Wildkins Posted October 17, 2019 Posted October 17, 2019 https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/7180 As some of my earlier PRs may have made clear, I have a soft spot for the service area and the Kitchen in particular, and it's an honest shame that so much of its code hasn't been touched in so long. Since I'm pretty sure most of the egregious bugs in the kitchen area have been squashed, it's now time to look at making things a little less 1990s around here. This PR implements a Vue UI for the microwave, and overhauls a lot of its functionality. For the average user, the microwave is almost identical to how it used to be, save having a new interface. Putting in the right ingredients will still get you your food, but there's now a few new key features: You can now abort in-progress cooking. If the recipe is valid, this is always a safe action. If not, you can abort safely for the first half of the cook time (about 20 seconds) before it's "locked in" as burned mess. You can now eject individual ingredients. Ejecting solid contents (meat, etc.) will simply place them on the microwave as normal; ejecting reagents requires a held container with enough space. Cook time is now shown via a progress bar on the UI. I'm mainly looking for feedback on the UI/UX of the display, since I'm no front-end developer by any stretch of the imagination, and what you think about the microwave and "messing things up". Right now I'm looking at these questions myself, and if you have any strong microwave opinions, I'd like to hear them: Microwaves can't? be broken right now. (Might be wrong.) Regardless, what should warrant breaking a microwave vs just dirtying it? Should burned mess still be a thing? I was considering making a "messy ball of food" item that just catch-all'd the ingredients into one not-very-nutritious ball, as something slightly more realistic and slightly less painful than just outright burning everything. Should abort be a thing? You'd only really use it when you messed up, and honestly the entire dirtyness mechanic somewhat strikes me of a noobtrap or a pitfall for people following out of date recipes. If failures causing damage are fine, then should they be instant? Right now you have to wait half the normal cook time just to find out the microwave's now dirtied, and egads, your roast is ruined. Should I care this much about microwaves? (The answer is yes.)
Happy_Fox Posted October 17, 2019 Posted October 17, 2019 I think if the failure caused the microwave to start emitting smoke towards the end of the cooking - perhaps with an italic red message "The microwave starts to emit a foul smelling smoke..." and gave the chef time to dash over and hit abort? Egads the roast would be ruined - but the microwave would be saved.
Wildkins Posted October 17, 2019 Author Posted October 17, 2019 3 minutes ago, Happy_Fox said: I think if the failure caused the microwave to start emitting smoke towards the end of the cooking - perhaps with an italic red message "The microwave starts to emit a foul smelling smoke..." and gave the chef time to dash over and hit abort? Egads the roast would be ruined - but the microwave would be saved. Well, right now failing one recipe doesn't do anything to the microwave. You'd need to fail a second one to actually dirty the microwave to non-usefulness, and even that's only at a 10% chance. I like the idea of having some kind of indicator that the recipe is failing, though. I'm still not sure if making burned messes is still the right way to go, but at the very least I'll implement that.
Happy_Fox Posted October 17, 2019 Posted October 17, 2019 I don't want to make things more complicated for you... but maybe the longer it smokes for (failing) the more ingredients are ruined?
Wildkins Posted October 17, 2019 Author Posted October 17, 2019 1 hour ago, Happy_Fox said: I don't want to make things more complicated for you... but maybe the longer it smokes for (failing) the more ingredients are ruined? Eh, the problem is that failure is basically a binary state. The recipe system really doesn't like you missing single ingredients, and honestly I'm still not sure if I'm a fan of failed recipes just thanos-snapping the ingredients out of existence for a toxic mess. That's not really how real cooking works, you just make worse food, or it doesn't turn out right. That's why I kinda like my "lump-of-gross-food" idea slightly better, since it wouldn't completely waste the ingredients, but I don't know if that's necessarily a great idea either.
