Food/Water consumption rate is too fast.

SuzanneA · Post by **SuzanneA** » Mon Feb 26, 2001 7:22 am

Compared to the real DM, RTC seems to require about 5-6x more frequent food and water consumption. Also characters that die of starvation/thirst (wasn't there a warning sound-hint in DM?) almost always die immediately following ressurection due to still having zero food or water. There seems to be 1-2 seconds where you can feed them.

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Mon Feb 26, 2001 7:38 am

...but I rememebred that a character on no food/water still had 1/4 stamina (I could be wrong on this), though their stamina went down faster when they tried to do anything.

George Gilbert · Post by **George Gilbert** » Mon Feb 26, 2001 11:36 am

Hmm - this topic has been dealt with before. The last time someone mentioned it they reckoned that food/water didn't go down fast enough so I increased it from 1 unit per turn to 2 units per turn. Now it seems that it's 5/6 times too much!

Can someone make a definitive measurement and I can easily change it; but the things I've been told so far are highly contradictory with each-other...

Post by **cowsmanaut** » Mon Feb 26, 2001 12:30 pm

well, it would seem that this whole thing is based on our perceptions of the game. Now to think that we all have played different chars and different versions of the game on different computers.. We are bound to all get different answers.

I found that certain characters ate far too frequently and lost stamina far too often.. Characters Like Wuuf the Bika ate like a hog.. Tiggy too it seemed.. Gothmog was a little better than those two but not by much.

It's obviously linked to their stats and most likley their Vitality. I do notice that food does go down directly in relation to stamina.. the more you exert yourself the more food you use up. when you are healing and gaining mana you stamina goes down.. notice how you can only get half stamina if you only have water or only have food? Also if you look at how stamina is actually a lot more than it says 20 could be like 2000.. food is also 4 or 5 digits, so there is a connection somehow.

A test should be done with DM using two characters with different stats one should have half the Vitality of the other and everything else the same run 4 tests on them.

1.how long does it take to sleep away your food and water counting each seperate. do nothing but sleep!
2.sleep with 0 mana how many food/water points does it use to heal 20?
3.sleep with 0 Stamina how many food/water points used to heal 20?
4.sleep with 1 health how many food/water points used to heal 21?

this hsould give you something to base it on.

fuzzydodge · Post by **fuzzydodge** » Sat Mar 17, 2001 12:07 pm

Hi Gilbert
First : Great good super job !!
Now I'am be able to play DM originaly with my
(sometimes shitty) SBLive!
I also get stuck at the Gold-Key door...
O.K. It's fixed now.
But to fast Food/Water consumtion makes me down .
Please decrease it .
Nice !! I hear the steps of the monsies i have
missed in DMjava ,also a great super job from Alandale.
Boys: We love you for this good jobs !!
It would also be fine to see in RTC the nice Graphic
i have seen on DMclone... Is it possible to build in?
Ahem,sorry,i missed sometimes the themes.. some things
belongs better to suggestions..
Please, perhaps there is a possibility also to create
a CSB-Dungeon ?? Its (snief) never released for PC...
And some people could not play DM2 with SBLive..

Thanks you very much
Andy

theadder · Post by **theadder** » Sat Mar 17, 2001 3:00 pm

That's nothing, Fuzzydodge. Games like DM2 can't be played at all in Windows ME now because there is no real DOS support. Running the installer in a DOS window results in a string of errors from the Memory Manager built into the game, presumably conflicting with Windows own memory manager. Sound is no longer the major issue!!!

Anyway, I agree about the food/water thing. When I played the original DM, I could explore several levels essentially without eating a thing - which although not very challenging is realistic. Humans can go for about 2-3 weeks without food or water if they need to, so certainly exploring a few levels of a dungeon wouldn't be a problem. In RTC, though, by the time I've got to the gold key door that caused all the problems earlier my characters have used up most of their food. This is the equivelent of me eating lunch, walking to the local shops and dropping dead from malnutrition. Not really that realistic

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Sat Mar 17, 2001 6:09 pm

Hi, adder can you actually quantify that since you've played DM recently? Poor george has been going on too fast/too slow, can you actually say 'charcter x, y and z seemed to go through 3 x more food'?

If not I'll try it with a party and some timings early this week, since with the full game i take it this will become really noticeable now...

theadder · Post by **theadder** » Sat Mar 17, 2001 11:10 pm

Sorry to throw a spanner in the works, but I've just played RTC through to the fourth level with different champions (can't remember which I picked last time, sorry) and the food thing doesn't seem such an issue. This might explain things - perhaps some of the champions food levels decrease too quickly, and I assume this would be related to things such as low stamina, etc.

Certainly, getting to that gold key door on the first level and finding that I was out of food was really frustrating - but at the moment my latest game seems ok. Go figure, as the Americans say!

George Gilbert · Post by **George Gilbert** » Sun Mar 18, 2001 4:54 pm

Currently food consumption rates are a constant for all characters (i.e. independent of stats) but dependent on what you're doing. For example a characters food will decrease more rapidly if they've been fighting or running about compared to sitting still. The same goes for stamina decreasing too (i.e. dependent soley on what you're doing, not your stats), but the increase is related to their vitality.

