Thought on nutrition, food, drinks, and survival in general.

[Jeremiah Cross 55]

Had a thought today.

What if food in DayZ had different nutritional values which affected your characters ability to survive, not as in buffs, but as in how healthy you are and how susceptible to disease and hypothermia. It would add difficulty not so much in finding food, but in having a somewhat balanced diet.

My idea is to give each food item four values; Fats, Protein, Vitamins, and Calories.

Fats would effect how well you could maintain your body heat. Either by lowering the maximum value of your body temperature or increasing the rate at which you lose it if you have a deficiency.

Protein would be how much blood the food restores, which is already a part of the game.

Vitamins would effect how easily you get sick and I like the idea of it affecting your total blood pool. The more vitamin deficient you are the less health you have. Or scurvy could be implemented, but that feels a bit harsher.=)

Calories would either determine how much of your hunger meter is filled or how quickly it depletes (Like how in IRL foods high in carbs can fill you up just as fast as foods high in fat and protein but you'll feel hungry again much sooner.)

This could even be include drinks. Sodas have some fat and calories to them and water doesn't, though water hydrates you better, increasing the time before you feel thirsty again.

I also like the idea of being able to warm canned food up over a fire and having it and freshly cooked meat act like a heat pack for, oh lets say, ten minutes after heating. As it stands it wouldn't make much difference since the only way to cook is with fire, which warms you up anyway, but if they add camp stoves (which i think they should) it would be nice. Speaking from experience, camp stoves don't do much to warm you up, but hot food does.

Also, what if (with the clothing in standalone already being planned on carrying diseases) you could prevent hypothermia by stripping down after a swim and lighting a fire until they dry (maybe a minute?). I don't know about this one, it adds realism, but also sounds like it would be a pain in the ass. Though that might not be bad since it would all but make a boat or chopper required for travel to islands, making them a more "endgame" type of location. A place you need to work towards getting to. Just a thought.

On another side note, if camp stoves are implemented; screw looting propane bottles! Just fuel them up at a gas station. There are several types of camp stove that can run on unleaded gasoline. Some multi-fuel stoves can run on just about anything from alcohol to unleaded. Rather than carry around fuel bottles, just have the stove hold the fuel and run out after so many uses. I seem to remember match boxes and canteens used to do this. And if they didn't, they should. Twenty uses per match box and three drinks per canteen (1 liter/34oz. canteen roughly equals three 12oz. cans of soda, yes?) With the new water purification stuff it would make canteens more worthwhile IMO. Now they take up as much space as soda for, twice the work and you can get sick if you forget to boil the water.

[Beanus 61]

Now those seem to be pretty unique ideas!

[shadowleaper 22]

I like the food breakdown idea. Simply because in reality you would get deficient looking and only finding one type of food. There could be some interesting draw backs to this and really give a sense of reward when you find that orange for instance.

I'd make the drawbacks there, but make them only set in after a long game time as it would IRL. It'd add a subtle change to the blood and stamina system etc.

[Jeremiah Cross 55]

Yeah, it wouldn't be like "Well it looks like you only ate some canned pasta today, enjoy the plague."

Not entirely sure on how to implement it, but I was thinking something along the lines of a "daily requirement" where it just ticks down slowly over time and after several hours of play you'll start developing a deficiency. So if you don't get any fat or vitamins for, lets say. twelve hours you'll become completely deficient.

I don't know though, twelve hours seems both a bit to long and not long enough. That part would need to be experimented with.

Edited February 8, 2013 by Jeremiah Cross

[janus0104 212]

I like the idea of breaking down nutrients into several groups. One problem with it is that it would only show any effect after several days.

A counter for that however would be random starting stats when you spawn, unreasonable to expect every character had the healthiest dietary meal of his lifetime just before passing out and getting washed up on the shore.

So you'd spawn on the shore, go to your stats screen or w/e and go "wtf? am i playing a fat guy over here? all fat and no vitamines... will have to do something about that" and runs towards the next garden with some fresh vegetables.

[finkone 320]

Trade you my orange for that DMR? ;)

[mr_chabowski@live.co.uk 2416]

If the risk of vitamin deficiency is added, the most important new feature would be the ability to raid allotments for fruit and veg.

Previously, I've brought up the idea of cooking meals (as a potential group activity) to give different effects depending on the ingredients used. I think these suggestions would tie together nicely.

Nutrition would be a valuable addition to the overall experience IMO.

EDIT: Hunger management currently feels very artificial.

Whether you're a little peckish, or literally starving to death, 1 tin of beans will leave you full up.

I think more "body-management" in general would be a good idea.

Edited February 9, 2013 by Chabowski

[Jeremiah Cross 55]

I think some sort of foraging system would be a good addition. It shouldn't be 100% chance to find anything and I think what you find should vary depending on season and where you are. So fruits and veggies around farms and rurual villages; pine nuts, acorns, and grubs in the forest. Forage would be plentiful in the summer and fall but almost non existent in the winter. Or something like that.

