food

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BasiliskWrangler
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Re: food

Post by BasiliskWrangler »

I can see both sides of this debate, however making food/water "a hassle" is not our intention. Food/water requirements should be something that makes the experience of role-playing seem deeper and more interactive, as well as help balance out certain gameplay exploits. However, there is not enough game there yet to be able to play for an extended period of time and know whether or not this is the case. As the game nears completion, if I feel that it is more of a hassle than a improvement to the role-playing experience, then I'll gladly disable the code before the game ships.

Another compromise I like is making food/water optional via a difficulty setting at the start of the game. There are going to be other "challenge" settings that can be set at the start of the game which cannot be changed after the game begins. Food and Water requirements could be one of these options.
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Re: food

Post by CobraEye »

BasiliskWrangler wrote:Another compromise I like is making food/water optional via a difficulty setting at the start of the game. There are going to be other "challenge" settings that can be set at the start of the game which cannot be changed after the game begins. Food and Water requirements could be one of these options.
This is a great solution. I presume that my character takes the appropriate steps necessary to acquire food and water (when he passes streams or wells he drinks up and fills his canteen, for example, without me intervening), so I don't feel as if the food/water issue adds anything other than tedious "administrative housekeeping" tasks which otherwise detract from game play.

I really like realmzmaster's suggestion:
realmzmaster wrote:For example, a wizard sees your camp fire and interrupts your slumber to share your food or water The wizard teaches you a spell as a reward for your kindness.
This is another way to acquire skills, knowledge, lore, clues, etc., beyond books and other means in Book I. It might even be a very specific food, tied to a mini-quest: a guest joins you at the camp fire and asks for food. If you share you meager adventurer's fare, the guest suggests where tastier comestibles might be found, leading to a visit to some lord's manor where not only food but other goodies might be found. Once you have visited the keep you can return to your guest, a box of Krispy Kremes in hand, to share, and receive a spell such as "create food and water" which allows a player to mitigate the need to haul frozen pizzas into the desert or a useful magical object or skill.

Making the food an integral part of the story beyond eat-sleep-poop prevents the game from becoming a Sims spin off where the player micromanages everything.
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jhorto1
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Re: food

Post by jhorto1 »

Basilisk Wrangler - I REALLY like your idea of a challenges option. Sounds like that would be a way to make everyone happy.


Realmzmaster - I too have been playing games since before automap, (The first CRPG I remember getting into was the Swordthrust series on the Apple ][ and didn't even have graphics.) but I think some game mechanics that made sense back then, need to be retired. Other examples in my opinion would be random battles and mapping dungeons on graph paper.

IMO the cartography skill is a fantastic way to handle this.

Random battles, self-mapping and eating requirements didn't really bother me in the early 80's because I didn't know it could be any other way.

One of the reasons I enjoy Eschalon: Book 1 so much is that it has a lot of the old gameplay features I love so much from the older RPGs, and none of the ones I've grown to dislike.
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Re: food

Post by realmzmaster »

jhorto,

Now , I don't feel so old. I played the Swordthurst series also. What about Eamon?

The Alternate Reality (City, Dungeon) series had a food requirement that worked well and added some tension to exploration.

There you are running out of water and food, because you accidently stumble into a secret passage in the city wall. Your hit points are dropping. You are hungry and thirsty. It seems that every enemy knows you are weak and keep attacking. You cannot escape the enounters and they will not accept your bribes. Lo and behold you stumble into a inn or tavern in the city wall! But you have no money! The patrons take pity on you and give you food and drink!

DataSoft (IntelliCreations) had a newsletter it produced for the series. It was a fun read.

A way to turn off or on the food requirement would be the best way to solve the problem. But certain side quests would only be available if the requirement is active. That may or may not be a fair compromise. But, it has possibilities.
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Kreador Freeaxe
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Re: food

Post by Kreador Freeaxe »

I'm trying to remember the name of the first CRPG I played. It was text based, on our old TRS-80 Model III. You had to wait at sections while it loaded the next bit from tape (cassette tape, believe it or not). It was an exploration of an old Mayan ruin. You started off fighting your way through the jungle, and then finding a way into the pyramid, and so on.

The only food requirement there was going to make a sandwich while the tape loaded. :wink:
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Re: food

Post by realmzmaster »

The second job I had after graduating from college was teaching computers using TRS-80 Model ones with cassette tape drive. In fact all the early computers I owned had cassette tape drives ( Timex-Sinclair ZX-81, Commodore Vic-20 and 64, Atari 400, Apple II).

I remember playing a game called Dungeons of Death by Aardvark Software. You loaded different parts of the game from tape.

I also remember the Level 9 adventures. I had Red Moon and Emerald Isle for my Atari.

