[Suggestion] Improved Booze System

So you're probably reading through this and thinking, "Lol, who's this noob, and why is he polluting our forum with crap vague suggestions?" Well, frankly, I've been rolling a few ideas about my noggin for about two weeks now, after discovering the joys of IC2's booze system. The system is rich and fulfilling, but is very lacking in explaining to other people why. I myself had spent hours upon days experimenting with different recipes and brews, following the posts by quantumleaf7895 and my own personal workings. You see, the ideas began to form when I was serving some very finely crafted ale to a group of friends on my own private server. After much extensive work and many hours of waiting, I finally managed to create a successful batch of Strong Black Ale, which was served to them. They each in turn began to question why I did it, as they saw no effects happening, and therefore saw no reason to pursue my title as Brewmaster. I was deeply saddened and began mental work laying the foundation for this extensive suggestion. I will break this post down into an outline, detailed with notes and accumulated theories for improving this amazing system to bring popularity to not only it, but IC2 as well.

1: Clearly visible effects.
This point comes from my own work peering into a modified server console after sampling each type of booze. I found that there were effects, but they were all hidden -- things like miner's fatigue, fire resistance, blindness, ect... Things that make sense to people such as myself who have seen them, but make no sense to people who do not know they are there. This is why I complied a list of possible things to affect that will be easily noticeable and beneficial to anyone drinking the beverage:
- Damage Resistance (Armor, ect)
- Health Modification (Healing, regeneration, ect.)
- FoodSaturation/hunger (foodSaturationLevel is a hidden stat that affects how quickly hunger degrades)
(Note: The list goes on, but I stopped here because these are the only effects I pursue.)

2: Using those effects as part of the brew's creation.
Here, I analyzed each part of the brewing process and applied the effects above to the process.
- Wheat: Adds damage resistance in the form of armor for the duration of the drunken state.
What I imagine here is, say for instance, a Regular Brew (1:1 solids-to-water, 1:1 hops-to-wheat, brewed instantly) will add 1 armor piece for as long as the player is drunk.

- Hops: Adds health regeneration, where the tick is always 1/2 a heart but more hops will decrease the tick time.
Here, I imagined that just as before, a Regular Brew would cause the tick to be 30 seconds long, meaning you receive 1/2 a heart every 30 seconds for as long as the player is drunk.

- Water: This affects the strength of the brew's properties, such that more water (like Lite brew) will lessen the effects of the brew, but will also lessen the strength of the drunkenness.

- Length of Fermentation: Affects the foodSaturationLevel (read more) provided by the brew.
I chose this idea because I feel that the better a brew is, the more satisfaction should be reflected from the imbiber.

- Existing effects are not threatened.
I actually rather enjoy the fact that random properties are added to some brews. This adds a sense of realism in that no two pints should be the exact same.
- Some negative effects need to be much more rare the better the brew is (fermentation length), such as blindness or miner's fatigue.

3: Drunkenness
This portion actually came about as part of inspiration I recieved from seeing another mod called Alcoholcraft, (video is the most clear showcasing I have seen thus far) which adds only beer and wine, but allows the player to become drunk on a very basic level. I have incorporated the mechanic into the ingredients, and several other places already. This is how I envision the drunkenness mechanic working:

Below is a chart showcasing the level of drunkenness a player will gain from a specific type of brew:

As usual, the level of fermentation will raise each level of gained drunkenness by +0.5 per tier, as follows:

Finally, here is the scale of drunkenness, with following effects, with a timer that constantly counts down to sobriety:
1-4: Tipsy; Bloom added to screen at each level. Each level lasts 35 seconds.
5-8: Wobbly; Motion blur added to screen at each level. Each level lasts 35 seconds.
9-14: Drunk; Slight screen shake on collision, vision blur. Each level lasts 30 seconds.
15-18: Hammered; camera pans in wobbly fashion. Each level lasts 25 seconds.
19-20: Completely Smashed; screen shakes slightly, shakes violently on collision, bare fisted punch power greatly increased. This level lasts 20 seconds.
Total time to sobriety from level 20: 600 seconds, 10 minutes = 1/2 Minecraft day or night.
Note: I avoided directly interfering with control sequence like making the character stumble and fall because adding screen effects such as these will make the actual player feel drunk, and therefore make those mistakes without the game's help. Also, this adds the ability for the player him/herself to be able to overcome the drunkenness and therefore develop a resistance and ways to work with the visual effects.

