Caveman 3.0: favorite foods

The game: caveman v3.0 - a FPSRPG / person sim hybrid - stone age setting.

I'm down to adding favorite foods. The SIMs have them, but they don't do anything except trigger a special animation (at least in the sims 3).

However, in caveman, it tracks your recent meals and nukes your mood from eating the same thing all the time. If mood goes low, you can't do actions - except basic stuff like eat and drink.

So the idea is band members would each have a favorite food that didn't nuke their mood, no matter how often they ate it.

Is this too trivial to even bother implementing?

i'm down to this, mini-games, final graphics, and help. and there are still 29 more kinds of quest generators on the todo list - the game already has 28 kinds of quest generators in it.

if not, should it be a random food, or should the player be able to choose it when they create-a-caveman?

random food that changes once per few months maybe?

random sort of makes sense - i didn't choose to like mexican food in real life, i just do.

but change every few months? i'm talking about all-time-favorite foods.

i've always liked mexican and steak (burger king!), have never cared for white meat much, and seafood is "against my religion" i dislike it so much. these preferences haven't changed in over 50 years, and i doubt they ever will.

How hard is it to obtain all kinds of food?

yeah - that might be a problem. some foods are as easy as picking berries or finding nuts. things like spiced beef vegetable stew and spiced wild grain cakes with fruit and nuts are much more work, and require more skills and tools, as well as a fire. If its a random food, they might get one that's a lot of work. if they can pick the food, they can just choose nuts and then practically skip the entire "having to get food" part of the game. players eating just nuts as a min-max strategy was the reason "mood nuke from eating same food" was added to the game. if its random, they might still get nuts as a favorite food, and still be able to almost skip the "having to get food" part of the game.

Nuts are pretty easy to find in wooded areas, and spoil slower than most other foods, which tends to make them a dominant strategy for food sources. To force the player to eat a wider variety of foods (and thus explore, hunt, and gather more), i added the mood nuke from eating the same food all the time. i was considering adding health nuke due to lack of nutrition as well, but mood nuke seems to be sufficient. about a week of eating the same stuff and your character will be in such a foul mood they won't do any work.

I guess to do it right, i should add random favorite food, AND lack of variety in diet nukes health, or maybe makes you sick (which in turn nukes health over time).

Food mechanics can really help improve a game, one of the largest complaints of Harvest moon 64 was that you couldn't cook the food.

I have about 7 basic types of food in the game: nuts, fruit, veggies, meats, spices, grains, and water - as i recall offhand.

Those can be combined to make 30+ (50+? 60+?) foods in the game. Both raw and cooked, and plain and spiced versions - including juices and teas.

And I just thought of two more! dried fruit + roasted nuts = plain trail mix. dried fruit + roasted nuts + spices = trail mix (or spiced trail mix).

Eating increases food and mood, and water too in some cases. But eating the same thing too often nukes mood instead of increasing it.

Favorite food would basically negate the penalty for eating the same thing all the time.

or should it just reduce it, or not kick in until they eat a whole bunch (such as: last 8 out of 10 meals vs last 4 out of 10), or both (kick in later, and reduce mood less) ?

How important is mood in the game and how many factors can effect it

mood < 20 (on a a scale of 0-100) means you can only gather and eat food - nothing else. You are not motivated enough to do anything more.

everything affects mood, and i do mean _everything_. the weather, illness, injury, events, social interactions, successes, failures, pursuing interests, combat results, actions - you name it.

In general everything in the game affects everything else (where it makes sense). So almost everything in the game can have an effect on variable stats, skills, inventory, relations, etc.

If it's a important stat then I would like a few meals that can have a lasting positive effect on it to counter any negative effects that could happen with out me noticing. These food can have a high difficulty and still work.

More complex meals generally boost both food and mood more. So a nice meat and veggie soup will make up for a couple meals in a row of the same old same old eaten previously. The game already does that.

This should work, maybe it should also give a small boost, I always feel better after eating my favorite food.

All foods give both a food and mood boost. And some boost water slightly as well - things like fresh fruit. The game already does that.

An extra mood boost if its your favorite vs the mood boost everyone gets makes sense.

If you are going to have that many then it helps to have some incentive for players to try new ones

Tell me about it! <g> I started with 31 types or so, and all anyone ever ate was nuts and berries - including me! It was just easier, and it didn't bother my character that they ate the same thing all the time, so there was no reason not to, other than for role-playing sake. So I added "mood nuke from same food all the time".

The penalty for eating the same thing will help, although I find that if each food has it's own stat boosts it also helps as a incentive.

Well, the game already does both, so I think I have that covered! :)

In your game if trading is possible, random selecting what items will be sold at a higher profit would mean that if players stored different food types, there is a better chance of having one that sells for a high price.

The game has trading, but not really variable "prices" per say. Its more like you put out one or more items, and indicate which of their items you which to exchange for yours, and they say yes or no, based on the general value of the items - never making an unfavorable trade.

So they will accept pretty much any items in trade, as long as the total value equals what you want from them. And like everything else in the game, needless to say, variable stats, skills, relations, the price of rutabagas in Outer Mongolia, the kitchen sink, etc. all affect whether they accept a trade offer. <g>

favorite food isn't sounding that bad.

Should it be random, or they pick it? Random? And if they get nuts - lucky for them? And if they get spiced meat and veggie stew (meat, veggies, grains, water, spices, fire, boiling bag, cooking skills) - tough luck?

I let them pick their interests... (exploration, encounters, combat, money, crafting, etc).