Ugh, it's actually way to hot for RPG Makerings, but well...I managed to work a bit on the project today:

After some experiments with my project Monster's Den, it was decided that the typical dungeon roaming requires some more pressure to it. Therefore I deciced to add a few "Systems" to the game that are not directly battle related and add a bit more stress to the dungeon running. Today I would like to shed some light on the first (finished) system:

Food & Starvation

To be honest - i hate when you have to feed your characters in RPGs. But starvation surely adds some pressure to dungeon exploration, so i decided to add it. To keep things simple, there is a food counter that is the same for all characters and each food type also increases that food counter by the same amount. So it makes no difference if you eat a banana or a steak, they both heal 100 food points.

1. Food Items

There are many different food items in the game, but only one is of real importance: Iron Rations. While your characters can find and eat any kind of food - only the Iron Rations can be bought in town. And when auto-eating, your characters always try to consume iron rations first. That is what makes them so "special".

2. Food Usage

Food basically "heals" 100 food points (a new stat), each Actor starts with 100 food points and once they drop below 0 it suffers from the "Starvation" state. You can feed your Actors manually as well and it is not possible to overfeed (is that the right word?) your party.

3. Food Extras

Of course all food items are defined as regular items and can have nice side-effects as well. The most important one is that food heals either HP or MP - this fact turns it into a real alternative to potions. But I can imagine adding "magic food" later as well that will add some nice Buffs (states) to your Actors.

4. Starvation & Time

Time requires your Actors to eat. Eating is only required inside of dungeons. But there is no realtime clock in this game. Instead what Im doing is measuring the number of steps. Each step reduces the food points of each character in your party by one. Once an Actors food points drop below 0, it is affected by the "Starvation" state.

5. Starvation Effects

Once a Actor begins to starve it loses 1 HP per step taken. Thats not really dangerous (maybe at the beginning of the game), the true penalty is a different one: Actors affected by Starvation have all of their base stats reduced (except DEF because that would be totally unfair). In addition, any potential HP and MP regeneration is stopped. So Starvation kills you really slooooowly, but comes with a major penalty regarding combat capability!

Well, thats all for today - I hope to keep the pace and with for Monster's Den to shape up into playable state early next year.

Next time I will be reporting about the second "system" that I have started working on: The Light System.

until then

cheers

-Malagar

PS: One more screenshot showing a Dark Knight and a Paladin in the party. Note that the 8-Bit Window Skin was replaced with my 16-Bit one (done about half a year ago). Also removed the border from the Actors faces and adjusted the bars and their position a bit. Please note that there are no real "faces" in this game - all characters are represented with Sprites instead of Faces. And they are all animated (simple with just 2 frames). The sprites are from RPGMaker 95!