Automatically use designated items when Very Hungry/Very Thirsty/Dead Tired

[SorensonPA]

Sometimes you’ve gotta’ spend a lot -and I mean a lot - of time doing something. Maybe you’re processing that big damn pile of veg you just harvested, or breaking down all that sweet loot from your latest town raid, or poring over that neat textbook for knowledge: whatever the case, you’ve got to devote quite a chunk of time to it, and that means dealing with all the hunger and thirst and fatigue you’ll rack up during said period. Sure, you COULD do it in bulk in a few goes, but then there’s all the penalties to productivity racked up in the later stages.

Rather than having to micromanage your basic needs during these productive times, what if you could dictate specific items to be used when the appropriate conditions arise, such as when you cross the threshold from mere desire to serious deficiency? Say, three different slots for for hunger, thirst and fatigue, which use a text-line interface similar to that for AutoPickup entries: when you’re in Safe Mode and a need ticks over to serious deficiency, it checks your inventory for the item specified for use and Activates it. You could thus set up something like Meat Jerky and Clean Water and Caffeine Pills, and as long as you’ve got ample stocks of those items you’ll be well set to keep truckin’ on as need be.

And on the topic of basic needs: what about adding numerical representation of them to the Aware trait as well? Needs are even more quantified than health is, so having an exact idea of just where you are hunger/thirst/fatigue-wise would be equally as useful as for health, if not even moreso.

[BeerBeer]

“Auto-consume item” could be a thing. There is one concern that needs to be addressed. An item set to auto-consume might well be a crafting component. The game would have to pause running auto-consume orders for the duration of crafting, and check the hunger/thirst status again right after the crafting has stopped. But then again, crafting could be interrupted by threats. How to prevent the character from auto-eating if there’s a surprise zombie brute just 3 squares away…? I don’t remember how long exactly it takes to eat in CDDA. It’s a short time but it could be deadly enough. (Remind me to eat a sandwich in the presence of an approaching zombie…)

The auto-consume setup menu could be similar to the auto-pickup setup menu.

Additionally item descriptions could have options for ‘auto-eat’ or ‘auto-drink’.

An alternative way would be to introduce some sort of lunchboxes which the player would have to fill themselves. Only the items in the “lunchbox” would be valid for auto-consumption, and the items within would be ignored as crafting components as well.

Furthermore, how to handle foods that provide both nutrition AND quench? In theory you could be ‘full’ but ‘very thirsty’. Would you then want to auto-consume the sandwich that provides 50 nutrition and 3 quench? What’s the minimum nutrition/quench that the food/drink should have? Should it be free for the player to choose? Or should a “lunchbox” only accept food items that are CLEARLY meant to sate one or the other, either hunger OR thirst, and never both.

[DooMJake]

[quote=“BeerBeer, post:2, topic:10372”]“Auto-consume item” could be a thing. There is one concern that needs to be addressed. An item set to auto-consume might well be a crafting component. The game would have to pause running auto-consume orders for the duration of crafting, and check the hunger/thirst status again right after the crafting has stopped. But then again, crafting could be interrupted by threats. How to prevent the character from auto-eating if there’s a surprise zombie brute just 3 squares away…? I don’t remember how long exactly it takes to eat in CDDA. It’s a short time but it could be deadly enough. (Remind me to eat a sandwich in the presence of an approaching zombie…)

The auto-consume setup menu could be similar to the auto-pickup setup menu.

Additionally item descriptions could have options for ‘auto-eat’ or ‘auto-drink’.

An alternative way would be to introduce some sort of lunchboxes which the player would have to fill themselves. Only the items in the “lunchbox” would be valid for auto-consumption, and the items within would be ignored as crafting components as well.

Furthermore, how to handle foods that provide both nutrition AND quench? In theory you could be ‘full’ but ‘very thirsty’. Would you then want to auto-consume the sandwich that provides 50 nutrition and 3 quench? What’s the minimum nutrition/quench that the food/drink should have? Should it be free for the player to choose? Or should a “lunchbox” only accept food items that are CLEARLY meant to sate one or the other, either hunger OR thirst, and never both.[/quote]
Well how about we could mark an Item für auto-eat and auto-drink than the player could choose if his soup is for eating, drinking or both.

