1. Create more food sources
2. Change hunger from a punishment system (on the consequence scale) to something more fitting
3. Connect the potion and hunger systems with a cooking system.
4. Generate herbs as ingredients for various potions, healing items, and other effects
The first one is self-explanatory. Behold the blackberry bush:
(Testing screenshot, won't be quite that many. Also the fast graphics version; fancy is slightly buggy atm)
There are also raspberry, blueberry, and geoberry bushes that generate in various parts of the world. Wheat also generates naturally so that there's some form of food from the get-go besides hunting down the few pigs that spawn. Some crops (barley, potatoes) are in the works as well.
A few fruit trees are also planned. Apples, beware!
The second part is a bit more complex. Regeneration at full health is a slap-fix for a blatant lack of healing items, and with the brewing stand squarely placed at "endgame content" healing potions are only useful after you would normally need them.
The hunger bar will be replaced with a hybrid stamina/hunger bar. The player's hunger will affect how high the maximum stamina can be; the hungrier you are, the less stamina you have. This shouldn't affect mining too much, but will get in the way of combat if you run around on an empty stomach or just mined a long tunnel into a skeleton dungeon. Also, regeneration will be allowed at 70% hunger or above and be nerfed quite a bit. It's definitely not going to kill you at 0% hunger anymore; that part is rage inducing.
The lack of healing items will be addressed with the additional herbs. Aloe will be your friend; smearing it on your body will heal a few hearts directly. There will be other herbs for antidotes, speed enhancements, and possibly other nifty effects.
The cooking system will tie everything together. You will be able to combine foods in a sensible fashion, string herbs together for more powerful effects, and create potion ingredients so that you don't have to sit in the boring nether farming nether wart. I'm still working out the details of this one.
Special shout-out goes to a few mods: Pam's Harvestcraft, Xie's Farming Mod, and all of the RuneCraftory mods. I recognize these mods and have gained some inspiration from all of them, but the pieces alone do not make a coherent whole. RuneCraftory is a partial exception, but it mimics Harvest Moon too much for my liking.
