The Perfect Bowl News

As you may notice, this update is a little late. The month of July has been pretty busy so I couldn't work on The Perfect Bowl as much. Additionally most of the work done is on systems so there isn't much going on visually. I suspect this would be the trend moving forward as I would also be focusing on the actual meat of the game which is story related stuff.




[h2]Unity Dialogue System Plugin[/h2]
This is where the bulk of my time working on The Perfect Bowl has been.
Trying to pickup a new system is time consuming but from what I've seen so far, this would be worth it in the long run.


[h2]Shifting viewports[/h2]
Getting this to work was quite tricky.
This was done using two cameras, manipulating their viewport transforms and FOVs using Tweens.
It took me awhile to understand that I had to make sure I had two separate post processing volumes covering each camera so that each camera has their own bokeh effect.
Also each camera needed to have its own "UI Camera" as I wanted the dialogue UI only to appear in the customers side.
The most tedious part however was needing to change the anchor values for ALL the UI in the assembly viewport. When I started development, I did not anticipate the need for two separate dynamic viewports (which was dumb in hindsight) and made the UI work only for a full screen viewport.


[h2]Writing The Narrative[/h2]
The part that I dread the most ːsteamsadː
For all its pretty visuals, The Perfect Bowl is actually a narrative game first and foremost which means there is a lot of stress in making a really good story with memorable characters.
To be honest, I tried putting this off to a later stage because:

1. I've been thinking about it as much as possible before I start on it
   
2. I'm scared to do this part
   

But the time has finally come where I cannot delay this any further. If I'm to make a player (or publisher) remotely interested in continuing the The Perfect Bowl, I'd have to start now. I've done my research and understand that writing is an iterative process just like game development so I just have to trust the process and know that it will get better over time.


Didn't work on any bug fixing this time.

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Check out my first post on the game I'm currently working on, The Perfect Bowl, here: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2976790/view/4264427597925989204

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[h2]Basic Credit System (top left popup in gif)[/h2]
A pretty simple but I think important mechanic in the game.
The credit system essentially limits the player from being able to spam all the ingredients at once when serving a customer.
This provides some sort of framework that the player needs to work around in order to get to a result that they would like. Hopefully this would help breed some creative thinking when assembling the bowl. Once player testing starts, I'll be able to refine this even more.
This mechanic pulls second duty by providing an immersive element to bring the player deeper into the world (which I would get to sometime in the future).

[h2]Basic Flavour System (bottom left popup in gif)[/h2]
Another core gameplay mechanic that is the bridge between the Ramen bowls and the characters that the player would interact with.
The flavour system is just a bunch of stats that is kept track as players add elements to the bowl. Each flavour stat corresponds to a character trait that it can affect.
The idea is that each of these flavour types affect a character trait and based on the resulting profile, the appropriate storyline would continue in that direction.
It is currently in a very basic phase just showing the values as text. Eventually it would be represented in a heuristics graph form.

This is how I assign the flavour-character traits pair:

• Hearty => Disagreeable (Less flexible in their thinking)
  
• Light => Agreeable (More flexible in their thinking)
  
• Rich => Outspoken (More willing to share ideas and put them on the table)
  
• Refreshing => Reserved (More analytical about the situation before coming to a conclusion)
  
• Rough (couldn't really find a better word for it but its in the realm of feeling after you eat a spicy
  Ramen) => Straight Forward (More likely to get straight to the point)
  
• Smooth => Delicate (More likely to ease into a topic for conversation)
  

[h2]SFX & BGM[/h2]

I had a very particular vision of using a radio for the BGM. With some research I was able to use the audio effects provided in Unity to do a simple but effective radio sound.
I think it would be pretty fun to have an actual interactive radio within the game to help with immersion but I'll put that on the back burner for now. I would also like to implement an option to tune how much of the radio effect to have as I'm quite sure not everyone likes it.

• Stored images are deleted as well when a Preset is deleted
  
• Topping outline is hidden when not in the correct interaction mode
  
• Polaroid previews smoothly transition to next Preset preview now
  
• Disable saving of Presets if any topping is not in a bowl
  
• Topping transform panel becomes hidden when in camera mode
  
• Trouble with github pull requests
  
• Fixed random ui value change after merging to master
  

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Hey there! I'm extremely excited and happy to present to you The Perfect Bowl's first announcement! This post will mark my public commitment to completing The Perfect Bowl as a game. (Or at the very least, a playable demo).

For some background, the trailer presented in the store page had been a mix of a mock up and proof of concept for a mentorship program I was in previously thus its representation is a little backdated. Since my decision to make this game a reality, a full on refactoring of code and serious redesigns have been made and will continue to be made as I journey on cementing the art and game feel.

As a starting point and first post, I'd like to present some major updates to show that I have been hard at work.

P.S. Just to be transparent about it, you might have realised that some of the illustrations and backgrounds in the trailer have been generated using AI. I promise you that they are there just for placeholders and mock up purposes only. The final build would acquire relevant assets through proper means.

P.P.S Please consider following me on my socials and signing up for my newsletter to get more direct announcements especially if you're interested in signing up for playtests. All appropriate links can be found here

[h2]Additional Features[/h2]

[h3]Preset System[/h3]
Players will be given an option to save their previously created Ramen bowls. This provides a shortcut to assembling a bowl that they use often. (Or if they just like their creation)

[h2]Visual Updates[/h2]

[h3]UI Changes[h3]
There is an ongoing effort to make the selection and moving of toppings as user friendly as possible while keeping the UI nice and clean. So far this has been my solution but until I actually do some player testing, I wouldn't really know. In the mean time, this will have to do.


[h2]Soup trails and overflowing bowls[/h2]
A totally unnecessary but absolutely fun feature added was the ability to have the soup spill across the work surface.

[h2]Regular Updates[/h2]
If you've read this far, thank you so much for reading. This section deals just deals with stuff going on behind the scene.

[h3]Code Refactoring[/h3]
As previously mentioned, I've been doing some code refactoring just so that scaling is easier in the long run.

[h3]Mode State Machine[/h3]
I've coded a very simple state machine (the a loose sense) to just help keep track of what the player is currently doing. Eg. Pouring soup, moving a bowl, moving toppings. This makes it easier to toggle certain features on or off to prevent accidental activation of an unrelated feature.

[h3]Marketing Efforts[/h3]
Probably the bane of my existence but something I'll have to get used to doing going forward. I've been preparing some videos to be posted on my socials to hopefully get the word about my game out there.

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