Spoils & Preserves

[Kurundo]

I'm hoping this doesn't fall under "Item Decay", as I am not talking about equipment but just food items and things that should be Perishable.


I think stored food products should have a "Shelf Life", instead of lasting until the cook is ready to come about and cook up a swarm of food, and then store that until people come around eventually to feast.

Some example lifespans off the top of my head:
Raw meat goes rotten after 3 days
Fruits, Berries and Vegetables can go a week before spoiling
Grains that are unprocessed can last 2 weeks before going bad (Corn left on the cob, oats on the stalk)
Milk having a shelf life of 5 days to a week before spoiling.

Along with this, food should have a sort of freshness buff/debuff. What I had in mind was something like:
Hot & Ready, foods eaten within an hour of being prepared confer an extra 20% feasting bonus, food like this can only be prepared from fresh ingredients that have not decayed in any way (unless otherwise specified).
Fresh, foods eaten within the first day of being cooked are the same as they are now, no bonus, no penalty.
Sour foods provide 30% less points as restoration foods or points for feasting.
Foods cooked and then ignored for 2 days go rotten, but can still be eaten for 50% of their point values, and giving the poor soul a case of food poisoning and insanity.

Speaking of food poisoning, it should work mush like mushroom poisoning except the character has to regularly stop to lurch and hurl, and if you max out your food poisoning you die.

With an aging system in place, food then should have means of expanding its shelf life for those still intent on hoarding and stuffing their cupboards. For this I propose the methods of Smoking, Salting, Dehydration, Canning/Jarring, and for those who can find enough ice or snow, perhaps an ice box as primitive refrigeration. Also perhaps all foods should decay colder during a cold snap as nature takes the place of a natural fridge.

Salted Meats, Veggies and fruits should retain their previous uses, a salted steak could still be cooked into a Sunday Steak, or split into salted cuts or used as any means it could be used for before salting. Salting should be a quick means for making things last a little longer in the storehouse.

Dehydrated foods are ready to eat meats for the road. Jerky, Trail Mix, Fruit Chips, Corn could be dried for future popcorn. These foods would mostly be good for restoration foods as they're rarely something you see at a dinner table.

Smoking meats should provide better longevity than salting, and will also be the means to high quality jerky when smoked with hickory or applewood chips. Smoking is already in place but hardly seems to be that wonderful of a feature unless you are gambling for black pearls.

Canned Foods are mostly condiments and fillings. Canned fruit and pumpkins can be used to make sweet pies when cooked with sugar, tomatoes can be cooked and canned to make a sauce or soup base, and many other garden vegetables could be jarred with Vinegar to make all sorts of pickles. Pickles and Preserves should be it's own gluttony category.

Ice Box A container that can only be built indoors or in a cave using bricks, clay, pig iron and nails, it is able to stop food from aging while it is loaded with "Fuel", the fuel either being snowballs or some other cold-stuff that could be released and only harvest-able during the coldsnap.



For Players --- There is a good side to all this rot.
Wine, Cheese, Beer, Vinegar
There is a current lack of booze to be had in Salem, and everyone loves cheese. If we're going to have to deal with the bad side of foods getting old, it seems reasonable to give the good side of it as well.
The basics, wine and beer both require time to age in a clean environment, Barrels should work fine so long as they are cleaned out with lime/soap/vinegar first to prevent unwanted bacteria from ruining everything.
Speaking of bacteria, for all the drinks here we need yeast, which should be either or both purchasable in town or cultured naturally, but naturally culturing yeast is bound to rot a bunch of batches before you meet success with your first beverage and residue of yeast in the barrel which could be scraped and reused.
Yeast should also be used in the making of any rising breads, which means you could bounce yeast cultures between beer and bread, and perhaps even as you brew and bake you could increase the purity of your colonies yeast cultures.
When we get cows, I'd also love to see the addition of Cheese, which would require cooking milk with either vinegar or a rennet of some sorts, which would require the addition of more giblets to be harvested from animals.

