The blue stamina bar max = hunger. As long as your stamina max is all the way to the right you know your hunger is greater or equal to 100. As soon as your stamina max dips below and reads 95 or 90 or 85 etc you know your exact hunger by glancing at the screen.
Yes, a warning pops up when your hunger goes below 75 I believe but you’ll be able to tell immediately by looking at the stamina bar as soon as it goes below 100 (or whatever the max is later on)
You're right that the max stamina bar lets you know when you're starting to incur hunger penalties, but I didn't know that as a newbie. I had to google it to understand where my stamina was going, and that I had to check a menu to see my hunger and thirst. Also, you don't know about thirst penalties until it's already kicking in at 75 or whenever the icon appears, meaning you have to keep checking the menu if you want to keep yourself topped off and avoid penalties. They could just put a couple numbers/bars in the corner of your hud under your health/stam bars or something, and immediately all becomes clear and many button presses are saved.
While they're at it, I'd like some kind of indicator to let me know I'm feeling warm/cold before I become hot/cold enough to start incurring penalties. It doesn't have to be the actual temperature, since obviously you don't have the weather channel or a proper thermometer to tell you the exact temp. Instead, it could just be your impression of the temperature, maybe even just a color coded word, like warm -> hot -> sweltering going from yellow -> orange -> red, and then cool -> cold -> freezing going from light blue -> dark blue -> purple or something like that. That way you can see if you're feeling warm or cool before you get so hot or cold that you're taking penalties, giving you the opportunity to do something about it before it's a problem, like changing clothes, drinking coffee, or just leaving the area if it's going to be an issue.
Maybe I'm just an optimizer, though. I like to be able to avoid penalties from things like hunger/thirst/temperature as much as possible, so I'd really like to have an easy way to know about it
before it becomes a problem. It's not like the game doesn't provide this information to you already, I just wish it were easier to see instead of requiring you to stop what you're doing and look at a menu.
I know I can just install a mod, it just seems like an odd choice to me to not make this kind of info readily available in a survival game is all.
Take a look at this screenshot:
https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/1059/images/288/288-1552776709-1828068334.jpeg
There. Simple, easy to read, available on the HUD so you know it's important to keep an eye on, and it only very slightly increases the size of the hud. I would prefer if the temperature were replaced with your character's impression of the temperature instead of the exact number, but the point remains.
I'll be using this mod, so my problem is solved, but I felt it was worthwhile to make it known that this was a little confusing to a newbie like me.
I'll stop harping on it now, thanks for any consideration this receives.