The thing that makes Plate up so enjoyable are the people who play it. The fact that any two Hermits will be playing something cooperatively; their banter chemistry alone will make this worthwhile for viewers!
Bdubs as a chef: quick, efficient Scar as a waiter: Hi, how may I help you? VS. Bdubs as a waiter: WHADDYA WANT?? Scar as a chef: ITS TURNING BLACK, THERES SMOKE, HELP
This is the BEST DUO for testing out Tango's game. Bdubs and the baked potato bit...."Oh No...We got ANOTHER ONE!" 1:39:00 I am literally crying - they are slaying me. I can't wait to watch Hermits play this game. LMAO. Bdubs TALKS to them - like they are real and not armor stands. LMAO.
Sounds like there are 3 parts to the game. The Farm, the Kitchen, and the serving areas. I think you need to focus on each part more. I would eliminate customers who want non crafted items like a carrot or beet root unless it is a single-player game. Maybe have the system skip day 1 for 2+ player games. In a 2+ player game, the fun will come from each player completing tasks in their own area while also serving customers. So the farm focused player could have to do tasks to earn bone meal to help crops grow faster when not providing chef with ingredients to craft meals. Chef player needs to figure out what items they need to request from farmers, and then once they get them, craft the food. The server needs to take orders, do minor tasks to reset customer happiness so they don't time out during harder to craft food items, and maybe answer phone calls by standing on a pressure plate for x seconds when phone starts ringing, etc. There needs to be options for complexity based on the number of players/amount of challenge players want. Maybe have fully open area for 1 player, require players to divide areas with walls they can pass things over but not cross for 2 players, and have each player have a dedicated area of their own for 3 player games.
I feel like the biggest problem is Minecraft itself doesn't have enough crafted/cooked food. Although, what's different between plate up and hungry hermits is that plate-up is focused usually on one type of food, with variations. Minecraft doesn't really have variations, but also, hungry hermits makes you focus on many different types of foods at once. Minecraft's lack of food really makes it difficult to get a fun and balanced plate-up-like game.
I think you need to simplify the number of different foods that can be made. Part of the fun of Plate Up is that you can make a backlog of food because there's only 2 or 3 options of what will be ordered. So say your options for food are cake, beetroot soup, and baked potatoes. They are all foods that require more than one step, but it's food that can be predicted and made ahead of time. You just have to balance the time it takes to make each food with the patience of the customer. With this, you need to give the players some counters. Having no counters means that you have to do everything within your inventory, thus negating working with your partner and not allowing for food to be prepared ahead of time. There's no way to give your partner ingredients that won't disappear. I think making players have to choose what gets saved on a counter (maybe an item frame so they can only do one) gives them more freedom. Ingredients and prepared food will take up counter space quickly, and it will be a good frustration to have to decide how to clear that counter. I like the idea of the cobwebs popping up more than the rats. Maybe you should make the floor powdered snow and make the players wear leather boots? Then items can't be left on the floor, they will fall through. Then just have a way to collect the dropped items below, like a water stream or something.
On the topic of fun: - I think things like the cauldron + water bucket will be the backbone of making the players feel like their decisions r having an impact. Even if the game stays somewhat "fetch-quest-y" things like the water bucket offer a super interesting little decision for the players. ----- "ok we have a water bottle order" now, the smart thing to do is get a bucket instead of a bottle and go fill the cauldron first, then ditch the bucket, get a bottle and fill it from cauldron. Saves time in the long term but takes extra time to set up. Super interesting decision espicially if the customers come in big rushes and then die down. It'll be like "okok we have a free moment go fill up the cauldron and ill fill up the X! Quick!"
Seeing an actual playtest I think you should just enforce it to 2 players tbh - it makes conceptualising interesting gameplay a lot more straight forward, and it's not like you haven't already made fantastic single player games in previous seasons! Plus it'll be done quicker ;)
Ethos game is more oriented towards the enjoyment of the player; not so much the viewers. Your game is so much more fun for the viewers to watch. It's also in an interesting middle ground of where it's different from Minecraft content but not a completely unknown gameplay(like plate up)
I have only seen the first 10 minutes of this video but the journey of Frogger was rather disappointing. I've watched Pearl's video on it: at first, she basicall died always, then she got some points. And then she got a hundred-something. Now, the highscore is in the 700s and games last for almost an hour or so. I saw a bit of her livestream where it looks more like a chore she does while answering chat's questions. (She seems to have found one optimal route.)
I hope that play test quelled your fears a bit, because they were definitely having fun. Now add the rats, and I personally think the upgrades will add a lot
Hey Tango, have you considered potions instead/in addition to food? There's more variety of potions, and you can more easily differentiate complicated foods. It also gives you a base level of ingredients, and an ability to plan forward (i.e. you know they are all potions, so you know you need X amount of Blaze Powder. So you get Blaze Rods, and have the timed auto crafter turn them into blaze powder. The same thing with knowing you are going to need water bottles, and nether wart. Each brew would somewhat work like Soup in Plate up where you get 3 times the serve (Or if you can figure out a way to lock out brewing stand slots, that could be an upgrade?) It gives the player the base ability to forward plan because they know, at the base level they are going to need to make a potion. The next level could be they need to make 2 different types of potion, and having more customers. The more I think about the base issues I see, I think Potion Brewing solves a fair chunk of them. You might need to have recipes displayed somewhere for the potions for hermits who don't know. EDIT: I also think you are getting bogged down in the idea of upgrades, and progression. Not sure if you have played it, but have you checked out Overcooked? There is no progression, each level is it's own challenge, and instead you are working towards a high score (By serving the most customers quickly during that time). You don't lose in that game by having a Queue overflow, your loss conditions are "just" the length of service on customers. The competition between plays is instead to get more Stars which are gated at certain scores, or get a high score. Mechanically, it is simpler than Plate Up, but probably more accurately maps to Minecraft- you can throw items, but players can be locked in spots. Some of the dynamic challenges on the levels are moving obstacles, which could be piston walls, or changing to parkour.
Here's a crazy thought. Obviously not this season, but imagine combining plate up with decked out. They take a customer's order, then have to go into a dungeon to find the ingredients and make it back out alive to serve the customer.
Tango, early on you talked about separating the players. the more time that goes on the more i think this would help with the game being fun and require skill and communication. Have someone who handles taking the orders and handles the freezer items. I suggest that you focus on the Multiplayer game version to get the game out. If its received well then make the adjustments for singe player.
Maybe you can have the poe poe or some sort of health inspector be randomly added to the queue once a week/day? And you have to do some small tasks or some kind of action to satisfy them, and if you dont make it they will shut down a section of the farm or kitchen for a certain amout of time? Or only to be re opened after some purchase or something? Just spitting idea's.
If you want to track how long individual customers in line have been waiting, have a piston feed tape of composters. Periodically feed items into the composters to increase their level. If the composter fills up, the customer ran out of patience and game ends. When the line moves forward, advance the feed tape to match. You can reliably and consistently increase the fill level of the composter with cake or pie, or you can use another item type and the patience time will have some random variance.
Take a comparator output that triggers a system to fill it up completely. There would need to be a buffer with the system to allow multiple composters to be emptied before being added to the queuing system.
@@jurjen909 Basically, yes. To reset a composter, fill it until it's full, then empty it again. On the feed tape this could be done at two different points on the feed tape so you don't get timing edge cases of it emptying and then partially filling again. (Basically just empty composters when they're just about to be cycled back to the back of the queue again. They should be 100% full when they're on the "back side" of the feed tape, and then they pass over a hopper before they're cycled into the queue) So at positions in the feed tape corresponding to the queue positions, you have hoppers feeding into the composters, and those will put items in the composters on a "patience tick" if there is a customer in that line position. Once a composter is shifted outside of that range of the feed tape corresponding to queue positions, it gets filled completely (this takes up to 7 items/28 redstone ticks if he's using pies, or about double that if he uses something easier to produce like cactus). There could be more than one of these "top off" points so when the whole system is resetting on a game over it could move the feed tape faster than once per 28 redstone ticks. Then just before a composter gets cycled back around to the back of the queue again, it passes over a hopper, extracting the bonemeal and resetting it to fill level 0. An approach like this would require some kind of farm feeding it obviously. Filling the composters with pies or cakes is the most deterministic solution (every item added to a composter increases the fill level, 100% of the time) - with autocrafters that's a lot easier than it used to be but it still means a pumpkin farm, a chicken egg farm, and a sugarcane (or honey) farm... autocrafter to produce sugar and then another to make pie. It's doable but it is a significant addition to the project. Depending on how the item distribution works (i.e. is there just a hopper line that's filled to capacity with pies to carry them to the different fill points?) the system could need over 50 stacks of pies just to fill the system enough for it to operate correctly - and then in an average game (say, 25 customers served) another 200 pies consumed (as each composter that cycles through the queue must be completely filled, then emptied again) A simpler farm like cactus could work but it would make the patience system random - on a patience tick, 50% chance the composter fill level increases. Some customers could wind up being more "patient" than others depending on how the RNG goes. I think probably that's not desirable though. Another challenge with a system like this is tracking which slots of the queue have customers in them, so you don't wind up adding fill level to a composter that corresponds to an empty spot in the line. For that purpose maybe a crafter that counts how many line positions are filled (add an item to the crafter when a customer joins the queue, remove an item when a customer moves into the restaurant) - then use signal strength from the composter to control which slots in the composter system will accept an item when patience is ticked.
You could just track the third customer position in line. If you are moving the customers quickly then you shouldn't have more than two customers in line for too long. If the line is moving too slowly there would be at least three waiting customers long enough to trigger the impatient customers consequence. Play testing would help fine tune if the third customer is the right one to put the timer on and how much time should accumulate to trigger impatience.
I was thinking something along this, but with iron nuggets? as the customer moves forward, all of their nuggets go forward with them. when they leave queue, the nuggets drop out too?
