I realized something while working on my RPG design: it will be impossible for the characters in my game to ever eat like a normal person or even sleep for a couple game hours without the game being annoying and stupid. The RPG I am working on will have multiplayer support, but all the players don''t necessarily work together or even for the same team. Since the players aren''t on the same team, they are not necessarily going to rest at the same time. This may not sound like a problem at first but if the players were on the same team, they could rest together and work together and the sleeping time could just be skipped in real time, however, if one player decides to rest, the time can''t be skipped in the game because another player may not be ready to rest. In any case. The only solution I could come up with isto offer the player something that rejuivnates their chracters like a full nights rest without the using the time normally required. The other problem I ran into was eating. I have played games where the player was required to have the characters eat and I found this extremely annoying. Anyway, my real question is, would it detract from the realism very much if my RPG was full of starving insomniacs? Or should I work harder to find some way of sticking sleep or regular meals into the game? Thanks for opinions!!!

Personally, this is one area of RPG''s that I think is extremely unnecessary.

Think about it for a bit - eating and sleeping are pretty boring (unless you make a feature of it in some way)... what is it really adding to the game? realism???

There is so much downtime in your typical RPG - whether it be walking between cities/dungeon''s (walking within a dungeon even)... your characters are going to be smart enough to eat and sleep when they need to - the player doesn''t need to be bothered with these boring details, surely you can give us more interesting things to occupy us with?

Unless time plays a critical factor in your RPG - why can''t a character rest without telling us the boring details? - I''m sure they''re clever enough to find a quiet part of the dungeon, or set up camp along the road to wherever they''re going.

An interesting point, however it''s ignored for years. It appears all characters need not eat nor sleep in order to fufill their duties. ^_^

Personally having to eat every once in a while in a game is fairly annoying and is something that can be done without. The same is said with sleep.

- Matt

while we''re nit-picking, let''s add bowel movements and
urination to the list.

-eldee
;another space monkey;
[ Forced Evolution Studios ]

Do NOT let Dr. Mario touch your genitals. He is not a real doctor!

In many RPGs, sleep actually does perform some vital function for characters, such as in Baldur''s Gate and Neverwinter Nights, where characters must rest to regain special abilities and spells. In other games, even food is a factor, like in UO, where a character becomes fatigued more easily when she''s hungry. These elements actually have been considered in some RPGs.

But while eating can become mildly tedious if its required, sleeping isn''t something that the player should EVER be expected to endure. Sleep should either be instantaneous, or in a MMORPG, should happen when the player is offline.

Such monotonous factors SHOULD be taken into account in the game flow, but should be completely automated and should not severely interfere with the game -- let characters become tired and hungry, and let it have an impact on the game, but don''t require them to eat or sleep if its going to detract in any way from the player''s time or experience.

In regular CRPGs, stick with the instantaneous sleep cycle. It could be assumed that players eat during that time as well. In MMORPGs, it should just be assumed that they stop and rest or sleep whenever the player is offline. Again, eating could be assumed to have occurred during that time.

What does seem odd to me is that these characters can run around for days at a time without eating or sleeping -- but thats not a problem with the characters, its a problem with the passage of time!

WHY is it that in almost every CRPG I play, a day passes in like an hour? That''s ridiculous. There''s NO reason why the game can''t be in real time. If it has something to do with making sure that players in certain time zones always have a fair amount of daylight, then make time zones within the game world, so that while time passes realistically, daylight is relative to the character''s position in the game world.


Brian Lacy
Smoking Monkey Studios

Comments? Questions? Curious?
brian@smoking-monkey.org

"I create. Therefore I am."

quote:
WHY is it that in almost every CRPG I play, a day passes in like an hour? That''s ridiculous. There''s NO reason why the game can''t be in real time. If it has something to do with making sure that players in certain time zones always have a fair amount of daylight, then make time zones within the game world, so that while time passes realistically, daylight is relative to the character''s position in the game world.

You know that in order to do that you would have to model the entire planet? Else you would get those funky situations where the player can walk across three time zones in 20 minutes...kinda blows the whole realisam factor then...course with a fully modeled planet...the player population density would be like one player for every hundred miles, given that such a game is as popular as Everquest and UO combined...

Honestly if the difference between day and night hardly effects the gameplay...why bother? Why do RPG gamedesigners feel so driven to include day/night cycles anyway?..."more realistic" is a completely bogus reason, if in the same game the player can start off with a fully grown adult character (of thier own design, no less) that is barely strong enough to hold a weapon...and then the moment you throw magic, orks, monsters, dragons, elves, and the other cliched trappings of such games into the mix...well you have just thrown realisam right out the window...

And honestly...in a RPG...where we easily accept magic, orks, monsters, dragons, and elves as everyday occurances...why can''t we accept that a character can seem to run around for days on end without food or sleep?

Actually, time DOES play an extremely important role in many parts of my game''s design. This is why instantaneous sleep couldn''t work for me. But, fortunately, none of them require eating or sleeping in the ways that D&D and other games require them.

I found eating and sleeping tedious in the games that use fatigue and hunger to modify the characters abilities, but I think because of the importance of time flow in my game it would end up being even more annoying than normal.

I was also wondering on what a good real time to game time ratio would be. I can''t use real time as game time cause the player would probably end up completing half the game in one game day. I was thinking 5 or 10 minutes would be a game hour. With these ratios, a game day would be 2 or 4 hours respectively. Is this too much or too little?

what about making game time proportional (gametime=a*realtime) to realtime only in some areas(like world map) but event/story related in dungeons and other areas (ie: completing one quest will take 5 h) so eating and stuff would be needed while leveling but while advancing story it goes to background.

You can always go the route of Earthbound (SNES): instead of potions and elixirs to restore your status, use food. Go to a tavern or restaurant, order some food to-go, and eat it when you need to regain hit points. Monsters have to eat too; perhaps you can take the food you find on monsters. Even better, eat the monsters! May need a beverage to wash down some monsters...

If you really want to be anal about realism (and I don''t), you can make each of your characters suffer from physical side effects from eating too much (as opposed to too little). Eating too much in one sitting makes the character slow to act for a few minutes/battles, etc.

Good point MSW.

Timezones is a bit much, and we really probably don''t need to be so hung up on realism anyway.

I''m beginning to think it is similar to watching a movie. We don''t ever see the hero of a movie eat or sleep or do any other normal monotonous daily activity that would detract from the experience. If those types of things were left out, the player probably would not even notice anyway.