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[Dr Feelgood]

Auto butcher, pickup, and eat chunks. Now, you too can completely ignore the food system!

Code: [Select]

confirm_butcher = never
chunks_autopickup = true
easy_eat_chunks = true
easy_eat_gourmand = true
easy_eat_contaminated = true
auto_eat_chunks = true
auto_drop_chunks = rotten
runrest_stop_message += corpse
message_colour += mute:You (start|continue|finish|stop) butchering
message_colour += mute:This raw flesh tastes
message_colour += mute:You continue eating

{
function find_corpse()
  for item_under_you in iter.invent_iterator:new(you.floor_items()) do
    if string.find(item_under_you.name(),"corpse") then return true end
  end
end
}

{
function ready()
  if you.feel_safe() and find_corpse() then
    crawl.sendkeys("c")
    crawl.process_command()
  end
end
}

Copy-paste the above into your options file (init/rcfile). Edit: You can remove everything below the message_colour stuff if you don't want to auto-butcher every corpse. Instead, you'll just have to press 'c' once.

[Leafsnail]

I wasn't asking for examples, I was asking you to explain the examples you already provided.

Nausea did basically nothing at all.  There was the same amount of food in the game overall (chunks give less nutrition now to make up for the removal of sick/nausea) it's just that the game would sometimes force you to wait before eating your next piece of food.  You were no more likely to starve.  In other words the two things it actually did were 1) annoy you and 2) trick new people into thinking food mattered on some level.  I still had a mountain of permafood in those versions.

The same basically applied to sickness, except you'd be waiting a bit longer for your HP instead od to eat your next chunk.

[Dr Feelgood]

Food never really mattered, unless you were playing a race balanced around it. Even then, starvation was never a serious threat. Spell hunger would be a serious consideration, if food was scarcer. You can carry a stack of chunks, spam your high level spells, then eat. If you're playing a food-sensitive race, then you'll just focus more heavily on spellcasting.

Negative food effects were annoying. Stopping regen didn't matter, since nobody eats in the middle of battle. And nausea would only be dangerous if you were starving. In reality, they required you to stand in a corner and press '5', until the effect wore off. It's a waste of time.

There's enough food in the dungeon that you'll never have to worry about starvation. And the infinite branches have unlimited food. Improving the food system wouldn't be difficult. Reduce the amount of permafood in the dungeon. Remove permafood from pan and the abyss. And make contaminated chunks inflict semi-permanent stat drain, so it can't be waited out. Maybe people will actually die of starvation.

[DeKaFu]

I think that a lot of the charm of games like this comes from idiosynchratic flavor stuff. Most of it's completely harmless, so killing off things like racial armour and cheese because they aren't necessary makes me pretty sad. Next they'll kill off item identification so you'll no longer be able to find distressingly furry ring mail.

I'm sure they can trim off enough to get it to some kind of idealized perfect roguelike experience where there's only a few core mechanics left that are all extremely important and meaningful, but they'll have lost a lot of soul along the way.

[Aelig]

I don't think food is useless in every case, it's a way to balance some races and casters. Races with high metabolism would be way stronger (especially troll) without a food clock, and we are supposed to stack permafood because there are no corpses in the extended game.

[Bitoru]

DCSS is the e-sport of the roguelike genre.

In a more serious note, I for one, really enjoy the recent changes.

[Leafsnail]

The main fix for food that's being considered is to remove chunk eating for "normal" races (trolls, ghouls and maybe kobolds would stay as they are).  I think I'd agree with that, chunk eating is dull and it removes any tension that there might be in using up your limited supply of permafood.  I think that represents a flavour improvement, too - it would imply that trolls are so wild and voracious that they have to rip apart their foes and devour them raw, while most other races just eat normal food.

The fundamental problem which I see, though, is that starvation deaths aren't fun and never will be.  If starvation were a real possibility then there's also the possibility of being boned by getting too little food.

I don't think food is useless in every case, it's a way to balance some races and casters. Races with high metabolism would be way stronger (especially troll) without a food clock, and we are supposed to stack permafood because there are no corpses in the extended game.

There's fewer corpses in the extended game, but there's still food and that is almost always enough.  Food isn't really an important balance consideration on the vast majority of races - consider the fact that centaurs having fast metabolism and vegetarian I does nothing to their power level.

There are a couple of cases where food is relevant to regular races (Elyvilon being the main one), but I think it would be better to just introduce some other mechanic to balance those things rather than wasting everybody's time.

[Mindmaker]

I've seen somebody rewriting a well known scene from 1984 with the current design philosophy of DCSS. It fit perfectly.

[motorbitch]

  If starvation were a real possibility then there's also the possibility of being boned by getting too little food.

this. its either just a source of borring, RND caused death, or pointless.
any balance it serves is better done in a different way.