zyymurgy Posted October 17, 2019 Posted October 17, 2019 I can't say how happy I am for the kitchen to get some updoots. Breaking vs Dirtying: A microwave should be broken by putting stuff like metal utensils into it, and not much else. Being dirtied to me means that your food exploded in there, so anything with liquid in it is fair game to make it dirty IMO. Burned mess should stick around for if you actually burn your food, but I think adding a "failed dish" that gives you a random low number of toxins would be cute too as a cooking fail-state. A game I like, Rune Factory, usually includes Failed Dish and Super Failed Dish as the fail-states for their cooking mini game. It's important for me, from a game design perspective, that fail-states include clues as to what you did wrong, so separating Burned Mess and Failed Dish into two different things would give more feedback to the player about what they did wrong to get there. I would love to have an "abort" button for the microwave that just pops the door open and stops cooking, since microwaves have that IRL. It depends on how "IRLish" you want to make them, though. I don't think failed meals should break the microwave. I think it should be able to be dirtied and cleaned more easily, though. Having a bottle of cleaner and a rag in the kitchen would be really, really nice as well. (It would be nice if you could use the dry rag or some soap to clean it too, if you can't already. I always just call for a bottle of cleaner.) I do think you should add the ability to put inappropriate items into the microwave like forks and spoons and break the machine that way though... both as a fail-state for new players discovering the limitations of their equipment, and for LOL RP or sabotage. Yes, you absolutely should care this much about the microwave, since its one of the chef's most important tools. (I personally would like to see it changed from a microwave to a more futuristic type of cooking device, too, since it seems to do a lot that microwaves don't do. Maybe a Matter Reconstitutor or a Food-o-Tron. Or maybe an Easy-Bake.) The UI stuff you've got going on looks absolutely great and it's just the right step forward for the kitchen. The idea of having food start to smoke as a warning that it's going badly is great, but I don't think it's 100% vital as an addition. I'm okay with it being a pass/fail type of thing once you put your food in. Your roast being ruined in front of people is a vital part of kitchen gameplay, I feel. (I also think it's kinda lame that the map got adjusted so people can't see directly into the kitchen as well any more. I want it to be like a pizzaria where I'm tossing the dough right in front of them, you know? Not your area of expertise but I gotta mention it.) If you wanted something like a warning that your recipe is fucking up so you have time to abort, you could make it like this: If you examine the microwave, it's like the oven, you can see how the item inside is cooking. And if it's not making good food, you get a descriptor like "the food is bubbling strangely" or similar? So that it simulates the experience of peeking into the microwave window as it's cooking and watching your food mutate.
Wildkins Posted October 17, 2019 Author Posted October 17, 2019 Those are some good points. I like the idea of more recipes adding a small amount to the microwave dirtiness, and then making it easier for the chef to keep up on maintenance. As for burned messes and failed dishes, I think you're also spot on, although I'm not sure how I'd go about implementing burning a dish. Without doing a goon-style cook time system or some sort of power setting, everything's going to have a fixed cook time...unless I go the oven route and have it require manual input to stop cooking. But that isn't really how microwaves work, anyway. Still, the abort button at present does what you describe (more or less, there isn't a door-open sprite as far as I'm aware) I'll probably just have the smoking as a status effect that's displayed as a visible_message (like how the microwave getting dirty is), and then have a series of status effects show up on the cooking progress window to make it look a little more interesting. Something like "It's cooking nicely!" if the recipe matches or "It looks like a mess in there" if it failed somehow, probably showing up after the half-way mark of cooking. ...also, if we're having the microwave break only when you shove metal utensils or other stuff in there, then there should totally be a joke dish or two about like, microwaving a lunchbox or something.
SatinsPristOTD Posted October 17, 2019 Posted October 17, 2019 I have no actual "suggestions." I just wanted to say how much I appreciate this. I think it's FANTASTIC.
zyymurgy Posted October 17, 2019 Posted October 17, 2019 It would be fun to have dishes in the microwave take a certain amount of time. To make it more like a microwave IRL you could include the necessity to program the time it will cook for. So if you set something to cook for too long and walk away without checking it, it could burn and make your microwave dirty. Buuut that sounds like your "unless I wanted to xyz" statements, which seems to imply it would be a hassle and a half ? So just an idea more suitable for a total overhaul of the system... Quote I'll probably just have the smoking as a status effect that's displayed as a visible_message (like how the microwave getting dirty is), and then have a series of status effects show up on the cooking progress window to make it look a little more interesting. Something like "It's cooking nicely!" if the recipe matches or "It looks like a mess in there" if it failed somehow, probably showing up after the half-way mark of cooking. I like this very, very much.
Happy_Fox Posted October 18, 2019 Posted October 18, 2019 18 hours ago, Wildkins said: Eh, the problem is that failure is basically a binary state. The recipe system really doesn't like you missing single ingredients, and honestly I'm still not sure if I'm a fan of failed recipes just thanos-snapping the ingredients out of existence for a toxic mess. That's not really how real cooking works, you just make worse food, or it doesn't turn out right. That's why I kinda like my "lump-of-gross-food" idea slightly better, since it wouldn't completely waste the ingredients, but I don't know if that's necessarily a great idea either. Maybe two states of failure - one where the meal is recovered in the red text warning stage - producing edible but possibly toxic food that can cause sickness/vomiting, and another where if you don't "save" the food it becomes a burned mess.
StationCrab Posted October 20, 2019 Posted October 20, 2019 Burned mess can be used for a fun recipe so please keep it around in some form!
Recommended Posts