COOKING GAME - PLEASE HELP ME WORK THIS OUT!

Hello, I'm Jo and I have a story written that I'm trying to turn into a fully-fledged game. I have the writing done, made the tilesets and effects and have almost finished the character fullscreen designs but I have a major problem!

My story is based around cooking in a cafe to save your life from a mass-murderer (it makes a weird sense in-game, really) but I'm struggling with the cafe aspect.

I want to do the following:

Allow the character to select and combine ingredients to make meals (think I have that done in a really basic fashion)

Give the meal by carrying it to the right customer

Hire on helpful and not so helpful staff members

Have a system where-in the customers can be persuaded to go to a different part of the map when certain conditions are met

A suspicion system (I have the basics of this done, I think, but I struggle with so many customers on screen - I want each of them to have their own suspicion bar and for them to potentially affect each others' bar. I think I know the latter but I struggle with the former).


It's my most ambitious game to date and the first one I want to release - as much as I've learned with Ace and Unity it's still very complicated to me, so all help is appreciated!

I'm finding elements of these particularly difficult.

Using Nicks code for food combinations works well, I've put an extended menu to it so my player can have multiple options regarding cooking different items. Which seems to work fine but I may need to make a complicated timer, with different times for the items to cook and for the customer npc to be willing to sit and wait. Not sure yet.

When the meal is done the player needs to be able to pick it up and carry it (not in menu) in the characters hand and put it down in front of a customer. That bit is confusing me as to how to do it without making a hundred-odd player character sprites. There has to be a way to temporarily attach a food sprite to the main character and then put it down on a predetermined spot but I have zero idea on how to do that.

I have a hiring system but it's basically talking to an npc and selecting yes. Is there a way to have the npc move from where they were speaking and straight to a section they work in rather than just being added to the menu. I can get them to animate and to talk, but moving them doesn't add them and they don't have any effect on their work area (I'm guessing a conditional branch may help that, not sure yet).

I can get npc customers to move and animate on a path but not sure how to get the customers and their wants randomised. I think that's the biggest problem as it's one of the main game elements.

My character has a 'Suspicion' bar (rather than a health bar). If she gets noticed doing certain behaviours or leaves certain mess etc then customers will notice, raising the suspicion bar. I can do that. What I really wanted to do though was have a way that each customer has a suspicion bar instead and when one of theirs' goes up they get the police or investigate the back room. Any ideas?

Thanks for the really quick reply, it is appreciated!

PS Do you write the articles, I've been browsing through for info and there's a Trihan who writes too. If so, good stuff!