But, back in those days we thought 16K RAM was a lot of memory and disk drives were wonders to behold :!: :wink:
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Kreador Freeaxe
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Re: food

Post by Kreador Freeaxe »

Yep. I remember the day we installed 64K RAM. We thought we owned the world.
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Re: food

Post by Dragonlady »

CobraEye wrote:
BasiliskWrangler wrote:Another compromise I like is making food/water optional via a difficulty setting at the start of the game. There are going to be other "challenge" settings that can be set at the start of the game which cannot be changed after the game begins. Food and Water requirements could be one of these options.
This is a great solution. I presume that my character takes the appropriate steps necessary to acquire food and water (when he passes streams or wells he drinks up and fills his canteen, for example, without me intervening), so I don't feel as if the food/water issue adds anything other than tedious "administrative housekeeping" tasks which otherwise detract from game play.

I really like realmzmaster's suggestion:
realmzmaster wrote:For example, a wizard sees your camp fire and interrupts your slumber to share your food or water The wizard teaches you a spell as a reward for your kindness.
This is another way to acquire skills, knowledge, lore, clues, etc., beyond books and other means in Book I. It might even be a very specific food, tied to a mini-quest: a guest joins you at the camp fire and asks for food. If you share you meager adventurer's fare, the guest suggests where tastier comestibles might be found, leading to a visit to some lord's manor where not only food but other goodies might be found. Once you have visited the keep you can return to your guest, a box of Krispy Kremes in hand, to share, and receive a spell such as "create food and water" which allows a player to mitigate the need to haul frozen pizzas into the desert or a useful magical object or skill.

Making the food an integral part of the story beyond eat-sleep-poop prevents the game from becoming a Sims spin off where the player micromanages everything.

I really like your idea. Be nice to strangers and your kindness will be returned 3fold. Those who miss out on the mini-quest will just have to put up with shlepping around tons of dry rations and barrels of water to keep them going. :D
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jhorto1
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Re: food

Post by jhorto1 »

realmzmaster wrote:jhorto,

Now , I don't feel so old. I played the Swordthurst series also. What about Eamon?
I never even knew Eamon existed back then. I had a blast with the Swordthrust games though. I played several of the disks on the Apple ][ down at the local public library since the computer was very expensive back then.

I still remember sitting for hours after I'd discovered a glitch in the main hall weapons shop that would allow you to buy a poor quality spear for 0 gold pieces and sell it back to the same guy for 1 gold piece.

Talk about wasted youth.

Found a link to the disk images if anyone's interested:

http://www.eamonag.org/pages/beyond_eamon.htm
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Re: food

Post by AnthonyK »

realmzmaster wrote:The second job I had after graduating from college was teaching computers using TRS-80 Model ones with cassette tape drive. In fact all the early computers I owned had cassette tape drives ( Timex-Sinclair ZX-81, Commodore Vic-20 and 64, Atari 400, Apple II).

I remember playing a game called Dungeons of Death by Aardvark Software. You loaded different parts of the game from tape.

I also remember the Level 9 adventures. I had Red Moon and Emerald Isle for my Atari.

But, back in those days we thought 16K RAM was a lot of memory and disk drives were wonders to behold :!: :wink:
I've been around computers all my life. I was a military brat and my father worked with computers. My first taste of gaming was with a game called Zork. It was on a computer at my dad's work. Soon after that we got out first "home" computer. It was a TRS-80 Model 1. I remember playing many crpg games on it. Some I remember the most from then were, Zork (still), Taipan, Telengard, and a game called Adventure (not sure if it was/is considered a crpg but i loved it) Many hours of my day were wasted on these games. LoL that and actualyl playing D&D. (Dad was such a "bad influence)

Oh, and there was a Star Trek game too, it might have even been called Star Trek. The map of the sectors were .'s *, #, and other symbols depending on what was there. LoL
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Re: food

Post by The Noid »

Back on topic, what about sleep requirements? I just finished my first playthrough, but my character hardly ever slept. I played the hide-in-shadows rogue, never fought in the light and thus hardly ever needed the healing. Since you can outrun every single opponent I just ran around the map during day collecting all the enemies in my trail and mapping the area. Once it got dark I coul finish 'em all of as they could hardly hit me. Usually just walking around during day regenerated enough hitpoints.
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Re: food (and repairs)

Post by Sirrocco »

To get back to an earlier section of the topic - I would request that if you are making food and equipment repair a requirement, particularly if equipment repair is going to be a significant money sink there also be nonstatic treasure available at all levels. Currently, as far as I can tell, Eschalon 1's only nonstatic treasure is from being jumped by thugs (and possibly, eventually, goblins) while you sleep. Everything else comes out of quests (that you can only complete once), chests (that you can only open once), and various set thugs and goblins (that you can only kill once). That's fine currently, but I really don't want to be playing a game where "I can't keep playing. my gear's all broken, I'm starving, there's no gold left in the world, and I'm too high level to get random monsters who drop gear" is an achievable state (however unlikely). I really just don't want to have to worry about it. It would be nice if you could initiate such things in a way that was at least marginally less clunky than "sleep for a day and a half, kill four people, and get lucky" but that's a lesser concern.
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