Bay 12 Games Forum

Ergh. I apologize for going absent for so long, and for not reading every post since last time in detail.

One thing to consider, from an implementation complexity point of view: If a nutrient system, or other reasonable food system for that matter, is ever to be implemented in Dwarf Fortress, it will have to follow the "embrace and extend" path to get into the game. DF is too complex to just rip out the old system entirely and code up a new one, IMO. So I'd say suggestions should be, at least to some extent, put in terms of existing structures, instead of trying to reinvent too much (even though that is ultimately desirable).

Quote from: irmo on February 16, 2012, 02:23:25 pm

I'd rather not have a static list of nutrients. We need oddball nutrients like ALCOHOL, which only dwarves need, and MEAT for carnivores.
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Oh, now that's a very good point, which I never even considered.  (And after thinking about it, I'm rather ashamed I didn't.)

Creating only a framework, and shoving the whole system off onto the raws allows for exotic systems to be raw-modifiable, gives modders the ability to scale the difficulty level to their own personal tastes, allows different creature types to have radically different diets, and encourages the creation of tangibly different civilizations.

Kohaku, you should feel ashamed! This is exactly what I was trying to say from the beginning. "Generalization"? "Example"? "Framework"? Maybe it's just my English that isn't so good, or maybe I was vague. But being able to define the nutrient(-classes), their effects and how they are needed right in the raws was what I was getting at right from the start. In fact, I thought you were being sarcastic saying "that's a very good point, which I never even considered".

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on February 17, 2012, 10:24:10 am

In that case, I think you don't quite realize what sorts of "math" is actually killing the processor speeds right now. 

Less than 100 dwarves with a relatively simple 6 or so variable check, and with the potential for reducing the rate at which checks are made to every 10 frames or 20 frames so that that fiber thing I was talking about can properly work in an integer math situation is absolutely nothing in terms of complexity compared to A* pathfinding or temperature checks.

Ok, so I googled 'A* pathfinding' and while I knew it was a costly source of CPU usage, it's a bit worse then I imagined and I can see why that is infinitely more demanding then what you are proposing.

Exactly. This kind of stuff is peanuts compared to (eg.) the order of complexity of temperature checks as it is currently implemented. Even more so if hunger/nutrient checks are set to compute every N frames instead of every single frame.

Quote from: irmo on February 16, 2012, 07:31:57 pm

It's important that there are no effects until they're in the red zone--there shouldn't be obscure benefits for micromanaging your diets or players will feel obligated to do that. It should be enough of a challenge when you can't just feed everyone plump helmets all the time.

On the contrary, having a "better foods means that dwarves will need to take breaks to eat marginally less often" is something that most players will probably not feel a need to maximize.

There is no "completionism" in DF - some players are obsessive about making their fortress floors and walls all of one proper color and symmetry, and others will leave their stone out in the halls and never bother move anything or engrave a single wall outside of their noble's rooms. 

I entirely agree with Kohaku here, being one of those players that take a middle path between obsessive 'completionism' and being totally indifferent towards small benifits and cosmetics. I used to be more of a "completionist", but DF is in fact one of those games that helped me see how futile and tiring obsessive gain maximization can be. That, and growing utterly tired of collect-and-complete game genre. So yeah, I'd say add in the little benefits, let the system help the player a little more often than it creates game-problems (ie. nutrient deficiencies) for them.

Quote from: Montague on February 16, 2012, 03:41:56 pm

Like that. I'd almost want to nix calorie intake for the sake of simplicity, assume every meal a dwarf consumes is in sufficient quantities, I don't want to have dwarves subsisting on high density foods to become hungry later then lower calorie foods. So having a lot of plump helmets and vegetable type foods would just have dwarves running to the pantry every few minutes and players would insist on stocking nothing but tallow stew to keep their dwarves working at the furnaces. Or calorie intake requirements depending on how much exercise and work the dwarves are doing.

