After playing 1.8, I realized that I really, really liked the game mechanic of hunger. It tosses up survival, but to me adds only positives. Now while cowering in your house your first night, you have something else to do. Instead of just making your routine mine and rooting through your resources, you notice your hunger has gone down a pip or a half, and you realize you need to get some food. Maybe you killed a few animals and have a few pork chops, or beef or chicken, maybe you gathered a mushroom or two, maybe you have a few seeds you got. Now, creating a farm becomes not a task you do when you are more settled down. You need food, and now. You might have to find water and either get buckets of it to make a separate farm or settle near it. This definitely influenced where I settled, because lakes and other bodies of water seemed suddenly a lot more important when I needed wheat, and fast. I know that bonemeal and mushrooms became invaluable, because one mushroom can quickly be turned into a stack with bonemeal, and those mushrooms can then be mixed into stew. You start thinking about animal traps, even moreso when 1.9 comes out and animals will be farmable. Quite simply, the hunger system has you thinking about the game on a whole new level. It shows a new aspect of moderate realism in a largely unrealistic game, which I really like. These are a few slightly scattered ideas I came up with that I think would help create and enhance this effect of realism in Minecraft.
Temperature Meter
I know this is an old one, but I have a different idea on how it should work. The temperature meter should be small, not big or obnoxious in any way, yet still noticeable enough that you pay attention to it. It's not something you should be too worried about unless you were in a situation where not paying attention to it could mean death.
The best example of this is snow biomes.
Every five seconds, the game would now check to see if the player character is within 2 blocks of an ice, snow, or snow block entity. The temperature gauge starts at a middle level when you spawn, let's call it 10. Its max capacity is 20, and its lowest level is 0. If you are within 2 blocks in any direction of one of the above things, and a five second period passes in which you are within 2 blocks of it, your temperature will go down by 1 point. If the above conditions are not met, and five seconds pass, it will raise by 1 point, unless it is currently at 10 in which case it will stop rising. But anyways, if you stay near snow for too long, approximately 50 seconds (just under a minute) then your temperature will drop to zero.
If your temperature is at 0, the timer still counts down, only this time it begins taking half-hearts away instead of temperature points. Health that you lose from freezing to death should have nothing to do with your hunger and your healing from food, so once your temperature drops to zero, the system would stop healing you if you have a high hunger bar. If you continue to neglect your temperature, you will obviously die.
The opposite end of the temperature scale should work the same way, except with fire and lava. Being 2 blocks from fire and/or lava for 5 seconds will cause it to rise by a point. If it gets to 20, then your character will catch fire, which should take care of the health loss itself. If the character is in water, then damage taken from being too hot is negated.
This addition would cause you to think before settling in a snowy biome. Snowy biomes currently (or at least before 1.8 when snow was accidentally nerfed) are a pretty good place to go. The trees are densely wooded and tall and give lots of logs, without being finicky and complicated like normal mega trees. Dark wood is also considered a good building material, because of its looks. Wolves appear in taiga biomes, which you might want for various reasons, especially with the addition of hunger. Snow biomes are also the only source of snow (duh) which you might want for decorative purposes. But with being able to freeze to death and all, you might think twice and prepare more before setting foot into the wintery lands.
Wounds
Hunger has made the fighting system a lot more realistic, easier in some ways and harder in others. No longer can you stock up on food and immediately get a health boost, but avoiding strikes with a full bar will cause you to regenerate precious health over time. However, it simply doesn't make sense to me how you could be repeatedly raked with zombie claws, maimed by spiders, stabbed by the arrows of skeletons, and thrown by the explosions of creepers, and get out of it totally fine just because you have food. Therefore, I propose the idea of random wounds that you are unable to heal from by traditional methods (hunger).
When you are attacked by an enemy, there is a LOW chance (maybe 1/20 or even lower than that, because if it was too common wounds would get extremely annoying) that its strike would turn into a wound. A wound is an area on your health bar that turns a dark red and is ignored by the hunger healing system. Wounds would each be worth about a half heart of health and, when at full hunger, would not be taken into consideration as a part that could be healed and simply left there.
Wounds would not be that bad at first, but would accumulate over time, and that would be costly. Once your health bar is composed of over half wounds, you would become injured.