4: Other thoughts tacked onto this post.

- Using fruits or vegetables to make liquors other than rum.
- Apples: Cider
- Melon: Flavoring (Additional benefits?)
- Corn?: Whiskey
- Potatoes?: Vodka

- Giving rum (and the other liquors) similar properties as listed above, granting tiers of foodsaturation or possibly healing with heavily boosted drunk level gains on the tiers of ferment time.

- Adding other items to add flavor or various benefits to booze, such as barley or spices.

- Allow custom naming of a brew, so as to hide the type of booze it is and therefore the recipe to create it, also to add a little flavor to the entire idea of balancing the different stat bonuses.

Speaking of balancing stat bonuses, the entire reason I set up the ingredient balance system was to recreate how beer and ale are in real life -- because different people want different things, (like some like sweet, some like strong) it should be a given that different balances of flavor and bonuses appeal to different people. For instance, one fellow may want a lot of armor while another will want a lot of health regeneration. Such as the same idea with booze -- everyone has their own tastes and should find a recipe that works well for them, and beyond that -- a recipe that's worth the work the Brewmaster put into it.

All of the figures above are purely speculation that are meant to convey an idea. While it is part of my suggestion, it is open to interpretation and translation. I am simply giving an example of how I personally would write a mod that follows these ideas, and in no way wish to portray that these ideas are set in stone! That wraps up Brewmaster Esteel's thoughts on this glorious system. Again, I'm open to suggestions, constructive criticism, and would like to thank everyone that made it this far through a text-heavy (even though it's trimmed waaaay down from the first and second drafts) suggestion post. I look forward to hearing thoughts and opinions! Cheers!

Endnote: I used spoiler boxes because I wasn't sure how much the general reader has looked into booze making, and thus locked away any giveaway secrets that were needed to state my case.

Thank you for the support and optimism! As I stated in the opening of the post, I spent about two weeks collecting data, information, and finally plotting out my suggestion. I myself am an IT professional with secondary training in game design. I understand how mods are created, aiming towards using existing mechanics rather than making a bunch of new ideas. Drunkenness was indeed new, but the remainder of the items are already in-game and just need improvement in the code in order to bring the system up to spec with this suggestion. Also, everything was balanced because I believe that a player should find a suitable work space that works well for them, instead of just being any old brew.

Now, considering your questions and comments -- I actually wrote out a draft for this suggestion in a word processor complete with details, charts, graphs, and a few other explanation tools. However, the original draft turned out to be just under 2.5x the character limit. I trimmed it down over the next few drafts to around 300 under character limit, but ultimately cut out most of my explanations. I'll use user comments and questions to expand a little more as the thread becomes increasingly more populated.

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This is pretty well thought out in that they balance each other based on the ratio, almost allowing customizable positive effects. I don't like the brewed instantly for a regular brew though, I think the point of booze is that it is supposed to take time to earn it

I don't much care for it either, but I used it there because it served as a nice base to convey the idea I was going for. Actually, I had named a theory for a new stage on instant in the drafts called Lag, referencing the Lag Phase of Beer Making . This stage would have no benefits whatsoever, and have a 90% chance of food poisoning, then move the Brew stage up to 30 minutes, illustrated below:

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Yeah, this should probably keep existing effects in there, this suggestion should be seen as an addition not a complete rework (although it kind of is)

I'm not going to lie. I attempted to make it an improved system, but in some places it came out to be an overhaul. I apologize, and thus is why I leave the idea open to interpretation and translation in order to better mold the suggestion into IC2.

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Are you talking about collision with blocks? Collision with anything? This seemed a bit vague to me

I hated that this part was cut from the suggestion. It was very vague when I reread it myself, and wasn't sure how other users would accept it, but this is why we have comments and questions! I'll explain.

Say you are traveling along a flat horizontal surface such as the ground, and you come to a wall. If you directly walk into the wall, collision stops you from clipping through it. While drunk, however, when you collide with that wall from an angle, your screen would shake slightly, but running into it perpendicularly would cause the screen to shake more. Also, the "collision" would apply to 1-block high edges such as on hills or cave hangings, but cause a smaller screen shake than running into a wall. In short, "On Collision" means moving your character directly into a flat vertical surface will cause the screen to shake when you touch the wall or surface, at respectable amounts when either running, walking, or none at all while sneaking.

