Inmersive stamina management

[AtomSplinter]

I took inspiration from many games, but mostly from real life, to make stamina management much more inmersive, because the sole energy bar that goes down when you sprint and jump is kinda overused and I guess that can be improved.

Max stamina

IRL, your max stamina can vary depending on your physical status and capabilities. In that regard, your performance by executing actions that requires energy can increase or decrease, affected by multiple factors.

• Thirst and hunger
• Wounds
• Disease or virus
• Sleep and fatigue
• Overall energy usage endurance

All these factors must be properly attended in order to not get our max energy decreased and reach our maximum performance. As some of these may seem self-explanatory (you can’t parkour around with an empty stomach), I may need to clarify many points.

How to maintain max stamina

Thirst and hunger

Currently these can only make your health slightly regenerate if above 90%, and kill you if any reaches 0%. It can be way more inmersive.

These both stats should slightly decrease your max stamina when these are below certain percentage (which can fairly be 60%. I’ll let Nelson decide it), and even further as these keep going down. This is obviously known how to counteract, but I’d like to suggest some items to receive some tweaks.

For example, I talked about saturation in another post (which I’ll update soon):

Better skills development, chapter #1: food and cooking

Has anyone ever thought of roles and their skills that aren’t fully (or at least, fairly enough) covered in Unturned? Well, I’ve been thinking a lot into several of them, and I have A TON to say about it, and I’d like to start out with FOOD and COOKING, making CHEF a way more handy role to use. Well, I thought that grabbing a couple of ingredients in 3.x and making a pizza or a cake out from nowhere was really lame, so I was thinking about making the art of cooking more realistic and reliable.…

In that matter, I’d like to state here (and later there) that the more filling a food is, the more delay the hunger drop rate would be:

< < < <

Althought some of them being not very “full-filling”, should help to slow down or delay for a short amount of time the max energy drop rate:

(and basicallly any sugar source)

In any of both cases, energy and hunger should drop slower or even grant you extra energy if you succesfully fill yourself up

Also I see necessary to make these be way more useful than they currently are; give you extra energy or make these decrease you stamina even much slower, wether or not used at the moment, since these are useless when used with the full energy bar:

Some of the items listed in the previous point should do so too

Wounds

Currently, only breaking our legs can affect our stamina, forbidding us to sprint. But in that matter, I think that ANY severe wound that brings your health to 30% or lower should do this same effect.

(very long etc…)

Some others (if not all of those) should also make you walk slower if you get severely affected by them.

(and any other added)

There’s also many other type of wounds or status effects that people would like to add, I know it. You can comment on that regard below.

Disease or virus

This self-explains until certain point. Nobody can jump and run around if they’re barfing all the way because of some rotten beans, can they?

Being infected or affected by spoiled food, as any other status that affects player’s inmunity, should make them walk and sprint slower than the normal rate, and even disorient the player by nausea. Even it could go meme if you ate something rot and you will puke more often the more you sprint or jump, lol.

Hallucinations should do the same effect, as in 3.x you can see and hear everything weird but you can still coordinate your moves properly, which doesn’t make much sense.

Sleep and fatigue

Adding this feature would be nicely realistic, because in many games as IRL it helps you recover from many things. Finally, these both could be of use more than just picking a respawn point.

How will this work? Well, in singleplayer it may allow you to skip from night to day. But if you see this boring, you may just skip a smaller amount of time, by choosing the amount of in-game hours you want to rest. It works this way in The Last Stand: Union City.

In multiplayer, it can work like as Don’t Starve Together sleep tents and bedrolls, on which the more time you spend sleeping, the more you recover.

Sleeping feature may help you recover max stamina, keeping in mind that the more time you sleep, the more energy you recover.

Also it’d be neat to add a new effect status for when you don’t sleep at all. That may incide in your stamina and can even decrease your performance in every action you do because of the fatigue.

An alternative to sleeping may be resting, by just sitting on the floor as we currently can do, or even more comfy by sitting on benches, chairs and sofas, which could finally have a real use rather than being pure miscellaneous.

This may work to restore max stamina and counteract fatigue in a minor rate than sleeping, but would allow you to stay alert and use items meanwhile. Also it could make meds and food effects to work faster.

Overall energy usage and endurance

The other points stated before may not cause problems if attended properly, but this one is the most fundamental one. The more energy you use by executing physical actions, the faster your max stamina will decrease. In that matter, this point is also tied with the previous one, as the more energy spent, the closer you are from getting fatigued.

Endurance skills may help your energy to last longer and make it possible to execute a better performance when using it (faster or stronger), but it’d also mean you’ll have to not abuse of your stamina and keep your energy as much as possible if you’re short of resources.

And also, carrying weight should be another determinant factor when talking about general endurance. The more weight you carry, you’ll just not walk slower, you’ll also get fatigued faster.

-0,5% p/m… < -1,5% p/m… < -3% p/m…

This scheme just as example. I’ll not go deeper in values

I'm really curious about your thoughts! Feedback is welcome!

• All ideas are fair, realistic and awesome
• I think it can be improved… (comment)
• I’d only keep some ideas… (comment)
• I don’t like these suggestions

[GreatHeroJ]

I’ll be honest, it was a bit long so I read the first half and skimmed through the last half.

That said your effort really shows through. Excellent quality suggestion, you got your point across very well.

[Armaros]

I think this could really benefit from the Arma III weight and stamina system, where the heavier your load, the slower you move, the shorter you sprint, and the slower you regain stamina. If you use too much stamina running and quickly move to combat with little intermission, your aim will be at a disadvantage due to excess movement from heavy breathing, and your view will be slightly strained. It would still slowly recover and debuffs would gradually fade away.