[vache]

There are lots of items with food and quench that you wouldn’t want to eat. Say you were very hungry, but you had been hunting and had lots of raw meat on you. You wouldn’t really want to eat that, but it would automatically eat it.

[CosmicKobal]

There are lots of items with food and quench that you wouldn’t want to eat. Say you were very hungry, but you had been hunting and had lots of raw meat on you. You wouldn’t really want to eat that, but it would automatically eat it.

this is why you have to manually toggle an item( say, a cooked meat) for auto-consume,or even manually toggle ALL cooked meats that you EVER have on you at any time could be auto consume IF you are not in a dangerous situation

this is off topic, but I kind of like the idea of someone with cravings for booze or drugs to possibly act without player input to satisfy those cravings.

[Dlightfull]

[quote=“vache, post:4, topic:10372”]There are lots of items with food and quench that you wouldn’t want to eat. Say you were very hungry, but you had been hunting and had lots of raw meat on you. You wouldn’t really want to eat that, but it would automatically eat it.

this is why you have to manually toggle an item( say, a cooked meat) for auto-consume,or even manually toggle ALL cooked meats that you EVER have on you at any time could be auto consume IF you are not in a dangerous situation

this is off topic, but I kind of like the idea of someone with cravings for booze or drugs to possibly act without player input to satisfy those cravings.[/quote]

how’s this any better than micromanaging it every time? rather than press a few buttons when you’re hungry you’d press them few buttons before that.

[Coolthulhu]

how’s this any better than micromanaging it every time? rather than press a few buttons when you’re hungry you’d press them few buttons before that.

You could set booze bottle as autoconsume with like 3 keypresses and then you could just leave the survivor reading rather than stopping every 10 minutes to stop the cravings. Then after a long session of reading/crafting/etc. you’d unset the auto-drinking and go back to withdrawal.

this is why you have to manually toggle an item( say, a cooked meat) for auto-consume,or even manually toggle ALL cooked meats that you EVER have on you at any time could be auto consume IF you are not in a dangerous situation

The former option (just 1 item) would actually be harder to write, because we have no good way of semi-permanently marking items. It would have to be an entire item type.

this is off topic, but I kind of like the idea of someone with cravings for booze or drugs to possibly act without player input to satisfy those cravings.

I’m strongly opposed to having player character fight the player (the person playing the game). Extra immersion from this would be minor, annoyance would not.
Addictions are bad enough already. No need to make them even more annoying and require more micromanaging.

[BeerBeer]

Also: fridges

I’m mostly bothered and annoyed by eating when I’m crafting or reading. If all my perishables are in the fridge, I have to take portions out and eat them. I count that as tedium. It should and could be addressed. It’s even worse if you have Fast Metabolism. A part of the problem IMO is how you can’t eat straight from cooled contai…

After writing that, I realized you can actually almost eat straight from the fridge. Sort of. Via the advanced inventory. Transfer food in your inventory, examine the food after transfering, choose Eat.

I would still add that any active auto-consume orders should also check nearby containers or at least fridges (for perishables). Game performance might become an issue because people can have crazy amounts of items laying around and the game would have to go through all of them.

[DooMJake]

[quote=“BeerBeer, post:8, topic:10372”]Also: fridges

I’m mostly bothered and annoyed by eating when I’m crafting or reading. If all my perishables are in the fridge, I have to take portions out and eat them. I count that as tedium. It should and could be addressed. It’s even worse if you have Fast Metabolism. A part of the problem IMO is how you can’t eat straight from cooled contai…

After writing that, I realized you can actually almost eat straight from the fridge. Sort of. Via the advanced inventory. Transfer food in your inventory, examine the food after transfering, choose Eat.

I would still add that any active auto-consume orders should also check nearby containers or at least fridges (for perishables). Game performance might become an issue because people can have crazy amounts of items laying around and the game would have to go through all of them.[/quote]
well the performance issue could be avoided if we could select a container or fridge or whatever as a ‘auto eat from this thing when in range’ option - especially if we a re in our mobile fortress and have everything sorted nicely