Too complicated and too much math and tracking with that, I think. I'd suggest that perhaps caloric intake would be similar to fat intake and it'd effect their weight, if they are belarded with untold layers of fat or not. Intake requirements would be based on their attributes. Superdwarvenly Strong dwarves would be more susceptible to calorie deficiency and would lose fat (then strength) unless sufficiently nourished. Which makes sense.

Actually, it's the other way around - vegetables which have large amounts of fiber and complex carbohydrates take longer to digest, and make the body feel fuller longer, while simple carbohydrates (sugars) and fats are easily digested, and make the dwarf feel hungrier faster.
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Actually, it's not completely the other way around. AFAIK the carbohydrates found in vegetables and fruit tend to be more complex and longer lasting, but they occur in vastly smaller quantaties than in say, corn, so fruits are generally not enough to keep people going energy-wise. Proper pasta is an example of a food that contains a high amount of fairly complex carbohydrates. And before foods became as refined as today, even average bread could give you plenty of long-lasting carbs.

Also, this isn't complex math for the player to add in something like a "dwarves get hungry again faster on a diet of french fries", it's slightly more complex going on under the hood, but the player doesn't need to keep track of the math going on in the background.

Yes, it makes sense. It should all ultimately work quite intuitively.

But even our modern day societies do not have the complete picture when it comes to nutrition, what more to say about a medieval society. So I'd say that even though the basic information should be easily visible to the player (foodstuffs and their avg nutrient densities, how they compare, what is a default/canon dwarven diet, a few interesting exceptions) there should still be a mystery-factor here and there that could take figuring out. "What is bothering my dwarves? Why is this one so agressive. Why are they having trouble concieving?" ... "Oh, this working environment has this bad effect on them which is only supressed by this vitamin which is rarely found in most of my crops, especially because I'm not using fertilizer." (a modder can place clear or not-so-clear challenges ahead of a player trying to pull of a certain feat eg. working without any sunlight)

Anyway, I thought that one way to overcome the high-satisfaction low-nutrient foods problem is to take over-satiation out of the equation entirely. Just have a raws-defined limit of how much of each 'nutrient' a certain creature can hold in their body before any additional intake is ignored. So Urist McScurvy may run off and eat a whole bunch of vitamin-c containing plants, beyond what a normal hungry dwarf would do, gain his needed amount of vitamin-c (and not suffer constipation for pigging out on the only findable vitamin source). Just to keep things a little simpler. So, dwarves will consume all they need, but may start 'wasting' food if they get deficiencies. In fact, this isn't too far off from how people instinctively sometimes handle deficiencies, except for IRL we do get constipation, vitamin overdoses and/or other ailments from over-eating.

Heh, thinking of it, if you do put over-satiation effects into the mix, you could lay the framework for drunkenness in the game. The over- and under-satiation effects on a creature could be defined by a single mechanism (ideally in the raws).

I think it's important for this not to require micromanaging what each dwarf eats, which means they have to be smart enough to eat a balanced diet on their own. With the system I outlined above, it could go something like this:

- Energy and water are special, because they regulate the process.
- When Urist's energy drops below 1/4 of full, he'll finish his current job and then get a meal. Note that there are no ill effects at this point--energy shouldn't have a starvation syndrome until it's at zero.
- Suppose that when Urist goes to eat, his protein gauge is at 10%, his calcium is full, and all the others are somewhere in the middle (except energy, which is at 1/4). Protein's the lowest, so that's what he wants to eat.
- So he finds several food items containing protein, trying to avoid duplicates (for diversity) and any that contain calcium (because his calcium is maxed) and to include any of his preferred foods that qualify. He continues gathering food items until he's assembled a meal whose energy content is enough to get him back up above 3/4 full. Possibly gluttony/self-indulgence traits will affect that number.
- He sits down and eats all of this.

- When his water is at 1/4 of full, he'll go in search of a drink, following the same method, except limited to substances classified as "drinks", and without the "avoiding duplicates" rule. It's normal to just drink water until he's satisfied. Though if something else is lower than his water gauge at the time, he'll try to find a drink that contains that. The usual case of that for dwarves is alcohol.