Hit this threads up with thoughts, suggestions, or things I missed. Times to rotting are all approximated from what I /feel/ is right and I don't take any blame for anyone who chooses to cook and eat a steak that's been at room temp for 3 days. (Speaking of spoiling meat, we should have to hang animals before butchering them to get the juice out of them.)

[belgear]

please no

[Tulgarath]

I think it could work of under JCs new craving system. ..assuming the quantity isn't the issue like it is now. But stalls would need to be climate controlled so you have a chance to sell them, and not just have them rot.

[Taipion]

To put it simple, this means: a lot of (dev) work/time only for annoying the players

I don't say the dev don't want to annoy the players in one way or another, but that just does not look right in a game like Salem.

[Kandarim]

Plus, they can annoy us far more worth much less work:)
I'm afraid this does fall under item decay, at least in my book. We have something similar with the fruit (but in that case I'd argue that the rotten fruit is actually more useful than the fresh produce

[Dallane]

To put it simple, this means: a lot of (dev) work/time only for annoying the players

I don't say the dev don't want to annoy the players in one way or another, but that just does not look right in a game like Salem.

Why not? Fruits already go rotten. I think it would fit perfectly in salem. JC wants characters to be able to defecate. Rotten fruit would give dysentery which we all know is a death sentence for those on the trail.

[Taipion]

To put it simple, this means: a lot of (dev) work/time only for annoying the players

I don't say the dev don't want to annoy the players in one way or another, but that just does not look right in a game like Salem.

Why not? Fruits already go rotten. I think it would fit perfectly in salem. JC wants characters to be able to defecate. Rotten fruit would give dysentery which we all know is a death sentence for those on the trail.

You do these kinds of posts pretty much nonstop, this does not add to the significance of them.

Comparing fruits and rotten fruits to actual food is, to put it in a polite way, not that beneficial.
Fruit is pointless for gluttony, and only useful as ingredient in some things and mostly as fertilizer in its rotten form, this really does not qualify for a comparison in any way at all.

[Dallane]

To put it simple, this means: a lot of (dev) work/time only for annoying the players

I don't say the dev don't want to annoy the players in one way or another, but that just does not look right in a game like Salem.

Why not? Fruits already go rotten. I think it would fit perfectly in salem. JC wants characters to be able to defecate. Rotten fruit would give dysentery which we all know is a death sentence for those on the trail.

You do these kinds of posts pretty much nonstop, this does not add to the significance of them.

Comparing fruits and rotten fruits to actual food is, to put it in a polite way, not that beneficial.
Fruit is pointless for gluttony, and only useful as ingredient in some things and mostly as fertilizer in its rotten form, this really does not qualify for a comparison in any way at all.

Just saying there is already a form of this already, it wouldn't be that hard to expand it into other foods. I see you don't know what you can make with fruits.....I guess you won't be doing any serious glutton sessions.

[Tulgarath]

I actually thought Dallane expressed his view well in that post (and we rarely agree). JC seems to be focusing the game on survival. ..he mentioned he wants characters to produce waste. Fruit already rots, disease exists. ..it would be nice to have a way to preserve that food and prevent it from rotting, for example.

[TotalyMeow]

Comparing fruits and rotten fruits to actual food is, to put it in a polite way, not that beneficial.
Fruit is pointless for gluttony, and only useful as ingredient in some things and mostly as fertilizer in its rotten form, this really does not qualify for a comparison in any way at all.

You say this because you, unlike Dallane, haven't been paying attention. Fruits aren't terribly useful for Gluttony right now because new food is just so difficult for us to balance in the current Gluttony system. We have plans for many, many recipes and uses for things like Fruit, Domestic Meat, Milk, Cheese, Honey, etc. We only put in a few potato recipes and haven't even added the beans. Plus the Vegetable/Cabbage food group we want to split up and expand. Once we have a new system in that is more simple and easy for us to code and balance, you'll see more recipes. Fruit as it is is definitely considered part of the food/Gluttony system. Part of the reason it rots is because it is a very advanced food. I'm not sure if John has any plans for more rotting of foods. It would be kinda harsh though, to make newbie foods rot.