Idea.... plate up was made hectic because it has multiple steps to do in order to serve a customer. Most important of which is the food and a clean plate. So my idea is, instead of clicking a button to indicate that a customer is served, how about have a hopper where it needs a clean carpet( which could represent the plate) and then it goes to some sorting process where if it is a clean carpet(plate), it would accept the order, and if not then the item would come back. This would also simulate the customer eating the food not just them going for take outs. Also after the carpet(plate) is accepted, with auto-crafter, dye it with brown or with other dyes to represent a dirty plate which could then be cleaned with washing the carpet(dishes). This would also give one more task for the players to do. TLDR: To add more "fun" in the game to make it more hectic, add the "Plate" mechanic from plate up. --- -Add carpets to resemble a Plate -The carpet would be put in a hopper to replace the button to indicate that the customer is served. -That carpet would then get checked in an item sorter to see if its the right item -While in the process of checking, this simulate the customer eating -If the item does not match with the plate, it would go back and the customer would continue "eating" -If the item does match, the customer would be considered served and the carpet goes back dyed(dirty) -Players would then go clean the carpet(dye it back to white or the original color) to get a fresh clean plate. P.s. I started this thought with dyed hats at first since you can wash them which simulates washing dishes, then I remembered that they are not stackables so it might be hard to sort them out. So I instead resorted to carpets which could be dyed and still resembles a plate.
the fun part of plateup is controlling the elements and upgrading constantly to 'automate', or get money and stuff and the slightly convoluted cards where you take 'optimum' decisions in your 'workflow'
Not sure if this suggestion for the queue timing comes too late. But you could have a chest minecart in a "shadow" queue for every person in the real queue. Then if you fill those with items using a hopper, at one point it will be completely filled up, so no more items can enter, so the hopper feeding it fills up, which you can detect to trigger a lose event. If the guest in the queue moves up a spot, so does the minecart in the shadow queue. For every guest entering your queue, you add a new chest minecart to the shadow queue. When a guest enters the restaurant, you simply destroy the minecart. You can play with the timing by using either a chest minecart, a hopper minecart and items that stack to 64 or 16. Or maybe even preload the carts with filler items. Or of course more than one hopper per position in the shadow queue... And if it is possible to use a comparitor on a chest minecart, then you could even do something like create an indicator with lamps showing the patience of the guest in the front of the queue. Feature creep warning: if it is raining outside, you could unlock another hopper feeding the minecart...
I think it would help to have some tasks players can do at the start of the day to "get ready" or between customers to "get ahead". For example, the mini task to generate bone meal reserve.
What you need to really clarify with yourself is if Hungry Hermits is inspired by Plate Up or Based on Plate Up because that's two different ways of solving problems and game design.
I love how hard you work but more than that I LOVE YOUR VACATIONS!! Please DO NOT feel bad for taking them! We want you to take care of you! Naturally every video is a treat but we want you to be able to KEEP making them so in order to do that you need to go do the funs too!! Thank you for this great game! It is really fun to watch our hermits play!
Brainstorming is great for triggering ideas. Chat has great ideas! But you should also talk to Skizz and Jimmy and Pearl. Ask them their favorite things about Plate Up, but also ask Cub about weird things you can do in minecraft like when he set up the pillager to change the color of a sheep (I know that that example isn’t relevant to the game, but it could spark ideas).
I’ve played games like Plate Up and what makes them fun is that they’re puzzles. Your puzzle pieces are the tasks you must complete and you have to find a way to fit them into the box that is your time limit. Finding the tricks is what’s fun. What is the perfect sequence of events that will reward you with the most done in the smallest amount of time. There’s a juggling of resources. In your game that would be food, prep time, and customer patience. You need systems in place that allow you to massage one or two of those elements in a tricky to pull off yet predictable way (ex. ways you can tend the food while it’s cooking to get it out earlier and ways to placate customers to extend their patience.) The player needs to feel like they’re getting away with something when they play the game right. In a restaurant game I played the customers are harder to get rid of but sometimes you just don’t have what you need to feed them but the line is growing (and sometimes you can see a customer type in line who’s easy to serve) so you give the unwanted customer the wrong meal and maybe you fail that one or maybe you get far less points but the table is freed up. The player took a calculated loss but they also accomplished something. It’s a give and take. playing music and offering free treats is another way I’ve seen these games let players manipulate customer patience
Plate Up's booking desk mechanics allows players to control the pacing of the game and keep it frantic. I believe coming up with an insentive to get a similar mechanic will go a long way. Especially due to the difficulty of predicting the ideal pacing given different days, number of players, and player skill...
I have a simple suggestion to make things fun. "Parties". In real life it's rare for people to turn up one at a time to a cafe or restraunt. They usually turn up in pairs, I'd adjust the tables to be three sets of two, and have the option for groups of two to come in at the same time. Pairs or groups will order the same thing always but it could be anything from cake to water. So if they see two or four people pop up at the same time they know to stock up on several of the item.
What I see is that there might be many downtimes, players waiting for customers or an order that can be done by just one player. One thing you could do is more stuff like the freezer with a "minigame" for the items in the book (bowl, gold...) like a small mine for gold where you have to catch gold nuggets dropping from random spots on the ceiling, or cutting a tree by jumping many times on a pressure plate for wood to later make bowls in a crafter. This chores could be done by a player during slower moments in the day to stack up on those items (keep them in a container and empty it at the end of the game). You'll probably never read this, but after seeing those two playing, I know the game could be very fun an chaotic. Keep it up 💪
I really like these streams, as a hobbyist game designer I don't have many people to discuss game design with. It's very valuable and fun to just listen to tango think about these things.
Looking at the plate up wiki heres how it tracks the queue outside: All queuing customer groups share a single patience bar. Following the first group, each subsequent group to join the queue causes patience to decrease 10% faster (stacks multiplicativly). Moving a queuing group inside provides a slight boost to Queuing patience, while clearing the whole queue fully restores patience until the next queuing group arrives.
In plate up the total time for all waiting phases is 4min and 15 seconds at base(2player). 150s max wait to order, 90s max wait for food, and 15 for all food delivered. All the Patience timings are also based on player count. One player gets more time 3 and up gets less.
For more randomization, random potions like (slowness) that drop from the ceiling could help. In game terms that would be explained by the player suffering from tiredness.
This is connected to the diner language idea. What if the food items were named as if they were diner food. For example? A baked potato would be "flamin Hot Spud". Or The baked cod could be "fish out of water" or "fishy business" This could help to create more chaos when trying to fill orders.
My thought is that you could add the ‘messes’ using copper floors and having them age and a retextured axe as a broom/mop to clean the floors. That way it gives the server something else to do. Besides taking the order and waiting for another player to get the item. Then I think the real fun in this game will come as the days get more difficult and chaotic. And adding upgrades like maybe allowing more inventory slots (1 or 2 max I think). Upgrades like ‘decorations’ (paintings) that could do things like slows customer patience declining while waiting for food if that’s possible. Adding in maybe a pressure plate in the farm that dispenses bonemeal. A few at a time like 5-10 maybe. This gives the player a few things more to do/worry about. This system could then be upgraded with maybe a further upgrade that automates this process. Another thought is the phone in plateup could be here too and the server likely could stand on a pressure plate to add the the rate customers coming in. One final note is if you decide to keep single player maybe allow them to have 2 inventory slots starting off so it’s easier for them to multitask and maybe open the conveyor system upgrade to allow them to throw items to the kitchen quickly. But I mostly think it’s a 2 player game because of the time takes to do things in the game
For your queueing timer, you could have a dropper item counter that will put items into a dropper whenever a customer is added to the queue, and remove items when a customer leaves the queue. You would just add/remove whatever the time between each customer is. So, if there was 20 seconds between each customer, each time a customer joins the queue, you'd add 20 items to the counter. Each time a customer leaves the queue, you'd remove 20 items from the counter. If the counter ever reaches above some threshold, then you lose. You would just have to make sure not to add any items to the counter if a customer joins an empty queue (since that customer would have just arrived and would not have been waiting any amount of time). Essentially, each customer joining updates the amount of time the other customers have been there. The part that would probably be most tricky is making the amount of time between customers variable between days. But in theory, if you had a way of adding/removing 20 items on day 1, then 18 items on day 2, etc., this would work
Sorry that you were feeling frustrated, but I really enjoy seeing how you think about and solve all the puzzles involved in putting your games together.
maaan i am so hyped, its always so nice to get to this part of development. it must be fun for you too to be able to finally share the fruits of the hard work. lookin forward to see the hermits play this. Hermitcraft wouldnt be the same without you... yes this would apply to all the hermits, BUT still, lemme throw some love in your general direction.
For the customer patience, you could dispense the items into cobwebs when a customer is added to the queue. Have them drop into a hopper under the cobwebs. Start with some items already in the hopper, and take an item out of the hopper every time a customer enters the restaurant. That way the hopper only gets full enough to trigger if it gets filled up (by customers entering the queue and causing dispenser to dispense into cobwebs) faster than you are taking items out of it (as customers leave the queue for the restaurant), e.g. if the customers get angry faster than they can enter the restaurant. Edit: clarity
1. I think if you want to increase the decision factor, open up more hotbar slots, and run the customers through quicker. Now routing and time management is the game. "Okay I need carrot right away, but if I grab sugar and pumpkins I can feed the next costumer as well, do I have time for that?" 2. If there is some rhythm to what costumers will want next, the players can hedge and prep in different ways "Cake hasn't shown up in a about 10 costumers, its due, I should grab eggs when I go out for fish" 3. If a skulk finds a silverfish in the dinner room, costumers leave more quickly
I'm only 15 minutes into the vod so I dunno if this still holds up but: - for the tracking how long someone is in the queue: you know when a customer goes to the restaurant (armor stand gets dispensed) and when they enter (armor stand gets seated). Maybe you can use this to time how long someone is in the queue, if there is an X amount of time between going to the restaurant and getting seated then they lose. - also a visual representation of what tables are available might be nice, like a redstone lamp above it that's on or something Upgrade ideas: - a "freezer" to store food, like the plateup freezer. Could be a chest/barrel/shulker with limited space where they can store items - "auto harvest" : a observer could watch the farmland, when they plant something it gets bonemealed automatically - upgraded tables: customers have more patience Dunno if everything is even possible, just putting out some ideas :)
Scar looking for the pig was great. I think you could benefit from having actual livestock they have to punch to death, and they need to breed the livestock before killing it. You can then use other food items to get the babies to grow up faster... It might be a fun mechanic.
I feel like multiplayer is the way to go with this game. Plate Up, from a viewer experience, is fun because of the interactions. (Half of why I love the streams is because that’s where “Jimmy Jiggles” came from!) I think the player interactions/cooperation are important for that reason. It makes it fun for us to watch, and it makes it fun to play / stream. A suggestion, which might take away from vanilla Minecraft, but is my suggestion because I feel the biggest problem here is that Minecraft lacks the food needed to make this game possible: A temporary texture pack for when you play plate up / custom items dispensed after making food. I don’t know redstone, so I don’t know how much of this is possible, but this idea is that you’re using a crafting recipe of a pre-existing block, but when crafted, it triggers a different, retextured food (or item) to pop out. If not that, then retexturing blocks with a temporary-use texture pack and renaming items using said texture pack. Still using that idea, but eliminating the weird dispenser - crafter nonsense. Essentially just making it so the players have to work together to craft items, even if those items are a bit custom in nature. I get that this might be a bad idea, sheerly because it looses it’s vanilla Minecraft aspect, and everybody’s probably thought about it already. But I thought I’d put my two cents in. Finally, unrelated to ideas… just as a thought behind the purpose of this game. I don’t really see Hungry Hermits as the next Decked Out, in terms of longevity. It does feel more like a mini-game. Which, of course is disappointing in some aspects, because the goal would be to get people invested in a game for a long time. But I think it still has the potential to be a very fun streaming game. (Saw someone mention that this will be more fun for viewers than watching Frogger/Ravager Rush, which I agree.) If it was a minigame, you could always add “updates” to it (the addition of upgrades to the kitchen, the rats from the ceiling, maybe even side quests and other easter eggs).
