Possible bug. Casting a spell restores hunger?

[Ratha]

It appears that the mage restores a slight amount of his hunger every time they successfully cast a spell. I cant imagine that this is intended behavior? The bug exists in the windows version of Grimrock, versions 1.3.6 and after updating to 1.3.7. This was tested on both an old and a new save, and on normal and hard difficulty. Original install version of the game was from Humble Bundle 7 version 1.3.6, and updated with the standalone patch to 1.3.7. Is anyone else able to duplicate this? As far as i can tell, about the only steps that seem necessary to duplicate is simply to open the character sheet for the mage, and then successfully cast a spell, you should notice the hunger bar fill up by a small amount. I dont believe that the character sheet is required to be open but have not specifically tested that.

[Komag]

Holy crap, I just tested as see the same thing, never noticed before no matter how many times I've played the original and my own dungeons during testing!!! Although I did always notice that my mage didn't need as much food, but I always just figured it was because insectoids didn't need much food, as I always had an insectoid mage

[Sol_HSA]

Magic! =)

[Ratha]

Assuming that this is a legitimate bug, will i need to report it somewhere other than on the forums? Am not sure how active the development and patching is on Legend of Grimrock at this point, but for the sake of completeness if theres an official place to report such a bug, other than on the forum, id like to follow through if its necessary to do so.

Also does anyone know if this something that would be easily patched out or fixed with a mod? I discovered it on around dungeon level 4, have plenty of food in my inventory, but tend to feel like im cheating when using spells now.

[Komag]

No idea whether this is a bug or some intentional feature the devs planned, such as casting spells satiating body needs or something. There isn't really any official way to report a bug - this thread is good enough, and if the devs want to do something about it they will just add it to their list of to-dos.

My own personal impression is that this probably won't get fixed ever, the game has been out over a year, they're working on part 2, it's a very minor issue, etc.

[JohnWordsworth]

Just tested and I see it too - what a strange bug. My gut instinct is that it's unlikely that AH would fix this bug now, and I kind of agree - if it's not game breaking, I'd rather they spend the time perfecting LoG2!

I guess if you wanted to fix this in a custom dungeon, whoever is making the dungeon could just write an onCastSpell party hook to subtract a tiny bit of food to counter out that which is gained. Unfortunately, you can't just drop this sort of mod into the vanilla dungeon (although it could be added to Komag's excellent remake!).

[petri]

Thanks for the bug report!

I added it to the list and it will be fixed for Log2 at least. No patch for log1 is planned at the moment unless more serious bugs pile up. Patching all the versions takes a lot of time so we'd rather make one big patch rather than many small.

[Komag]

I guess if you wanted to fix this in a custom dungeon, whoever is making the dungeon could just write an onCastSpell party hook to subtract a tiny bit of food to counter out that which is gained. Unfortunately, you can't just drop this sort of mod into the vanilla dungeon (although it could be added to Komag's excellent remake!).

I'll do that for the next update, and MQ as well

[Komag]

I've been thinking about doing this "fix" for the next update of Master Quest, but now as I think it over some more I'm wondering if maybe it's better to leave it as-is, and explain it as purposeful, that one of the benefits of being a magic user is getting a tiny bit of magical food nourishment from each spell cast.

[Ratha]

Im not one to speak from a balance perspective since I've not played the game through fully, or attempted any of the mods/tweaks out there, but encouraging grindy behavior (spam spells to increase your hunger satiation) seems like the wrong kind of direction to take gameplay. Users will exploit that and while that is their choice to do so id almost argue that OCD users who feel compelled to do that sort of thing and take every possible advantage they can get will likely enjoy the game less due to spending lots of time grinding. I caught myself intentionally doing it there after i discovered the bug, and it definitely felt both abusive and not fun to do. Dont ask me why i did it in that case, OCD? Min maxing? I snapped out of that fairly quickly though when i realized it was affecting my enjoyment and was kindof exploity. Silly thing is that i was nowhere even close to needing to do it. :P

If i was voting, id say go for fixing it and setting it to be similar to what an attack would be, or simply make it not affect hunger. It basically converts player time into in game food without any sort of conversion penalty. Since the rest of the team does not have a penalty when you spam cast to restore hunger, hunger (stamina?) might as well just restore over time naturally and keep the flow of the game going without requiring the player to grind. (Which sounds like a horrible idea in terms of breaking the immersion, but would atleast keep the player 'playing' the game as opposed to grinding. Im not legitimately suggesting that be an option though, that'd be silly!)