"I'm hungry for action... and food"

Yea, this is a slightly more in depth look at something that was included in a previous topic, the realism one to be precise.
Here I wanted to take a slightly deeper look at how food and hunger is often handled in games which, since this is at critical flaw, is oftentimes done poorly.


Food as items has been in many games before, usually it functions as healing items like in the Castlevania series or Minecraft before the 1.8 update.
But quite a few have gone off of using it as an instant health item mainly because it seemed “unrealistic” to them, so in its place healing items like med kits of potions are used. However what to do with all the food items now. Quite a few developers thought “Hey, lets just have eating be a requirement” and with that sadly screwed it up as they didn't think it through.

For one their required eating system doesn't add anything, it actually just takes something away. You don't eat and after a set time suddenly get a “you're hungry” and get instantly punished for not eating anything (which reminds me, instant punishments will likely be a future topic). Mostly this is done in health draining, your running speed going down or you can't run at all, your stats being drained etc.
While those methods are OK in themselves they are often too severe and too instant. In real life you don't suddenly lose your skills just because you haven't had dinner yet. Also the hard set times between the intervals of needing food are not well done as well, it's actually not required to eat food 3 times every day, hell in the past you could have been lucky to get food ONCE a day.

So in short, many times the added hunger system is simply a punishment but doesn't offer anything back.


Now however there are a few cases where the food and hunger system was done much, MUCH better.

As I mentioned before, the food system in Minecraft 1.8+ is probably one of the best I have ever seen implemented in a game yet.

• Firstly, eating food is the main way to regenerate health. It completely regenerates over time if you are well fed, and other ways of healing become available later in the game

• Second, the most recently eaten food item satiates you a bit, preventing the food meter from decreasing for a short while, practically doubling it's own food value.

• Third, the times between requiring food are not hard set, it depends on the actions you took between them, you can check This Page Of The Minecraft Wiki for details how the depletion varies due to which actions.

• Fourth, you can get a good supply of food from almost every animal, mushrooms, wheat and even an emergency item (rotten flesh) to keep you nourished.

• Lastly, while there are punishments for not being nourished enough they only manifest at the very end of food meter depletion (with the exception of health regeneration which happens at the 80% mark). You can only not sprint anymore when you're down to 30% and health loss only happens at full depletion (which is only directly lethal in the hardest difficulty).

Now one criticism of this new system was that it completely replaced the “getting health instantly” one there was before and if you're in a tight spot at times that can be annoying, but now the implementation of the potion system allowed an instant health item again. While the necessary ingredients are harder to obtain it does allow to have both systems the same time now.


Aside game developers themselves the mindset of having bad hunger systems sadly also is spread among game modders. How many times have there been “requirement to eat” (eat or drop dead) mods that do exactly what described, only punish you for not eating at hard set intervals with too severe punishments? That's sadly the reason why I almost never use such mods.

However I have been picking up S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Shadow of Chernobyl again a few days ago after reading of the “Complete 2009” mod and I can only say it's awesome. Not only does it include graphics updates, quest fixes, many error fixes, better weapons handling among a few things, it also changes the food requirement the game previously had slightly to include a very slow but still handy health regeneration when you're not hungry and only tones it down slowly as your hunger worsens.
A small fix I would personally include would be to make the need for food slow down while using the sleeping bag (another addition of the mod) so when you went to sleep well fed you're only slightly hungry when waking up again instead of going into severe hunger. But even with that it still does a far better job than many other games and game mods presented.


In conclusion, Food and Hunger system like any realism aspect of games need to be very thought through before implementation, simple addition to the game without working out the exact workings of bonus and punishment only add to a frustration factor instead of a gameplay improvement. Also things like supply should be very thought through, if you'd need to eat in hard set intervals but food drops are only at very limited locations it will only turn into a race against a never stopping clock.
Once again it is not necessary for all games, only the ones that could actually profit from this system, largely the open world sandbox variants I'd say.


Also I want to give my endorsement to the “Stalker complete 2009” mod since it gives that game a great deal of replay value. You can find the developers blog with further information, download link and versions for “Call of Pripyat” and “Clear Sky” here:
Stalker Complete 2009 Blog