I really do enjoy a lot of your builds, and I think this game is awesome! I do think that changing the spruce wood walls will go a long way with just the polish of the game
Adjust the timers so that the tables from left to right get more impatient. This will force players to make decisions whether to take an impatient customer and let the patient one wait. If you have multiple customers running out of patience at different rates it makes it a challenging juggling act.
I think another thing plate up has going for it is you can watch what the other player is doing, so even if you're stuck, you have something entertaining to watch
18:00 Maybe you figured the patience in the queue thing since this time in the video. In case you haven’t, I thought of something you might consider. You would need to calculate the total winning time for all the scheduled customers, varying by level, of course. If the player goes over that total time, they lose. A countdown timer will give the player an idea of their standing as they play. In-restaurant individual customer patience stays the same, acting as a sub counter. Which is fine. If they can’t beat the individual customer requirements, they won’t beat the total time, anyway. 🤷♀️ Just a thought. ❤ #automation One “automation” could be powering the doors to the various places so they stay open. (That iron door is the bane of my Minecraft existence!😂) 1:12:25 😂 Etho!
2 ideas. 1. Endless mode. Orders get progressively harder until you timeout 5 orders. 2. "Group" orders. A table for two where both orders have to arrive at the same time or reasonably close. Great for team play.
Regarding upgrades of some farm tasks, you could have boxes that are fed carrot, beetroot, etc. instead of having to grow them, and make them accessible with a movable block on top (e.g. switch between a solid block and upside-down stair). The boxes would be accessible from the kitchen, negating the need to run out to the farm when that upgrade is achieved, though each chest would only be able to handle one order at a time, so going out to the farm for multiple orders might still be necessary. Or maybe a player-fed storage system so that someone working the farm and queue up multiple items in anticipation. Maybe pots that are emptied with a hopper at a button press, to avoid giving too much storage space.
Coop thing: make keys (roles) have each door need a key (toss through floor to unlock, key shoots back up on other side) but let some doors be opened by multiple keys. Ideally, have 1 more key than players
as one who completed both overcooked games, while playing with my brother I think what made the game fun even if there's like a theme for every couple level is the environment of the level itself. a lot of the levels may have had similar recipes, but each one had a challenge, like some had cars in the middle of the street where the kitchen is, I know u have done something similar with the silver fish so keep trying with that. also, something cool that I remembered you had done in the biggening of the season which is moving belts that transfer items in the red stone factory, why don't u add with some walls so both players have to send items to each other to complete the orders. and I think you have done an amazing job with the things that can be ordered but why don't you add more like maybe potions or stews, which will require more Coopertive playing as u would like. but GOOD LUCK and keep on working on it you are doing great.
Only part way through the vod yet, but could you cluster the first load of customers, like having the first 2-3 customers each day be added to the queue with as little delay as possible, and the rest added at the normal rate. That would give you the initial rush to require multitasking without making the game actually impossible over a long day.
There is a flash game from my childhood, "Penguin Diner" (and penguin diner 2) with potential concepts. The upgrade tree has a couple different avenues. Where you seat the costumer is important for minimizing travel. Currency, tips, routing to collect payments
I know this video is two weeks old at this point so the problems may have been solved, but honestly I think one of the big things about plate up is only having one inventory space, and needing to put things onto the tables in order to do multiple things. You could set up tables with item frames and have players fill their inventories with sticks to be down to only one space. Then you would have to throw items at your feet in order to craft so you pick each item up as you place it into the crafting table. Additional inventory spaces could also be an upgrade players could buy.
One thing you could do is split the kitchen but leave the table room unsplit so players can walk all the way around to the other side of the kitchen, but somehow make it so that its more efficient for the players to pass items through the wall to each other either by slowing the players down or maybe making a station with an item frame where they could store an item or a few within the wall
I would be more worried if I did not remember Several times of similar Doubt-Despair phases during the Decked out development, and we all know that all worked out to be an amazing game!
For the queue, you can use shulkerboxes to keep track of the 'wait time' by removing an item each X seconds, when its empty the customer had to wait too long. The shulkerboxes will move along with the queue and be placed in a shulkerbox unloading system, and moving it with the queue you can break it and let it be placed again by the next shulkerbox unloader.
I would drop single so fast for the thought of 2 hermits, both being able to have their perspectives on their own channels/secondary channels. Also, making the doorway to the serving room wider so when they have it in their hand and so close to the person; just for them to go bye-bye. I think that's would have promoted for frustration more than a challenge. So personally, layout should be commincation and time adaptability so that the hermits can actually find a part of the game they are great at, just like in the actual game. I would continue the rats, and honestly, I would promote 3 person plays. And just add more aggressive products, like a dinner rush button that they could do. Instead of asking for one thing, a person could ask for a whole meal. Also, maybe a cookbook for those recipes. I could imagine the communication being the main focus and the time being the challenge. Along with those mini-challenges that are 1 person based to allow a group to have a divide and specialize playthrough. Could possibly encourage dinner rush with a trophy and have it be like the hard core mode. Understanding this is probably a lot of additional Redstone since you're adding a game mode. So, if you ever decide to make a part two later in hermitcraft, 😢 remember this comment! 😂 Have fun in the noodles, Tango! I hope scar and bdubs were able to give you some great ideas. Since nothing beats a hermits giving another hermit advice.
Maybe having things like Zed's minigames, where you need to jump on bellows, which takes somebody out of action at times so the other person needs to take over their orders. It might be that the bellows sound an alarm when they need pumping, so it's somewhat random and unexpected in the middle of things.
In plate up you have the call option. As a player it might be fun to override how fast the costumers come in. In that way the people that have played day one multiple times, they can increase the difficulty. I saw in the vod there was problems with too many costumers coming in at once. Maybe a timer in front of the queue could delay them? Only when the previous costumer has been away from the queue for a certain amount of time, the next gets to move forward? I have no game making/redstone knowledge so I don't how easy or how possible this is or if this even is a worthwhile idea.
Randomness can feel good in games. Like lets say the freezer. If you are in the freezer waiting for a max of 20 seconds, it will feel very good if you hit the random chance that it only took 5. Which gives the player some brain candy to feel happy and get on with their task. Also I feel like randomness in upgrading will help the game a lot, which Plate Up has as well. This round you can choose between upgrade 1 3 and 6, the next round between 2, 3 and 5. Every game will feel different and feel good in different ways.
Here's an idea for the queueueue timer: Make a 45° slope and put rails on it, alternating between regular ones and detectors, one detector rail for every space in the queue(ueueue). From one side have pistons block the track so that carts will stay on the detector rails (the piston head should be one block above and one ahead of the detector). You can link all pistons up with a diagonal torch tower. If you send an 8 tick pulse into the lowest one they should let them all go ahead by one spot. On the other side place droppers to aim at the block above the detector rail. These will put the timer items into the carts. You can read the output of the carts through the slope, placing comparators behind the blocks the rails are on. All droppers should fire at the same time and if there isn't a minecart in place the item will shoot across the track, at which point you can catch it in a water stream and put it back into the cycle. The only problem is that there could be gaps between the customers, so you may need to link the detector rails to the piston above them.
Tango, seems like the rats would add another dimension and break up monotony, if nothing else, not to mention spiking the players' adrenalin and excitement, thus enhancing game play. It's also just a cool feature completely consistent with the lore of the diner setting. So I think it's worth the cost of doing it (which is easy for me to say, since I don't have to pay that cost lol)!
As far as the queue is concerned, I think the thing to track would be how long it takes for the queue to advance, rather than how long each individual is in the queue; this reflects real life in that people tend to be more patient (and more inclined to stay in line due to the sunk cost fallacy) as long as they perceive some level of progress -- a person might give up after five minutes of standing still, but stay in line for ten minutes as long as they got to take a couple of steps closer to the door every minute or so. Maybe to encourage multitasking, one potential upgrade would be that every so often, you find out what the order of someone in the queue is going to be (but not which person's order it is). That way, if you have spare time, you know that you're eventually going to have to get (for instance) Cooked Cod started, so you can get a jump on that. Maybe call the upgrade Call Ahead, or Reservation?
Just started listening to the VOD and had this idea: I personally would love a mind-numbing simple mode as a player. And as a viewer, this would be really cool background for any chat session (either on streams or on videos). Maybe ask if Hermits would be interested in this mode? There's no point in doing it if no one wants it, but there may be interest to make it worth while!
When the game starts pre load a bunch of silver fish; splash them with weaving; use a separator to send them individually to drop off location(s) maybe in a queue at each location(s); when rats are requested double piston pull a block in the ceiling at chosen location(s); drop how ever many rats are requested; in the mean time when all rats are separated from the original pre load area; a new batch is spawned & splashed as back up?
@@Yirggzmb oh I forgot the timer on potion. So when the request for rats to be sent to the kitchen comes in; that’s when you splash the group; then separate and drop them? (I don’t know what it takes to separate them; I’m sure it’s tedious too?)
P.S. just got to the bdubs & scar part. Not only am I glad they came because they’re both extremely entertaining individuals but they’ve come to play test; which allowed tango debug as they play which is also fun to watch as it is helpful to tango. Especially because I’m sure the game has his anxiety on high alert. Always fun with friends. Hope tango has less bugs to deal with in the future. :)
Label certain monuments with signs so people know where they generally need to go or specifically need to go depending on which location they’re going to. For example refrigerator is just labeled refrigerator & not the items inside but the trash cans or other devices are labeled individually.
2:21:02 - My dad always had this idea to buy space on a billboard. Even a bunch of them. And have it say “He is coming” and just leave it be that. Just have it there for ages. Just to get people wondering, who is it, what are they coming for and why is it important? And then just after ages and ages, follow it up with another billboard that says “He has been” just so people felt like they missed out on whoever it was that was coming XD As a non advertisement I thought it was brilliant.
