Myre’s Massive Mealtime - development (v0.604 - 6/27 games and words)

[Juxtaterrestrial]

Myre’s Massive Mealtime v0.603

Download here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/myres-massive-v0-130313162

I revised about half of the pre dinner conversation text and added the new poses and expressions from the last year. Definitely restructured the flow of a few passages to make it feel less mechanical. That included writing some new in-between bits. I also took notes on where to add new variant content in the future.

Ironically me adding those new poses to the flow, did not account for the new additional poses I made this month. When I say 12 (or 24) base images, i mean the poses with Myre bent over. 3 emotions x 4 belly levels x 2 outfits. The number of expression for the bent over pose went from 3 to 10, and the number of poses went from 2 to 4. Multiply that up and you get 160 (or 320) new images for that pose.

I messed around a lot with actually getting more - grafting hands from the other poses, but i couldn’t get anything to look right in the time I was working. I do want to take another look at trying for more, but wanted to lock in and get the ones now in the game.

Changes:

• Revised about half the pre-dinner conversation events for spelling, flow, poses/ expressions.

• Made more new Myre facial expressions and poses from existing art. Also implemented them! 12 images have become 160 images (counting work outfit variant, the numbers are 24 → 320. Specifically these are variants of the bent over pose.

This project only exists because of the generosity of patrons. Thank you

[Juxtaterrestrial]

A gif from testing new poses and expressions - makes her look like she’s doing a little dance

[Juxtaterrestrial]

Been working on a side thing

[unknownman115]

sees all the artwork, progress, a Clara like character added, and the potential for shenanigans to occur hhhmmmmmm, proceeds to order 5-50 dishes of chocolate pastries n cakes just to enjoy a soft Clara now how to trick Myre into a similar situation…

[Juxtaterrestrial]

The basic game loop of the side project is done! A few knots to tie. And i want to add a bit more interface stuff to show the character’s state, and implement a basic lose condition. But My plan is to release it as a tech demo for BTS patrons this month.

The plan is also to put out an MMM update as well!

[Juxtaterrestrial]

Proof of concept build for side game!

Posting it in this thread because i don’t even have a name yet.

MMM update still coming this month too. This is extra! I’ve basically have been working for 2 weeks at 70+ hours a week on it. And I’ve been planning this project for like 2 years.

Premise is that you are one of those chefs that cooks food at the table of a restaurant.

The game is meant to be a puzzle game of sorts. Every action you take ticks down the customer’s patience. So you want carefully choose what ingredients to mix and when to make the best use of your time.

This is a bare minimum proof of concept build. The goal was to get the primary game system working - that is being able to combine foods, and have the customer eat them. I have a tone of ways to expand on the game besides just adding more food.

Future expansions:

• End of meal > customer payment > new customer.
• Returning customers: Weight gain over time. Stomach capacity increase if you keep filling them up. Customers can get greedier if you treat them too well (so, difficulty increase because less patience).
• Meta game: Get to affect what foods get set out before you start cooking (EX: some flour will be automatically dough[ saving time when cooking], buy better quality ingredients, affect ingredient ratio, buy access to new ingredients).
• Meta game: Business upgrades. Make it so various tools are ‘off the board’ so you can use them without them taking up a valuable slot for ingredients. Pre-meal survey to know customer preferences.
• Deeper cooking: The plan is to add quality to food. Better quality ingredients mean more satisfying meal = more money. But besides that, I want to add a system for seasoning, and flavor additions that can add to the quality of the meal. I also want there to be subjective quality; if someone likes chocolate a lot, they will see something with chocolate as being higher quality. This makes catering to customer preferences valuable. And on the topic of subjective quality…
• Tricks: This is one of those fancy restaurant’s right? So you should be able to do knife tricks and stuff. The mechanical idea is that if in the chain of creation of a food, you do one of these tricks to an ingredient, the food will be perceived as being higher quality, even if it’s the same ingredients. Beyond that, I want tricks to add more functionality to manipulate the board EX you move all the ingredients in a row to the left by 1 grid. This could be valuable for positioning, but then all the ingredients would be seen as higher value. Or maybe you can swap ingredients from farther away, emulating a toss of a food. Again that can be useful to save time, but also increase the quality.

So, this is something i want to work on alongside MMM.

TIPS AND TRICKS

Here are the current food combos

some ingredients can be on the table or in a container, some can only be in one or the other.

To feed something to Myre, click on a food and press the feed button(assuming it’s edible). To mix the ingredients click one ingredient and then click a square next to it - if they can mix, then a mix button will pop up. (if you click outside the table after clicking at item the game will currently crash lol)

Bowl or pot + faucet = container full of water.

Water + flour = dough

Dough + oven = bread

Bread + knife = sliced bread

Tomato + knife = tomato slices

Sliced bread + tomato slices = basic ass bruschetta

Tomato slices + knife = diced tomatoes

Diced tomatoes + blender = tomato puree

Do not use dough, flour, or basic tomato sauce on the blender - they will mix but there is no sprite for those combos lol

Use the tomato puree on a pot or bowl, then tomato puree(in container) + oven = basic tomato sauce

As above - water + flour = dough

Dough + knife = raw noodles

Use raw noodles on container then use container with water to get raw noodles in water

Raw noodle in water + oven = cooked noodles

Cooked noodles + basic tomato sauce = basic spaghetti in sauce

also

Dough + bag of sugar = sweet dough

Sweet dough + oven = cookies

Currently only a windows build because i am still new to Godot.

