Cooking system

[trombonaught]

This is out of the "small but important suggestions" thread. I've started a new topic so it's easier to have a discussion and collect our ideas in one place- what are yor thoughts on the cooking system as it is now?

 

589. Food Prep

Taken from the Vehicles build 26 thread:

   On 23/11/2017 at 5:52 AM, Shinjitsu noDeshi said:

Honestly, if you want to make a stew, you should be given a checkbox (like the foraging menu) or have to build/use a prep table where all the ingredients are laying out on it. There'd be nuances with this, obviously, because you can add items repeatedly and that impacts the final quality.

I also find that cooking could be a little more elegant in design. I understand there were some changes made in the build 26 (main game, not vehicles) but I wasn't around to know what those changes were. I liked Shin's idea above and might expand on it like this:

 

1. Similar to the present method, right-click on a food item to see your food prep options (prepare salad, stir-fry, etc).

2. After choosing an option, a "grocery/recipe list" comes up. This is a list of all food in range that can be used in the dish you selected (eg. chicken stir-fry also brings up butter, noodles, condiments, etc).

3. You click checkboxes beside the food items to select the ingredients you wish to use. If you have enough of an item to use it multiple times, perhaps after selecting it once it can spawn an additional checkbox to allow you to add more of it (repeating the process until you have no more portions remaining).

3.5 As you click to add more food, the recipe stats (hunger, happiness, etc) update to reflect your current selection.

4. You click a button at the bottom of the recipe list, something like "prepare." This triggers a progress bar with timing scaled to be proportional to the number of ingredients you are preparing.

5. Once you have a prepared dish, you can still right-click on it to reopen the recipe list and add more food to it.

 

This process isn't radically different from what we have now, but it cuts the number of food-prep clicks in half (no more reopening the context menu for each item). It also gets rid of the start-and-stop progress bars invoked by the multiple item adds we have now.

 

I don't know how hard it would be to code in that recipe list, but if done it would save the cooks of Knox County plenty of tediousness!

 

 

 

ADDITIONAL SUGGESTIONS

From @Damien Darkside below:

Food Prep station

"those who have played Minecraft with the "Pam's Harvestcraft" and "Cooking for Blockheads" mods installed know what I am talking about, a dedicated system like that would be great."

Edited November 26, 2017 by trombonaught

[Damien Darkside]

I think a food prep menu like yours should be used, with context.

 

First is "on hand" food prep. You are carrying a pot and some food in your backpack. "Prepare Food" in this sense is what is in your backpack as well as your hands. 

A "Food Prep Station" would be very nice, assigning a hard counter surface that allows you to keep knives, pots, pans and the like. When preparing food here, it takes in consideration all the items in the food station as well as on your person (like carrying meat to the station). I kind of do this in my house builds but it would be great with assignable stations. You just end up with ingredients that were in your inventory, not a mish-mash of everything you touched.

If those who have played Minecraft with the "Pam's Harvestcraft" and "Cooking for Blockheads" mods installed know what I am talking about, a dedicated system like that would be great.