[MrExzibit]

It’s a good suggestion, I pretty much did what GreatHeroJ did. But yeah, it’s a good suggestion.

Something small I’d change. In my opinion, max food and hydration shouldn’t be a good thing. Instead, I’d say 60% hunger would be a good area to stay in. I think so just because technically… If you’re completely stuffed yourself with food. You shouldn’t really be able to run. Else you’d feel very sick, that’s how it works in real life. That’s what I and others do when they go running. I haven’t forgotten about this

@AtomSplinter

I took inspiration from many games, but mostly from real life

So yeah, I do think it would be quite interesting being completely full could be looked upon as a downside too. Whilst having a point you’d have to be in to maintain your stamina effectively. Overall, your idea is good. I would add or consider something I added just now though.

[anon24515308]

I like the general idea, but I disagree with some specifics. Low immunity shouldn’t cause vomiting or slower movement, but should cause increased risk of gaining detrimental status effects. Endurance shouldn’t be one skill, but should be divided into separate skills for specific actions (i.e. a melee skill would make the player more efficient at meleeing.)

[AtomSplinter]

We don’t even know how skills will be set, so I just stated the basics.

[AtomSplinter]

Talking about the food, haven’t you ever wondered why hunger and thirst dropped so fast in 3.x? It’s fast when you do the math comparing the drop rate with the in-game ticks (and I only do this as 4.x will be more realistic and must improve flawed features from 3.x).

Maybe I’m wrong, but for what I remember, if you let your char with no food all way long, it will last like 2 in-game days to starve (when IRL you last at least about 5 days). Knowing that, I assumed that the 100% expressed in the hunger bar has to be the limit of the necessary and fair enough amount of food to ingest, in order to be satisfied.

What you say about being stuffed may only happen if you try to eat something that overpasses that 100% (like eating a cake or an MRE while at 80% hunger).

So yes, I didn’t specify that on the explanation, but it’s a good point to consider and discuss.

[Peedeoo7]

Just remember to not have the effects happen to often or have them too obnoxious.

(Like one RL hour+ then the sleep emblem pops up?)

[AtomSplinter]

I guess that’s up to Nelson.

In many games you can be awake up to 3 days without severe consequences. At least in Don’t Starve Together it’s almost merely optional; if you maintain yourself healthy via any other method, sleeping isn’t that much of a need.

[AtomSplinter]

Uh, I forgot. About being sick:

I think that only rotten food and some types of toxic chemicals may cause you to vomit. Other diseases may not make you walk slower but sprinting slower instead because c’mon, have you ever tried to run or jump while being ill? It aches bad dude.

[Burger_Time]

everithung is excelent but…

@AtomSplinter

How will this work? Well, in singleplayer it may allow you to skip from night to day. But if you see this boring, you may just skip a smaller amount of time, by choosing the amount of in-game hours you want to rest. It works this way in The Last Stand: Union City.

i think that this thing can be changed. In real life you almost can’t wake up when you want to. you will sleep until you won’t be tired. If you want to wake up at certain time, you can set time on alarm clock (like in project zomboid)

[AtomSplinter]

Trust me when I tell you that there’s a good part of people that doesn’t need an alarm clock to wake up when they want. Also, in the middle of apocalypse, most people would become forced to control their sleep hours, because of the permanent alert status.

However, your statement can be taken in mind; players under effects of extreme fatigue may need an alarm clock in order to awake earlier if they need to. Otherwise, their fatigue could cause them to fall asleep in a random period between 8 to 11 in-game hours as soon as they find a place to rest (even a sofa, lol).

In multiplayer this could be simulated making it to the player impossible or very hard to awake until certain hours have been slept, in the case you get severely affected by fatigue. Of course, this can be counteracted if the player sets an alarm clock or has a friend who can wake him up.

It’s a very interesting scene indeed.

[Burger_Time]

@AtomSplinter

most people would become forced to control their sleep hours, because of the permanent alert status.

Maybe true, but i think that IRL people just sleep less when always alert.

@AtomSplinter

Of course, this can be counteracted if the player sets an alarm clock or has a friend who can wake him up.

There can be more factors when player wake up. E.g: Zombie scream, other loud sounds or even nightmares

[AtomSplinter]

@Burger_Time

There can be more factors when player wake up. E.g: Zombie scream, other loud sounds or even nightmares

Also all of that must be taken in mind. But I really dunno if it’s really necessary to include a “dreaming” feature in the game (since there must be one to have “nightmares”). If that’s so, psychologic status or sanity has to be added as a whole new stat to maintain.

Now, about this very last thing, I’m not really sure if Nelson es even planning to do that.

[Burger_Time]

@AtomSplinter

But I really dunno if it’s really necessary to include a “dreaming” feature in the game (since there must be one to have “nightmares”)

The dreams won’t be real of course. Your character will only wake up in panic and stress and game says something like “Uh Oh LoOkS l1ke YoU Hav3 seen NiGhTmArE”

[AtomSplinter]

Yeah, but even if it’s kept simplified like that, there would be the need to implement the psychological status feature, as we’re looking towards realism, and being like that, dreams and nightmares can’t be sort of a random thing that happens when you sleep.

Maybe it can be done like you say in order to not hinder or complex things up. But as the title of the post says, we’re trying to enhance the inmersion (our magic [s]word); so my point stands, althought all your suggestions are good ideas as well.