Food in games is always done wrong: it's either an obnoxious money/time sink to keep your character fed, or a half-assed mechanic that's not particularly interesting. So what's the best way to handle food in games?
>What benefits does eating food provide? >What penalties are incurred from not eating food? >How is food differentiated from similar systems like drinks, potions, medkits, magic, etc? >What is the purpose of more expensive/harder to obtain foods?
Food shouldn't be a big issue unless it's a game that relies on cooking, then it should be a bigger issue. Problem is a lot of cooking games are either time management boondoggles, or simplified into a series of minigames that never fun.
Carson Bennett
Monhun does food well. >eat before every mission to get stat buffs >snack during mission to keep stamina high
They even spent like half of their animation budget on the food scenes so you can see shit like the oil sizzling on the chicken that just came out of the stone oven.
Henry Cox
I like how you can mix food together to create mixed drinks with good effects in dead rising
I like how Darkest Dungeon handles food/rations. >When your party sets up camp, you can choose to feed the group 0, 2, 4, or 8 rations to heal different amounts of health and morale >Can also be eaten while exploring for a small HP boost >A stack of rations takes up an inventory slot, so you might be tempted to sacrifice food to fit more loot >Food goes bad between excursions, so you can't just buy a bunch and hoard it
It's not a complex system, but that's fine IMO since Darkest Dungeon isn't ABOUT food. The inventory system really makes you feel like you're stocking up before a difficult journey, and forces you to make interesting decisions about stocking up/saving/dropping food. I like that a lot.
Only thing I hate is that sometimes your party will randomly decide that they're all hungry, and demand one ration apiece. If you don't have enough food to feed them, they lose sanity. But I guess that comes with the random bullshit that is Darkest Dungeon.
>What benefits does eating food provide? A "well-fed" buff that lasts a long while. Probably to something like passive HP regeneration. >What penalties are incurred from not eating food? Nothing, except that you miss out on the buffs. Hunger in games is shit, starvation doubly so. It's not realistic but who gives a fuck. >How is food differentiated from similar systems like drinks, potions, medkits, magic, etc? Food is more of a "slow burn", and isn't very effective mid-battle. Potions/magic can heal you in the middle of a fight, but are much more expensive than food. >What is the purpose of more expensive/harder to obtain foods? There are 3 types of food: rations (no prep required, small buff), and hot meals (must be cooked, big buff). Hot meals can be bought in town, or crafted over a fire with ingredients. Rations can also help extend the duration of a Hot Meal buff, so ideally you get one hot meal per day plus a few snacks.
Just spitballing here but I think it'd work well for a single-player game where it's possible to skip time by resting.
Anthony Martinez
IMAGINE
Liam Hill
>sometimes your party will randomly decide that they're all hungry It feels particularly bullshit when they go hungry almost immediately after camping with 8 rations.
Bentley Evans
Yakuza 5 does it best. You stop in for food and it gives you a 30 minute buff. Do some sidequests and you'll unlock special food items at each place that give you an even higher buff per visit.
Luis Butler
I liked ffxv food. Gives stat bonus and made apart of camping and diners but not a requirement. It's food, it doesn't need to be a big part of gameplay. I wished they showed the crew sitting down and eating it too though just for atmosphere purposes.
Camden Adams
I haven't played any of the other games, but I really liked the way Yakuza 0 handled it. After a few beatdowns around town with the local thugs, you stop in a restaurant for a hearty meal to refill your HP. Of course if you don't get hit, you don't need to eat...
Robert Morales
/ck/ here this looks disgusting
Jordan Parker
Imagine being so fat you look at computers and see food
Jace Stewart
imagine being at computers so fat you look and see food
James Watson
never add any real life shit mechanics to a game: ugly people hunger/thirsty toilet necessity tiredness timed quests fetch quests no save and load/auto save only
maybe money/score is the only ok one but only because it does progress,the others are shit
Jeremiah Kelly
Absolutely based
Benjamin Parker
One thing about FFXV I won't shit on is the overall design of the food stuff. It was very wholesome, fun and complimented the game design of bros going out on an adventure.
Buffs were also pretty varied between stats and xp gain
I like how MGQP did it where you can eat cooked food to pre-buff before hard fights and you gotta level up a chef to get the best stuff.
James Flores
The problem is when people insert those mechanics into games that don't gain anything from it. Like Minecraft, it turned from a comfy building/adventure game into a slog where you're forced to spend a bunch of time & resources stockpiling food or else you fucking die.
If Minecraft wanted to keep food they could have made it non-essential. Maybe hunger doesn't drain over time, but hunger points are slowly transferred to HP at a 1:1 ratio if you're hurt. That way it operates kind of like a secondary health bar, and you're not completely fucked if you run out of food underground, BUT it's good to fill up on food whenever you can since it's basically a free out-of-combat health buffer.
>If Minecraft wanted to keep food they could have made it non-essential. Or just ditched hunger and kept food as a basic healing item. But then I suppose healing potions wouldn't have been as useful.