[gesundheitk 420]

Rocket, you know what to do.

[Jeremiah Cross 55]

Alright, now I'm thinking about foraging and have a few ideas there.

I think we can all agree that fresh fruits and veggies would go bad rather quickly if left on store shelves. Fields would be left to rot and soon over grown with weeds, so those two are more or less out. Canned fruits and vegetables could, and if a nutrition system is added, should be added. Though canned foods have less nutritive value than fresh food, so there's that.

Making foraging an action (like changing weapons or bandaging a wound) is a bad idea, it would make it to easy. You would have people just sitting around raking in enough food to survive with no effort. The only way I can think of to counter this would be to set it up so that a region would be depleted of food after a few successful foraging attempts, then restore itself after a little while. I would be hesitant to ask the devs to have to take on this much programming, and a foraging "skill" wouldn't fit with the rest of the game.

The alternative I've come up with would be to have foraged food be loot drops. You could find pine cones (which could be cooked to get at the pine nuts), piles of acorns, mushrooms, etc. just sitting around on the forest floor and apples or other tree fruit in the scattered orchards (like the one south of Berezino.). Additionally, bushes could also be made into a container or loot pile of sorts, which you can loot to find some berries or leaves that can be brewed into tea (not sure if this would be viable or not, but it's a thought.). The problem then would be that food would be more prevalent and the game could become to easy. To fix this, I propose making foraged food provide little nutritional value per individual unit, basically making it so that to feed yourself by foraging would require a fair deal of searching and would really reduce it to a hand to mouth existence, which is in keeping with reality. Dedicated survivalists, such as myself, would probably best employ it as a way to stay fed in between killing wild game (and yes, i think hunting should be harder, too. Either by making game less common or by making it more elusive.).

Just my thoughts. As an avid outdoorsman and long time student of wilderness survival I would really like to see foraging implemented, but in a way that won't break the game.

On the subject of meat, I seem to remember reading a few suggestions like this before, but here's my two cents. Meat should decay. Raw meat in a couple of hours, cooked meat after a day or so (server time, not play time). I also think that you should be able to smoke meat over a camp fire, having the process take somewhere in the range of thirty seconds to a minute. Smoked meat could last somewhere in the range of a week. I don't know about anyone else, but whenever I make a camp for myself, I inevitably end up with massive piles of meat, raw and cooked, in my tents, which just doesn't seem right.

[CreepySalad 108]

yesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyes.

YES.

Edited February 9, 2013 by CreepySalad

[janus0104 212]

snip

Yeah, foraging would be an immersion killer if done like in SWG :D Click Forage, character kneels, "You search the area for anything useful" "..." "..." "..." "You find..." "A jar of insects", then he walks 5m and forages again lol

I like the idea of loot spots at gardens and such. Making a few vegetables is the least of problems, a few hours to add it all I'd wager.

The going bad would also be cool. Use a timer like the one for helis, every hour non-canned food degrades by 10%.

[mr_chabowski@live.co.uk 2416]

I had imagined any foraging mechanic would work similar to Skyrim.

A variety of fruits/seeds/mushrooms are able to be harvested, and would only renew after a pre-defined time.

It stops areas from being infinitely exploitable, and would require that the player has some kind of knowledge of where to look for food sources.

A side-effect of this is, a keen eye would start to spot player "trails" forming. High traffic areas would be comparatively barren.

A smart tracker might even be able to use this to find and stalk other survivors.

As a side note. If wildlife is going to be improved upon in terms of behavior, the animals should eat these plants too.

[janus0104 212]

You'd have to find a whole bag of vegetables/mushrooms/chestnuts/etc. to make a single meal, though... unless you make very bland soups or only go for pumpkins. Don't see it working well with the current inventory system.

I have this funny idea in my head, you walk up to a tiny village, see smoke coming from a chimney... pull out your binoculars and zoom in, as a bandit with a chef apron comes stepping outsides and yells "fresh pumpkin pie for all!" lol

Anyhoot, wouldn't random loot piles with a low chance next to gardens/certain bushes/whatnot sorta equal the whole Skyrim foraging mechanic WITHOUT having to turn gardens and whatnot into entities the game recognizes and gives you a foraging action for?

Edited February 9, 2013 by Elvaron

[mr_chabowski@live.co.uk 2416]

It's just an object with a toggleable spawner, either yay or nay.

Since we're just throwing ideas around, it's worth shooting for the optimum conditions.

If loot-piles is a less demanding alternative so be it. But it's not how I'd implement such a feature ideally.

[janus0104 212]

It's just an object with a toggleable spawner, either yay or nay.

Since we're just throwing ideas around, it's worth shooting for the optimum conditions.

If loot-piles is a less demanding alternative so be it. But it's not how I'd implement such a feature ideally.

I'd say loot piles for the community mod, proper implementation for the stand-alone. OP never specified the scope :D

To add at least a little value to my post, how about actual cooking?

