10032020

Today I worked on hunger, which is basically more or less finished at this point as far as general implementation goes. It’s roughly tied to the fullness of the stomach, and begins incrementally decreasing once the stomach reaches a certain volume. Hunger here doesn’t exactly represent physical hunger (which is more accurately represented in the game by calories, which I’ll discuss later), but is a closer measure of psychological hunger: as Avery’s hunger level depletes, she’ll slowly and eventually steadily begin to lose willpower. This means that, should the player choose to, she can go a decent amount of time – about two or three in-game days, depending on other covalent conditions and/or deficiencies – without eating anything, although it certainly won’t be a comfortable experience for her. Tomorrow I’ll finish up the same process for thirst, which I started today but which I didn’t get around to really properly balancing. 

I also added in a new UI element, representing overwhelming thoughts. These, in contrast to inspection-based thoughts and interaction thoughts, are usually more urgent in both nature and tone and as such, represent thoughts that are more sudden and intrusive, such as pangs of hunger, or desires to relieve oneself. They take up the entire screen for about a second before disappearing, similar to the appearance of intertitles in film.