Game idea: Make it 2 floors high. Some of the top floors are glass to see the player above/below and have barrels to transfer items. Some tools/farms and crafting table only available upstairs.
it would be sick to like, collect a bunch of spiders and drop one or two every game in the farm as a farm-specific threat that u have to take the broom to deal with, and then you can maybe buy a brewing stand upgrade and use spider eyes to brew "coffee"
Hi Tangp, my two cents: * Drop single player and focus on two player fun. No one will miss it and Hermits will simply team up (= more interactions) * You could lock the (iron) doors to the dining area after a player received the order (= benefit when other player takes over the ingredients hunt) * Tell players which dishes may show up each day (signs), this could make them preparing complicated dishes (= more decisions) * Customers may need some time to eat up if there is room for the redstone (= more bussy dining room) * Put a hanging sign somewhere so Hermits can name their restaurant (= stuff to do and argue during easy inital days) * Rats could be a DLC * When rats always show up near e.g. the trashbin this would be okay
Idea: The people in the farm work together to solve a random fairly easy puzzle like a guessing game with a low number of solutions but enough to have the variation needed for reuse. Maybe the complexity increases over the game session. That way the server comes back "Order up! Need a carrot and 2 beets!", then the person or people in the farm have to solve some puzzle to receive the needed items, and maybe you can add more steps where you get an item from one solution, deposit it as part of the next solution to get an ingredient. Try not to get too bogged down in the concept of Plate Up, Minecraft won't necessarily live up mechanically to everything Plate Up can do, so if you come up with unique ways to add complexity and teamwork outside of the framework of Plate Up then I believe it will be more fun for everyone involved.
Another idea is to not have so many crops available and already grown in the farm, and shift the food providing mechanism to requiring the players to grow it from seed. The puzzles they do will reward bonemeal that will allow them to create the meal faster
I'm imagining that for the queue system, you could have a queue waiting block, that is constantly emptying at a fixed rate. And each waiting hermit turns on an auto dropper to add into that timer. You get two tuning knobs, which is the speed of item removal from the waiting time, and to raise the limit. It has a problem where somebody sitting at the front, or even two at the front won't make the game end, but timing from the front isn't as challenging as tracking all of them/following them through
In stead of one waiting line, make 6 parallel waiting lines with a gate system that opens one after another. That way you can time how long Esch of them are waiting. You can keep the other line for visuals
Not sure if this gets addressed later on, but I had a though about the timing for each customer in the queue. If you are guaranteed to have less than a certain amount of customers waiting, call that X, then you can set up X different hard-coded timers. You start timer 1 when customer 1 enters, 2 when 2 enters, etc until X. Now, when a customer enters the restaurant, check timer 1, then 2 for the next customer, etc (use a counter/pointer and move it forward when a customer leaves queue). When we reach X+1 customers, given that we can have no more than X players in the queue, either of two cases is true: 1) The first customer was not served in time and the game is already over or the customer is lost (whatever the punishment is). This case means customer X+1 either doesn't need a timer (if the game is over) or can use timer 1 (if the customer is just lost), and thus go to case (2). 2) Or, at least the first customer has been let in/served, so timer 1 is open. Start timer (X+1) modulo X for customer X+1 (i.e. just cycle back to the start of the timers) It seems to me that this would provide a way of tracking each customer's time in the queue, though I don't know redstone well so I don't know how feasible the timers would be.
For the queue, imo, when you are in a queue, no matter how long it is as long as its moving your patience is fine so resetting the time every time it moves would be realistic. if you did want to make it incremental you could have a timer on a hopper clock that resets every time it moves but have a counter keeping track of the amount of people in the queue (items added/subtracted from a barrel). Read off the barrel to remove/add items to the timer to change the timings.
Game fun factor. I think if tables fill up faster with longer customer patience and larger variety of what they want earlier you could have up to 4 fail before game loss. But if you get a cake you might choose to let that customer go while you frantically multi task the other customers with more inventory slots available and a much larger que outside without penalty.
You could approch 'automation' via inverting the recipe system. Start the players making complex foods and add a recipe *upgrade* to make their recipes simpler.
Hey Tango! Bit of a wacky idea, what if you split the area into multiple sections (say like 3 or 4), and had a series of locks that prevents two players from entering the same area? With four areas that might make for an interesting bit of juggling where the players have to get and take orders but coordinate with the other player to get food that might be in their area, or push them out to get through and make an order
Ooh maybe players could randomly receive resources needed to activate certain things, dropped by customers or leftovers of meals etc, such as bone meal for the farm or fuel for the furance, so they'll need to coordinate. Maybe they go to a resource dispenser every time they do a task and receive a random type of item needed for the game's current or upcoming orders.
hearing your complaints made me think that maybe introducing roles would be beneficial. you could base the game around 3 players and have a 2/2/2 solution, where the number stands for how many rooms each player have to focus on. one role could focus on farming and waiting customers, another on waiting and cooking and the last one on cooking and farming. i think this works with more and fewer players as well, creating the 1/1/1/1 and 3/3 scenarios. my opinion regarding solo play is that it should be possible, but only with upgrades. for this to make sense you'd likely have to add more tasks to the waiting/dining area, like e.g manually calling in guests from the queue (this could also make it so that the first queued guest that you keep pre loaded in the system can be at the door at the beginning of the day, reducing "load times", and the start day button could potentially double up as the "call in guests" button), or entertaining guests which could increase one stage of patience once per day. the kitchen might also need some changes for this 2/2/2 model to work, to give the players a reason that they should be multiple people there. i really like your freezer idea for this. small inconvinences that can be omitted by being two people. e.g maybe you can temporarily unlock the crafter speed upgrade by having another player stand on a nearby pressureplate that just outside of reach. farms are solid as they are imo, but you could make them two separate areas that allows the farmers to throw an item to eachother, and make it so only one player can be in each farming area at once kinda like with the pop down stair on the cart ride side. final point in my novel of a comment is that the hermits need some sort of reason to play the game, and upgrade points/for the fun of it aren't reason enough. the reason decked out and frogger became so successful among the hermits are because of a solid ranking system, letting hermits compare themselves to others, and the rewards (and i'm not talking about the frog coins). when it comes to this game i think that time can be a substitute for score, and whoever finished all days in less time is the employee(s) of the month! points in itself is enough of an insentive for some players to come back to the game, but since xisuma have started with the trophies then you could probably reach out to the person that made them and order a trophy or 4 for the different team layouts. Etho and Pearl can't win a 4 player format by themselves XD
If you wanted to get real fancy with the redstone, you could try and pull off Overcooked's moving map design. It's the same idea as trapping people to certain areas and forcing them to work together but it changes so one person isn't stuck doing the same job the entire game. You could do it by just having redstone walls popping up and down in the kitchen area. And maybe even the serving area, so if someone gets caught out there, you have to throw the food to them to serve and if nobody is out there, you waste time and have to wait to serve food.
Maybe limit the number of items a player can hold at one time? Drop sticks to fill their inventory or something. The thrill of overcooked was that you could only carry one item at time. There was also areas that closed so players couldn't be in the same spot or they may get stuck in the same spot, being unable to get a certain items or be able to turn in a completed order adding an added level of challenge. Cant wait to see how this turns out!
Would it be possible to allow the players to select which dishes they would like to serve each day? Like, as they get progressively farther through the days, they must occasionally pick some number X out of Y food options to add to their menu. Early game, this would be easier, but also increase collaboration (by being able to sort of pre-make dishes ahead of time, maybe even trending the “meta” towards one server and one cook), and late game would give more variance to the runs (because they would have different menus). So for example, before day 1 starts, they could choose 2 dishes out of easy dishes like carrots, water bottle, beetroot, etc (they could even be presented with subset of the easy dishes for more variance). Then on maybe day 4, they must add 2 dishes out of slightly more difficult dishes like steak, cooked chicken, pork chops, etc. Then on maybe day 7, they must add 1 of the hardest dishes like cake and pumpkin pie. Could work well when combined with Etho’s idea of a lockout timer for the farm. Could even have a button elsewhere that could override the lockout (similar to freezer), so the second player would need to go over and hit the override button to let first player into the farm (not enough time for one player to hit the button and get to the door in time).
An idea for the issue with the splitting for the different tables: With the water stream on the head level the armour stands should drop quicker. If you don't need the ice you can even let it all slide over bottom trap doors and have the water stream two blocks higher. That way they drop super fast because they are in the water stream just with the tip of their "head". In general: Really looking forward to see this game being played. Glad you feel more comfortable with it now. Totally understand your concerns. As you said, you, as a game dev, know what is working and what not. We trust you. Your critical approach is useful to find what is good. At the same time we want to encourage you as you do great. A little biased because we are fans of you, still though
I think that when the player has to conciously go and take an order, it removes a lot of stress. If the orders shows up automatically and you don't know when they show up, it could lead to the need for cooperation. The foods in Minecraft is very limited. Maybe this is more of a crafting game? Maybe the players need to make cobblestone stairs or chistled bricks, to up the variety and give you better control of the difficulty?
The game needs more ingredients that’s what makes overcooked fun. That’s what makes up fun so I think adding potions as drinks. Therefore, you have to get different ingredients on different timers. Maybe even putting the brewing stands on sticky pistons so you have to move them from brewing stand to brewing stand otherwise you’ll lose your drinkcould add a bit of
Issue thought!!! In plateup, if you shove somebody to the kitchen and they do their job perfectly, they get to watch as the server struggles or even fails. As they watch, and if they have a path, they can run out and help. The issue I’m seeing here is if you have someone in the back farm waiting similarly to the example above, they have zero visual cues to run back to the front of the restaurant to help. Early in the vod tango was addressing missing “something.” I’m not saying this it, but I would not enjoy being designated to the farm not able to see the customers, arguably the point of the game. That said, very much excited to see how this shapes up. Huge fan of plateup.
The thing that makes Plate up so enjoyable are the people who play it.
The fact that any two Hermits will be playing something cooperatively; their banter chemistry alone will make this worthwhile for viewers!
Bdubs as a chef: quick, efficient
Scar as a waiter: Hi, how may I help you?
VS.
Bdubs as a waiter: WHADDYA WANT??
Scar as a chef: ITS TURNING BLACK, THERES SMOKE, HELP
This is the BEST DUO for testing out Tango's game. Bdubs and the baked potato bit...."Oh No...We got ANOTHER ONE!" 1:39:00 I am literally crying - they are slaying me. I can't wait to watch Hermits play this game. LMAO. Bdubs TALKS to them - like they are real and not armor stands. LMAO.
Sounds like there are 3 parts to the game. The Farm, the Kitchen, and the serving areas. I think you need to focus on each part more. I would eliminate customers who want non crafted items like a carrot or beet root unless it is a single-player game. Maybe have the system skip day 1 for 2+ player games.
In a 2+ player game, the fun will come from each player completing tasks in their own area while also serving customers. So the farm focused player could have to do tasks to earn bone meal to help crops grow faster when not providing chef with ingredients to craft meals.
Chef player needs to figure out what items they need to request from farmers, and then once they get them, craft the food.
The server needs to take orders, do minor tasks to reset customer happiness so they don't time out during harder to craft food items, and maybe answer phone calls by standing on a pressure plate for x seconds when phone starts ringing, etc.
There needs to be options for complexity based on the number of players/amount of challenge players want. Maybe have fully open area for 1 player, require players to divide areas with walls they can pass things over but not cross for 2 players, and have each player have a dedicated area of their own for 3 player games.
