Cooking System and other "Home " features

[Cecilia Crescent]

I'm making a game where the main character has a "Home" area. As the story progresses several features will be unlocked like cooking, alchemy, maybe even crafting and such, similar to Rune Factory games. I wanted to give the player a sense of attachment to the area and, along with several other characters that will eventually reside there, give some sort of "homey" atmosphere, although the game I'm making is primarily an RPG. I was looking for suggestions on what kind of systems I should implement (that hopefully won't be too difficult for me XD).

The "Home" has a kitchen, a work room (which contains an alchemy bench, enchantment area, etc) and an unused basement among others, though I can easily add more rooms. The first thing that came to my mind was cooking but that may be a problem. Since I'm definitely going to put an alchemy system (where the player can brew healing potions, antidotes, etc), what use will the food do? It's not like HM/RF games where you could cook different dishes to give to people in order to raise their relationship points. I'm not really planning to make that kind of game. The easiest would be to use the food as buff items but I don't know if that will really encourage the player to use the kitchen since personally, I don't really use buff items when I play games unless I really need to because it seems like a bit of a hassle collecting items, then cooking them just to use them up later in a battle.

Sorry if my post is a little too wordy. Any help or suggestions would be appreciated

Edit: After thinking about it for a while, I decided that maybe it's not too far fetched to implement some sort of relationship system just to give off that "Homey" feeling. I was planning on dividing the story into chapters and in between them, have segments called Interludes which is similar to the day-off system in Growlanser series. That way, it wouldn't stray too far away from the original RPG concept while still letting the player use the systems I'm planning on implementing, like giving food to the other main characters to increase their relationship points (which will probably unlock sidequests or skills). With that in mind, what other "Home" systems should I put? I was thinking maybe some simplified gardening thing akin to the ones in the MH series among others. Nothing too complicated I hope XD

 

[mlogan]

Hmmm, just kind of the first thing off the top of my head, but what if you could sell or trade the cooked items for needed alchemy ingredients or whatever?

 

[Ralpf]

Well, if you are going to have a stamina system of some sort you could always connect food to that, preferably with buffs too so all the food wouldn't be redundant.

If you didn't want to buff stats directly, maybe tie it to magic (assuming you will have elemental magic), say eating spicy food would give you a boost to fire and ice cream a boost to ice. Bit corny...but different.

Maybe some rare items that can be cooked to give permanent stat bonuses. Healing, stamina, and buffs really are all that come to mind with food...

Well, you could combine it with alchemy...say you make a poison with alchemy, you could take a steak and cook it with the right herbs/spices mask the poison, then you could throw it at a carnivorous creature (say a wolf) and it would poison it. (I feel like I have done that in a game but I can't remember what game)

 

[nio kasgami]

hey : D just for say : 

use Venka script 

this is allow to make what you want

Rune factory style ?

if you success to do this YEAH! 

I love the rune factory saga! 

 

[Cecilia Crescent]

@mlogan I don't know. I was primarily thinking of getting the alchemy ingredients through drops and it might seem a little bit more of a hassle that way. Thanks for the suggestions though

@Ralpf Rather than a stamina system, I was considering some sort of hunger system, but that might stray away too far from the original concept of the RPG game I'm making. I like the idea of elemental buffing though, especially since the main character is a magic caster and my goal is for the player to exploit the elemental weaknesses of the enemies. I wanted the cooking system (as well as the other home systems I'll implement) to be something the player would use often so maybe stat bonuses might be an every now and then use if it was focused solely on that. Still, it would make a good addition once the primary system is established. The poisonous steak idea made me laugh though, in a good way. I wonder what kind of game it was that you played. It seems interesting XD

@nio kasgami Thanks for suggesting the script. I'll use it once I have a definite idea on the crafting systems I'll implement.

 

[whitesphere]

I love Rune Factory and have played the first 3.

However, I never use cooking, even there.

How to make cooking useful?  Here are some ideas:

- It acts as bait for certain monsters (if you want to get a Wyvern's Fur, you need to use honey cookies for a lure).  Rune Factory 3 uses this to trigger one boss battle.

