#yknow maybe its time to open rpgmaker again

[moedori]

X

OH MY MOE .

[tumblunni]

LETS THINK ABOUT BREAKFAST RPG Protagonist: a cute lil girl of some sort. Maybe named Cherry or Gateau or something adorable. Maybe a cherry shaped hat? Maybe shes like a chef magical girl. Or maybe just use default assets from rpgmaker cos the point is to get the game done and not over think it. And then like a tutorial character/rival who's like THE BRUNCH DEMON or something! Some really inexplicable reaper-lookin monster who has a goofy cute personality and is protag's friend/enemy/Robbie rotten. She runs a rival restaurant, comes in like plankton to steal le secret formula but also inexplicably constantly pops up in the tutorials, having a tea party with protag on the loading screen, etc. Self-sabotaging helping the poor kid out because deep at heart she's a nice ol monster! And then the third character is just The Office Guy. Some completely ordinary working Joe who has a breakfast magical girl pop into his life for no rational reason. *toast keeps appearing* *screams* First level is just you making him breakfast (and him freaking out), then you progress through stuff like impressing his boss with a birthday cake or whatever, to improve the poor sod's life. (While he continues screaming at all this magically appearing food, probably starts seeing a psychiatrist) And then eventually he just accepts it and you open a restaurant together. ...and then he has to compete against this giant monster brunch chef, and starts screaming all over again. STATS AND ELEMENTS! Maybe just keep stats exactly the same but give them funny renames? Or rename em to what they symbolise within this particular game. So like... Maybe speed = overall cooking skill? Cos it means you can attack faster and use more actions before the end of the time limit, its basically the most important skill for making complex foods. And I dunno, attack and magic attack could be... Cut and whisk? Savoury and sweet? Food and drink? If you had to divide all breakfast items into only two categories, how would you do it? I'm not sure what to do about the two kinds of defense. I mean.. I know what I want them to be but its hard to summarise it in one word. Could just be like defense against food based injuries (burning, etc) and defense against food-spoiling moments (getting eggshell in the bowl, overcooking, etc). Like one is actual defense and one lowers the odds of random events that harm you. So you get less penalties for failing. Oh, or maybe just have it as savoury defense and sweet defense and then luck affects your failure penalties/success bonuses? But I wanted to rename luck as ~love~ and say its the most important ingredient! XD "Elements" would be where the cooking styles come into play! Enemies would have a lot of tags, like tomato is savoury, fruit AND vegetable, and classed as an entree rather than a main dish component. Can only be used as ingredients, toppings and side orders. And most food would have a flavour but I dunno really what to define tomato as? Or potato. So there should be a sort of neutral flavour element that's just as important as the others. Like.. Calm flavour. Balance flavour. Foundation flavour. That's what potatoes and breads and carbs are, they lower down other flavours and act as a base to absorb those flavours, yknow?? They're important! But tomatoes aren't the same even though its hard to categorise them into a flavour. Maybe flavours can combine to make flavours? Tomato could be like... Salty + sweet? Maybe everything has a particular amount of each flavour that they contribute to the dish. So tomato would give +2 salt and +1 sweet. And +1 moist or something. And then your attacks are divided into multiple elements separate from the food elements. Your elements are all cooking techniques, like boil, chop, etc. And levelling up elements unlocks more skills for each one, like triangle cut or finely chopped or minced, or a passive skill that let's you cut tougher stuff like steak! And maybe it'd be clear cut weaknesses like sweet items are weak to mixing, or maybe its just individualized for each ingredient enemy and acts like the real ingredient in real life. I mean it'd be weird if tomatos were weak against going in a fruit pie or whatever... And then like... Combatttt!! I could just go with really basic default battle system but I wanna do elemental madness! And I wanna make it so you have a limited amount of turns, cos that means certain skills wouldn't be viable early on if they take too long, ensuring a good learning curve without having to limit the options too much. Like maybe complex chopping deals less damage but gives better results, so you have to fight harder to achieve that sandwich! Whereas you can just smash the tomato for a one hit kill and have a terrible sandwich. Triple weak to kneading, but logic dictates you ain't wanna do that :P (...maybe get an achievement called Undyne for seeing all the critical fail cut scenes? XD) And I dunno, maybe if you can't defeat the enemy before the time limit you just get an undercooked food that loses some points. And maybe if the enemy defeats you its like "somehow you slipped on a tomato and broke your back" Office dude better appreciate what we do for him! This kitchen is a deathtrap! And maybe early on you just have to complete the recipes the computer gives you, only being able to get bonuses/penalties depending on time taken and etc. Then you can start deciding how you wanna behave during battle- like triangle cut sandwiches or swapping the salad dressing! Then you can actually start selecting from multiple recipes, and multiple ingredients. It just says 'sandwich' and a vague description of what the person likes ('spicy' and 'traditional' and 'vegetarian') and its your job to figure out what to pick to satisfy that. Like maybe they don't