Bodily functions & Hygiene

[Kajin]

I wouldn't mind keeping hygiene to hand washing, face washing and laundry. Going to a rain barrel with some soap and selecting "wash up" for a quick scrub of your face and hands or just "wash hands" if you're doing it before eating dinner would be about all you'd need to for cleaning yourself. Maybe an additional "wash wounds" if your character has an open injury, complete with replacing bandages,

 

Beyond that, I think the best thing you could do for hygiene is to have clean clothes. You're gonna sweat and get covered in dirt, grease, blood and various other filth. And most of it is gonna end up on your clothing. So taking your dirty clothing off and replacing it with fresh, clean clothing would do wonders for both sanitation and character mood. Maybe rig up a washing barrel with crank to turn some paddles inside or a washing board for scrubbing the grime off. Then lay out the clothing to dry and presto, you've got a fresh set of clean clothing.

[Ewok]

Aaaand - deleted post about modding stuff...

Sorry, I missed a page when reading through and missed the bit when Rath said no more talk about modding stuff.

...he's going to ban me now

[Rathlord]

I'll let it slide... this time

 

 

As for those bodily functions, name the action "take care of business", just slap a progress bar on top of blurred/pixelated character and be done with it. Couple of moodles to prompt user to take action, nothing too descriptive or frequent.

 

It's been 'reconsidered' time and again over the last three years. There's nothing anyone can say that adds anything new or unique to this discussion- we've seen it all. The reality is, there is no gameplay benefit for adding this. This is not the Sims. Further, we don't just add things because we're aiming for realism- there has to be a reason to spend coding time on it. For a game with accelerated time, we can just assume that you piss in the bushes every once in a while- there is no reason except "because" to add this. So, while everyone is more than welcome to discuss it, it's not going to happen, ever, and you should go into the discussion with that expectation.

[philthy mcnasty]

No. this opens up trolling. If i was on a multiplayer server, i would "do my business" in your: water barrels, ovens, food stores, safe houses, door to your safe houses, or whever i felt like.

 

I would NOT be the only one doing this.

[Nero]

We can just have the mod be like drinking no animation just a bar. Use Toilet.

but i drink out of the toilet....lol

[Moloch Horridus]

 

As for those bodily functions, name the action "take care of business", just slap a progress bar on top of blurred/pixelated character and be done with it. Couple of moodles to prompt user to take action, nothing too descriptive or frequent.

 

It's been 'reconsidered' time and again over the last three years. There's nothing anyone can say that adds anything new or unique to this discussion- we've seen it all. The reality is, there is no gameplay benefit for adding this. This is not the Sims. Further, we don't just add things because we're aiming for realism- there has to be a reason to spend coding time on it. For a game with accelerated time, we can just assume that you piss in the bushes every once in a while- there is no reason except "because" to add this. So, while everyone is more than welcome to discuss it, it's not going to happen, ever, and you should go into the discussion with that expectation.

Except you can play PZ in real-time if you wish. I like to play on a very low time compression for one.

Furthermore I don't think time compression is a good argument omitting a feature, since there are already other similar features like eating and sleeping. Similar as in related to real-life and time consumption of daily activities. Playing with time compression settings on low you end up with a lot of time on your hands.

Following your argument there is no added gameplay value in eating for instance. It could be treated similarly as you suggest since the actual gameplay parts of staying fed are scavenging and farming. The eating action is just a progress bar that you have to sit through because the moodle told you so. We could just assume characters eat every once in a while if they have food available.

If you think about this only based on coding time you're right. Eating and sleeping are implemented already and the hygiene is not.

Of course the need for these actions are subjective and will wary on player preferences. I'm all for realism (well, not all for since zombies wouldn't really be a threat in real life), but not everybody is and therefore options have been invented. Of course devs have all the power to decide what they want to put their effort into, but since time and time again this feature is suggested maybe, just maybe they could reconsider.

I'd argue that similar to eating and sleeping actions, bodily functions are one necessity we humans have in our daily lives and I'd argue its just as important - after all one of those two is actually contributing to this one. To some degree the weather is also contributing here once its implemented wholly. During hot summer days you'd need to drink more because you're sweating, but if you keep up the pace during winter you'd need to use "bodily functions" more often.

So, going to the bushes couple of times a day maybe wouldn't be a gameplay feature itself, but combining it to other features already implemented or coming sometime in the future it certainly wouldn't be just a gimmick any more. In my opinion.

[Rathlord]

Following your argument there is no added gameplay value in eating for instance. It could be treated similarly as you suggest since the actual gameplay parts of staying fed are scavenging and farming. The eating action is just a progress bar that you have to sit through because the moodle told you so. We could just assume characters eat every once in a while if they have food available.

 

That simply doesn't follow my argument at all. Food is a resource- it is gathered, horded, fought over, and lost. It is both a point of conflict and a necessity of life that you could be without. Regardless of whether the progress bar is there, you'd still need to consume the food that you gathered (and for that matter, water is already handled that way- there's no progress bar if it's in your main inventory). Taking a piss does none of that- there is no resource to manage, no gameplay added. It's just an annoyance timer.

 

Of course the need for these actions are subjective and will wary on player preferences. I'm all for realism (well, not all for since zombies wouldn't really be a threat in real life), but not everybody is and therefore options have been invented. Of course devs have all the power to decide what they want to put their effort into, but since time and time again this feature is suggested maybe, just maybe they could reconsider.

 

As I've already pointed out- it's been reconsidered. And (before I was a mod) my signature used to be "PZ's number one defender of realism." But even then I understood that realism enough isn't worth it. You can't just shove shit in a game- designing a functional game takes more than that. And at some point you need to acknowledge that maybe experience game developers know more about game design than random passersby/fans. I don't mean to be rude- everyone has their own wants for what should be in a game, and I respect that. But at the end of the day, the devs have a vision for the game and they have experience.

[silents429]

Its bad game design to make a 100% realistic game.

To me at least.

When I make my own that'll be how I go.