Once highlighted, the player presses the button to dispense that ingredient (6). The analog stick is rotated to the ingredient of their choice (5). The player then scans the ingredients to see how they’re displayed (4).
Once reached, the player presses the button to bring up the order (2). Once the player finds the ingredient, they tap it immediately (4).Ĭontroller (6 steps): the player scrolls to the corresponding order if it is not currently highlighted (1). Because it is a visual button that must be tapped, this step cannot be skipped. The player then scans the ingredients on the right side of the screen to see which one needs to be tapped (3). Mouse/Touch (4 steps): the player brings up the order by tapping it on the left (1). If not, the player skips step 3 and goes straight to typing the letter that corresponds with the ingredient or action listed first (4). If needed, the player refreshes themselves with the hot keys for the ingredients (3). Keyboard (3-4 steps): the player brings up the order by typing the number it is served under (1). I broke down the steps needed to input the first ingredient for each method: The three control inputs, which in the order of speed and accuracy would be keyboard, touch and mouse, had a basic line of steps that could be shortened upon playing the game and memorizing ingredient hot keys and recipes.
To figure out whether or not the slow controller inputs were a result of a flawed design or my flaws as a gamer (I am a fairly average game player in terms of skill), I thought the best thing to do was figure out why keyboard, touch and mouse controls worked so well. I had to figure out why this wasn’t working. Was this because I was so used to mouse/keyboard controls that it was too jarring to move into this kind of control scheme? Did I need more practice? With GDC coming up and the deadline for controller support coming in just a few days, there was no time to try and get accustomed to the controls. It was slow, in a way that seemed impossible for me to improve on. I was not able to blast out the ingredients for foods in any kind of quick manner. No matter how much I practiced, in fact, it wasn’t working at all. The original radial menu test for controllers. It seemed like an easy choice, as radial menus are very easy to navigate, easy to understand, and fast compared to, say, having a highlighted box moving up and down with the d-pad. The original idea was to have a radial menu for ingredients, so that the player could rotate the joystick to the ingredient of their choice, press a button, and move on to the next ingredient. Touch works similarly, but with bigger buttons and much faster responses with the hand vs moving a mouse. While a mouse is similarly accurate, the speed is rapidly decreased by the movements the player has to make on the screen vs the keyboard.
There are two other control methods: mouse, which allows you to click the letters instead, and touch, which is obviously the mobile standard. The keyboard is the perfect control input for this type of game- it provides not only the speed players need, but also the pin point accuracy. It is a difficult game if players strive for perfection- one small mis-typed letter, and their bonus for achieving the perfect day is gone.
“Cook, Serve, Delicious!” is a game where you must quickly fill out food orders from customers and get them out the door perfectly satisfied. It was easy enough to come up with some visually good looking ideas, but in practice the experience made me so much more aware of the complex nature of controllers verses other forms of input.