Buckshot's Metabolic Rework

Buckshot's Hunger Rework

I replaced the vanilla hunger and health regeneration systems in Minecraft with a standardized metabolic engine. All actions follow a strict caloric cost calculated on a tick-by-tick basis, and all consumable items are physically broken down into specific macronutrients. I introduced a dynamic stomach queue and a new set of attributes to support physical digestion and energy calculation for survival gameplay.

The Stomach Queue and Digestion

The vanilla Minecraft hunger bar is fundamentally flawed. Nobody actually interacts with it beyond filling it to enable sprinting or healing, and it functions merely as a static timer. I replaced this with a physical stomach queue governed by macronutrients.

When you consume an item, it does not refill a global numerical bar. Instead, it is broken down into Carbohydrates, Proteins, Greens, Fats, Potions, or Rot, and placed into your stomach. The stomach queue automatically sorts these nutrients based on their biological function. Carbohydrates bypass the queue and inject themselves near the front to provide immediate fast-burning energy. Fats sink completely to the bottom of the queue for a delayed and eventual burn. Proteins and Greens slot naturally between them.

The stomach operates with a hard physical capacity dictated by your Stomach Capacity attribute. If you exceed this capacity, the engine physically rejects further consumption.

Dynamic Calorie Drain and Sleep Mechanics

Vanilla exhaustion relies on arbitrary action tracking. I introduced a tick-by-tick caloric drain calculation based on physical velocity and entity state.

If you are standing still, the engine applies a flat idle cost. Walking, swimming, and sprinting dynamically multiply this cost based on your actual horizontal movement. Your Stomach Efficiency attribute dictates the final cost of these actions.

Action Calorie Cost = Base Tick Cost * Stomach Efficiency

Sleeping through the night requires a calculated toll rather than acting as a free time skip. Because the engine knows a standard night takes roughly 8000 ticks, it calculates your exact resting metabolic rate to determine if you can survive the night.

Estimated Night Cost = Sleep Cost Per Tick * 8000

If your currently digesting calories are lower than this estimated cost, the engine physically blocks you from entering a bed because your body lacks the energy to make it to morning. When you wake up, the engine calculates the exact number of ticks passed and subtracts the true caloric cost from your stomach.

True Cellular Regeneration

Vanilla health regeneration is entirely disabled. You will no longer passively heal simply because your food bar is full. Instead, your healing rate and efficiency are mathematically dictated by the actual contents of your stomach queue.

Proteins currently digesting in your track act as multipliers to your regeneration speed, while Potions and Rot apply severe penalties. Every single hit point you recover directly taxes your current calorie pool.

Total Heal Cost = Regen Amount * Heal Cost Constant * Stomach Efficiency

If you do not have the required calories to process this cellular repair, you will not heal. If your stomach empties completely, the engine induces starvation damage based on your baseline regeneration attribute.

Dynamic Metabolic Attributes

To support this entire mathematical framework, I introduced four new dynamic attributes. These stats scale naturally and are manipulated in real-time by the contents of your stomach queue.

Stomach Capacity dictates the physical size of your digestion track. By default, a player can hold exactly ten macronutrients at once. Because this is a standard attribute, modpack developers can easily attach it to custom backpacks, heavy armor, or magical baubles to expand or shrink the player's physical limits.

Stomach Efficiency acts as a direct multiplier to all caloric drain. A baseline value of 1.0 means your actions cost standard energy. If your efficiency drops to 0.5, your metabolism is highly optimized and you burn half the required calories. If it spikes to 2.0, your body struggles and burns energy twice as fast. Digesting Greens mathematically improves your efficiency, while carrying toxic Potions or suffering from the vanilla Hunger effect severely worsens it.

Regeneration Amount determines exactly how much health is restored during a cellular repair cycle. The baseline is a single hit point, but actively digesting Proteins applies a direct percentage increase to this yield. Conversely, eating Rot or having an empty stomach applies a mathematical penalty to your healing output.

Regeneration Interval defines the physical speed of your healing cycles. By default, your body attempts to process a heal every 100 ticks. The vanilla Regeneration potion effect no longer grants free health; instead, it mathematically reduces this interval, allowing your body to convert calories into health at a vastly accelerated rate.

Configuration and Modpack Integration

The backend configuration provides direct control over the metabolic engine variables. The common configuration file allows you to adjust the global caloric energy granted by each macronutrient. You can double the baseline energy of all Carbohydrates across the entire game by changing one variable, removing the need to edit individual food items.

Food behaviors and nutritional blueprints are controlled via a custom JSON datapack system rather than hardcoded instance checks. You can create a JSON file to define exactly what nutrients an item provides, how long it physically takes to eat, and what custom potion effects it applies.

For example, to configure a custom glazed ham that takes 40 ticks to eat, wipes all vanilla potion effects from the item, provides two Proteins and one Fat, and has a 50 percent chance to cause Slowness, the JSON structure is written exactly like this:

{ "type": "item", "target": "modid:glazed_ham", "speed": "BIG", "override_vanilla": true, "nutrients": [ "PROTEIN", "PROTEIN", "FAT" ], "effects": [ { "id": "minecraft:slowness", "duration": 200, "amplifier": 0, "probability": 0.5 } ] }

Because the overarching caloric values of these nutrients are mathematically resolved by the central configuration file, any item introduced via this datapack structure is instantly balanced within the metabolic engine.

Performance and Synchronization

The framework operates without dangerous global variables or hardcoded core modifications. By utilizing modern NeoForge Data Components and Stream Codecs, the stomach data is attached directly to the player entity.

Network packets are only dispatched from the server to the client when physical changes occur in the queue, ensuring perfect synchronization with zero network bloat. Native client-side checks dynamically read the caloric state to naturally block actions like sprinting without fighting the vanilla game engine, flawlessly executing complex metabolic algebra twenty times a second.