In an injured state, your walking speed is only about 75% of what it used to be. Breaking blocks is slower, like if you were on a ladder. Sprinting is disabled when you are injured.
"What!?" You say? "This is a stupid idea! How can you expect someone to survive in Minecraft if they just keep getting all these wounds and eventually become crippled, and end up dying from them? That's lame, this should never be added to the game!" Well, I have a solution for that. First of all, wounds would heal over time. Every 2 days that you are wounded (and by day I mean full day+night cycle) you would heal 1/2 heart of wound, if you are wounded. Not quick enough? Well, here's my next idea.
Bandages, that can be used to heal wounds. They would be made out of paper, or paper and cloth or string or whatever, as long as it involves paper because paper is currently a useless resource for anything other than decoration. With the addition of the swamp biome and more sugar cane, more of a weight would be placed on sugar canes, which I currently feel are kind of useless unless you're baking cake or building a library. Other crops are important, why not sugar canes?
Instead of auto-heal and bandages for wounds, why not make sleeping in a bed the only way to heal a wound?
Now beds have more than one purpose
EDIT: I take it back, bandages would be cool. But only heal 1 wound (half a heart right?) per bandage, where as a bed can heal multiple wounds.
I really like this, actually. Beds are kind of boring at the moment, and it makes perfect sense that sleeping would help heal wounds. I'll add this to the main post.
I like the idea, though, If I may make a few suggestions;
The idea of realism has some merit, but you also have to think of accessibility and compromise. In particular, your idea with temperature is a good one, though I'd like to ague against it with an alternative with the idea of fatigue. Fatigue comes into effect as time goes by. After some time doing arduous tasks(like when your mining or sprinting a lot. Working, basically) sections of your food meter will turn dark red. When that happens, you won't be able to heal that section of your food bar by eating. Fatigue can also be in effect when you're in snow or dessert biomes unless your near fire for snow and under shade or in water for dessert.
To heal fatigue, you have to sleep, rest for a while in a moderate climate by either just walking or not move, or eating certain foods like mushroom soup. This system of fatigue will add challenge to the game and make things like sleeping much more important.
On the subject of the wound system; When you take ten hearts worth of damage, instead of it being random, you'll gain one wound point, which is 1/2 heart. You won't be able to heal over that wound point normally. This creates a danger of taking too much damage and makes it a very bad idea to tank damage in the long run as it decreases your overall health.
The way to heal wounds is to create bandages and/or salves or rest a while.
These two systems will add a lot more challenge without being too unfair. It will also give more incentive to play smart.
Tell me what you think of this rendition of your idea.
Temperature Meter
I know this is an old one, but I have a different idea on how it should work. The temperature meter should be small, not big or obnoxious in any way, yet still noticeable enough that you pay attention to it. It's not something you should be too worried about unless you were in a situation where not paying attention to it could mean death.
The best example of this is snow biomes.
Every five seconds, the game would now check to see if the player character is within 2 blocks of an ice, snow, or snow block entity. The temperature gauge starts at a middle level when you spawn, let's call it 10. Its max capacity is 20, and its lowest level is 0. If you are within 2 blocks in any direction of one of the above things, and a five second period passes in which you are within 2 blocks of it, your temperature will go down by 1 point. If the above conditions are not met, and five seconds pass, it will raise by 1 point, unless it is currently at 10 in which case it will stop rising. But anyways, if you stay near snow for too long, approximately 50 seconds (just under a minute) then your temperature will drop to zero.
If your temperature is at 0, the timer still counts down, only this time it begins taking half-hearts away instead of temperature points. Health that you lose from freezing to death should have nothing to do with your hunger and your healing from food, so once your temperature drops to zero, the system would stop healing you if you have a high hunger bar. If you continue to neglect your temperature, you will obviously die.
The opposite end of the temperature scale should work the same way, except with fire and lava. Being 2 blocks from fire and/or lava for 5 seconds will cause it to rise by a point. If it gets to 20, then your character will catch fire, which should take care of the health loss itself. If the character is in water, then damage taken from being too hot is negated.
