time of day, phase of the moon, "naughtiness" killings and more... that we have to keep an eye on as if not watched carefully there are reprocussions to not staying alert. Another idea is that the excessive eating of "spoiled" food may harm your heath like monster meat does.

I also like the idea of crop potted foods stacking maybe in groups of 5 at the most but something for a little more management.

[Coyotus]

Wouldn't there be a problem stacking food. If you had meat that was about to spoil and on top of it you stacked meat that was completely fresh would this cause both of them to spoil or both to stay fresh? Mabe it could seperate the stacks but having a stack for every percent of freshness of every object would take up a lot of room and if it split when it spoiled and a chest was full it would fall on the ground so some monster could come and eat it.

[negaman]

i LOVE this idea so much. i have 3 turbo farm plots 2 be boxes and 10 berry bushes- way to easy to get food. rotten food is going to make the game a lot harder (in a good way!).

[urteem]

Love the idea, seems only natural to me.

What if rotten meat effigies came alive and tried to kill the player / wandered the world until they found them? Imagine being scared to go to your base because you know there are 3 corrupt Wilsons there, waiting for you.

Except night is coming... so you've got to face them eventually

I think it would be a great balance for effigy hoarding.

[daldingo]

Some of the suggestions are over the top. I agree -something- like this must be implemented to achieve some type of continued late game. But if you're going on realness, then seeds and honey don't expire in the same way regular foods do. Both honey, and seeds, if stored properly, can last for years with no indecent. What's stopping people from ignoring the food system altogether, and hoarding seeds and honey? And people would probably just be driven to live on monster meat and honey anyway, because once you get to 100+ days, hound meat will be flowing out of your ears.

[Marak]

I couldn't agree with this idea more. For a game called "Don't Starve", I never have. I've never even come close. It's always the Grue or Tentacles that take me down. You always end up playing SimBase until you have enough Turbo Plots and Crock Pots to have chest after chest full of Froggy Bunwiches and Stuffed Eggplant and Honey Ham and cooked Pumpkins, etc.

If all that hoarded food were to go bad, I'd have to go out and explore in order to find more sources of fresh food, which would lead to less reliance on Farming and your SimBase, and a very real possibility that, even with a bunch of food-making stuff in or near your base, you could no longer stockpile months' worth of food in chests, like you can now.

Please implement this in some way. Please please please.

My suggestion: when you shift-click to examine food, have that be the indicator of freshness. Would allow for more fun personality/flavor text from the characters, as well. "This doesn't look very fresh any more." "Eww, it's got some moldy bits on it..." "Uh oh, this is clearly about to go bad..." and so on.

[rodrigo4sb]

Oh no, all my stored food ...

If we had a 100% efficient fridge, i would love it.

[sirmentlegen]

Well from a veterans perceptive: yeah makes the game for challenging

noobs perspective: hell no it makes the game UN-playably hard.

[mobius187]

I don't think it would make much sense to have a lot of food stages, where the only food that you really want to eat is completely fresh food. Instead you should have some time before it suddenly turns for the worse. I'm more of a "the food is good, until it goes bad" guy - and at the first sign of it going bad, you throw it away.

Well this is how it worked in Project Zomboid. Food was fresh... until it became rotten. Once it was rotten the food was useless, worse still if you mistakenly ate it and became nauseous/sick. I don't mind different stages, but so long as it doesn't overtly complicate the issue. For example, the percentages tell us how much the Stomach is replenished based on the freshness level of that food item, however we know the food lasts 5-7 days on average, so the Devs would need to factor in how many days, or at what stage in a day, each food item would move towards becoming rotten.

Also you would need to factor in what happens when said food item is either cooked, combined with other foods (via crock pot), or preserved/salted. For example, say you have a Cucumber (we need those...) and it lasts 7 days right from the moment you pluck it from the vine in your farm plot. Okay, after 3 days you decide to turn it into a preserve... which happens to be Pickles. Now normally a "preserved" food lasts longer... so maybe, based on the state of decay, it instead serves as a multiplier. Say... x4. So if it had been preserved on the first day the Pickles would have lasted 28 days, but since we waited until the third day (7 - 3 = 4) it will now only be preserved for 16 days (4 days left x4 multiplier). Keeping in mind that you need a glass jar to create the "Pickle" food item and it would lose Hunger value (i.e. restores less when eaten). So is it better to just eat it... or preserve it to keep it longer.

