I like NetHack And I also like the food system in NetHack. It works like this:
1) You start out non-hungry
2) You start with a little food
3) You get more hungry every turn and from Famine and Rings of Hunger, and from wearing rings and amulets
4) Food is found randomly in the dungeon, on the bodies of the monsters, their bodies , stores(emergencys only), and some more ways -_-
5) Hunger increase rate can be lowered by wearing a Ring of Slow Digestion, or by polymorphing into a non-eating monster
6) Eating old corpses will make you Ill
7) Food is randomly rotten, will only give some minor effects
8) Eating takes quite some time(turns, not real time ), so you''d better find a empty place to eat
9) Fainting while hungry is not a good idea
10) Hunger gets less important at the end of the game as you usually find a lot of food and a =oSD
11) Famine killed me on the astral plane(with the amulet)
12) You can get un-hungry by praying to your god

This food system is really good in my opinion, it prevents camping somewhere and doing whatever ... campers do :D You have to find food all the time... yeah.. and this game is some kind of a survival game You spend more time trying to survive than you do role-playing.

The problem with food is making it significant as a feature - if food is plentiful and cheap and it only means pressing the ''e'' key every so often (or going through a more complex inventory juggling process...) then it''s definitely a bad idea. One way to handle eating is to embed it into the sleeping process - most times a character won''t just stop dead in the middle of nowhere and have a nap - they''ll pitch a tent, make a fire, cook a meal, maybe set some snares... If there''s no non-trivial choices involved in the food management system eg if "I''m in town -> max out food load" "I''m hungry -> eat" will take you through the game, then it''s not worth putting it in in the first place - in any case you probably want to abstract out so that eating is automated but the rate of consumption is player controlled.

I think that basically the issue has come down to how much you want the game to focus on the character''s basic survival, and how relevant things like food and fatigue are to their survival within the gameworld.

In a modern-day setting, within the richer parts of the world, food is hardly an issue unless you are very tight on cash, and if you are, it''s not as much about finding food as it is finding money, and if you''re clever finding substitutes for buying things to meet your needs. Similarly, if the character is driving or flying around all the time, how tired he is shouldn''t need any consideration unless you have a burning desire to make the player pull over for catnaps or finding a hotel every game-day.

On the other hand, settings where your day-to-day needs are highly valued, or where your physical exhaustion could become a concern, would want some model to take care of it.

Depending on the situation you have, this could be represented by taking money out of the budget every day for supplies, running your character into food symbols to increase his meter, or somewhere in between(seperating picking up from eating, turning a fixed budget need into something the player has to micro-manage as detailed above, etc.) or with stamina, having a fixed amount that you use over time, only when you move/fight, having it regenerate anytime/only resting, how deadly it is etc.

I don''t think any one method will work for every game, though. Like I said, it''s a case of "focus" over realism. (I prefer this to "gameplay" over realism, because gameplay is not as clear a word and "focus" fits this usage quite well - also, the latter implies that adding realism subtracts from gameplay, which isn''t always true of course)

They had this feature in Betrayal at Krondor (very old game, from Dynamix)...

It added alot more realism, and kept you more focused on your objective, as well. You couldn''t run around in the wilderness forever, you had to go buy food at a nearby inn or in a nearby town. You could also find food on enemies that you killed, and other places where they could be hidden.

Actually there was a quest where you needed to poison some hidden foodstores, hidden by an invading army.

The eating system was automatic, as long as you had rations. The PC would eat twice a day, or something. And when you did not have food something would pop up and tell you that you were feeling hungry, and you were getting weaker.

It would take a very long time to die if you didn''t have food though...

It was alot better with food!

This feature is often used in MUDs, just not to the degree which people are commenting on. In my case, their just annoyances seeing as they provide no depth to the game.

As long a feature can be tied into the game to give it greater depth and actually become a part of the game, instead of just "look your hungry, go waste some money on useless bread," then I''m okay with it.

In an RPG with more complex mechanics, food could have an effect on the rate at which physical strength is gained. In the real world, working out will not make you any stronger if you''re not eating. A designer could probably work out a simplistic equation to figure out the rate of strength gain depending on the relation between the amount of food the character is eating and the duration and difficulty of physical activity.

A character that spends his day running around, for instance, would need normal rations to maintain a constant strength. If he gets 25% or no rations, he slowly loses strength, and if he gets 125% to 150% of normal rations, he''ll slowly gain strength. Naturally there would be a cap to the amount of food the character will consumer per day which is relevant to their activity -- a character that spends his day running around fighting things, or chopping down trees, can eat a lot more -- say, 150% to maintain normal strength, with the cap as high as 250%. A character doing constant, hard physical labor like combat or lumberjacking, and eating 250% of normal rations per day, would gain strength at the highest rate possible.

Sleep could affect stamina (aka Endurance) in a similar manner.

But if the game your making relies on mechanics that are relatively simple and easy for the player to grasp, sleep and food really should be low priority concerns, if you include them at all.

****************************************

Brian Lacy
ForeverDream Studios

Comments? Questions? Curious?
brian@foreverdreamstudios.com

"I create. Therefore I am."

Thanks for the good example irbrian

A good way of thinking about how to make food that much more interesting, what if we take a look at the way a very popular game used it''s food, River City Ransom, and apply a system like this, though exclusive benifits are only temporary and the food adds to a characters ''fuel'' for the day Of course, there can also be negative effects as well.

Just a clearer thought

- Chris

(If you don''t know RCR, let me know )