The Perfect Bowl News

Happy Holidays! December was spent focusing on initial playtests and impressions. I'm proud to announce that the playtests were a success in that game breaking bugs were found and insights were gleamed. The gist of it is that the game loop didn't have enough depth to it. I thought of some solutions which would hopefully address these issues.

Additional features to add over the next month:

1. Inventory and Supply Shop System (Completed)
   
2. Reworked Flavour System
   
3. End day Favourite Bowl Mechanic
   

[h2]Inventory and Supply Shop System[/h2]
In the hopes of making the player be more conscious of what ingredients they add to the Ramen bowl, I thought I would make ingredients have a limited amount they can use (save for a few starting ingredients). This would tie in with a reworked flavour profile mechanic which I would go into detail in the next update.

The player then restocks their inventory before every work day starts. The availability of each ingredient and whether or not its on Sale (Half off its price) is dependent on its rarity.

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November Update Post:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2976790/view/536587777549009673

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November is basically a push to try to get a fully playable version of the game. Adding additional art work and features so that I can get some play testers to prod the game for game breaking bugs or extreme friction causing UI/UX.


[h2]Day 01 (Tutorial Level) and Day 02 Dialogue Sequences[/h2]
Using Pixel Crushers Dialogue System plugin definitely made this much easier than it would have been without. Most of the time spent of this was modifying the system to fit my needs and create exceptions to the pace game for the tutorial stage. Introducing features bit by bit.


[h2]Dialogue Options Hints[/h2]
This feature was thought up when I reallized even I had a difficult time trying to figure out what combinations of flavour would lead to which dialogue branch. I also wasn't going to design and develop a complex system to take into account of how every flavour would affect every dialogue. Just the illusion of it would suffice I think. So simplifying the process would hopefully make the game less of a guessing game. This is another one of those features that I think would be good but cant really confirm until I get play testers which fortunately would be soon.


[h2]Credits and Ingredient List Layout Changes[/h2]
The layouts showing the remaining credits and ingredients used have been adjusted a little bit to make it easier to look at

[h2]Customer Portrait and Name[/h2]
A feature to help with immersion.

• Topping transformer UI is properly active when Selecting topping when builder panel is open
  
• Credit and flavour fields get updated properly. Fields affected by soup get recorded twice causing values to not reset
  
• Next and previous buttons do not showing up when previewing photos if there is only one available photo
  
• UI panels appear and disappear appropriately when in photo taking mode or preview and preset
  
• Tutorial animated sequences playing properly
  
• Loading a preset updates system that checks if all required types of ingredients are present
  
• Target location of bowl updates properly when serving
  

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October Update Post:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2976790/view/4463723296443072958

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This month will be one of those months where not much is happening in the foreground but significant progress has been made in the background.

I bit the bullet and finally have a dialogue and story planned out for the first few in game days of The Perfect Bowl. Its only something temporary just to give future investors and collaborators an idea of the story and full game loop. This took about half a month.

The remaining half a month I was able to add in some world building elements for better immersion and minor polishing.

Unfortunately no bug busting this time.



[h2]New Location Sequence[/h2]


Welcome to Calor. A country found on the Antarctic planet of Xibalba. What better place to serve a nice warm bowl of Ramen eh?

To help with immersion and storytelling, I have added in some animated sequences to show when the main character has travelled to a new location in Calor. Each location will have its own set characters to meet and local ingredients from which the main character can create special toppings.

[h2]New Day Sequence[/h2]


Games in this genre has a low cost/high effectiveness staple in adding to the world building and that would be the Daily News section. Its an easy way to give players non-essential context but provides an effective illusion that there is a world out there that is very much alive.

I decided to approach this as if the main character was drinking his hot drink and reading the daily on goings both in the country and locally just before he starts his day. Again not essential to the gameplay but helps with the immersion. Plus it provides the player some nice context as to where they are working for the day.

[h2]Daily Sepcials[/h2]


The Daily Specials feature will probably be reworked some time in the future but the general idea is to give the players a variety of ingredients in each location to keep things relatively fresh and something to look forward to.



[h2]Icons[/h2]


The buttons are finally no longer just arbitrary colored boxes that don't mean anything to anybody except me.

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