I feel like the biggest problem is Minecraft itself doesn't have enough crafted/cooked food. Although, what's different between plate up and hungry hermits is that plate-up is focused usually on one type of food, with variations. Minecraft doesn't really have variations, but also, hungry hermits makes you focus on many different types of foods at once.
Minecraft's lack of food really makes it difficult to get a fun and balanced plate-up-like game.
Great suggestions. 😊
I think you need to simplify the number of different foods that can be made. Part of the fun of Plate Up is that you can make a backlog of food because there's only 2 or 3 options of what will be ordered.
So say your options for food are cake, beetroot soup, and baked potatoes. They are all foods that require more than one step, but it's food that can be predicted and made ahead of time. You just have to balance the time it takes to make each food with the patience of the customer.
With this, you need to give the players some counters. Having no counters means that you have to do everything within your inventory, thus negating working with your partner and not allowing for food to be prepared ahead of time. There's no way to give your partner ingredients that won't disappear. I think making players have to choose what gets saved on a counter (maybe an item frame so they can only do one) gives them more freedom. Ingredients and prepared food will take up counter space quickly, and it will be a good frustration to have to decide how to clear that counter.
I like the idea of the cobwebs popping up more than the rats. Maybe you should make the floor powdered snow and make the players wear leather boots? Then items can't be left on the floor, they will fall through. Then just have a way to collect the dropped items below, like a water stream or something.
On the topic of fun:
- I think things like the cauldron + water bucket will be the backbone of making the players feel like their decisions r having an impact. Even if the game stays somewhat "fetch-quest-y" things like the water bucket offer a super interesting little decision for the players.
-----
"ok we have a water bottle order"
now, the smart thing to do is get a bucket instead of a bottle and go fill the cauldron first, then ditch the bucket, get a bottle and fill it from cauldron. Saves time in the long term but takes extra time to set up. Super interesting decision espicially if the customers come in big rushes and then die down. It'll be like "okok we have a free moment go fill up the cauldron and ill fill up the X! Quick!"
Seeing an actual playtest I think you should just enforce it to 2 players tbh - it makes conceptualising interesting gameplay a lot more straight forward, and it's not like you haven't already made fantastic single player games in previous seasons! Plus it'll be done quicker ;)
I think it could be hard coordinate hermits plans together
Ethos game is more oriented towards the enjoyment of the player; not so much the viewers.
Your game is so much more fun for the viewers to watch.
It's also in an interesting middle ground of where it's different from Minecraft content but not a completely unknown gameplay(like plate up)
I have only seen the first 10 minutes of this video but the journey of Frogger was rather disappointing. I've watched Pearl's video on it: at first, she basicall died always, then she got some points. And then she got a hundred-something. Now, the highscore is in the 700s and games last for almost an hour or so. I saw a bit of her livestream where it looks more like a chore she does while answering chat's questions. (She seems to have found one optimal route.)
I hope that play test quelled your fears a bit, because they were definitely having fun. Now add the rats, and I personally think the upgrades will add a lot
It was pretty fun watching two player like Bdubs and Scar. I think as humans we liking playing things that are simple.
Hey Tango, have you considered potions instead/in addition to food? There's more variety of potions, and you can more easily differentiate complicated foods. It also gives you a base level of ingredients, and an ability to plan forward (i.e. you know they are all potions, so you know you need X amount of Blaze Powder. So you get Blaze Rods, and have the timed auto crafter turn them into blaze powder. The same thing with knowing you are going to need water bottles, and nether wart. Each brew would somewhat work like Soup in Plate up where you get 3 times the serve (Or if you can figure out a way to lock out brewing stand slots, that could be an upgrade?)
It gives the player the base ability to forward plan because they know, at the base level they are going to need to make a potion. The next level could be they need to make 2 different types of potion, and having more customers.
The more I think about the base issues I see, I think Potion Brewing solves a fair chunk of them.
You might need to have recipes displayed somewhere for the potions for hermits who don't know.
EDIT: I also think you are getting bogged down in the idea of upgrades, and progression. Not sure if you have played it, but have you checked out Overcooked? There is no progression, each level is it's own challenge, and instead you are working towards a high score (By serving the most customers quickly during that time). You don't lose in that game by having a Queue overflow, your loss conditions are "just" the length of service on customers. The competition between plays is instead to get more Stars which are gated at certain scores, or get a high score. Mechanically, it is simpler than Plate Up, but probably more accurately maps to Minecraft- you can throw items, but players can be locked in spots. Some of the dynamic challenges on the levels are moving obstacles, which could be piston walls, or changing to parkour.
I'd love to SEE tango and etho build a Game togheter. they're already created an awesome mail system. What a power duo!
them collabing/troubleshooting redstone, game design, everything is always great. here, decked out, always...love it. they work great together
You mean, you'd be excited for Etho to build a game while Tango takes a vacay? 😈
50% chance of getting 2 customers instead of one should create decent clusters, and create mulitasking.
Day 1 feels like a tutorial. I think it would feel more fun when using the kitchen ie: smoker, crafter etc.
Imagine the chaos if they could unlock a station of energy drinks "speed potions" to cover more ground faster 😂
Here's a crazy thought. Obviously not this season, but imagine combining plate up with decked out. They take a customer's order, then have to go into a dungeon to find the ingredients and make it back out alive to serve the customer.
this reminds me of Battle Chef Brigade
This would be pretty cool!
delicious in dungeon...
Decked up
@@espressomagic948lol
Tango, early on you talked about separating the players. the more time that goes on the more i think this would help with the game being fun and require skill and communication. Have someone who handles taking the orders and handles the freezer items. I suggest that you focus on the Multiplayer game version to get the game out. If its received well then make the adjustments for singe player.
Don’t even have to physically separate. He could place cobwebs in door ways to discourage people crossing over areas
Maybe you can have the poe poe or some sort of health inspector be randomly added to the queue once a week/day? And you have to do some small tasks or some kind of action to satisfy them, and if you dont make it they will shut down a section of the farm or kitchen for a certain amout of time?
Or only to be re opened after some purchase or something?
Just spitting idea's.
If you want to track how long individual customers in line have been waiting, have a piston feed tape of composters. Periodically feed items into the composters to increase their level. If the composter fills up, the customer ran out of patience and game ends. When the line moves forward, advance the feed tape to match. You can reliably and consistently increase the fill level of the composter with cake or pie, or you can use another item type and the patience time will have some random variance.
How could you reset a composter tape? Spam feed them all stuff untill they give a bonemeal? And hope they dont get partially filled.
Take a comparator output that triggers a system to fill it up completely. There would need to be a buffer with the system to allow multiple composters to be emptied before being added to the queuing system.
@@jurjen909 Basically, yes. To reset a composter, fill it until it's full, then empty it again. On the feed tape this could be done at two different points on the feed tape so you don't get timing edge cases of it emptying and then partially filling again. (Basically just empty composters when they're just about to be cycled back to the back of the queue again. They should be 100% full when they're on the "back side" of the feed tape, and then they pass over a hopper before they're cycled into the queue)
So at positions in the feed tape corresponding to the queue positions, you have hoppers feeding into the composters, and those will put items in the composters on a "patience tick" if there is a customer in that line position. Once a composter is shifted outside of that range of the feed tape corresponding to queue positions, it gets filled completely (this takes up to 7 items/28 redstone ticks if he's using pies, or about double that if he uses something easier to produce like cactus). There could be more than one of these "top off" points so when the whole system is resetting on a game over it could move the feed tape faster than once per 28 redstone ticks. Then just before a composter gets cycled back around to the back of the queue again, it passes over a hopper, extracting the bonemeal and resetting it to fill level 0.
An approach like this would require some kind of farm feeding it obviously. Filling the composters with pies or cakes is the most deterministic solution (every item added to a composter increases the fill level, 100% of the time) - with autocrafters that's a lot easier than it used to be but it still means a pumpkin farm, a chicken egg farm, and a sugarcane (or honey) farm... autocrafter to produce sugar and then another to make pie. It's doable but it is a significant addition to the project. Depending on how the item distribution works (i.e. is there just a hopper line that's filled to capacity with pies to carry them to the different fill points?) the system could need over 50 stacks of pies just to fill the system enough for it to operate correctly - and then in an average game (say, 25 customers served) another 200 pies consumed (as each composter that cycles through the queue must be completely filled, then emptied again)
A simpler farm like cactus could work but it would make the patience system random - on a patience tick, 50% chance the composter fill level increases. Some customers could wind up being more "patient" than others depending on how the RNG goes. I think probably that's not desirable though.
Another challenge with a system like this is tracking which slots of the queue have customers in them, so you don't wind up adding fill level to a composter that corresponds to an empty spot in the line. For that purpose maybe a crafter that counts how many line positions are filled (add an item to the crafter when a customer joins the queue, remove an item when a customer moves into the restaurant) - then use signal strength from the composter to control which slots in the composter system will accept an item when patience is ticked.
You could just track the third customer position in line. If you are moving the customers quickly then you shouldn't have more than two customers in line for too long. If the line is moving too slowly there would be at least three waiting customers long enough to trigger the impatient customers consequence. Play testing would help fine tune if the third customer is the right one to put the timer on and how much time should accumulate to trigger impatience.
I was thinking something along this, but with iron nuggets? as the customer moves forward, all of their nuggets go forward with them. when they leave queue, the nuggets drop out too?
Idea.... plate up was made hectic because it has multiple steps to do in order to serve a customer. Most important of which is the food and a clean plate. So my idea is, instead of clicking a button to indicate that a customer is served, how about have a hopper where it needs a clean carpet( which could represent the plate) and then it goes to some sorting process where if it is a clean carpet(plate), it would accept the order, and if not then the item would come back. This would also simulate the customer eating the food not just them going for take outs. Also after the carpet(plate) is accepted, with auto-crafter, dye it with brown or with other dyes to represent a dirty plate which could then be cleaned with washing the carpet(dishes). This would also give one more task for the players to do.
TLDR:
To add more "fun" in the game to make it more hectic, add the "Plate" mechanic from plate up.
---
-Add carpets to resemble a Plate
-The carpet would be put in a hopper to replace the button to indicate that the customer is served.
-That carpet would then get checked in an item sorter to see if its the right item
-While in the process of checking, this simulate the customer eating
-If the item does not match with the plate, it would go back and the customer would continue "eating"
-If the item does match, the customer would be considered served and the carpet goes back dyed(dirty)
-Players would then go clean the carpet(dye it back to white or the original color) to get a fresh clean plate.
