I'm still looking for a good balance between "getting far enough in the wilderness" and the symptoms described above. So far I lack any decent ideas... maybe satiation should increase with increasing dungeon depth or something like that (although there is no logical reason for that). Or I should adjust the logical scale of dungeons to increase satiation. But so far none of the solutions really thrills me...

Or you could add a way ("throw up"?) to voluntarily remove the satiated/bloated status; make yourself hungrier in other words.

I quite like it the way it is. The previous game was pretty brutal about it. I know that this is a roguelike, but there will be plenty of chance to die. I for one would not welcome back the previous system of hunger and corruption! It destroyed the fun and replayability by pushing me to play faster (using tried quick methods) instead of allowing me to play at my own pace (which is ALWAYS more fun for the player) and experiment.

DF recently implemented hunger, and you can go without water for 5 days and without food for 30 days before you starve - your stats and skills take damage though.

Alternately, make it a multiplier choice that players can choose! Pleases everyone! Allow it to be chosen even midgame from a menu during testing phases.

My 2 cents.

The hunger effect in wilderness (and the corrosponding effect of survival skill) is something that really makes exploring the wilderness really challenging, like real exploration. The feeling of knowing that you have to watch your supplies if you are going to go through those hills is realistic (and fun, imho). It even adds a bit of strategy to exploration, which is quite reasonable.

I am noticing right now that satiated is lasting for a very long time, even in the overland wilderness map (this was not the case in the previous release).

Right now, I think the hunger rate just needs to be turned up overall.

After that, maybe increase the dungeon rate of hunger a bit.

Then, make rations more available. Right now, I don't seem to see any in the village.

$0.02

@Elone:
The only way I could really get behind something like that would be in the confines of individual difficulty settings each with their own high scores. Without some kind of structure the list of past achievements gets murky and we all lose the ability to effectively compare our previous plays. Ambiguity and confusion will run rampant and we will all lose perspective nearly instantly. The waters of Ancardia will cloud and muddy. Man will destroy man. Children will be eaten. Our mothers will parish and our fathers will abandon us and you'll never have another birthday again.

You play for highscores? O.o

Shouldn't satiation be tied to in-game time? Or is that what it's currently like already?

@Silfir:
Probably. As a fellow programmer I would deduce that Thomas likely has the player's "metabolism" (that is to say, the amount of nutrition that is burned) removed from the nutrition pool once every tick, in miniscule quantities. The operation of a game tick is tied-in to the game's internal clock. So hunger, by law of association, also probably is. I'd say the real difficulty comes from trying to find a good balance between realism and enjoyability.

The last time I checked, taking a step in the world map took many hours (~6) in ADOM II, whereas in ADOM it took something like two at most (except in rough areas like mountains). Adjusting the time that passes in the world map could be a good way to balance hunger.

Nah, I prefer my roguelikes to be Nintendo Hard. Putting some pressure on the player makes the game more interesting. In ADOM II however, the player should be able to explore a decent amount with just some moderate preparation (looting a small dungeon or two to buy enough food).

EDIT: Also there should be roads between most cities. The roads would take half the time to travel through and make finding cities much easier.

And what, may I ask, is wrong with such a concept?

Just to be clear, you are talking about the time elapsed in-game (use the [Ctrl-t] command) and not the amount of turns taken, right?

@MITZE:
Yes, of course. I'm talking about the in-game elapsed time. "Turns" is a mucky time reference as the length of a given turn is variable.

This is why we cant have a lot of nice things. Everything has to be balanced for competition, often at the cost of fun. In a singleplayer game. Let me ask you, and no offense intended; given a choice, why would I play by your rules if I can play by my rules which I like better?

Sure, lock the difficulty, restrict the player! What better way to lock out virtually every single newbie out there?

That's what is wrong with the concept.

Or you could, you know, not be such an elitist and let others enjoy at their own customizable pace. With a difficulty which they can personally alter as they themselves get better at the game.

I'm not the same person you were replying to, but I think I understand him. I personally don't find a game, any game, fun at all if there is no competition. Period.

Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean that there must only be one difficulty level and it must be extra hard. It just mean that there must be a way of telling good players from bad ones, or of showing off. Sure, have several difficulty levels, but then have separate highscore lists for each difficulty level (or make the level affect the score). Sure, allow savescumming, but then display in the highscore that that player has savescummed. Etc. But if I can't compare myself to other players in some way, I don't enjoy.

I remember that I used to see doing sudokus as a really boring thing until a friend of mine told me: "hey, I found this website where they have sudokus and they measure the time you take, I managed to do one in the hard level in 2 minutes". Damn, I spent a whole week doing sudokus until I achieved better times than him (not for long though, he's just better at that than me, but it was fun trying to win, not necessarily winning).

I think in general men play games for competition and challenge, and women play games for... well, I don't know... understanding why a game could be fun without competition just escapes my limited mind! :)

Of course that's in general, I know at least one woman that is so competitive that she can get really angry when losing at board games.

You guys are crazy. It must be a remnant from those days when you used to bonk each other atop the head with clubs.

I can understand your stance. I have my gaming quirks as well, which would be strange to you. However I still see your stance as elitist, well perhaps less so because you at least hinted at a compromise here. I am not sure how this would be handled (tho i smell this being a feature of deluxe version), but the first game was pretty good... I have faith that our dev did not forget how to make a good game, but got even better at it.

@Elone:
Hey, be easy; nobody's tying to offend anybody here. If you do it again I'll bonk you on the top of your head with a club. Oh, wait.... ;)

I think there definitely needs to be some change to how satiation currently works in dungeons. As it is, food is basically a non-issue. Even the wilderness, I find satiation is pretty negligible. I think the hunger rate could easily be doubled and hunger would still be pretty marginal.

A few options for dungeons...
-Have non-walking actions in dungeons take much more food. Say, for example, it costs 1 point of hunger to take a step, but takes 10 or 20 to attack, a few points to use a skill, etc. This is at least marginally realistic, as such actions are physically more demanding than just walking around.
-Make it that actions taken while injured cost more food. This would tend to increase hunger rate in dungeons but have little effect in the wilderness since you regenerate to full in 1 or 2 steps anyway.

Fixed for ADOM II 0.2.4. Please send your real name to creator(at)ancientdomainsofmystery.com for it to be included in the credits. (If you were already asked to do so you can ignore this message. Please include a reference to the bug or RFE you are credited for.)