[Retropunch]

I've seen somebody rewriting a well known scene from 1984 with the current design philosophy of DCSS. It fit perfectly.

Got a link!?

And yeah, while I don't think food was balanced particularly well it does cause trouble for high-metabolism races and stopped casters just spamming away with sif channeling and high level spells, especially for spriggans and the like. Earlier on (about version 5-6) it used to be better balanced for food, but later some devs decided to up perma-food till it became meaningless because they didn't like the mechanics. This just made it pointless and boring, and I guess that's why people want to get rid of it now.

There are a couple of cases where food is relevant to regular races (Elyvilon being the main one), but I think it would be better to just introduce some other mechanic to balance those things rather than wasting everybody's time.

I would be happy if they would introduce new mechanics in the place of hunger, but so far (for the last version and trunk) it's mainly just been stuff getting ripped out with nothing new to take it's place. I personally think hunger is a good balance if it's done better (many games manage it quite well) , and I really wish that the devs would work on creating mechanics rather than just removing everything till it's just slashing or shooting.

[Mindmaker]

Got a link!?

http://i.imgur.com/5bISdGm.jpg
It falls off during the second half, but the idea was great.

[frostshotgg]

Except it's entirely invalid. You guys are focusing so much on "Boo hoo my poor useless content" and concluding from it "They're not doing anything but removing stuff". You're completely ignoring all of the stuff, that's actually MEANINGFUL, that's being added. I vastly prefer new, interesting races like Formacids to pointless drudgery like having to drop all my potions if I see a certain type of enemy.

[Mindmaker]

I wasn't aware I walked into a "no fun allowed"-zone here.
Also "useless content" is something entirely subjective.

[...]pointless drudgery like having to drop all my potions if I see a certain type of enemy.

I believe the whole game becoming Tab + O is more of a pointless drudgery.
Having enemies with interesting abilities that have special interations with the player is one of the strong points of roguelikes.

[Retropunch]

I wasn't aware I walked into a "no fun allowed"-zone here.
Also "useless content" is something entirely subjective.

[...]pointless drudgery like having to drop all my potions if I see a certain type of enemy.

I believe the whole game becoming Tab + O is more of a pointless drudgery.
Having enemies with interesting abilities that have special interations with the player is one of the strong points of roguelikes.

I second this (and that 1984 rewrite was hilarious). New races and gods are great, but if all the mechanics are removed that support difference then new races/gods/ect. become too homogeneous - like the removal of racial food conducts for instance.

I just wish that they'd add new mechanics (or better yet make the ones we have better) rather than just stripping away stuff till it becomes tab+o, which is really is becoming nearer too. 

[Leafsnail]

And yeah, while I don't think food was balanced particularly well it does cause trouble for high-metabolism races and stopped casters just spamming away with sif channeling and high level spells, especially for spriggans and the like. Earlier on (about version 5-6) it used to be better balanced for food, but later some devs decided to up perma-food till it became meaningless because they didn't like the mechanics. This just made it pointless and boring, and I guess that's why people want to get rid of it now.

0.5 and 0.6 both had Hive, a virtually infinite source of perma-food (and I'm not sure that perma-food generation has ever been tweaked since then).  I don't buy this argument at all - are you sure it's not just that you've gotten better at the game since then, and therefore have now realised that food is an irrelevant mechanic?  Because I remember finishing every pre-0.10 (going back to 0.6) game with literally dozens of honeycombs and royal jellies lying on my stash.

I would be happy if they would introduce new mechanics in the place of hunger, but so far (for the last version and trunk) it's mainly just been stuff getting ripped out with nothing new to take it's place. I personally think hunger is a good balance if it's done better (many games manage it quite well) , and I really wish that the devs would work on creating mechanics rather than just removing everything till it's just slashing or shooting.

If something is serving no purpose then there's no need to replace it with anything (or if it's only serving a couple of very specific purposes then you can replace it with something that covers only those specific purposes).  It's actually probably easier to create new mechanics (see: the three races and god added over the past two versions, the two gods that may be included soon, the massive number of new summoning spells, dramatically more relevant and interesting evokables, etc) than it is to try and salvage a fundamentally poor one.

Also "useless content" is something entirely subjective.

Not really.  If there's a mechanic that never causes you to take a meaningful decision (but does waste your time with trivial ones) then it's useless.

I believe the whole game becoming Tab + O is more of a pointless drudgery.
Having enemies with interesting abilities that have special interations with the player is one of the strong points of roguelikes.

The developers agree that enemies with interesting abilities is good, which is why new ones are added in every version (in 0.14 you have the new specialist nagas, thorn hunters and demonspawn enemies).  It's just that "a monster that causes you to walk away and drop your scrolls then come back" is not interesting.  If an enemy presents absolutely no threat to me then yes, I want to tab right through it because at least that doesn't waste my time.  Then I can spend more of my time thinking about actually dangerous stuff which has the potential to kill me.