Devlog #5 / Week 5,6 & 7 ~ Cooking is now Operational

Date: 27.05.2020 - 17.06.2020

So in order for the game to make more sense for the player and less overwhelming when you play I knew I had to illustrate the food icons. So that's how I started the week with illustrating 18 food ingredients... in hindsight I chose way to many but I got really attached the the concept that there are 6 food groups and each group does something different in combat:

Meat - Shield
Fish - Evade
Cereal and Nuts - Weaken
Fruit - Heal
Vegetables - Attack
Dairy - Unpredictable 

And within these food groups there are 3 items ranging in different rarities; common, uncommon and rare; so the rare ones would only show up once so often and be stronger than the common ones.

Even though I probably wasted too much time on this I really enjoying coming up with these fake/ magical food items and getting to illustrate them. You'll have to check out all the final ones in-game!

From here I worked tons on the prototype! Step 1 was getting rid of the bugs I had in my slot machine like the enemy getting confused when there were no more ingredients in the slot machine. Then creating a refill system; when the slot machine is empty it will refill with 9 more ingredients! To this date I still have a bug where the enemy chooses an ingredient way too fast after the refill; I've tried increasing it's delay when the slot machine is refilling, but that wasn't working for some reason. For now I'm giving up as it's not that critical.

I actually made a huge change to the way you cook meals. I started to make a system where it checks for unique items in the pot and check what they are. 

But that made it so I had to code in every iteration possible! like what happens when there are 2 different  meats + 1 fruit. I did it for a little bit as what I did like about it is that each iteration could be unique and interesting. But it was way too much work for the little time I have I have to make this game. 

I created a new system where there are main slots and secondary slots in the player pot and depending where the ingredient is located it will change the description of the final meal.

I didn't want the player to feel limited when 'cooking' by just making the main ingredient the first ingredient you put in the pot and so I added a stirring mechanic where the bottom ingredient goes to the top. Due to all the ingredients already having gravity on them this worked perfectly as everything falls down when you move the bottom ingredient!

So here's a full look at the current prototype: I'm making 3 meals simultaneously; stirring when need be, and cooking them and after that it will give me a little description of what the full meal is. Then I can choose who to feed the meal to (even though this isn't operational just yet). Oh I forgot I also finally have your randomly generated team working; each member has a favourite food, disliked food and a food intolerance; but more to come about that!

I did not think making a cooking game was gonna get this complex; especially when it comes to the design of this game. I don't have much time left to work on the combat system but I'm super happy with how these cooking mechanics are looking! Should I just have made a cooking simulator?