P.s. I started this thought with dyed hats at first since you can wash them which simulates washing dishes, then I remembered that they are not stackables so it might be hard to sort them out. So I instead resorted to carpets which could be dyed and still resembles a plate.
the fun part of plateup is controlling the elements and upgrading constantly to 'automate', or get money and stuff
and the slightly convoluted cards where you take 'optimum' decisions in your 'workflow'
Note to self, watch VOD before typing ideas as you may just have to delete your comment in 5 minues after its covered
Yep I just did this with the cobweb idea!
Done that a few times. Once commented on the VOD as if I was watching live….
I'm guilty of this lmao
Also guilty here haha
Not sure if this suggestion for the queue timing comes too late. But you could have a chest minecart in a "shadow" queue for every person in the real queue. Then if you fill those with items using a hopper, at one point it will be completely filled up, so no more items can enter, so the hopper feeding it fills up, which you can detect to trigger a lose event.
If the guest in the queue moves up a spot, so does the minecart in the shadow queue. For every guest entering your queue, you add a new chest minecart to the shadow queue. When a guest enters the restaurant, you simply destroy the minecart.
You can play with the timing by using either a chest minecart, a hopper minecart and items that stack to 64 or 16. Or maybe even preload the carts with filler items. Or of course more than one hopper per position in the shadow queue...
And if it is possible to use a comparitor on a chest minecart, then you could even do something like create an indicator with lamps showing the patience of the guest in the front of the queue.
Feature creep warning: if it is raining outside, you could unlock another hopper feeding the minecart...
I think it would help to have some tasks players can do at the start of the day to "get ready" or between customers to "get ahead". For example, the mini task to generate bone meal reserve.
What you need to really clarify with yourself is if Hungry Hermits is inspired by Plate Up or Based on Plate Up because that's two different ways of solving problems and game design.
I love how hard you work but more than that I LOVE YOUR VACATIONS!! Please DO NOT feel bad for taking them! We want you to take care of you! Naturally every video is a treat but we want you to be able to KEEP making them so in order to do that you need to go do the funs too!! Thank you for this great game! It is really fun to watch our hermits play!
Brainstorming is great for triggering ideas. Chat has great ideas! But you should also talk to Skizz and Jimmy and Pearl. Ask them their favorite things about Plate Up, but also ask Cub about weird things you can do in minecraft like when he set up the pillager to change the color of a sheep (I know that that example isn’t relevant to the game, but it could spark ideas).
I’ve played games like Plate Up and what makes them fun is that they’re puzzles. Your puzzle pieces are the tasks you must complete and you have to find a way to fit them into the box that is your time limit. Finding the tricks is what’s fun. What is the perfect sequence of events that will reward you with the most done in the smallest amount of time. There’s a juggling of resources. In your game that would be food, prep time, and customer patience. You need systems in place that allow you to massage one or two of those elements in a tricky to pull off yet predictable way (ex. ways you can tend the food while it’s cooking to get it out earlier and ways to placate customers to extend their patience.) The player needs to feel like they’re getting away with something when they play the game right.
In a restaurant game I played the customers are harder to get rid of but sometimes you just don’t have what you need to feed them but the line is growing (and sometimes you can see a customer type in line who’s easy to serve) so you give the unwanted customer the wrong meal and maybe you fail that one or maybe you get far less points but the table is freed up. The player took a calculated loss but they also accomplished something. It’s a give and take.
playing music and offering free treats is another way I’ve seen these games let players manipulate customer patience
Plate Up's booking desk mechanics allows players to control the pacing of the game and keep it frantic.
I believe coming up with an insentive to get a similar mechanic will go a long way.
Especially due to the difficulty of predicting the ideal pacing given different days, number of players, and player skill...
I have a simple suggestion to make things fun. "Parties". In real life it's rare for people to turn up one at a time to a cafe or restraunt. They usually turn up in pairs, I'd adjust the tables to be three sets of two, and have the option for groups of two to come in at the same time. Pairs or groups will order the same thing always but it could be anything from cake to water. So if they see two or four people pop up at the same time they know to stock up on several of the item.
my brain can’t comprehend the absolute CHONKS of redstone you do for these projects always cool to see
What I see is that there might be many downtimes, players waiting for customers or an order that can be done by just one player.
One thing you could do is more stuff like the freezer with a "minigame" for the items in the book (bowl, gold...) like a small mine for gold where you have to catch gold nuggets dropping from random spots on the ceiling, or cutting a tree by jumping many times on a pressure plate for wood to later make bowls in a crafter. This chores could be done by a player during slower moments in the day to stack up on those items (keep them in a container and empty it at the end of the game).
You'll probably never read this, but after seeing those two playing, I know the game could be very fun an chaotic. Keep it up 💪
I really like these streams, as a hobbyist game designer I don't have many people to discuss game design with. It's very valuable and fun to just listen to tango think about these things.
“Tango’s Noodles” is a great alternate name for this game 😂
Looking at the plate up wiki heres how it tracks the queue outside:
All queuing customer groups share a single patience bar.
Following the first group, each subsequent group to join the queue causes patience to decrease 10% faster (stacks multiplicativly).
Moving a queuing group inside provides a slight boost to Queuing patience, while clearing the whole queue fully restores patience until the next queuing group arrives.
In plate up the total time for all waiting phases is 4min and 15 seconds at base(2player). 150s max wait to order, 90s max wait for food, and 15 for all food delivered.
All the Patience timings are also based on player count. One player gets more time 3 and up gets less.
For more randomization, random potions like (slowness) that drop from the ceiling could help. In game terms that would be explained by the player suffering from tiredness.
Then you can upgrade your energy levels, by reducing these drops or even dropping speed potions
The fact that you generally avoid the quasi connectivity has saved me a lot of grief in my lifelong project of converting Decked Out to Bedrock..
This is connected to the diner language idea. What if the food items were named as if they were diner food. For example? A baked potato would be "flamin Hot Spud". Or The baked cod could be "fish out of water" or "fishy business"
This could help to create more chaos when trying to fill orders.
My thought is that you could add the ‘messes’ using copper floors and having them age and a retextured axe as a broom/mop to clean the floors. That way it gives the server something else to do. Besides taking the order and waiting for another player to get the item.
Then I think the real fun in this game will come as the days get more difficult and chaotic. And adding upgrades like maybe allowing more inventory slots (1 or 2 max I think).
Upgrades like ‘decorations’ (paintings) that could do things like slows customer patience declining while waiting for food if that’s possible.
Adding in maybe a pressure plate in the farm that dispenses bonemeal. A few at a time like 5-10 maybe. This gives the player a few things more to do/worry about. This system could then be upgraded with maybe a further upgrade that automates this process.
Another thought is the phone in plateup could be here too and the server likely could stand on a pressure plate to add the the rate customers coming in.
One final note is if you decide to keep single player maybe allow them to have 2 inventory slots starting off so it’s easier for them to multitask and maybe open the conveyor system upgrade to allow them to throw items to the kitchen quickly. But I mostly think it’s a 2 player game because of the time takes to do things in the game
For your queueing timer, you could have a dropper item counter that will put items into a dropper whenever a customer is added to the queue, and remove items when a customer leaves the queue. You would just add/remove whatever the time between each customer is. So, if there was 20 seconds between each customer, each time a customer joins the queue, you'd add 20 items to the counter. Each time a customer leaves the queue, you'd remove 20 items from the counter. If the counter ever reaches above some threshold, then you lose. You would just have to make sure not to add any items to the counter if a customer joins an empty queue (since that customer would have just arrived and would not have been waiting any amount of time). Essentially, each customer joining updates the amount of time the other customers have been there.
The part that would probably be most tricky is making the amount of time between customers variable between days. But in theory, if you had a way of adding/removing 20 items on day 1, then 18 items on day 2, etc., this would work
Sorry that you were feeling frustrated, but I really enjoy seeing how you think about and solve all the puzzles involved in putting your games together.
maaan i am so hyped, its always so nice to get to this part of development. it must be fun for you too to be able to finally share the fruits of the hard work. lookin forward to see the hermits play this.
Hermitcraft wouldnt be the same without you... yes this would apply to all the hermits, BUT still, lemme throw some love in your general direction.
For the customer patience, you could dispense the items into cobwebs when a customer is added to the queue. Have them drop into a hopper under the cobwebs. Start with some items already in the hopper, and take an item out of the hopper every time a customer enters the restaurant. That way the hopper only gets full enough to trigger if it gets filled up (by customers entering the queue and causing dispenser to dispense into cobwebs) faster than you are taking items out of it (as customers leave the queue for the restaurant), e.g. if the customers get angry faster than they can enter the restaurant. Edit: clarity
1. I think if you want to increase the decision factor, open up more hotbar slots, and run the customers through quicker. Now routing and time management is the game.
"Okay I need carrot right away, but if I grab sugar and pumpkins I can feed the next costumer as well, do I have time for that?"
2. If there is some rhythm to what costumers will want next, the players can hedge and prep in different ways
"Cake hasn't shown up in a about 10 costumers, its due, I should grab eggs when I go out for fish"
3. If a skulk finds a silverfish in the dinner room, costumers leave more quickly
Im so excited for this, love following the development process. What i liked from these games is how crazy hard it gets.. and the organisation needed
I'm only 15 minutes into the vod so I dunno if this still holds up but:
- for the tracking how long someone is in the queue: you know when a customer goes to the restaurant (armor stand gets dispensed) and when they enter (armor stand gets seated). Maybe you can use this to time how long someone is in the queue, if there is an X amount of time between going to the restaurant and getting seated then they lose.
- also a visual representation of what tables are available might be nice, like a redstone lamp above it that's on or something
Upgrade ideas:
- a "freezer" to store food, like the plateup freezer. Could be a chest/barrel/shulker with limited space where they can store items
- "auto harvest" : a observer could watch the farmland, when they plant something it gets bonemealed automatically
- upgraded tables: customers have more patience
Dunno if everything is even possible, just putting out some ideas :)
I think his main concern is "what is the physical redstone mechanic that actually stores and tracks that information"
Scar looking for the pig was great. I think you could benefit from having actual livestock they have to punch to death, and they need to breed the livestock before killing it. You can then use other food items to get the babies to grow up faster... It might be a fun mechanic.
I feel like multiplayer is the way to go with this game. Plate Up, from a viewer experience, is fun because of the interactions. (Half of why I love the streams is because that’s where “Jimmy Jiggles” came from!)
I think the player interactions/cooperation are important for that reason. It makes it fun for us to watch, and it makes it fun to play / stream.
A suggestion, which might take away from vanilla Minecraft, but is my suggestion because I feel the biggest problem here is that Minecraft lacks the food needed to make this game possible: A temporary texture pack for when you play plate up / custom items dispensed after making food.
I don’t know redstone, so I don’t know how much of this is possible, but this idea is that you’re using a crafting recipe of a pre-existing block, but when crafted, it triggers a different, retextured food (or item) to pop out. If not that, then retexturing blocks with a temporary-use texture pack and renaming items using said texture pack. Still using that idea, but eliminating the weird dispenser - crafter nonsense.
