Medicines. Expand description

[IdleSol]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

There are many medicines in the game. Many of them have rather vague descriptions. And the result of their action is not always accurately defined.

For example, let's take a hemostatic powder and a potassium iodide tablet.

If with the powder, everything is clear enough. Take it and apply it to the wound. If the bleeding does not stop, repeat. Instant results that any player can understand.

What about the tablet? Will there be a result from taking two tablets at the same time? How long does this tablet last. Does it work at all?

Solution you would like.

Therefore, I suggest that the following information be added to the description of medicines:

• how long the drug lasts
• whether there is a benefit from increasing the dose (at least a verbal description: none, small, significant, etc.)
• (optionally) the effect of the action expressed in figures. In addition to the verbal description, add some figures
• (optional) adverse effects

For an example, let's take potassium iodide tablets:

Cataclysm-DDA/data/json/items/comestibles/med.json

Line 1204 in 5f6f5e0

"name": { "str": "potassium iodide tablet" },

"A potassium iodide tablet. If taken prior to exposure, they help to mitigate injury caused by radiation absorption.",

Its descriptions could be supplemented: Take one tablet every two hours. Increasing the dosage has no effect. Has no side effects. (Reduces the radiation exposure received, by a factor of about 3)

Either, more standardized:

• action time: 2 hours
• dose escalation effect: none
• side effects: none
• effect: reduces the level of radiation received by a factor of about 3

Cataclysm-DDA/data/json/items/comestibles/med.json

Line 1218 in 5f6f5e0

"effects": [ { "id": "iodine", "duration": 7200 } ]

(The effect is hard coded. And I'm not sure I found the right lines in the srс)

Second example: a Prussian blue tablet.

Cataclysm-DDA/data/json/items/comestibles/med.json

Line 1624 in 5f6f5e0

"name": { "str": "Prussian blue tablet" },

• time of action: 1 hour
• dose escalation effect: small increase in the duration of the drug
• side effects: none
• effect: removes up to 10 mSv

Cataclysm-DDA/data/json/items/comestibles/med.json

Line 1638 in 5f6f5e0

"effects": [ { "id": "pblue", "duration": 3600 } ]

Cataclysm-DDA/data/json/effects.json

Lines 2837 to 2838 in 5f6f5e0

	"id": "pblue",
	"base_mods": { "rad_chance": [ 600 ], "rad_min": [ -1 ] },

Describe alternatives you have considered.

Instead of fixing the description, you can add appropriate fields (effect duration) to display in the interface.

Additional context

No response

[GuardianDll]

put it to the extreme degree, having medicine boxed with relative instructions would be interesting
stepping back from extreme, yes, sure, having information about need to be taken three times a day, X pills max, possible side effects and would be a reasonable information to have

tho it has a problem of our medicine being still pretty abstract, i think it would be a fine addition

[worm-girl]

People may not be aware that certain medicines got large overhauls this year, particularly analgesics, and now function as vitamins, and afaik this was intended as the model going forward for all drugs. For those medicines, it shouldn't be hard for the game to gather up the data on vitamin content in the drug, the maximum safe amount a person can take, the amount required to be effective, and the decay timer, and intelligently put together a readout about how much to take, how often to take it, and at what point overdose will occur. It'd be really neat if this readout required some kind of proficiency to see.

Since various mutations etc. might change these parameters, you could have the box display the dosage for average adult/child (just calculate for a medium and small character, respectively), so that non-proficient characters could simply read the packaged instructions, and loose pills would be a bit of a gamble for them. Similarly, you could hide the dosage information for mutants or particularly exotic drugs behind more difficult proficiencies.

The game already kind of does this for regular vitamins, and smartphones etc. have the app that tracks nutrition, so it'd be a matter of copying that method and adjusting the readout and stuff.

See #70239 for more info.

[IdleSol]

I looked more closely at med.json and topic #70239. And it looks like a problem. Or a lot of manual labor.

The problem is that different drugs use different recording structures.

For example. Let's take the pill from the first post. The duration of action is defined in the duration of effect field.

Cataclysm-DDA/data/json/items/comestibles/med.json

Line 1621 in 5f6f5e0

"id": "prussian_blue",

    "use_action": {
      "type": "consume_drug",
      "activation_message": "You take some Prussian blue.",
      "effects": [ { "id": "pblue", "duration": 3600 } ]
    }

For ibuprofen, vitamins are additionally added, which will have their own different effect and their own duration.

Cataclysm-DDA/data/json/items/comestibles/med.json

Line 150 in 34aab02

"id": "ibuprofen",

    "use_action": {
      "type": "consume_drug",
      "activation_message": "You take some %s.",
      "effects": [ { "id": "pkill1_nsaid", "duration": 9000 } ]
    },
    "vitamins": [ [ "vit_ibuprofen", 216 ] ]

Cataclysm-DDA/data/json/vitamin.json

Line 75 in 65aca7f

"id": "vit_ibuprofen",

    "excess": "nsaid_eff",
...
    "rate": "100 s",

Duration of effect: 216 x 100 / 60 x 60 = 6 h. (This is an effect that increases blood pressure. An additional problem is that the effect does not have a name field and cannot be substituted in the descriptions in the side effects section).

But that's not all. Let's take a stimulant:

Cataclysm-DDA/data/json/items/comestibles/med.json

Line 24 in 34aab02

"id": "adderall",

    "stim": 24,
    "fun": 10,
...
    "use_action": { "type": "consume_drug", "activation_message": "You take some %s." }

In this case, instead of the effect and its duration, the value of the dose(?) is specified. And the duration, apparently, is hard-coded somewhere in the functions(?).

And that's just at first look. Perhaps there are some other variants. And this is either manual work or a multilevel function of the if-then-else kind.

I certainly hope someone will take it up. But it is more rational to postpone it until standardization (will it take place?). Or limit yourself to adding only one “effect duration” field to the drug information window.

Look at the use_action section, effects subsection. If there is a duration parameter, convert it to hours and display it in the pill information window. If there is no field, do nothing.

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