want a hoagie or a toastie, and maybe they'd prefer brown bread? And definately can't rely on the easy +5 spicy sausage, we have to battle the far stronger peppers this time! And all the time we'll be seeing new recipes with longer steps and stronger ingredients!! And maybe move on to satisfying multiple customers at once? Have to make a food that contains all their fave things without getting so complicated that it defeats you. Or have no information about what they like and you have to just make multiple dishes that try and cover the full spread of logical possibilities so everyone is happy. At least one vegetarian option, and take care to make sure there's no nuts or gluten on ANYTHING cos we dunno which one the allergic coworker will eat! And then you can move on to outright alchemizing your own recipes by combining different ingredients in a practise mode. You don't get any penalty if you're wrong, and you can help out later missions by unlocking more recipe options, but you still have to pay for ingredients in order to practise. And I'm gonna make sure it is actually possible to win with just the default story unlock recipes, even if it might not be as easy or be able to get five star results. Oh, and probably a mission replay practise mode and/or sidequests, where you can make more money and grind for experience! Maybe even be able to get relationship points with different characters? Like, every day there's a repeatable side quest to keep making breakfast for office guy, like you did in the first level. And it gets more complex as you go on, so you could be making the world's best sandwich by the end! I think maybe also have some kind of morals meter for the [plot thing] that decides what ending you get. Like its not actually good and evil, but its a positive ending and a negative one. Like the best ending requires friendship with both office guy and rival demon, and higher [certain stat]. But you could also get like... Low stat rival demon ending has you selling out to her and the restaurant becomes awful and office guy lives in a cardboard box but at least you're rich. And positive ending might be that you still ditch office guy and fly off together, but you decide to travel the world finding other people in need of cheering up via magic breakfast and bring much happiness to the world~ Its lonely cos you always have to say goodbye to your human friends but at least you have demon rival buddy along for the ride in your immortal brekkie quest~! So yeah! A lot of ideas! I most definitely won't get them all done during the timeframe but I could at least hopefully make a playable demo. So like... Try and get as far as possible using default rpgmaker assets and basic framework, then release it as a teaser for people to see. If it does well then I have a whole bunch of ideas already on how to expand it into a full game, and I could draw fully original art assets and cutscenes to enhance the fun~! I just need to try and decide what the time limit is gonna be and when I'm gonna do it. And raise a lil hype from my friends cos seriously seeing comments and crits on my work is what motivates me beyond all else! Oh, actually, maybe I could do like... Multiple challenges?? "Hey bunni see how much you can make in one weekend" Then release that demo, and see people's comments and crits. Then if people are interested I could try working on it for a week next time and see how much I can improve it! And so on! That'd be good, with feedback and breaks in-between and stuff. And if one idea fails then I can just go back to the three day challenge with a different idea next time ^-^ Making a game out of making a game is a good way to get used to becoming more confident~! Maybe when it gets going then people could even add bonus challenges or something? I'd keep a tally of how many of these challenges I've done, and pretend its 'points', so I have a clear perspective on how productive I'm being. And then bonus points for how much positive response I got from the project, or how many downloads, or something. And then people can start throwing in requests like genre or how many words of dialogue or 'hey, include a shape shifting skill' or 'it has to be only black and white'. That'd help inspire me on what to do AND be challenging fun! And bonus productivity points for learning a new thing!! THIS IS A GOOD CONCEPT YES I could make like a points counter page or sideblog or something. Maybe have a lil doodle of me as a cliche RPG fighter character and when I hit point milestones I level up and draw a new outfit! And switch to magician or whatever when I run out of ideas. Need to find fun ways to motivate myself!!! I have dumb anxiety compulsions to count the tiles on the floor like that'll somehow make my luck better, counting nonexistent points is a nice way to make it less dumb. And making the reward be just the right to draw myself in a cute outfit means I'm guaranteeing I'll draw at least one thing that month, and drawing is a reward and not a job. And k dunno, maybe later on make the rewards stuff like 'you get to work on the big idea you actually wanted to do', so games are a reward not a job. Or 'you get to go to the cinema', so going out alone in scary crowds is a reward not a job. Or just even earn the right to buy a caffeine drink once a month and then that's a better way of beating my addiction! I've been trying to go cold turkey but I've never made it past 15 days cos there's really no reward or incentive or way to tell if I'm doing good. And sometimes I feel like having a lil energy boost would actually help me with finishing a project or something, versus when I'm just drinking it every day for no reason except yum. So if I can have one drink a month I might not even necessarily drink it right away, I'd save it for the last day of a challenge when I'm racing the deadline~! Lotsa ideas!!!