Proper rate of hunger/thirst/fatigue consumption?

[conanjaguar]

So, I know that this doesn’t pertain to TLD, but no one looks at the Misc Topics anyway.

I’m currently working on a survival game in Unity. What I want the experience to be like is a hybrid of Subnautica and TLD, with hunger, thirst, and fatigue meters. I’m undecided about cold.

Anyway, I thought I’d ask what the proper rate of consumption of these meters should be. I don’t want to have to have the player constantly stuffing their face, but I also want to make survival a challenge.

[Lexilogo]

Short answer: Players should be able to go about a full in-game day before having to refill on a meter that was full when the day started, that's a good ballpark for a survival meter that's not annoying.

Long answer: It depends a lot on the goal your game is shooting for.

2 hours ago, conanjaguar said:

What I want the experience to be like is a hybrid of Subnautica and TLD

Here for example, it's important to note Subnautica and TLD have very different ways they use survival systems.

In Subnautica, survival isn't really the objective and doesn't need to be focused on after early game. The game is about exploration, but has survival mechanics as an extra thing to keep in mind and an extra stressor when leaving the comfort of your base. The main risk and rewards are in exploring.

TLD is a more focused survival game where just surviving every day is supposed to force you to take new risks.

 

So, in Subnautica, the whole point of the survival systems would be defeated if your meters lasted ages. You could eat before an exploration trip to avoid bringing rations along, and the oxygen meter wouldn't limit early progression properly as much if it was bigger. Subnautica needs its meters to be on the aggressive side.

Meanwhile, TLD can afford a system where Thirst is really the only meter that decays particularly fast, and reaching 0 on any meter on its own takes quite a while to kill you. It doesn't matter that you can store a lot of Calories in your stomach when the game is built to steadily wring you of them over months. The hard part isn't dealing with the meter, but planning on how you're going to deal with the meter tomorrow, and the next day, and so on.

Essentially, you should figure out if your game is a Survival game or a ____ survival game. Best of luck, mate!

Edited January 19, 2023 by Lexilogo
(clarification in first paragraph)

[TonyInPleasantValley]

Hunger: we normally eat three times a day, so I would look at normal calorie consumption and ensure they are taking in that much, and wanting food (hunger, which is not starvation) a few times a day for realism. One thing about TLD I think could be more realistic is food consumption. I often eat 2 kg of meat at a time in TLD to get my meter up, which is 4 pounds, or said another way 16 quarter pounders. I think that is a lot so make it more realistic. Thirst would depend on movement and activity, but 2-3 L per day is average with female characters needing less. Fatigue is another one I am not sure TLD does as realistically as they could. Fatigue is affected by what you are doing, carrying, and type of activity. I think I get tired in TLD faster than I would in real life, especially when I am not doing a lot of stressful activity. Walking tires me in real life, but not to the degree that it does walking from PV to TM. I think climbing is about right, but descending is not anyway near as tiring. If I am reading, it is all mental which is not that tiring to me, but I know my dog gets really tired after mental exercises, so maybe that is different from person to person as well? Dunno. Good luck with your game and let us know when it is available to try out!

[odizzido]

I would give people options. Many people seem to like the way it is done in TLD, but personally I think it's awful that you can't even sleep through the night without taking thirst damage, or that you can die of starvation 12 hours after stuffing your face with as much food as you can possibly eat for weeks.

Maybe have two settings and keep the calorie and thirst requirements the same. One is the TLD way where you're constantly under threat of dying if you're not topping up, the other gives you longer buffers.

In the longer buffer version, you could have TLD system be your hunger/thirst meters for how your characters feel, but then it pulls from a pool as well. So you have lets say a 10,000 calorie buffer. If you're above 50% hunger some of your calories go into that pool, if you're below some of your calories come from that pool. Only once your pool and hunger hits zero do you start taking damage.

[conanjaguar]

Some good pointers, thanks!

On 1/19/2023 at 10:02 PM, TonyInPleasantValley said:

One thing about TLD I think could be more realistic is food consumption. I often eat 2 kg of meat at a time in TLD to get my meter up, which is 4 pounds, or said another way 16 quarter pounders

This ^^. TLD is an example, but there are other games where you can literally eat an entire cow in one sitting and still be hungry.

On 1/20/2023 at 1:13 PM, odizzido said:

In the longer buffer version, you could have TLD system be your hunger/thirst meters for how your characters feel, but then it pulls from a pool as well. So you have lets say a 10,000 calorie buffer. If you're above 50% hunger some of your calories go into that pool, if you're below some of your calories come from that pool. Only once your pool and hunger hits zero do you start taking damage.

I especially like this idea.

[MarrowStone]

I honestly really like valheims food system for a survival game. Its an option to consider if youre not making something ultra realistic!

Essentially you cant starve but food in you raises your maximum health/stamina. Different foods buff differently and it encourages a variety of food sources. 

It's kind of a fresh system that you should at least look into. 

 

As for a true survival game. I like when you have a max calory store to limit how much you eat, but then let calories descend to negatives when the bar empties. This prevents people from just eating last minute and restoring health. 

To prevent eating a whole cow in one sitting you might need some way to calculate fullness by weight of food eaten. 

[cattailstalker]

I have over 3k hours in TLD and speedrun Subnautica, so I think your game idea sounds fantastic! 

I think survival game 'meters' are done best when their importance (rate of depletion, I guess)  matches the game's defining 'theme' of survival, if that makes sense. 

To me, what defines TLD and makes its survival experience unique is the cold and constantly dropping temperature. What makes the game challenging and fun is managing the temp meter above all else. This meter is the hardest to manage, the quickest to deplete and most critical to your HP (essentially your progression in an open-ended 'sandbox survival' game, no?). Learning to successfully deal with this meter, I think, means learning how to play and enjoy the game.

Similar may be said for Subnautica's O2 meter. Story progression requires exploring deeper, which requires equipment and upgrades. Note there's only one ranged weapon available for self-defense, but four oxygen tank upgrades to unlock! The greatest danger in going deeper isn't necessarily the alien 'wildlife', but your constantly depleting oxygen meter, gating further exploration or else requiring the player take a well-timed risk. Discovering and managing that risk/its rewards are what really defined my first experience playing  Subnautica.

On the other hand, I didn't like managing a cold meter in Subnautica: Below Zero. Exposure depletes health at what seems a much higher rate than lack of oxygen. Meanwhile, with a large part of the game land-based, oxygen stopped being a concern. In what would seem laughable on Great Bear Island, BZ's cold is a constant temp and eventually dealt with by wearing a snowsuit. In Below Zero, meters tended to be annoying or fairly ignorable, making my gameplay less immersive or memorable than I expected.

About useless survival meters: Rust is a 'survival' game, but (having an embarrassing amount of hours in this game as well) its hunger and thirst meters are fairly easy to ignore. They honestly could probably be removed without much changing in the game, since PvP is at its core, not 'survival'. No one raids for your food stash!  I think many recent survival games tend to 'tack on' survival meters (along with common offenders like crafting, co-op, and base building) simply to tick boxes rather than to provide any thoughtful or enhanced player experience.

In short, sticking to one survival 'theme' - and doing it well - tends to make for the most challenging and enjoyable 'survival' games for me.  Meters should be meaningful to the game's ethos, arguably defining and creating a memorable experience for the player. Anything less and they just become a HUD-cluttering nuisance.