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I don't think we should needlessly implement additional booze types, although I do think the flavoring idea could be expanded upon and make a good addition to the main post

I had added this as an afterthought, primarily aimed at the crop suggestion section. Having multiple uses for any given crop is always a better case to add that crop to the system. Speaking of, I would like to take a moment to mention something I had to cut from my draft: Hops.

Hops are a bit of a nuisance. Because they are a random crossbreed in agriculture, any brewing must wait for the player to create them. I feel that this way of aquiring hops makes the brewing system even less useful than need-be. On one game, I managed to attain a hops plant within an hour of crossbreeding. In another, it took me over 20. I'd like to see a more stable system that hops can be gathered, such as adding them to the world as a random spawn in the same way that tin and copper were added. This would make hops a more viable crop, and also allows brewing a larger profile within IC2.

Again, thank you for your support and optimism! I look forward to more posts like these. Until next time, Cheers!

That is something I will definitely be doing. After I decided that it would be better to allow IC2 to have these specs than myself writing a second layer mod, I also decided that I'm going to throw my full support behind this project. Also, I appreciate your positive comments, and look forward to your "in-depth review." Just as CrafterOfMines57 has done, feel free to ask for clarification or comment on any part of the suggestion. If you have an idea that would make this suggestion thread better in any way, I'm very interested to hear it. Cheers!

Hello, again! Please excuse any errors or out of place information here - I have a rather enduring headache at the moment, and waiting for the ibuprofen to kick in. Here goes --

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"Clearly visible effects" -What do you mean by this? Most of the potion effects are hidden? Please explain.

What I meant by "Clearly visible effects" simply put are effects that are noticeable to anyone drinking the beverage, not just someone who knows they're there. Effects like healing, hunger, ect. Something that lets the player know that the item they used is beneficial in some way immediately other than "You drink tall, frothy drink." and wondering what it did. For example, when I first started to brew, I sampled a beer and got some kind of swirly effects around me. I had no idea what they were or what they represented; and was confused as to the nature of what effect the beer had. Now, because I know of the background effects like fire resistance, I understand the benefits of brewing. However, if I served the brew to someone who had no idea what it would do, I'm not sure that they would understand. Thus meaning "Clearly visible" because I would like to see the effects clearly and immediately such as seeing my health begin to regenerate.

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"The part about mechanics" -I don't really care about these, but they would seem to be a very good addition, and are well thought out and not OverPowered

I'd like a little clarification on mechanics -- do you mean how the ingredients are balanced? That's what I assume when you talk about them being not OP. If that is your topic, I made them to convey the idea and open-ended for this thread. I balanced them out because I don't care for "lol make a nuke cannon that shoots like a million miles lololol" frankly because I like balance and would see brewing molding into a natural part of endgame Minecraft rather than being some busted addition that makes the game easy mode. The second reason I balanced them out was to create a sense of "This brew works the best for me, because I want X, but I also want Y. but not too much Z." This goes back to the primordial thought process of Minecraft in that it's the player's world that the system supports, not the other way around.

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"The part at the end where you discussed stuff" -If you have any more information that you had to cut from the OP, I would appreciate it. This is a good idea.

Most of what was cut from the OP was lengthy explanation, and most of what wasn't has already been touched on. The other bits were other ideas for extra ingredients, but mostly belongs in the agriculture section. I'll read back over the original draft and pull anything that hasn't been mentioned yet. I think at least one thing I will be posting at a later time is the flavoring and extra ingredients section I plotted out. The extra charts and graphs will likely show up, when I can get around to having time to make another large post. Part of that OC is actually coming up in the next section.

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"Hops Mini-Rant"

I actually had a very similar conversation about this with my server members over vent. The idea was shot down initially because the programming would add a lot of new metadata values, would therefore affect the trade-o-mat even further, and be fairly difficult and lengthy to program. If the thread wants to go with this idea, Nanomanz has credit for adding it to the suggestion as of this post. The way I had planned for the idea to work also included using the hydration cell as an added level of water, then using a Harvest Moon-Inspired grading system for crops, assigning Common-Good-Great as E, D, C, B, A, S. The brew would then average the grade of all the ingredients, also looking at the two types of water, and create a brew with bonuses reflecting the quality.

This is Brewmaster Esteel, looking forward to more comments and additions! Cheers!

Sincerest apologies about the double post. I was skimming the thread as well as my OC draft, and remembered that I promised the extra ingredients section. I'll go ahead and post it here, and re-purpose the appropriate information in the crop thread at a later time. Note: This portion was also cut because of the lengthy programming and metadata hodgepodge that would make up its meat.