With all the scavenging, it should be harder and harder to find actual canned food, but who steals the proverbial sack of rice or 50 pounds of flour?

Would be kinda cool to see a survivor walk around with a frying pan dangling on his backpack, have a rudimentary cooking system.

I'd also like to see more post-apoc animal skins. Grizzly bear from 12 Monkeys, that skinned rat-cat mix from The Book of Eli, snakes, frogs and lizards...

[mr_chabowski@live.co.uk 2416]

It would be nice to have spawns scaled over the course of sever-life to have tinned food become seriously scarce and more wild/planted food grow. But that's just wishful thinking on my part.

If the potential was there for survivors to create a settlement, I'd jump at the chance to start building a kitchen.

(quickly consumable resources give more reasons to go out on raids)

You'd get to try my world famous "don't ask" stew. :thumbsup:

But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

[captainwaffles 41]

Ok. Good idea but it would make the game a little to tedious IMO.

[mr_chabowski@live.co.uk 2416]

If you mean "tedious" as in, "not run and gun KoS", good.

That's the kind of tedium we need. :D

I think adding a requirement for players to take care of their character's bodies would benefit the survival scenario.

Edited February 9, 2013 by Chabowski

[thesodesa 99]

I'd like to either see the soda cans removed from the game or alternative drinks added, since soda actually works as a diuretic because of all the salt that's in it (kidneys expend water to remove any excess salts from the blood), so it would actually make you more thirsty and dehydrated.

EDIT: It could be one of those useless items suggested in another thread.

http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/124884-give-us-what-we-do-not-need-junk-and-unique-loot/

Edited February 24, 2013 by TheSodesa

[Clumzy (DayZ) 377]

If foraging is added, then a way to add difficulty would be adding poisonous berries, so you have to be very careful with what you eat.

[LeonsenPartisani 0]

Yeah i like the idea! However do not make it too complicated. Proteins, Carbonhydrates, Fats and Vitamins would be just enough to look after. Having a disbalance should have just one bad effect, there shouldn't be like 1000 possible symptomes.

Also i like the idea of looting bushes and trees for food.

Reduce tinned meal and make gathering food a real challenge. For now, theres actually no need for hunting. That should give people a goal beside shooting people randomly.

[joe_mcentire 2073]

from the dev-blog http://dayzdev.tumblr.com/post/44886721127/weve-gone-for-a-reasonably-quick-and-dirty-video

Expanding health system

Health is extending far beyond just blood, into a system that incorporates health, blood, and consciousness level. How these are all interrelating will be touched on in its own devblog in future. Some of the exciting developments coming include longterm play effects such as poor diet affecting your long term health levels. All this translates into the importance of a longterm plan for survival of your character, and we’re sure the role of medical specialists will become very important - hopefully emphasizing social interaction opportunities.

Edited March 11, 2013 by joe_mcentire

[Lady Kyrah 1109]

In neo scavenger you can find bush berries in fields and mushrooms in forests.

In this game, eating berries and mushrooms randomly found around is a recipe for disaster, i once died of dehidration due to toxic berries (diarea, fever, etc...). Seems like in this game, unless you take the botanic skill that let you identify the berries, eating berries has about a 40/60 chance to kill you, or at least make you severely ill for the next few days.

Now we don't want that kind of skills in dayZ, but at the same time, simply making the red berries toxic and the blue berries edible is too easy in my opinion. A possibility could be that some wild berries have a 50/50 chance to be poisonous, but that boiling them in a saucepan will neutralise most of the poison.

This gives you the option to take the risk of eating them if you really have no choice (starvation), or to boil them to be safe. Hell, some meds could be used to counter the effect too!

[Roark92 90]

really cool. im one of the people who feels that there is nothing that could make the game too "tedious"

soo many people spend so much time making mods for games that do these things, because developers are too scared of tedium... meaning players have to take it upon themselves to deliver the content.

im sure im not the only one here who plays/played skyrim with 100+ mods.

it could be really intuitive if done right.

also by giving simple items like coffee or tea values that are unique to them (as an example caffeine), you also open up a whole market of tradeable goods... since drinking coffee wouldnt be entirely superficial.

that said im not very big on foods providing "bonuses" in a buffing sense... i think that is really artificial... when you drink coffee you dont get "15% more alertness for 2 hours"... you just feel more alert. so no flat out "heres your bonus from your coffee and heres its duration" stuff.

in that sense becoming deficient could just be a subtle thing that you begin to notice before it actually impacts you. or could just increase infection rate. that removes tedium because it provides you with time to deal with it without the (eg) "shit i just became tired, i need to sleep to get rid of this 50% less melee damage" modifier that pops up instantly without warning and forces you to deal with it right then and there.

but i am actually pretty confident that down the line in dayzSA development, into beta, these sorts of things will really start popping out and expanding the game. Rockets got it covered.