Thanks to Clinkoclinko and Kayinthedark for some of the art used in it

Currently BTS patrons can see it because it’s very WIP

Get it here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/something-new-of-131779915

[Juxtaterrestrial]

And an updated gif of the current build. It’s actually really hard and heavily RNG dependent on whether you can make a full spaghetti meal. That will be adjusted in the future, but also it has something of a long production chain. Future mechanics and balancing should make things easier, but i want the game to make each move you make valuable so that if you are careful and play your board well you can get more bang for your buck.

One change i want to make is have some food combos take time. Like putting something in the over taking 3 actions to finish. That would make things longer, but it could let you prep next step while something is cooking. If I added that to this build, the biggest benefit would be that while that is happening you can make and and feed the customer more food. In the future food quality will have a big effect on the customer’s patience. So if you can make something quick and high quality, you can buy yourself more time to make a big meal.

[Juxtaterrestrial]

Been awhile since i updated here.

Myre's Massive Mealtime will have and update out for BTS patrons in the next few days as usual.

But besides that i’ve also gotten a lot done on the side project.

Like so much. Interfaces. Being able to cash out customers and get paid. It’s no longer a static customer - when one customer finishes and pays you get another customer.If the customer’s gets full and/or their mood goes too low then they will leave(you still get paid. Basically they “Check please…” you. )

And then also I’ve rendered a shit ton of assets with daz for customers. It’s like 300 images, thought since they are split between front, three quarters, and side view, only 100 of them across the 3 current customers are accessible currently. Planning on letting your change the pov soon.

Support development of both projects on patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/juxtaterrestrial

[Juxtaterrestrial]

Download here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/myres-massive-v0-132515238

The teaser image is right. 3d side project Myre can’t hurt you.

If you didn’t see it, that is referencing: https://www.patreon.com/posts/something-new-of-131779915

This month i put probably 200 hours into developing a side project I’ve wanted to make for awhile. The link above includes an earlier build showcasing the bare minimum game loop. You mix foods on a grid and feed them to a customer. The game has advanced a lot since then.

The plan is to keep working on both projects. I hope to have another build out in the next week when there is more gameplay value!

Wont that take away work from MMM?

I don’t think so. Work on this side project has come fro ma lot of inspiration and desire to make a more mechanically interesting project. It leans on programming and design skills. I usually have to try and hold back on those with MMM to avoid scope creep on an already large project.

On the other hand, MMM is very writing heavy. They are different part of my brain. Different skills and have different energy pools for me. The cooking game will have some writing eventually in the form of reactions. But that is just such a much smaller level than writing actual dialogue formatted into a story.

And more importantly, for me successes can build momentum. So getting work on one thing helps me continue working on other things after. My hope is that the side project can help fuel MMM and the other way around. Or at the very least, i can procrastinate on one project by working on a different project. Life pro tip there for you.

Okay, what about MMM this month!?

This month i spent time outlining for the post dinner conversation option. Specifically I’ve started focusing on the option everyone will get regardless of choices (just so there is a baseline for everyone. That choice is to ask Myre if she’s ready for dessert.

As that option is available for anyone, there can be a tone of states which the player can be in when they get there. So the outlining is about what of the many options get brought up? What ones get priority over others? What things should be referenced. It’s harder because there could be any number of tags. I didn’t fully line up all the choices, but i got a good framework for finishing that up.

On that line, I also wrote about 1k new words in that scene. The 1k words are a bit spread out as i wanted to get a few starts for different belly sizes going. So it’s not a cohesive event just yet. There is a lot of variance for the scene planned.

The way the project is structured, this part - after dinner talk - is probably the most referential to previous choices. Desert options after are much less open ended? Because after that there are the few distinct end states. And they will reflect you conversations choices. But the real meat of conversational rewards is this section right now. This is where things should really pay off for the choices you make. Or to be blunt, this is where things get hornier lol. That is why outlining is important here.

Changes:

• Behind the scenes outlined some of the post dinner talk scenes
• about 1000 new words written in the post dinner scene where you investigate if Myre has room for desert

Download here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/myres-massive-v0-132515238

These project(s) only exists because of the generosity of patrons. Thank you!

[Juxtaterrestrial]

Lots has happened in a few days:

• implemented end of the day interface. SO now you can actually get paid/
• Implemented interface to start a new day
• customer stats get added to a global customer list at the end of the day - so stats can be tracked between days.
• Most importantly - I implemented basic stomach capacity stretching - CELEBRATE!

Pictured in the gif, I’ve gotten a framework in place to handle chef tricks. These will be key early on to making higher quality food to get happier customers and better tips. Ingredients involved in a trick get a bonus to their perceived quality due to the spectacle of it

The example here is being able to process a row of sliceable things all at once. Which is super overpowered but were still early on.

In a later build the idea in my head is to have different tricks you can ‘buy’ and level up by spending money on training. So this trick would start out with being able to slice 2 in a line. then next level would be 3, etc.

The tricks i think are going to be a key part of making the game interesting to play. It’s one thing to have food combos and recipe chains. But it’s another thing to have a way to be able to plan ahead thoughtfully and line up combos.

I’m trying to have another build out in a few days. I want something out that is more or less playable continuously with the basic mechanics, even if it’s a bit basic.