Hi everyone,

I want to include a feature in my online game where people can bake things and gain experience points from it. Now what I cannot make my mind up about is how complicated to make the baking recipes? Do I make them exactly like real recipes or do I shorten them?

I want people of all ages to be able to play it and I would like the real recipes in my game so children can learn the real recipe but I am worried that would make the game too complicated as they would have to buy all the ingrediants first.

Any ideas?

I would say go with real recipes as there are many simple ones out there and will add an extra level of learning to your game. Good Luck.

Yeah, I think it would make it pretty cool if you use real recipes. Perhaps you can specifically only include very easy recipes with only a few ingredients each?

How important is the baking in the game, and how would the realism impact it?

If realism is important, you could do a sort of progression, such as breads - you could start with a real basic flat bread (water, flour, salt), move on to leavened breads (water, flour, salt, yeast, time to let the dough rise, etc), naan bread (water, flour, salt, yeast, sugar, yoghurt, ghee, time for the dough to rise), garlic naan (naan with garlic and ghee on top), etc

Make the base recipe easy, and variants add extra ingredients and complexity to the method. If you don't personally know about baking, I'm sure someone's mum can help you out (assuming by the NZ in your name you're from New Zealand, and baking is pretty strong there).

It's not such much for realism but for learning. I would like the children to see the real recipe online and then want to go bake it with their parents.

But my worry is that it would be too complicated and be too boring if they are too involved.

I would like the children to see the real recipe online and then want to go bake it with their parents.

But my worry is that it would be too complicated and be too boring if they are too involved.

the trick is to make it YUMMY!

then complexity won't matter as much.

and they'll be much more motivated to bake it for real.

such as the ultimate payoff: Colonial Williamsburg VA USA bakery style gingerbread cookies (wood fired in the original brick ovens, you can smell them for three blocks):

(god its been forever...)

flour,sugar,water (?), egg, milk (?), baking power, shortening(?), coffee ,molasses, cinnamon , ginger, cloves, nutmeg, i think thats it....

[edit] forgot the brown sugar!

i recall something about a two stage mixing process, sort of basic dough followed by spices.

I spent a lot of time working in restaurants in my school days so I feel like I can lend a hand.

I'd reduce each recipe to its component parts if the idea is to make complete dishes.

Have three slots, one for the dish's protein component (meat, beans, etc.), one for the starch (breads etc.), and one for fruit or veg. These are the categories that most actual recipes are based on, and transfer well into a game.

You could have recipes that players can follow, and it also allows them to try out their own ideas.

You'd then have to prepare each ingredient, so if it's a sandwich with a small salad, they'd have to toast the bread, slice the cold cuts, and dress the salad.

This will teach the younger players the basics of meal preparation, without overcomplicating the gameplay

I enjoy the way ChefVille does it: Most recipes have 2-5 representative ingredients, and when you learn a new recipe there's an associated actual recipe for the dish. In ChefVille they email it to you. I liked having an actual recipe that I could cook for the dishes I was playing with in-game