- Special case: if any of Urist's gauges actually drop below their starvation limits, he'll immediately go find something that has that nutrient and eat it, regardless of energy. This should also generate a warning.
- Special case: hospital caretakers can see their patients' nutrient gauges, and will try to apply the same system when fetching food for them.

This should ensure that each dwarf stays out of the red zone on all nutrients as long as there are no gaping holes in your food supply. If there are, you'll be able to see this on the bar graph (your population is lacking in alcohol, better do something about this) and eventually you'll get warnings on the main screen when they start to suffer starvation.

Yes. Something along those lines. As we established, all the constants in such a system should be editable in the raws. There could be threshold levels defined for nutrients (which I'd still say should all be treated as generally as possible) below which the creature will start to look to fill up that nutrient in some way like what irmo explained there. From a few such constants 'nutrient priorities' can be inferred by the engine. Obviously, the adverse effects of going into the 'red zone' should be defined seperately. Eg.
NUTRIENT {
    name="Vitamin-C"
    defic_effect(defic_percent) { decreaseHealRate(defic_percent); addEffect(effectSCURVY, 2.5*defic_percent);  }
    defic_threshold[human] = 25%
    defic_threshold[dwarf] = 15%
    lookfor_threshold[human] = 40%
}et cetera. Sorry if that last bit is very unclear, but I'm not really versed in the art of RAWs, so I just scribbled down my idea in a format I think at least somewhat understandable.

In fact, I think Kohaku makes some very important points as to UI design. Ultimately that is how you interact with the fun.

Also, curiosity led me to look up the nutritional value of mushrooms and they are surprisingly balanced, healthy and a good source of a wide variety of vitamins and minerals, including vitamin C. They are just relatively low in calories. So it almost like you could conceivably survive off nothing but mushrooms and kitten tallow biscuits if you had to.

Somewhat surprising, yes. I have been involved with mushroom farming for several years of my life, and AFAIK (full size) mushrooms are mostly composed of water, so they're not densely packed with nutrients. And yeah, the main thing is being very low in calories and in most mushrooms' case complex protien. Also, different types of funghi decompose different types of things in dead material (so sometimes you'd have three different 'waves' of mushrooms growing on the same dead tree after eachother as it gets progressively decomposed) so different mushrooms can have completely different nutritional values. I digress.

First, why should players care?

The easy question, I'd say. As you have pointed out, it would add fun and Fun by adding variety to food.

Second, how will players know?

Third, how will players be able to control this?

OK, this is quite difficult but also important. I'm thinking that real-life history can be a good though not perfect guide in this one.

Self-regulation once the needed nutrients are available: People get cravings. I'm sure animals too. Even subtle cravings and anti cravings influence our food choices daily. If you've had nothing but flat bread for a month, your mouth waters when you see a strip of meat or a juicy fruit. Whereas you'd feel really put off by the idea of more bread. IMO The body can, to a large extent, communicate via intuition with the conscious mind about what it needs. So the dwarven food-selection-upon-hunger algorithm could simply have the dwarf choose a food based on (among other things such as preferences or chewing effort) which of its needed nutrient counts are low. They should eat even when not hungry because of strong cravings. Pregnant dwarves throwing craving-tantrums or eating the spleen straight out of a goblin in battle. Fun.

How exactly players will know is challenging. How did the rulers of old know? Sometimes they didn't, or didn't care. Sometimes people would simply hunt or gather on their own, and knowledge of which of these foods people usually seem to need would get integrated into government. History has examples. Anyway, I'd say that unhappy craving thoughts occasionally listing a type of food (such as mule meat, quarry bushes or rum) would go a long way. Perhaps a summary list of what your dwarves crave most or what nutrients are missing. Although the latter would be too much of a sinkhole that has the player stare straight into DF's guts :-/. I don't have an ideal answer on this one. But if your dwarves go out on their own accord picking and devouring some wild strawberries, you'll know something is missing.

