To produce the resources needed for the game cycle, I created a field in the overworld that leads to a kitchen menu. Various dishes can be cooked in this menu. The food is stored as a counter variable and can be reused later, for example, to use buff food or to feed others. This should make it easier to progress through the turn-based battles.
The Menu
The food will also be incorporated into other parts of the game, such as puzzles and shops, to mix up the different parts of the game more!
The small kitchen is inspired by bushcraft cooking and campfire cooking to support the story’s rather wild setting. A cauldron over the fire next to the tent! This is also shown in the scene’s background image.
This is the mockup for the scene. As usual, the image is watercolor and micron ink on an A3 sheet of paper.
When creating the image, I used many references from bushcraft and camping. To break up the scene a bit, I added small details like a potato blossom.
This view has changed a lot over the course of development.
Resource Integration
First, the cost of food was incorporated into the menu so the player could see what they were spending. Now, instead of simply extending a button across the entire screen, I had more objects to take care of.
In addition to the food costs, inventory quantities and icons have now been added. The layout is also now: from left to right, food and costs, and from right to left, food in the inventory. Resources the player already has are displayed in the top bar and updated with a button click.
The Little Cooking Pot is a set of two animations: the cooking pot, which runs more slowly, and the fire, which runs about twice as fast. The animations are also created with watercolors and microns.
The Logic
The crafting menu itself works primarily with button clicks. Each click calculates the new values and updates the display. This way, I avoid having it constantly update.
The updaters do nothing other than write the current value into the labels.
