Overview
The last few months working on the arguably more important aspects of the game really took a chunk of my energy and motivation. It felt like I was going nowhere because even though the quantity of task I needed to do was small, completing each task was arduous.
So this month felt really productive with all the bug fixing and additional features and improvements which has been a great motivator.
There is always more to do but I am ready to face them head on until I see The Perfect Bowl out there in the world.
Improvements
Topping Mover UI & Topping Border
I think I have finally settled on a system that I'm happy with! After some inspiration from looking at Tiny Glade, I took the 3D UI approach mixed with what I had previously. Interactions regarding spatial movement of the topping is presented using 3D arrows while additional features are shown in 2D with a bar that follows the topping.
This way, the bar can be made more compact and less intrusive in terms of visuals and user experience while the main way of interacting with the toppings are associated more strongly with the topping.
I also added a visual to show the bounds of the topping as visual aid for players to understand the 3D space the topping is in.
Topping Section Title
A simple addition to the Build UI so that players can quickly see which section of Toppings they are in.
Preset Previews Total Cost and Flavour Profile
It was already part of the design that I have yet to implement until now. I had to make sure the backend of things regarding Presets was set properly before I had a clear idea of what data I would need to pull from the save files.
The next steps for the Flavour Profile is to convert it into a heuristic graph visualizer.
Features
Topping Description Popups
A simple addition to the Build UI to give the player a quick idea of what kind of cost and flavour the topping will add to the bowl. It also provides a small description space for flavour texts.
Maximum number of Presets
One of the ways that I will be indicating progress to the player is by expanding their photo board to allow more Presets.
Topping Duplicator
A quality of life feature that I think would be quite useful.
Credit cost and Flavour Profiles for Noodles and Soups
Noodles and Soup Types will have their own Credit cost and Flavour profile providing more options to fit the need of the customer. Also would be a neat way to further strengthen the immersion of the game.
Bug Fixing
- Noodles now follow bowls when serving customers
- When clearing table, everything moves towards the new trash buttons position
- Soup stream is hidden from dialogue viewport
- When loading Presets, noodles will spawn if they contained noodles
- When loading Presets, Credits and Flavour Profile updates properly
- Detecting if a topping is in the bowl or not is more reliable
- Creating a new Preset doesn't rename older presets
- Topping UI shows up after topping previewa