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Sun Mar 18, 2001 5:46 pm

Ok, it's cool to know how some of these mechanics go, and seems logical actually. Except that poor wuuf can't keep up with my party! He has the same vitality as boris, but he's got no stamina left while boris is still on about half...they are only about 15 points apart! (65/50 respectively)

I noticed you've introduced a slightly less harsh penalty for having no stamina...or is this too dependant on the actions (or represented another way)? Even punching on zero stamina only deals 1 damage not 5 or so, which i always thought was criuel but fair as you are exausted.

Ok, and final question, I notice conversely that the two fighters I picked (Stamm and Halk) aren't really losing stamina at all despite rushing around chopping at everything in sight....are actions less harsh to stamina now, or just low level ones?

George Gilbert · Post by **George Gilbert** » Sun Mar 18, 2001 6:11 pm

OK - I can see why that's happening. Reduction of stamina is done on an absolute basis (i.e. minus 1 point every 10 steps), recover is done on a relative (to the max) basis (i.e. 1% of your total every 15 seconds). Someone with a very low maximum stamina will therefore be penalised equally compared to someone with a high maximum but will recover more slowly.

The relative recovery is necessary beacuse without it then your high level character with 600 health or whatever would take forever to heal. Equally it doesn't make sense to have relative reduction in stamina as then it wouldn't make any difference what value you had!

I think this system is therefore correct, but the rates may be wrong (say it should be 2% per 15 seconds rather than 1%, or whatever).

BTW - the values quoted are only representative guesses; I don't want to give too much away now do I

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Sun Mar 18, 2001 6:29 pm

Ok, I see that and it sounds fair I guess...I notice too the wieight system is now on a scale too with stamina rather than have occasional drops..cool.

One of these days when real life or revisions aren't getting in the way, you could state the basic assumptions and stuff that went into some of the systems like stamina, throwing, recovery - just so people can tell why it's behaving as it does rather than say it's not acting like DM all the time : )

Post by **Gambit37** » Mon Mar 19, 2001 2:19 am

I still think the water depletion rate is way too high. I filled all my champions water gauges to maximum and by the time I had finished the last one, the first champions water had already dropped a couple of notches... the whole process couldn't have taken more than 10 seconds...

fuzzydodge · Post by **fuzzydodge** » Mon Mar 19, 2001 3:57 pm

Hello
Also my problem is,that i take 4 characters with high
ability of weight (they can care much)but they are
no good magicians.I have not enough food to train them
for the ghost! Must i start my game with a good magician ? Normaly not .

Greetings

Andy

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Mon Mar 19, 2001 5:31 pm

Run round him til you get to the gold coin hole.

Post by **cowsmanaut** » Tue Mar 20, 2001 6:32 am

trying to post this for the umpteenth time...
took some time to complete a test of the food depletion in DM.

Test subjects
all 4 were given stats of 10 in every slot all skills were dropped to none
and food and water was raised to full.

test 1
ch1 Health was dropped to 1 of 10
ch2 Stamina was dropped to 1 of 10
ch3 Mana was dropped to 1 of 10
ch4 was left at 10 of 10

Put characters to sleep
at 15sec ch2 was at full STM
at30sec ch1 was at full HP
at 1 min ch3 was at full Mp

Characters are woken at this point to find all of them at the same food and
water levels

characters put back to sleep and left alone

after 7mins characters all had approx half Food and 3/4s Water.. test end.

Test 2

Characters were run for 14mins only stoping when stamina droped too low.
Stamina dropped 1 point every 20steps.

After 14mins characters food at approx 1/2 and water at 3/4s
end test.

I'm not sure how usefull this is but further testing could be done.

2 possible other tests would be as follows

Same test subjects (ie. all stats set to 10)
1. battle a door for 14 mins
2. cast spells for 14 mins
recovery time is included in the 14mins.

anyone want to do Those two?

Cheers

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Tue Mar 20, 2001 7:37 pm

LOL...it's posted ok! Twice in the general, so you're all right : )
Odd that this post isn't turning up for you...

Post by **cowsmanaut** » Tue Mar 20, 2001 10:27 pm

strange.. it won't show me any new posts.. unless I hunt for them and I'm unable to see new topics at all!! so only if it's in a reply to an old post...

it also says that the last post is 03/12/01!! in every section!!

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Tue Mar 20, 2001 10:46 pm

Too odd, time to ask the helpdesk...

Post by **Gambit37** » Tue Mar 20, 2001 11:23 pm

Drake, if you haven't already, try clearing your browser cache, including offline content. If you have a cookie manager, delete the ezboard cookies too (but you'll have to log in again). This may solve the problem.

Post by **cowsmanaut** » Wed Mar 21, 2001 3:55 am

I deleted all temp files
cleared history
cleared all cookies
restarted windows

loaded the page again and lo and behold.. it still says I'm logged in and it still gives me the wrong info.. how messed up is that!!??

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Mon Mar 26, 2001 7:53 pm

Stamina doesn't drop at all when food is in the red...in DM you dropped to half rate with one gone, and it tried to 0 with both gone, or in other words you were going to die of starvation unless you had magic to back you up (YA potions) or had large health to account for losing 5 health per action!

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Tue Apr 03, 2001 10:03 pm

nm, I've found out...if you let food go totally then you start taking damage for any action performed..seems fair, though maybe have the stamina reduction too?

George Gilbert · Post by **George Gilbert** » Sun Apr 08, 2001 7:08 pm

Fixed for V0.08

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