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[mikmanner]

this looks really good! I love the moving food trucks, v funny

[davemakes]

This looks fantastic, I love how over the top you've gone with the concept.

[DuskedSky]

This looks exciting. The art style fits well, and the gameplay looks fun. I'm a pretty big fan of cooking games so I can't wait to try this.

[ThilDuncan]

@DuskedSky - Thanks, so far we've had a really positive response. We're hoping there are lots of people out there like us who want to play co-op game with their friends, seems to be a little thin on the ground at the moment!

@davemakes - Just wish we had a longer development to really push things even further :D

@mikmanner - Thanks, the moving food trucks was inspired by the street food revolution that seems to be happening here at the moment. Most of them are too cowardly to cook while jumping between moving trucks though :-/

@vividhelix - Thanks, good to know!

@Osteel - We're not sure at the moment, the plan is to run a user test session with the levels we have an see how people get on. Originally we planned for around 40 but we'll see when people play whether we think they want more/less or... different ;-)

@ephoete - Thanks, the more we played with the concept the more cool mechanics seemed to naturally emerge. We might find ourselves losing some and keeping others, but it's nice to be that position (doesn't happen very much on big studio projects)

@JctWood - Thanks a lot.

Oli is back in the office this week and is hard at week hooking up our character select/ level start screen. With that in place we should have a pretty good flow from the start menu right through to initiating a level and then saving progress. One fairly big change which we introduced lately is a change to our scoring system:

Previously players had a certain number of orders to deliver (10 say) and they had to deliver them as quickly as they could in the time limit (the faster they delivered them, the more they were rewarded) The new system allows players to deliver as many orders as they can within a time limit (the more orders the more they are rewarded). It's a little bit more of a classic scoring system, but it means that players keep playing right up to the buzzer, rather than dwindling.

For the moment we've kept in the timer on individual orders so that players aren't tempted to stick to orders with less ingredients, but we'll see how that fairs in practice...

Here's a little gif of our food trucks in motion:

[Mya]

Good gravy, this is looking ace.

Lovely work, chaps

[davemakes]

Just wish we had a longer development to really push things even further :D

Story of my life! You're seriously doing some amazing stuff here, though.

[ThilDuncan]

@davemakes - Thanks man, appreciate the kind words : )

@Mya - Thanks, good to hear from you buddy!

So what have we been up to... Good question!

We've been really digging into the details with the game now. Spent a lot of time hooking up the flow for the game as well as doing a lot of work we've been putting off. For example:

- Moving all our UI over to the new UI system and giving everything a fresh coat of paint:

[All of which bounces and animates and all that good stuff]

- Adding models, animations and icons for all the new ingredients and recipes. Here's an image to illustrate all the various models which go into a fairly simple recipe:

- Adding Sound FX for the various interactions
- Updating the rig for the player characters and re exporting all their animations (Old rig has been in the game since pretty much day one so it was a real relief to finally get the new one in and means all our new chef character models are all skinned correctly)
- Added a boost mechanic which introduces a small but neat risk/reward element: Boosting allows you to cover a short distance more quickly but can mean you overshoot your destination, or even knock into your fellow players:

[potential for griefing so we're a little reticent :D ]

- Playing with 3D menus:

[Don't look at this gif too long or you'll start to feel sick...]

-We've been speaking to lots of folks and getting lots of great feedback, we also managed to demo the game at a local venue (http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/) which went down reeeally well and gave us a great boost of confidence.
 

Apologies for all the enormous pictures and gifs, at first I thought we hadn't really done much in the last few weeks but actually it seems like we were busier than I thought!
 
Hope you guys like what you see, as always fire us your thoughts/comments/feedback we love to hear what you folks think!!

P.

[oldblood]

Haven't stopped in this thread in awhile... Wow, this is looking really amazing. Do you guys have a target release date yet?

[Osteel]

That menu. <3

That infographic how a recipe is made is really awesome, and useful. I don't know if it's been explained but will people have assigned roles for each recipe, or is that up to the team to figure out who's going to handle what?

[ThilDuncan]

@oldblood - No official release date yet, we're hoping for some time this year. Hope that's vague enough : )

@Osteel - It depends on the level, in most levels it's up to the players to decide who does what, leading to lots of space-team style yelling at one another :D In other levels we physically separate the players (Sometimes going as far as giving them 4 separate rooms) and only giving them access to part of the cooking tasks. We basically want each new level to make the players reconsider their approach, to look at the level and talk amongst themselves to work out the best way to deliver each meal (... then part way through the level we turns things on their head just to keep everyone on their toes)

P.

[davidalbertainley]

Looks amazing keep up the great work!  This could be something really special.

[ThilDuncan]

@davidalbertainley - Glad you think so, we think it's a pretty original premise and certainly the type of game we want to exist so here's hoping :-)

[ThilDuncan]

Extremely busy week this week, but here's a little glimpse of what we're up to with our single player game::

[The idea being that you can switch between these little robot chefs at will, meaning you
can set one off chopping up vegetables while the other goes and grabs another from the crate etc.]

I'm really enjoying the fake kitchen/lab environment we've set up for this and really wish we had more time to push the concept even further. I instantly want to create bunsen burners and welding goggles and flame throwers for our Science NPCs

Sorry there's not more info, we're currently sat in front of the big TV fixing weird graphical bugs! Any questions or feedback please fire our way!

P.

[Mittens]

Following this, looks really fun

[flashysquirrel]

Seems very interesting, makes me really curious, i will follow

[Cranktrain]

This looks impossibly fun. This is a game I'm really keen to play for myself.

[Miltage]

I absolutely love the look of this. I love local co-op games and this looks like a lot of fun.
Gonna add this to my list of party games - which currently consists of only Gang Beasts.  

I've been lurking for 3 years but after perusing this thread felt compelled to congratulate you on what appears to be a brilliant execution of a clever concept.

[thekill473]

Maybe it'd be cool if it flipped, the props popped up, then it slammed into the ground with a dust particle effect.

[TitoOliveira]

You've mentioned a demo. Is it public? I really wish i could play a prototype. It seems pretty fun

[de11ed]

Haha this game looks awesome! I love the graphics and the idea! Tell me, sorry if you said this somewhere already, will you be able to build your own kitchen/map?