This addition would cause you to think before settling in a snowy biome. Snowy biomes currently (or at least before 1.8 when snow was accidentally nerfed) are a pretty good place to go. The trees are densely wooded and tall and give lots of logs, without being finicky and complicated like normal mega trees. Dark wood is also considered a good building material, because of its looks. Wolves appear in taiga biomes, which you might want for various reasons, especially with the addition of hunger. Snow biomes are also the only source of snow (duh) which you might want for decorative purposes. But with being able to freeze to death and all, you might think twice and prepare more before setting foot into the wintery lands.
Wounds
Hunger has made the fighting system a lot more realistic, easier in some ways and harder in others. No longer can you stock up on food and immediately get a health boost, but avoiding strikes with a full bar will cause you to regenerate precious health over time. However, it simply doesn't make sense to me how you could be repeatedly raked with zombie claws, maimed by spiders, stabbed by the arrows of skeletons, and thrown by the explosions of creepers, and get out of it totally fine just because you have food. Therefore, I propose the idea of random wounds that you are unable to heal from by traditional methods (hunger).
When you are attacked by an enemy, there is a LOW chance (maybe 1/20 or even lower than that, because if it was too common wounds would get extremely annoying) that its strike would turn into a wound. A wound is an area on your health bar that turns a dark red and is ignored by the hunger healing system. Wounds would each be worth about a half heart of health and, when at full hunger, would not be taken into consideration as a part that could be healed and simply left there.
Wounds would not be that bad at first, but would accumulate over time, and that would be costly. Once your health bar is composed of over half wounds, you would become injured.
In an injured state, your walking speed is only about 75% of what it used to be. Breaking blocks is slower, like if you were on a ladder. Sprinting is disabled when you are injured.
"What!?" You say? "This is a stupid idea! How can you expect someone to survive in Minecraft if they just keep getting all these wounds and eventually become crippled, and end up dying from them? That's lame, this should never be added to the game!" Well, I have a solution for that. First of all, wounds would heal over time. Every 2 days that you are wounded (and by day I mean full day+night cycle) you would heal 1/2 heart of wound, if you are wounded. Not quick enough? Well, here's my next idea.
Bandages, that can be used to heal wounds. They would be made out of paper, or paper and cloth or string or whatever, as long as it involves paper because paper is currently a useless resource for anything other than decoration. With the addition of the swamp biome and more sugar cane, more of a weight would be placed on sugar canes, which I currently feel are kind of useless unless you're baking cake or building a library. Other crops are important, why not sugar canes?
^^Like this a lot. It makes logical sense and provides beds with another function.
Anyways, those are my ideas. I have a few more that I might add later, but what do you guys think?
Now beds have more than one purpose
EDIT: I take it back, bandages would be cool. But only heal 1 wound (half a heart right?) per bandage, where as a bed can heal multiple wounds.
I really like this, actually. Beds are kind of boring at the moment, and it makes perfect sense that sleeping would help heal wounds. I'll add this to the main post.
The idea of realism has some merit, but you also have to think of accessibility and compromise. In particular, your idea with temperature is a good one, though I'd like to ague against it with an alternative with the idea of fatigue. Fatigue comes into effect as time goes by. After some time doing arduous tasks(like when your mining or sprinting a lot. Working, basically) sections of your food meter will turn dark red. When that happens, you won't be able to heal that section of your food bar by eating. Fatigue can also be in effect when you're in snow or dessert biomes unless your near fire for snow and under shade or in water for dessert.
To heal fatigue, you have to sleep, rest for a while in a moderate climate by either just walking or not move, or eating certain foods like mushroom soup. This system of fatigue will add challenge to the game and make things like sleeping much more important.
On the subject of the wound system; When you take ten hearts worth of damage, instead of it being random, you'll gain one wound point, which is 1/2 heart. You won't be able to heal over that wound point normally. This creates a danger of taking too much damage and makes it a very bad idea to tank damage in the long run as it decreases your overall health.
The way to heal wounds is to create bandages and/or salves or rest a while.
These two systems will add a lot more challenge without being too unfair. It will also give more incentive to play smart.
Tell me what you think of this rendition of your idea.
I'm not sure about adding temperature-related damage anytime soon...
But adding wounds and bandages is a great idea. I'd like to see that in 1.9.