- It is the only way to replenish your HP and MP in the field

- Like in ancient Egypt, you need to pay homage to the dead by leaving burnt offerings (which must start from properly cooked food).  If you don't, their spirits haunt you (various debuffs)

- Carrying the above idea further, maybe whatever god or gods are in the game grant blessings, some permanent, if you provide the right offerings.  This could open up a whole slew of priest quests ("The Goddess of Harvest will give you a divine Shield if you make a burnt offering of a creme brulee").

- Planting some cooked foods seems to cause strange plants to grow (Who knew a money tree grew from cooked lettuce!)

A large part of it depends on how silly you want to make the game, particularly my last idea.  You could fill the entire farm with really bad puns which make a kind of quirky sense.

 

[Venka]

I love a good bad pun! I was horrible for reading all the Xanth books that was just horrible with puns lol

 

[whitesphere]

I love a good bad pun! I was horrible for reading all the Xanth books that was just horrible with puns lol

I found it very entertaining in my last game when I had a vampire show himself, teleport the party to a secret location, then try to threaten the party.  The dialogue went like this:

Rik (Shaman): "Does anyone else want to say the V word?"

Paul (leader): "Sure.  I just bet he's dying to have someone to sink his teeth into."

Vampire: "Oh, that's a really, really bad pun.  Just for that I'm going to make you suffer before you die."

Diana: "We're quaking in our boots."

I really liked adding such a bad pun the BOSS commented on it.

 

[HumanNinjaToo]

I suggest don't add features just because you want them. If they are redundant of other features and you have to really try to make them relevant then it may be better to cut them out.

 

[Cecilia Crescent]

@whitesphere the bait thing could be a good idea though I can only see it useful in maybe some side quests or maybe just a once in a blue moon sort of thing. The replenish hp/mp in the field is a bit of a radical idea and it might make the game too difficult or grindy though I do see how it will be used very often there. As for the gods thing, I'm not sure... My game doesn't feature a very deep mythology kind of thing and I was really hoping for the cooking feature to be used primarily for the main characters to foster a kind of "homey", camaraderie, or even family sort of atmosphere.

@HumanNinjaToo Yes, but it's very much related to the overall theme of the game (which is that homey/family attachment of the main character despite RPG genre of the game) Though I could just see the cooking thing happening in cutscenes since it'll still give that certain atmosphere. If all else fails then maybe I'll just do that.

Edit: After thinking about it for a while, I decided that maybe it's not too far fetched to implement some sort of relationship system just to give off that "Homey" feeling. I was planning on dividing the story into chapters and in between them, have segments called Interludes which is similar to the day-off system in Growlanser series. That way, it wouldn't stray too far away from the original RPG concept while still letting the player use the systems I'm planning on implementing, like giving food to the other main characters to increase their relationship points (which will probably unlock sidequests or skills). With that in mind, what other "Home" systems should I put? I was thinking maybe some simplified gardening thing akin to the ones in the MH series among others. Nothing too complicated I hope XD

But thank you very much for all those who suggested things on the cooking feature . I'll most likely add those features in addition to the one I mentioned about the relationship system (like the elemental buffs, stat bonuses, baiting and such)

 

[whitesphere]

If you have the Rural Tile Set, it includes a complete sample game, with a relationship system, so it can give you some good ideas for how to implement it.

If you do have a relationship system, you could use the cooking to improve your bonds with family/friends/whatever.  That's mainly what I use cooking for in Rune Factory, even though foods do give HP/MP/stat buffs as well.

 

[Oddball]

what if food had multipule uses? like, if a battle was going horribly, and you needed a sure escape, you could throw food at the enemy to escape easier. Also, I like the selling/trading idea, you could use it to recover HP or MP as well. oh! another thing you could do is you can cook up ingrediants to use in alchemy. It's a little long winded, so the player should probably have other options to get alchemy ingrediants. But maybe cooking them yourself has some sort of benifit to it...like... you don't have to pay for them or go out and hunt them down

Edit: like, there's Sulphur in onions. So, cook Onions in just the right way, and you get sulphur

 

[Cecilia Crescent]

@whitesphere: Interesting. I'll have a look at it some time. But a relationship system it shouldn't be that complicated, right? It's just a matter of influencing variables when certain actions are done. Maybe the gift giving part, I can either use a long conditional choice list (I'm using one script that can do so) or some script to bring up the inventory.

@Oddball: Hmm, wouldn't it be closer to extracting rather than cooking? Still, it's a nice suggestion. I'll keep that in mind. Thank you.