quote:
Originally posted by Explodo:
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Preserved - Cooking food using dwarven sugar and something else would make a meal that doesn't rot, giving sugar production a use.
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Right, the food wouldn't rot, just the teeth of the dwarves that eat it. (Just kidding, but I think this would have to be restricted to plant products - I doubt anyone wants to eat meat cooked in sugar...also, salting meat should be quick, while drying it would take a long time but make it last near indefinitely.)
But seriously, I think these are all good ideas, though like Name Lips said temperature should be taken into account. On a freezing map you likely wouldn't have to do much processing at all.
And before anything like this was implemented, for balance reasons it should be impossible to make a meal entirely out of alcohol (though it should be okay as at least one ingredient), and the same goes for syrup and sugar. Those are all kind of exploity even now, but if other foods rotted they would give such a ridiculous advantage there would be no reason to produce anything else.
Anyway, as cool as I think all this stuff would be for the dwarves, I think it could be even more interesting for adventure mode, once it gets made more realistic as far as eating/drinking/etc. goes.
Instead of just killing an animal and then using its corpse to bludgeon another animal with, imagine being able to butcher it, cook a little of the meat, salt the rest to either trade or eat while you travel, and while you're at it tan the hide to make some nice leather clothes, maybe even carve some trinkets from its bones. (everything except the bone carving part can actually be done in a game called Unreal World that's been getting some discussion in the 'other games' forum...I've been playing it a lot lately and it's got me all excited for some of the things that could be possible in adventure mode once Toady has time to flesh it out.)