My suggestion for "freshness" in relation to preserved food would perhaps be that it starts off at "Almost fresh" level (i.e. refers to the less Hunger restored issue with preserved foods) and then takes longer, because of the added days, to reach the lower freshness levels.

Now, I think honey should be something that would last for a while, but perhaps go bad after at least a good deal of time. I think honey, instead of adding a lot of random items with only one purpose, could be the conserver in the food conserving process. Winter is coming - what do you do? You take your meat, fruits and vegetables and stuff them in a jar of honey.

Well honey can last a very long time... very long. Of course it should still need to be properly stored, like in a glass jar. As for using honey to help preserved foods... I don't know. I prefer to think smoking, boiling, or salting foods would work best (depending on the type of food).

Never mind realism, I'd rather have multipurpose items than just a bunch of items with only one purpose.

This would of course mean that we would need something to conserve things in, like the jar.

Well the simplest suggestion I've seen on this topic involves using the Crock Pot. You place the foods into the Crock Pot, and add either salt (for meats) or a glass jar (for fruits/vegetables), then lets it cook. Once completed you get either a salted meat (i.e. salted ham) or a jar of preserves (i.e. pickles).

But what if it didn’t just happen right away? If I understand the story mode correctly, which I probably don’t, then you’ll continue to jump forwards to other islands. If Maxwell created this world, in which you must survive, then couldn’t he introduce that mechanic a bit later?

I think it's best suited early on because you'll have extra options. The wild carrots you find would remain fresh, and if my suggestion is followed, remain until Winter (a long way away). So that's one food source you can collect/eat without issue. The same is true for my suggestions about berry bushes. Seeds should be fine... although I'm not sure what happens if you roast/cook them. All in all most of the food early in the game you tend to eat fairly quickly. Based on how long each freshness level lasts, based on the food, you will most likely eat food when it's either fresh or mostly fresh (which would only inflict a minor penalty). In the long run however this effect would be more obvious as you began collecting larger and larger quantities of food... then players would uncover the horrible truth, but still be able to recover from these loses at that stage.

Think of this more as a buffer that is reached at an "apex" in the survival experience... when you start getting more food than you can eat in a day. When you're not living from hand to mouth... When the stockpiling starts... then... surprise.

I think the level of healing you get from cooked food and honey is way too high as it is. I liked it at the beginning when I didn't have cooked food or honey and I felt like I had to be very cautious about what fights I got into. But that's really off topic to this discussion.

Maybe a little off-topic, but we are discussing food. Personally I find it odd that the character can eat food even after their Stomach is full. Explain to me how that works Kevin! At least have a "vomit" action key.

But seriously, players shouldn't be able to eat anymore once their Stomach is full. If certain foods are more "fulfilling" (i.e. Health restoring) players would need to recognize them and eat those foods over lesser ones if their main goal is Health restoration through eating. And, yes, I support bandages/poultices as a better means than food for restoring Health for this reason.

Now, to get back on-topic.

Dang Mobius, where have you been? I was starting to miss that avatar of yours.

I was at my sister's wedding in Colorado. She married an American. The American was not Clint Eastwood. I was sad. Next question.

Another idea is that the excessive eating of "spoiled" food may harm your heath like monster meat does.

I support it causing food poisoning... which causes nausea (Stomach icon turns green)... which causes puking (empties Stomach slightly and causes character to "spew").

Wouldn't there be a problem stacking food. If you had meat that was about to spoil and on top of it you stacked meat that was completely fresh would this cause both of them to spoil or both to stay fresh? Mabe it could seperate the stacks but having a stack for every percent of freshness of every object would take up a lot of room and if it split when it spoiled and a chest was full it would fall on the ground so some monster could come and eat it.

I think that food should stack in order of "age", with the oldest at the top of the stack and the first to be eaten. Then when it becomes "rotten food" it creates a new stack wher all rotten food (no matter the source) collects.

I think it would be a great balance for effigy hoarding.

Maybe. I always assumed an easier method to control Meat Effigy hoarding was to simply limit Wilson to only creating one. Then if he tries to create another he says, "But I already have one..." and doesn't. Of course if Meat Effigies rotted away, well then, that would also solve the issue of having too many of them.

...But if you're going on realness, then seeds and honey don't expire in the same way regular foods do. Both honey, and seeds, if stored properly, can last for years with no indecent. What's stopping people from ignoring the food system altogether, and hoarding seeds and honey? And people would probably just be driven to live on monster meat and honey anyway, because once you get to 100+ days, hound meat will be flowing out of your ears.