Fourth, what will the proper solution to this problem actually be?

I think you pretty much made this one clear yourself. Provide your dwarves with what they need, by bolt, hook or plow (or trading for socks and rock crafts).

You just know that if ToadyOne starts with this idea, it will become incredibly complex/convoluted. Pandas/elephants that don't starve to death would be a good start.

Hah, you put my fear into words . Of course things will get convoluted to some degree with any implementation of anything (my law of programming ) but I'm putting a lot of stress on conceptual simplicity for this idea.

And I think conceptual simplicity is present in my suggestion and some of the other forumers' suggestions here so far. That is something that can't be said of all feature suggestions (some are simply not well formulated IMO, and others which would add value to the game are quite simply inherently complicated).

Also, I believe that proper food variety is inevitable for Dwarf Fortress! I'd love to see it done right sooner rather than later.

I'd say this is a reasonable request.

However, it is more of a backseat-request IMO since it is more of a gimmick than something that would add a new element to the game mechanics.

Also, there is the question as to the tools that dwarves have to drill (realistically/SoD-wise speaking) fairly deep holes into walls that are under pressure.

I was just editing a little when you replied.

I think the system just needs to encourage players to provide more variety of foods to the fortress population. It doesn't need to be overly complicated

and

"Subject: Help! My dwarves keep dying from scurvy!"

My thoughts precisely!

I'd group vitamins and minerals together for simplicity's sake.

You could add fat to the list.

Fat, essential, certainly!

Yes, vitamins and minerals are very similiar. Grouping them together though, I think it would be important to divide them into some sub-categories so that you can't get all the minerals and vitamins you need from a plant that is supposed to be high in a specific kind of mineral but lacking in others. Thinking of it, such subdivision of these categories would be obviously neccesary anyway, so imma merge them now.

The Mechanisms of Defense was quite a good, dwarfy squad name I happened apon once.

And of course...

The Malicious Bitches.

Malicious Bitches FTW!

or *coughing fit* shields... well, no, they would be impractical since you cant bash worth a bit with them

Meh, I'd say that's kind of moot since you probably already have dwarves that are good at their weapons and don't really need the bonus of bashing a bit once you actually obtain proper *coughing fit*.

Besides that, I'm also quite curious as to what is in a shield. The simple dynamic of weight proportionate to bashing damage makes sense. But do shields definitely act the same way as armor when it comes to stopping power, and does the item quality play a role? Any more gurus to enlighten a bit?

Glad we could help a new player.

Press the U key for a list of creatures (that's the general DF term for 'living things') in your fort area. Take note that this list can become extremely long as a fort ages, as deceased creatures still also remain on this list, but are moved to the bottom part of it and marked as deceased. A slight annoyance is that this list doesn't support zooming the view to a selected creature's (corpse) location if that creature is deceased. (of course, corpses tend to get into bits and pieces scattered all over the place)

Another thing that should help you a lot is the anouncement screen (press A), if you don't know of it yet. A message in bright pink/magenta should be in there announcing the death of your dogs. Since the latest few versions, you can select an announcement and press Z to zoom to its location of origin. That should help you figure out where and when the dogs died.

Lastly, a huge help is the combat announcements screen (I think that's its name). Press R to view detailed accounts of recent voilent festivities in and around the fort. A red C or somesuch character should show up on the screen frame on the left edge, almost at the top, whenever there are new combat announcements. This should help you figure out exactly what killded your mutts, if it was a wild/hostile creature or a violent fall down a shaft that killed them (though the latter is usually very unlikely).

Now btw, being someone quite lazy who has got to know the vanilla interface quite well (it's all I play with, and it works for me), I wouldn't exactly know the answer to this, so I have to wonder out loud whether there isn't a convenient single place where nubbies can go and learn the interface basics.

And heck, where useful things to know are made obvious, like the fact that you can change Z-levels with Ctrl+5 and Shift+5 (that saves me a lot of arm motion as opposed to using < and >).