Essentially just making it so the players have to work together to craft items, even if those items are a bit custom in nature.
I get that this might be a bad idea, sheerly because it looses it’s vanilla Minecraft aspect, and everybody’s probably thought about it already. But I thought I’d put my two cents in.
Finally, unrelated to ideas… just as a thought behind the purpose of this game. I don’t really see Hungry Hermits as the next Decked Out, in terms of longevity. It does feel more like a mini-game. Which, of course is disappointing in some aspects, because the goal would be to get people invested in a game for a long time. But I think it still has the potential to be a very fun streaming game. (Saw someone mention that this will be more fun for viewers than watching Frogger/Ravager Rush, which I agree.) If it was a minigame, you could always add “updates” to it (the addition of upgrades to the kitchen, the rats from the ceiling, maybe even side quests and other easter eggs).
I really do enjoy a lot of your builds, and I think this game is awesome! I do think that changing the spruce wood walls will go a long way with just the polish of the game
Adjust the timers so that the tables from left to right get more impatient. This will force players to make decisions whether to take an impatient customer and let the patient one wait. If you have multiple customers running out of patience at different rates it makes it a challenging juggling act.
I think another thing plate up has going for it is you can watch what the other player is doing, so even if you're stuck, you have something entertaining to watch
18:00 Maybe you figured the patience in the queue thing since this time in the video. In case you haven’t, I thought of something you might consider. You would need to calculate the total winning time for all the scheduled customers, varying by level, of course. If the player goes over that total time, they lose. A countdown timer will give the player an idea of their standing as they play. In-restaurant individual customer patience stays the same, acting as a sub counter. Which is fine. If they can’t beat the individual customer requirements, they won’t beat the total time, anyway. 🤷♀️ Just a thought. ❤
#automation One “automation” could be powering the doors to the various places so they stay open. (That iron door is the bane of my Minecraft existence!😂)
1:12:25 😂 Etho!
2 ideas.
1. Endless mode. Orders get progressively harder until you timeout 5 orders.
2. "Group" orders. A table for two where both orders have to arrive at the same time or reasonably close. Great for team play.
Regarding upgrades of some farm tasks, you could have boxes that are fed carrot, beetroot, etc. instead of having to grow them, and make them accessible with a movable block on top (e.g. switch between a solid block and upside-down stair). The boxes would be accessible from the kitchen, negating the need to run out to the farm when that upgrade is achieved, though each chest would only be able to handle one order at a time, so going out to the farm for multiple orders might still be necessary.
Or maybe a player-fed storage system so that someone working the farm and queue up multiple items in anticipation. Maybe pots that are emptied with a hopper at a button press, to avoid giving too much storage space.
Coop thing: make keys (roles) have each door need a key (toss through floor to unlock, key shoots back up on other side) but let some doors be opened by multiple keys. Ideally, have 1 more key than players
as one who completed both overcooked games, while playing with my brother I think what made the game fun even if there's like a theme for every couple level is the environment of the level itself. a lot of the levels may have had similar recipes, but each one had a challenge, like some had cars in the middle of the street where the kitchen is, I know u have done something similar with the silver fish so keep trying with that.
also, something cool that I remembered you had done in the biggening of the season which is moving belts that transfer items in the red stone factory, why don't u add with some walls so both players have to send items to each other to complete the orders.
and I think you have done an amazing job with the things that can be ordered but why don't you add more like maybe potions or stews, which will require more Coopertive playing as u would like.
but GOOD LUCK and keep on working on it you are doing great.
Only part way through the vod yet, but could you cluster the first load of customers, like having the first 2-3 customers each day be added to the queue with as little delay as possible, and the rest added at the normal rate. That would give you the initial rush to require multitasking without making the game actually impossible over a long day.
Thats what i was thinking about too, i wonder if that would be tricky for the redstone though
There is a flash game from my childhood, "Penguin Diner" (and penguin diner 2) with potential concepts.
The upgrade tree has a couple different avenues.
Where you seat the costumer is important for minimizing travel.
Currency, tips, routing to collect payments
You really should play it, after watching all the decked out streams im sure it will give you a ton of ideas
I know this video is two weeks old at this point so the problems may have been solved, but honestly I think one of the big things about plate up is only having one inventory space, and needing to put things onto the tables in order to do multiple things. You could set up tables with item frames and have players fill their inventories with sticks to be down to only one space. Then you would have to throw items at your feet in order to craft so you pick each item up as you place it into the crafting table. Additional inventory spaces could also be an upgrade players could buy.
One thing you could do is split the kitchen but leave the table room unsplit so players can walk all the way around to the other side of the kitchen, but somehow make it so that its more efficient for the players to pass items through the wall to each other either by slowing the players down or maybe making a station with an item frame where they could store an item or a few within the wall
I would be more worried if I did not remember Several times of similar Doubt-Despair phases during the Decked out development, and we all know that all worked out to be an amazing game!
I just started re-watching an old vid. This timing was perfect!
For the queue, you can use shulkerboxes to keep track of the 'wait time' by removing an item each X seconds, when its empty the customer had to wait too long. The shulkerboxes will move along with the queue and be placed in a shulkerbox unloading system, and moving it with the queue you can break it and let it be placed again by the next shulkerbox unloader.
I would drop single so fast for the thought of 2 hermits, both being able to have their perspectives on their own channels/secondary channels. Also, making the doorway to the serving room wider so when they have it in their hand and so close to the person; just for them to go bye-bye. I think that's would have promoted for frustration more than a challenge.
So personally, layout should be commincation and time adaptability so that the hermits can actually find a part of the game they are great at, just like in the actual game.
I would continue the rats, and honestly, I would promote 3 person plays. And just add more aggressive products, like a dinner rush button that they could do. Instead of asking for one thing, a person could ask for a whole meal. Also, maybe a cookbook for those recipes. I could imagine the communication being the main focus and the time being the challenge.
Along with those mini-challenges that are 1 person based to allow a group to have a divide and specialize playthrough. Could possibly encourage dinner rush with a trophy and have it be like the hard core mode.
Understanding this is probably a lot of additional Redstone since you're adding a game mode. So, if you ever decide to make a part two later in hermitcraft, 😢 remember this comment! 😂
Have fun in the noodles, Tango! I hope scar and bdubs were able to give you some great ideas. Since nothing beats a hermits giving another hermit advice.
A visual display for what day you are on could be cool, high scores work well :)
Maybe having things like Zed's minigames, where you need to jump on bellows, which takes somebody out of action at times so the other person needs to take over their orders. It might be that the bellows sound an alarm when they need pumping, so it's somewhat random and unexpected in the middle of things.
This playtest proves how fun this game is going to be.
it just hit met they're actually co-workers, when Tango hit them with the " have a good weekend"
In plate up you have the call option. As a player it might be fun to override how fast the costumers come in. In that way the people that have played day one multiple times, they can increase the difficulty.
I saw in the vod there was problems with too many costumers coming in at once. Maybe a timer in front of the queue could delay them? Only when the previous costumer has been away from the queue for a certain amount of time, the next gets to move forward?
I have no game making/redstone knowledge so I don't how easy or how possible this is or if this even is a worthwhile idea.
Randomness can feel good in games. Like lets say the freezer. If you are in the freezer waiting for a max of 20 seconds, it will feel very good if you hit the random chance that it only took 5. Which gives the player some brain candy to feel happy and get on with their task.
Also I feel like randomness in upgrading will help the game a lot, which Plate Up has as well.
This round you can choose between upgrade 1 3 and 6, the next round between 2, 3 and 5. Every game will feel different and feel good in different ways.
Here's an idea for the queueueue timer: Make a 45° slope and put rails on it, alternating between regular ones and detectors, one detector rail for every space in the queue(ueueue).
From one side have pistons block the track so that carts will stay on the detector rails (the piston head should be one block above and one ahead of the detector). You can link all pistons up with a diagonal torch tower. If you send an 8 tick pulse into the lowest one they should let them all go ahead by one spot.
On the other side place droppers to aim at the block above the detector rail. These will put the timer items into the carts. You can read the output of the carts through the slope, placing comparators behind the blocks the rails are on.
All droppers should fire at the same time and if there isn't a minecart in place the item will shoot across the track, at which point you can catch it in a water stream and put it back into the cycle.
The only problem is that there could be gaps between the customers, so you may need to link the detector rails to the piston above them.
Tango, seems like the rats would add another dimension and break up monotony, if nothing else, not to mention spiking the players' adrenalin and excitement, thus enhancing game play. It's also just a cool feature completely consistent with the lore of the diner setting. So I think it's worth the cost of doing it (which is easy for me to say, since I don't have to pay that cost lol)!
As far as the queue is concerned, I think the thing to track would be how long it takes for the queue to advance, rather than how long each individual is in the queue; this reflects real life in that people tend to be more patient (and more inclined to stay in line due to the sunk cost fallacy) as long as they perceive some level of progress -- a person might give up after five minutes of standing still, but stay in line for ten minutes as long as they got to take a couple of steps closer to the door every minute or so.
Maybe to encourage multitasking, one potential upgrade would be that every so often, you find out what the order of someone in the queue is going to be (but not which person's order it is). That way, if you have spare time, you know that you're eventually going to have to get (for instance) Cooked Cod started, so you can get a jump on that. Maybe call the upgrade Call Ahead, or Reservation?
Just started listening to the VOD and had this idea: I personally would love a mind-numbing simple mode as a player. And as a viewer, this would be really cool background for any chat session (either on streams or on videos). Maybe ask if Hermits would be interested in this mode? There's no point in doing it if no one wants it, but there may be interest to make it worth while!
When the game starts pre load a bunch of silver fish; splash them with weaving; use a separator to send them individually to drop off location(s) maybe in a queue at each location(s); when rats are requested double piston pull a block in the ceiling at chosen location(s); drop how ever many rats are requested; in the mean time when all rats are separated from the original pre load area; a new batch is spawned & splashed as back up?
Though you'd have to be sure that they'd be used before the potions could run out
@@Yirggzmb oh I forgot the timer on potion. So when the request for rats to be sent to the kitchen comes in; that’s when you splash the group; then separate and drop them? (I don’t know what it takes to separate them; I’m sure it’s tedious too?)
P.S. just got to the bdubs & scar part. Not only am I glad they came because they’re both extremely entertaining individuals but they’ve come to play test; which allowed tango debug as they play which is also fun to watch as it is helpful to tango. Especially because I’m sure the game has his anxiety on high alert. Always fun with friends. Hope tango has less bugs to deal with in the future. :)
Label certain monuments with signs so people know where they generally need to go or specifically need to go depending on which location they’re going to. For example refrigerator is just labeled refrigerator & not the items inside but the trash cans or other devices are labeled individually.
Warped wood is in the cyan family. Cyan is in between green & blue.
