The various effects that can affect the player in MC are, to date, somewhat limited. In core, we have a health bar, burning (a DoT), and a slowing effect (currently caused only by a block). There are mods to implement hunger, and - so I hear - perhaps thirst.
There are, however, numerous other conditions that could be implemented. The potential range of such conditions is admittedly somewhat limited by the constraints of the core: straying too far into territory not supported by at least something previously existing is treading on thin ice, as coding such may simply involve just too much invasion into the core to make such a task infeasible.
I believe that the conditions below are feasible given the core. Those of you familiar with various console RPGs may recognize some of them. These are extensions of what existing code can do, or interact with player I/O.
Sprain Effect: Removes the ability to jump. Removal: Item (Brace) (see below)
In essence, any fall of unreasonable distance could cause this effect, which represents some portion of the player's lower body being disabled in some fashion. Not being able to jump severely hampers the player, as terrain generation generates in full blocks. The possibility of this condition causes an immediate change in player tactics, as well as generating a rise in caution in areas that have steep ledges.
A sprain could be removed with the application of a brace.
Potential Brace Recipe
Addled Effect: Randomization of player input Removal: Time (5-15s)
A confusion effect, perhaps caused by ingestion of certain varieties of mushroom or similar fungus, also possibly induced by custom mobs. Being addled is only dangerous in situations involving imminent danger: being addled in the relatively safety of your home is not a big deal, as one can wait out the effect, while being addled in a cavern complex overlooking lava is obviously significantly dangerous.
Randomization of player input can be achieved either by a singular change in what keys perform what function, or an actual randomization process each time any key is struck (which may cause lag, depending on how input is handled in the code - I am not sufficiently familiar to say).
Weakness Effect: Loss of inventory slots Removal: Food consumption
A potential secondary effect of hunger would be the idea that, the fewer nutrients one consumes, the less able one is to carry equipment. Weakness would temporarily gray out some portion of the player's inventory slots (I'd say anywhere between one-quarter to one-half), causing items to shunt to available slots or to be dropped if there is no more available room.
Consuming food would remove this condition.
Blindness Effect: Sight range decreased to at most 2 blocks, remaining vision obscured by fog Removal: Item or time (5-30s)
A condition caused potentially by some mobs or perhaps light sources that are overwhelmingly bright (some mods also include similar effects). While total blindness is unreasonable to deal with (it almost assures death in a dangerous situation), limiting sight to a few blocks is a reasonable enough facsimile of the effect for balance purposes. Sight could either return slowly (increasing the block radius out to normal over the course of the effect), or with the use of an item (returning entire vision instantaneously). The precise nature of the item would need to be determined; eye drops immediately spring to mind, but there may be insufficient in-game resources to reasonably construct such an item.
In terms of coding, this effect could possibly be produced by forcing fog production to the indicated number of blocks. Whether or not this invasive procedure could be performed, I am uncertain.
Infection Effect: Gradual reduction of max health Removal: Item (Poultice) (see below)
Interaction with mobs, water, sand, or dirt may cause an infection if not at full health while doing so (an abstraction, to be sure - the idea here is that, if you're not at full health, you have *some* kind of wound, and playing around in the dirt or with a pig might cause that wound to become infected). The lower your health, the greater the chance of infection. While infected, your maximum health slowly diminishes; given the extreme severity of this effect, this decrease should only occur perhaps every 5 minutes or so - sufficiently fast enough to cause alarm, but not fast enough to mean imminent death.
The cure for an infection would be a poultice, an herb-based remedy placed over the wound. I envision this as being constructed out of flowers and wool, which would give flowers a practical application.
I have been led to believe that it is possible to change the max health in MC, but am unsure how invasive such a procedure is; I am also not entirely certain if it would be possible to induce such a "gradual" change. There may be coding and/or UI presentation tricks that could make the effect work.
Flu Effect: Slow movement Removal: Resting in bed
Flu can be caught while in snow biomes. Exposure to water in a snow biome should give an increased chance of contracting a flu. While under the effects of a flu, player movement is slowed as though moving through soul sand.
Contracting the flu should be preventable. I would suggest wool armor, with the idea that such armor would be made more for warmth and comfort in snowy terrain than actual protection; if wearing wool armor, the chance of contracting the flu should be lowered. The defensive value of the wool armor could be used in determining how effective it is in helping avoid contracting the flu (thus just a wool shirt would be more effective than just wool boots, etc etc). However, in such terrain, there should always be some chance to contract the flu.
Once (re?)implemented, getting caught in the rain or snow should cause a chance to contract the flu (rain less so than snow). Wearing wool armor would, again, reduce the chances of contraction, though in the case of weather, wool armor should be able to reduce the chance to nil.
Removing the flu would require bed rest; mildly abstract, but sufficient to get across the idea that rest helps in fending off disease, and gives more of a reason to build a bed.
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Obviously these are all detrimental effects; while it would, perhaps, be possible to engineer positive status effects, my current interest lies in more interesting ways to make the game a challenge, rather than new ways to make it easier.
There will, of course, be those of you reading this who have no interest in such an addition. That is your prerogative; this is not necessarily a suggestion for core MC. These sorts of things should, at most, be optional.
The only question in my mind that remains is whether or not the player is made aware of these effects. I imagine a series of small but noticeable icons that could be displayed on either side of the screen, or perhaps on either side of the hotbar, that would denote having a condition... though now that I think about it, there's really no reason not to inform the player. If you had a sprain, you would be aware of it; if you had the flu, you would know it, and not have to rely on secondary effects to determine these things. None of these effects is so subtle to warrant not informing the player straight-up that they have it, and being so informed does nothing to cancel their detrimental effects.
