Virtual Femme

Quantifying any day-to-day activity into game mechanics is an extremely difficult endeavor. Simple actions that we take for granted can create a coding nightmare. For example, most of us probably take making change for granted. We use increasingly smaller denominations of coin to make exact change. This is something most of us learn in grade school. How do you write code to make change, though, assuming that you have differentiated currency? Think about that for a bit. You would first start by simplifying the currency. Most games go with a coin system that is a factor of 10 in some way. Either 100 of a type of coin creates the next type or 1000 of one coin creates the next type. Then, to make change, it’s simply a matter of division and subtraction.

Now take something much more complicated than making change like cooking. In one simple stir fry, I may use up to 10 ingredients and 3-4 utensils without thinking twice about it. I cut, cube, stir, toss, season and taste before I’m done with one dish, and I may cook 3-4 dishes a meal. Of course, give my husband the same ingredients, tools, and time, and he’d probably produce a charred lump of something inedible. In a roleplaying game, the goal is to make the process believable but not cumbersome, fun and yet challenging. How do you streamline something as difficult as cooking?

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