Cooking & Resource Management

info

Module Owner

Developer: Laurens
Core Focus: The extraction, preparation, and delivery loop. Covered Features: Cooking, Ingredient Collection, Kitchen Upgrades, Inventory UI, Cooking UI, Delivery Manager.

🎯 Prototype Goal

To build a satisfying, "farming-Cooking-simulator" style loop where the player manages resources, processes them through time-based cooking stations, and dispatches them via an automated "drone" to earn credits.

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1. The Core Loop (Player Flow)

The player's minute-to-minute gameplay revolves around three distinct phases.

1. Collect (Farming)

🌿 Resource Collection

Before cooking, players must secure raw materials.

• Harvesting: Players interact with specific nodes (e.g., ) to gather raw ingredients.
• Inventory UI: A clean, screen-space UI showing current carrying capacity.
• Limitation: The player has a limited number of inventory slots (3 items max), forcing them to make trips back and forth to the kitchen.

2. Cook (Processing)

🍳 The Kitchen Engine

Raw ingredients must be processed into deliverable meals.

• Input: The player targets a kitchen station and presses [Interact] to place the raw ingredient.
• Process: A UI progress bar appears over the station (e.g., 5 seconds to grill meat).
• Output: The item changes state (Raw Meat ➔ Cooked Meat) and can be picked up.
• Danger: If left on the station too long after the timer finishes, the food burns and turns into useless "Scrap."

3. Ship (Delivery Drone)

🚁 Automated Dispatch

The player does not leave the base to deliver the food. They use the automated Delivery Manager.

• The Dispatch Chute: The player drops the finished meal into a designated "Outbox" zone.
• The NPC: A small delivery drone spawns, picks up the package from the chute, and flies out of the level (or through a portal).
• The Payout: Once the drone disappears, the Delivery Manager script adds Space-Credits to the team's bank.

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2. Technical Systems (What to Build)

🎒 The Inventory UI System

A lightweight inventory manager.

• Backend: A script that stores an array or list of ItemData ScriptableObjects (ID, Name, Icon, Type).
• Frontend: A simple Canvas UI at the bottom of the screen that dynamically updates to show the icons of the items the player is holding.

🔪 Cooking Stations (State Machines)

Each cooking appliance (Grill, Chopping Board) needs a simple State Machine script:

1. Empty (Waiting for item)
2. Processing (Timer running, cannot be interrupted)
3. Done (Waiting for player to collect)
4. Burned (Failed state)

📈 Upgrades Manager

Players can spend their earned credits to permanently upgrade their workflow.

• Tier 1: Standard equipment.
• Tier 2 (Upgrade): Faster cooking timers (e.g., 5 seconds ➔ 3 seconds).
• Tier 3 (Upgrade): Larger player inventory (e.g., 3 slots ➔ 5 slots) or a faster Delivery Drone.

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3. Cooking recipe and resource design

Ingredients

• Meat
• Bread
• Tomato
• Potato
• Cabbage
• Carrot
• Cheese
• Dough
• Pineapple
• Onion
• Topings (Olives, Pepperoni, Pineapple, Mushroom)

Recipes

• Kebab: Meat + Bread + Tomato
• Burger: Meat + Bread + Cheese
• Salad: Cabbage + Carrot + Tomato
• Fries: Potato
• Pizza: Dough + Tomato + Cheese + (Topings)
• Wrap: Dough + Meat + Cabbage

4. Packing & Shipping

if a cooked single ingredient is picked up, it can be placed on a "" to be combined with other ready ingredients. Once the recipe is complete, the player can pick up the finished meal and drop it in the "Outbox" chute for delivery.

pizza example

Pizza can be made by placing items on rolled out dough. Players can directly place ingredients on the dough to create a pizza, but need a pizza shovel to pick it up once it's done to place it the oven and cook it. Once the pizza is cooked, the player can pick it up with the shovel and drop it in the pizza box to be delivered. Since orders can be made out of multiple itmes (e.g., 3 pizzas), the player can have multiple items in the inventory at once, but they can combined itmes into a single Box. This adds an extra layer of resource management and planning to the cooking loop.

Burger/Kebab/Wrap/ example

These items can be made by combinig the ingredients on a plate. The Combined item can then be wrapped in a paper to be delivered.

Salad/Fries

Salad, Fries are made by placing the ingredients in a Salad Bowl/Fries Bag.