Hunger++
Hunger++ allows you to increase the rate at which hunger reduces players' saturation and food levels from all actions, such as mining, walking, sprinting, fighting, and so on. The increase is configurable, so it can be set to 2 times as fast as normal, or 3.57 times, or whatever you'd like. You can also use it to decrease the rate, so it takes longer for hunger to affect you from those actions, though that isn't the primary focus of the plugin.
Additionally, Hunger++ allows you to optionally set a constant steady drain on your saturation/food level regardless of any other actions you may take, so that even holding still, you will gradually starve to death. This can be used by itself or in conjunction with the hunger rate increase above.
I created Hunger++ because while the idea was simple, I couldn't find a plug-in that actually did it, and I wanted this for a tougher challenge on my games, along with other challenges.
The config file is pretty self-explanatory with comments telling you how things work, and you can use whatever values you like, but for a quick set up, try these values:
Easier difficulty:
hunger_rate: 1.0
basal_metabolic_rate: 1.5
Moderate difficulty:
hunger_rate: 2
basal_metabolic_rate: 0.75
Hard difficulty:
hunger_rate: 3
basal_metabolic_rate: 0.5
NOTE: On the hard settings, food will need to be your number 1 priority, quite possibly even before shelter, as you will be at starving after 1 full day/night cycle even if you don't move. With regular movement, digging, fighting, and jumping, you can easily starve to death before the first day is over if you're not careful to find food quickly. It is survivable (I often play at this setting), but you will need to rethink your priorities and playstyle, and even just surviving from day to day can be a challenge at first.
Remember that jumping and fighting use up food especially quickly even normally, and that is amplified with Hunger++.
For extreme challenge, try the following:
Famine difficulty:
hunger_rate: 6
basal_metabolic_rate: 0.25
Super Famine difficulty:
hunger_rate: 10
basal_metabolic_rate: 0.15
Ultra Famine difficulty:
hunger_rate: 20
basal_metabolic_rate: 0.075
NOTE: Lasting through until even just the second morning on Ultra Famine will be quite difficult.
Config file
Hunger:
hunger_rate increases the exhaustion level so that you hit the exhaustion limit and therefore lose saturation/food sooner than you normally would. This affects all things that drain saturation/food, such as walking, jumping, sprinting, fighting, and so forth (This includes increasing the amount of hunger that eating rotten flesh causes, making it a food of last resort).
1 is normal, 2 is twice the normal hunger rate, 3 is 3 times the normal hunger rate, and so forth. Decimal numbers like 3.56 are fine. Additionally, setting it to negative numbers will lengthen the time it takes for hunger to affect you. -2 means hunger will drain your food twice as slowly as normal, -3 will make your saturation/food bar last three times as long as usual, and so forth. hunger_rate: 1
hunger_rate: 1
basal_metabolic_rate enables a configurable steady drain on your saturation/food levels that occurs independently of and in addition to normal drains like walking, jumping, sprinting, fighting, and so forth. This means you will slowly get hungrier even if you are holding still, not moving at all, though not as quickly as you will if you're doing other things.
0 is disabled, as is normal in Minecraft. The number you put in is the number of Minecraft day/night cycles (20 minutes each) it will take for a newly spawned player with 5 saturation points and 20 food points to completely run out of food and start starving. For example, putting down 3 will mean a newly spawned player will start starving in three Minecraft days, assuming they held completely still the whole time. Decimal numbers like 3.56 are fine. Any additional activities like moving, mining, and so on, would increase that as normal. NOTE: The hunger_rate is factored into the basal_metabolic_rate setting as well, so setting basal_metabolic_rate to 3 days would give 3 days no matter what hunger_rate was set to.
basal_metabolic_rate: 0
debug mode will show the new exhaustion starting point and the current exhaustion level in the console if set to 1. 0 is disabled.
debug_mode: 0
You can download the latest version here: HungerPlusPlus v0.4a
Notes on the ratios between hunger_rate and basal_metabolic_rate
In real life, the majority, and usually the large majority, of all calories a person burns for a day are just to keep the body functioning (In other words, what you'd burn just breathing, keeping your heart pumping, etc, even if you stayed in bed all day, sleeping). This is represented by the basal_metabolic_rate setting. The calories burned through activity, on the other hand, are represented by the hunger_rate setting. This means anything other than sleeping, including everything from reading a book or typing on a computer, to lifting heavy weights or running a marathon.
While the calories burned through your basal metabolism generally remain the same, the calories burned through activity vary heavily, depending on the person's level of exertion throughout the day. Two people might have the same basal metabolic rate, and therefore burn the same number of calories while at rest, but vary wildly in their calories burned through activities for the day. For the first person, who is very sedentary, has a desk job, and doesn't exercise, the calories burned through activity might only be 15% of the total burned that day. The second person, who undergoes extreme exertion from a very demanding physical job or performs heavy exercise all day, might end up with their calories burned through activity to be close to 50% of the total calories burned that day.
You can, of course, put the settings to whatever numbers you want, but above I have some suggested starting points/difficulty levels.
Assuming that the average day of a person in a Minecraft world is very physically demanding and exhausting, these suggested settings have a ratio that is almost a 50/50 split between metabolism hunger (Just keeping your body alive) and hunger from your actions (such as mining, fighting, sprinting, jumping, etc). This assumes heavy activity, but will, of course, depend strongly on your actual activity level from day to day.
Donating:
If you enjoy Hunger++, please consider donating by clicking on the "Donate" button in the upper right corner of the page. Any amount is welcome, and regardless, I hope Hunger++ improves your Minecraft playing experience!