2.1: Additional Ingredients
Think, for a moment, about how beer is made in real life. Major names like Budd Light, Samuel Adams, and Smirnoff use ingredients that make their beer different from others. Think - Budd Light Lime, one of the many wonderful spiced flavors of Samuel Adams like Octoberfest , which uses caramel, toffee, and 3 other roasted malts to create a seasonal beer with smooth flavor, or the flavored beer known as Smirnoff which comes in Lime, Fruit Punch, Grape, and several other varieties. Of course, because the player isn't actually tasting the beer, there needs to be some particular benefit to each flavor added that makes the flavor worthwhile in the beer itself. Barley is commonly used as a substitute or compliment for wheat, but in this case can be used as an added item to strengthen wheat's abilities in the brew, such as for this suggestion, giving the brew more armor-adding capability. Spices are used many times to compliment hops, but are difficult because "Spices" as an item could theoretically be difficult to put into logic as a Minecraft item. I personally suggest a craft -- sugarcane, seeds, and a pumpkin in a horizontal fixture to create 3 Spices as an item to be used here. Spices would then be added as an extra ingredient to strengthen the power of Hops in the brew, such as removing 0.5 seconds from the tick time of the hops' regeneration.

Obviously, adding more than two unique flavors would be wasteful, or adding too much of a single item would cause the brew to be overpowering. Both of these issues would realistically cause the brew to taste badly, making the effects wasted, but serves to add depth to the difficulty of creating a good brew. In order to put a soft cap on ingredients, I propose using food poisoning -- to reflect the horrid taste created. For each additional ingredient past the second, exponential chances of food poisoning arise from the brew, such as 20% with the third, 40% with the fourth, 80% with the fifth, and 100% from there onward, with no effects gained when food poisoning occurs. The second would deal with ratios -- adding another ratio to brewing is extensive work, especially when working with that ratio being optional and only used when additional ingredients are necessary. Below illustrates the ratios that I put together for this section:

The Name portion would be the final title before the fermentation name, and the brew-to-extra ratio refers to all other ingredients to extras; such that a batch made from 3 wheat, 3 hops, 6 water, and 4 melon slices would be a Flavored Brew, because 1:1 hops-to-wheat is a regular darkness, 1:1 solids-to-water is regular thickness, and 12:4 or 3:1 ingredients-to-extras is Flavored. The effects of using two ingredients would add the ingredients together, such that in the previous idea, replace 2 melon slices with 2 spices to arrive at the same answer. If two or more are used, Punch becomes the {Name of Ingredient} in the chart, or Spice if spices are used. Below are some examples of each.

3 Wheat
1 Hops
6 Water
2 Melon Slices
= Lite Alcfree Splashed Brew

1 Wheat
2 Hops
3 Water
1 Melon Slice
2 Apples
= Dark Punch Brew

2 Wheat
1 Hops
3 Water
1 Spice
2 Apples
= White Spiced Brew

I added negative effects to bolster the idea of "Finding a balance that suits the player." I used what effects I could think of, but not all are optimal. I also feel that there are likely other ingredients (such as Golden Apples) that could be super additives which could make the brew utterly amazing by themselves in some way.

Below is another section I had completely forgotten about, but needs to be mentioned:

5: Storage
This section is one that troubles me. While using mugs would be a great idea for use in the trade-o-mat, I would like to see a method of storage that doesn't take up space in the booze barrel. What I was thinking was a keg or cask that worked like a cell in that it had a charge bar showing how full the cask was (up to 64 mugs), could be placed in the inventory or a chest, and used the same metadata scheme as a mug containing the same brew. I would say the most effective method to use the cask would be to place it atop another block, and place a treetap on it to use the same way a barrel would to fill mugs; only difference is that a cask could be broken and placed into the inventory with the brew still inside.

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Just do not like alcohol and whole that system. I think many counts it as too complicate.

You're probably right. This is why I came up with this suggestion -- so that the system will become more popular because of its usefulness and benefits, or that the few of us Brewmasters that roam servers can make people like you something that even potions can't match. Cheers!

While a fiery effect (such as creatures nearby taking a small amount of damage) from Blaze Rods would be cool, I am attempting to keep the effects bound to biological ingredients, mostly stepping in time with the process of making real booze rather than potions. Blaze Dust, however, could be an idea for an alternate ingredient in spices... Cheers!