Should food be infinite or not?

[Ixnatifual]

Been pondering this question a bit while working on my dungeon. In Grimrock there are some areas where monsters providing food respawn endlessly. Essentially giving you endless food if you're willing to stay there for a while.

Perhaps it's done as a sort of "safety net" in case the player starts running out. Or perhaps it's done to make the player feel like monsters can appear at any time. A side effect of this of course is the player can also endlessly grind these monsters for XP if they don't mind the tedious work.

Do you think there should be a few ways to resupply food infinitely this way if you're taking very long to solve a dungeon? Or should food be finite?

Also, anyone come up with a clever way to prevent endlessly spawning monsters from potentially flooding the dungeon?

[Phitt]

From my own experience with my released dungeon I can only say that food usage differs a lot. Some players hardly need any food, while other run around/sleep endlessly and need tons of food. So it's quite hard to balance imo. I don't see a reason to have a food bar if you're never in danger of running out of food, but it's very hard to tell when a player will run out of it. And in the end running out of food means starting over, which is no fun if you've played for 10 hours and then realize you're screwed (unless you cheat and use the console, which is an option).

That's why from my point of view the food bar is pretty useless in terms of gameplay, since if you run out of food you will use the console because no one wants to start over after many hours of play time. It's a nice 'immersion' feature, but not more than that imo.

Personally I always limit the respawning monsters with a counter if possible. Of course if you have a puzzle that needs respawning monsters it is a bit problematic (since you need them to respawn endlessly or else the player can't solve the puzzle), but in that case I would simply make a rather long delay between spawns, decrease the exp gained from killing the monster so it's worthless (level 10 characters won't wait for half a minute only to kill a 50xp monster). And if it's a monster that spawns food I would remove the food spawn or at least greatly decrease the chance for spawning food.

[Komag]

I think food respawns are the solution, and snails work well because they are heavy, so there is the trade-off of how much to carry, later on deal with being on edge of hunger, trying to carry lots of other stuff, etc, so hunger can can work and still be a good element (and yeah, I like the immersion of it too)

[Batty]

I'm an explorer type player, I checked everything in the base game, took forever but still had an endless food supply.

Limiting food can play a factor because it forces you to make potions to restore health/energy which means you have to find herbs.

If you have a limited food supply, I think you should offer a farm area somewhere but put it behind a good secret/fight so the player must accomplish something to get it.

Then if you load up on food in the farm area, you will have inventory management issues later on (which is fun).

I don't think a single game mechanic (food) can be the be all/end all in strategic fun, it needs to be combined with other things to have a good overall experience.

[Xanathar]

That's why from my point of view the food bar is pretty useless in terms of gameplay

I agree
As a disclaimer: I'm in the very heavy food usage category, as I often play with 2 mages or rely heavily on the spellcaster anwyay, and when mana ends... .. actually, while I think about it, I'm on the very heavy food usage in real life too

A side effect of this of course is the player can also endlessly grind these monsters for XP if they don't mind the tedious work.

A snail gives 60exp. According to edsploration sheet, to go from level 15 to level 16 you need to kill 1162 snails, so not unbalancing in the long term; it might be unbalancing in the short term (farming 1st level) but then 1) why aren't you enjoying the game instead of farming snails to gain a negligible advantage for the next couple of hours and 2) why didn't you import a level 20 party in the first place if you want to exploit the experience system ? (I never much understood farming in any game really)

Then if you load up on food in the farm area, you will have inventory management issues later on (which is fun).

I agree, inventory management might be the only really fun part of the food thing, because it forces choices on you. Dying of starvation and restarting the game (or reloading a very old load) is no fun.

Also, anyone come up with a clever way to prevent endlessly spawning monsters from potentially flooding the dungeon?

Check this script of mine:
viewtopic.php?f=14&t=3792&p=38879&hilit ... ner#p38762

Spawns choosing a random spawner from the list
Doesn't spawn if there are already <max-monsters> spawned entities in the level
Doesn't spawn if the picked spawner is under <min-dist> distance from the party (to avoid seeing monsters appearing out of nowhere)

My 2 euro-cents naturally

[Ixnatifual]

That's a cool script Xanathar. Especially that it takes into account whether the party is near.

I know you didn't code it yourself since beholders have no hands, but send my thanks to the minion you bullied into writing it.

[Xanathar]

send my thanks to the minion you bullied into writhing it

It was a drow, of course. It was, of course.

[Diarmuid]

I think there should be a farm somewhere for those who like to explore everything and take their time. As my mod in progress is very non-linear, I also cannot predict if a player will do everything in an optimal order or backtrack endelessly across levels (just like CSB), and I don't want to frustrate players.

I think however that I found a clever way of "limiting" farm usage, you'll see.

PS: Xanathar, thanks for that script, I somehow missed it.

[Soaponarope]

I think there should be a farm somewhere for those who like to explore everything and take their time. As my mod in progress is very non-linear, I also cannot predict if a player will do everything in an optimal order or backtrack endelessly across levels (just like CSB), and I don't want to frustrate players.

I have to agree with this, for the same reasons. I think the players should somewhat have an option of how hardcore they want a mod to be. Whether or not they choose to farm a spot for food is part of this. I remember dungeon master had the screamer regeneration room to keep people from getting stuck, and at least most of the similar games since have had the like. If you are going to make it finite though, should probably put at least twice as much as you used on your own playthrough.

[Neikun]

Pressure plates at the intro that activate/deactivate the rate of food spawners?