2:21:02 - My dad always had this idea to buy space on a billboard. Even a bunch of them. And have it say “He is coming” and just leave it be that. Just have it there for ages. Just to get people wondering, who is it, what are they coming for and why is it important? And then just after ages and ages, follow it up with another billboard that says “He has been” just so people felt like they missed out on whoever it was that was coming XD
As a non advertisement I thought it was brilliant.
I love the "bdubs and scar" show. Like watching a Saturday morning cartoon 😂
Game idea: Make it 2 floors high. Some of the top floors are glass to see the player above/below and have barrels to transfer items. Some tools/farms and crafting table only available upstairs.
it would be sick to like, collect a bunch of spiders and drop one or two every game in the farm as a farm-specific threat that u have to take the broom to deal with, and then you can maybe buy a brewing stand upgrade and use spider eyes to brew "coffee"
Hi Tangp, my two cents:
* Drop single player and focus on two player fun. No one will miss it and Hermits will simply team up (= more interactions)
* You could lock the (iron) doors to the dining area after a player received the order (= benefit when other player takes over the ingredients hunt)
* Tell players which dishes may show up each day (signs), this could make them preparing complicated dishes (= more decisions)
* Customers may need some time to eat up if there is room for the redstone (= more bussy dining room)
* Put a hanging sign somewhere so Hermits can name their restaurant (= stuff to do and argue during easy inital days)
* Rats could be a DLC
* When rats always show up near e.g. the trashbin this would be okay
I had Oreos with pop rocks in them once. They were Fourth of July firework cookies.
Having customers come in groups would probably help alot.
Idea: The people in the farm work together to solve a random fairly easy puzzle like a guessing game with a low number of solutions but enough to have the variation needed for reuse. Maybe the complexity increases over the game session. That way the server comes back "Order up! Need a carrot and 2 beets!", then the person or people in the farm have to solve some puzzle to receive the needed items, and maybe you can add more steps where you get an item from one solution, deposit it as part of the next solution to get an ingredient. Try not to get too bogged down in the concept of Plate Up, Minecraft won't necessarily live up mechanically to everything Plate Up can do, so if you come up with unique ways to add complexity and teamwork outside of the framework of Plate Up then I believe it will be more fun for everyone involved.
Another idea is to not have so many crops available and already grown in the farm, and shift the food providing mechanism to requiring the players to grow it from seed. The puzzles they do will reward bonemeal that will allow them to create the meal faster
I'm imagining that for the queue system, you could have a queue waiting block, that is constantly emptying at a fixed rate.
And each waiting hermit turns on an auto dropper to add into that timer.
You get two tuning knobs, which is the speed of item removal from the waiting time, and to raise the limit.
It has a problem where somebody sitting at the front, or even two at the front won't make the game end, but timing from the front isn't as challenging as tracking all of them/following them through
In stead of one waiting line, make 6 parallel waiting lines with a gate system that opens one after another. That way you can time how long Esch of them are waiting. You can keep the other line for visuals
I will say that having freecam really helps here - watching the redstone easily and as it goes.
If only quasi connectivity would be shown xD
Not sure if this gets addressed later on, but I had a though about the timing for each customer in the queue.
If you are guaranteed to have less than a certain amount of customers waiting, call that X, then you can set up X different hard-coded timers. You start timer 1 when customer 1 enters, 2 when 2 enters, etc until X. Now, when a customer enters the restaurant, check timer 1, then 2 for the next customer, etc (use a counter/pointer and move it forward when a customer leaves queue). When we reach X+1 customers, given that we can have no more than X players in the queue, either of two cases is true:
1) The first customer was not served in time and the game is already over or the customer is lost (whatever the punishment is). This case means customer X+1 either doesn't need a timer (if the game is over) or can use timer 1 (if the customer is just lost), and thus go to case (2).
2) Or, at least the first customer has been let in/served, so timer 1 is open. Start timer (X+1) modulo X for customer X+1 (i.e. just cycle back to the start of the timers)
It seems to me that this would provide a way of tracking each customer's time in the queue, though I don't know redstone well so I don't know how feasible the timers would be.
For the queue, imo, when you are in a queue, no matter how long it is as long as its moving your patience is fine so resetting the time every time it moves would be realistic. if you did want to make it incremental you could have a timer on a hopper clock that resets every time it moves but have a counter keeping track of the amount of people in the queue (items added/subtracted from a barrel). Read off the barrel to remove/add items to the timer to change the timings.
Game fun factor. I think if tables fill up faster with longer customer patience and larger variety of what they want earlier you could have up to 4 fail before game loss. But if you get a cake you might choose to let that customer go while you frantically multi task the other customers with more inventory slots available and a much larger que outside without penalty.
You could approch 'automation' via inverting the recipe system. Start the players making complex foods and add a recipe *upgrade* to make their recipes simpler.
I personally think custom foods would have been the best option, but I understand you wanted to make it easy to pick up.
Hey Tango! Bit of a wacky idea, what if you split the area into multiple sections (say like 3 or 4), and had a series of locks that prevents two players from entering the same area? With four areas that might make for an interesting bit of juggling where the players have to get and take orders but coordinate with the other player to get food that might be in their area, or push them out to get through and make an order
Ooh maybe players could randomly receive resources needed to activate certain things, dropped by customers or leftovers of meals etc, such as bone meal for the farm or fuel for the furance, so they'll need to coordinate. Maybe they go to a resource dispenser every time they do a task and receive a random type of item needed for the game's current or upcoming orders.
hearing your complaints made me think that maybe introducing roles would be beneficial. you could base the game around 3 players and have a 2/2/2 solution, where the number stands for how many rooms each player have to focus on. one role could focus on farming and waiting customers, another on waiting and cooking and the last one on cooking and farming. i think this works with more and fewer players as well, creating the 1/1/1/1 and 3/3 scenarios. my opinion regarding solo play is that it should be possible, but only with upgrades.
for this to make sense you'd likely have to add more tasks to the waiting/dining area, like e.g manually calling in guests from the queue (this could also make it so that the first queued guest that you keep pre loaded in the system can be at the door at the beginning of the day, reducing "load times", and the start day button could potentially double up as the "call in guests" button), or entertaining guests which could increase one stage of patience once per day.
the kitchen might also need some changes for this 2/2/2 model to work, to give the players a reason that they should be multiple people there. i really like your freezer idea for this. small inconvinences that can be omitted by being two people. e.g maybe you can temporarily unlock the crafter speed upgrade by having another player stand on a nearby pressureplate that just outside of reach.
farms are solid as they are imo, but you could make them two separate areas that allows the farmers to throw an item to eachother, and make it so only one player can be in each farming area at once kinda like with the pop down stair on the cart ride side.
final point in my novel of a comment is that the hermits need some sort of reason to play the game, and upgrade points/for the fun of it aren't reason enough. the reason decked out and frogger became so successful among the hermits are because of a solid ranking system, letting hermits compare themselves to others, and the rewards (and i'm not talking about the frog coins). when it comes to this game i think that time can be a substitute for score, and whoever finished all days in less time is the employee(s) of the month! points in itself is enough of an insentive for some players to come back to the game, but since xisuma have started with the trophies then you could probably reach out to the person that made them and order a trophy or 4 for the different team layouts. Etho and Pearl can't win a 4 player format by themselves XD
If you wanted to get real fancy with the redstone, you could try and pull off Overcooked's moving map design. It's the same idea as trapping people to certain areas and forcing them to work together but it changes so one person isn't stuck doing the same job the entire game. You could do it by just having redstone walls popping up and down in the kitchen area. And maybe even the serving area, so if someone gets caught out there, you have to throw the food to them to serve and if nobody is out there, you waste time and have to wait to serve food.
Maybe limit the number of items a player can hold at one time? Drop sticks to fill their inventory or something. The thrill of overcooked was that you could only carry one item at time. There was also areas that closed so players couldn't be in the same spot or they may get stuck in the same spot, being unable to get a certain items or be able to turn in a completed order adding an added level of challenge.
Cant wait to see how this turns out!
He planned that!
Would it be possible to allow the players to select which dishes they would like to serve each day? Like, as they get progressively farther through the days, they must occasionally pick some number X out of Y food options to add to their menu. Early game, this would be easier, but also increase collaboration (by being able to sort of pre-make dishes ahead of time, maybe even trending the “meta” towards one server and one cook), and late game would give more variance to the runs (because they would have different menus). So for example, before day 1 starts, they could choose 2 dishes out of easy dishes like carrots, water bottle, beetroot, etc (they could even be presented with subset of the easy dishes for more variance). Then on maybe day 4, they must add 2 dishes out of slightly more difficult dishes like steak, cooked chicken, pork chops, etc. Then on maybe day 7, they must add 1 of the hardest dishes like cake and pumpkin pie.
Could work well when combined with Etho’s idea of a lockout timer for the farm. Could even have a button elsewhere that could override the lockout (similar to freezer), so the second player would need to go over and hit the override button to let first player into the farm (not enough time for one player to hit the button and get to the door in time).
An idea for the issue with the splitting for the different tables:
With the water stream on the head level the armour stands should drop quicker. If you don't need the ice you can even let it all slide over bottom trap doors and have the water stream two blocks higher. That way they drop super fast because they are in the water stream just with the tip of their "head".
In general: Really looking forward to see this game being played. Glad you feel more comfortable with it now. Totally understand your concerns. As you said, you, as a game dev, know what is working and what not. We trust you. Your critical approach is useful to find what is good. At the same time we want to encourage you as you do great. A little biased because we are fans of you, still though
I think that when the player has to conciously go and take an order, it removes a lot of stress. If the orders shows up automatically and you don't know when they show up, it could lead to the need for cooperation.
The foods in Minecraft is very limited. Maybe this is more of a crafting game? Maybe the players need to make cobblestone stairs or chistled bricks, to up the variety and give you better control of the difficulty?
Making food for monsters as a Holloween treat. Fermented spider eye, rotten flesh, maybe more? I can't think of too many options
The game needs more ingredients that’s what makes overcooked fun. That’s what makes up fun so I think adding potions as drinks. Therefore, you have to get different ingredients on different timers. Maybe even putting the brewing stands on sticky pistons so you have to move them from brewing stand to brewing stand otherwise you’ll lose your drinkcould add a bit of
Issue thought!!!
In plateup, if you shove somebody to the kitchen and they do their job perfectly, they get to watch as the server struggles or even fails. As they watch, and if they have a path, they can run out and help.
The issue I’m seeing here is if you have someone in the back farm waiting similarly to the example above, they have zero visual cues to run back to the front of the restaurant to help.
Early in the vod tango was addressing missing “something.” I’m not saying this it, but I would not enjoy being designated to the farm not able to see the customers, arguably the point of the game.
That said, very much excited to see how this shapes up. Huge fan of plateup.