My suggested solutions are:

1) Honey should require a glass jar to be collected/stored. The current method, globs of honey, borders on the ridiculous after all. Then, by limiting access to glass jars you control how much can be stockpiled. Next, add a creature that loves honey... and berries... and fish... oh wait, there is one, the bear. Maybe not a unique creature, but it would work.

2) Seeds are fine, but what if birds dropped them far less often. What if eating them restored only 1% Hunger? I mean they're just seeds after all. Anyone trying to survivw by eating only 6-10 seeds a day should tell me how well that turns out for them. A better investment for seeds should be planting them in a farm plot.

3) Cooked/roasted seeds, which could restore 2% Hunger each, should rot.

4) IMHO, the Crock Pot should NEVER be able to turn monster meat into "good meat". It should instead make poisoned/toxic foods. Or a "wet goop" equivilent for meats. I mean who here would expect to cook poisonous food and then expect it to turn out just fine? I wouldn't.

If all that hoarded food were to go bad, I'd have to go out and explore in order to find more sources of fresh food, which would lead to less reliance on Farming and your SimBase, and a very real possibility that, even with a bunch of food-making stuff in or near your base, you could no longer stockpile months' worth of food in chests, like you can now.

Not to mention if berries on bushes never rot, then it would give players a reason NOT to dig-up/hoard every berry bush in one location. By keeping berry bushes scattered along their exploration routes they would have a ready food supply. Where if they just harvest berries at their base camp they'll rot after 7 or so days... longer if cooked, but still.

My suggestion: when you shift-click to examine food, have that be the indicator of freshness. Would allow for more fun personality/flavor text from the characters, as well. "This doesn't look very fresh any more." "Eww, it's got some moldy bits on it..." "Uh oh, this is clearly about to go bad..." and so on.

We have the same idea.

[Syd]

Well from a veterans perceptive: yeah makes the game for challenging

noobs perspective: hell no it makes the game UN-playably hard.

I think the thing that makes the game hard to new players isn't necessarily the availability of food (as food is very plentiful on the beginner island, unless the player is victim to freakishly bad world generation), but the distraction the current research system poses. Having recently talked with a few players that were still new, and recalling my own experiences when I had first gotten the game, I'm convinced that the research system is a big indirect killer for newcomers. Quite a few deaths seem to be because the player is so focused on getting a science machine built, or finding things to throw in it to get research points, that they forget to gather the materials needed for basic survival. Hell, I remember that one of my own early deaths was to the Grue because I had forgotten to gather the materials to make a fire during the day.

As many players that have researched everything there is to research have found, once the siren's call of new craftable items is gone, it's quite easy to find much more than enough food to survive, even well before you've set up farms (or if you play like I currently do, having never made any farms at all, as not starving is still a trivial task even if one plays as a nomad).

I suppose we'll Soon see how the new upcoming research system effects early gameplay.

[mobius187]

I think the thing that makes the game hard to new players isn't necessarily the availability of food (as food is very plentiful on the beginner island, unless the player is victim to freakishly bad world generation), but the distraction the current research system poses. Having recently talked with a few players that were still new, and recalling my own experiences when I had first gotten the game, I'm convinced that the research system is a big indirect killer for newcomers. Quite a few deaths seem to be because the player is so focused on getting a science machine built, or finding things to throw in it to get research points, that they forget to gather the materials needed for basic survival. Hell, I remember that one of my own early deaths was to the Grue because I had forgotten to gather the materials to make a fire during the day.

Hmmm. I cannot provide input on this suggestion because I watched a Let's Play series before I purchased/played the game. So my own experience is jaded by the tips I learned from those videos, and thus, I never fell prey to this issue. As such, I'll assume this is a very real issue. To add more weight to your argument if anyone has seen the Yogcast Let's Play for Don't Starve that's EXACTLY what happens to them (if you haven't yet... uh... spoilers?). They're so focused on the inventions menu from the Science Machine they forget maintain their fire as night falls... and the Grue eats them. Sad, but true.

I suppose we'll Soon see how the new upcoming research system effects early gameplay.

Exactly. I have high hopes for it.

[Ora]

This idea. I love it. But I am curious, would seeds spoil? Because as long as they are kept dry seeds can last pretty much forever IRL.