There are, however, numerous other conditions that could be implemented. The potential range of such conditions is admittedly somewhat limited by the constraints of the core: straying too far into territory not supported by at least something previously existing is treading on thin ice, as coding such may simply involve just too much invasion into the core to make such a task infeasible.
I believe that the conditions below are feasible given the core. Those of you familiar with various console RPGs may recognize some of them. These are extensions of what existing code can do, or interact with player I/O.
Sprain
Effect: Removes the ability to jump.
Removal: Item (Brace) (see below)
In essence, any fall of unreasonable distance could cause this effect, which represents some portion of the player's lower body being disabled in some fashion. Not being able to jump severely hampers the player, as terrain generation generates in full blocks. The possibility of this condition causes an immediate change in player tactics, as well as generating a rise in caution in areas that have steep ledges.
A sprain could be removed with the application of a brace.
Addled
Effect: Randomization of player input
Removal: Time (5-15s)
A confusion effect, perhaps caused by ingestion of certain varieties of mushroom or similar fungus, also possibly induced by custom mobs. Being addled is only dangerous in situations involving imminent danger: being addled in the relatively safety of your home is not a big deal, as one can wait out the effect, while being addled in a cavern complex overlooking lava is obviously significantly dangerous.
Randomization of player input can be achieved either by a singular change in what keys perform what function, or an actual randomization process each time any key is struck (which may cause lag, depending on how input is handled in the code - I am not sufficiently familiar to say).
Weakness
Effect: Loss of inventory slots
Removal: Food consumption
A potential secondary effect of hunger would be the idea that, the fewer nutrients one consumes, the less able one is to carry equipment. Weakness would temporarily gray out some portion of the player's inventory slots (I'd say anywhere between one-quarter to one-half), causing items to shunt to available slots or to be dropped if there is no more available room.
Consuming food would remove this condition.
Blindness
Effect: Sight range decreased to at most 2 blocks, remaining vision obscured by fog
Removal: Item or time (5-30s)
A condition caused potentially by some mobs or perhaps light sources that are overwhelmingly bright (some mods also include similar effects). While total blindness is unreasonable to deal with (it almost assures death in a dangerous situation), limiting sight to a few blocks is a reasonable enough facsimile of the effect for balance purposes. Sight could either return slowly (increasing the block radius out to normal over the course of the effect), or with the use of an item (returning entire vision instantaneously). The precise nature of the item would need to be determined; eye drops immediately spring to mind, but there may be insufficient in-game resources to reasonably construct such an item.
In terms of coding, this effect could possibly be produced by forcing fog production to the indicated number of blocks. Whether or not this invasive procedure could be performed, I am uncertain.
Infection
Effect: Gradual reduction of max health
Removal: Item (Poultice) (see below)
Interaction with mobs, water, sand, or dirt may cause an infection if not at full health while doing so (an abstraction, to be sure - the idea here is that, if you're not at full health, you have *some* kind of wound, and playing around in the dirt or with a pig might cause that wound to become infected). The lower your health, the greater the chance of infection. While infected, your maximum health slowly diminishes; given the extreme severity of this effect, this decrease should only occur perhaps every 5 minutes or so - sufficiently fast enough to cause alarm, but not fast enough to mean imminent death.
The cure for an infection would be a poultice, an herb-based remedy placed over the wound. I envision this as being constructed out of flowers and wool, which would give flowers a practical application.
I have been led to believe that it is possible to change the max health in MC, but am unsure how invasive such a procedure is; I am also not entirely certain if it would be possible to induce such a "gradual" change. There may be coding and/or UI presentation tricks that could make the effect work.
Flu
Effect: Slow movement
Removal: Resting in bed
Flu can be caught while in snow biomes. Exposure to water in a snow biome should give an increased chance of contracting a flu. While under the effects of a flu, player movement is slowed as though moving through soul sand.
Contracting the flu should be preventable. I would suggest wool armor, with the idea that such armor would be made more for warmth and comfort in snowy terrain than actual protection; if wearing wool armor, the chance of contracting the flu should be lowered. The defensive value of the wool armor could be used in determining how effective it is in helping avoid contracting the flu (thus just a wool shirt would be more effective than just wool boots, etc etc). However, in such terrain, there should always be some chance to contract the flu.
Once (re?)implemented, getting caught in the rain or snow should cause a chance to contract the flu (rain less so than snow). Wearing wool armor would, again, reduce the chances of contraction, though in the case of weather, wool armor should be able to reduce the chance to nil.
Removing the flu would require bed rest; mildly abstract, but sufficient to get across the idea that rest helps in fending off disease, and gives more of a reason to build a bed.
-----
Obviously these are all detrimental effects; while it would, perhaps, be possible to engineer positive status effects, my current interest lies in more interesting ways to make the game a challenge, rather than new ways to make it easier.
There will, of course, be those of you reading this who have no interest in such an addition. That is your prerogative; this is not necessarily a suggestion for core MC. These sorts of things should, at most, be optional.
The only question in my mind that remains is whether or not the player is made aware of these effects. I imagine a series of small but noticeable icons that could be displayed on either side of the screen, or perhaps on either side of the hotbar, that would denote having a condition... though now that I think about it, there's really no reason not to inform the player. If you had a sprain, you would be aware of it; if you had the flu, you would know it, and not have to rely on secondary effects to determine these things. None of these effects is so subtle to warrant not informing the player straight-up that they have it, and being so informed does nothing to cancel their detrimental effects.
Thoughts? Opinions? Criticisms?
The reverse side also has a reverse side.
My Mods: Dungeon Mobs | (WIP) Blind Mapmaker