So are you going to randomize chunks of the rhyme so that you don’t have to plan on rhyming “spicy” rhyme with every single texture and instead just rhyme that within itself and have a completely different rhyming chunk for each of the textures?
For crispy, I was thinking of leaving the cake in the oven just a BIT too long! Almost like a burnt texture, but not quite. Like when a marshmallow turns brown, but doesn’t actually burn as opposed to catching it on fire.
caramelisation instead of carbonisation of the marshmallow
You could limit your Texture to the simplest when it comes to baking.
Airy (fluffy)
Dense
Charred
still leaves you with 33 outcomes, which isn’t all that bad
Exactly! Although I don’t like using bulky words like those, especially for something like a marshmallow. They just don’t seem to “fit.” I have nothing against long words, though.
I’m planning for the rhymes to be in randomised two line chunks. So something like
My love was sweet,
One of the elite,
My love was sour,
Her face was dour,
My love was faulty,
My tears were salty,
My love was bitter,
I once hit her,
My love was a beauty
Who loved all things fruity,
My love was nutty,
But a real hottie,
My love was nice,
But filled with spice,
Oh yes!
The rhymes can get worse!
Bad poetry is my curse!
Although that’s something I came up with in a minute. I may just go with the absolutely awful rhymes for a nonsense poem. It may make it stick in the player’s mind better.
@FairyGodfeather LOL! I love it! So with those couplets, the player is supposed to figure out which ingredient to use based on which couplet he is given, correct?
Yep, that’s the plan. It was what @CS_Closet suggested.
However there’ll be three sets of rhymes, one with the filling, one with the texture, the third with the decoration. They likely won’t make much sense and it’ll come across as a nonsense rhyme.
So I’d have:
The leaves crunched beneath my feet,
How neat.
The air was crisp and dry,
Oh my,
The stars were oh so light,
And bright,
It was a thought for me to chew,
How true,
The ground was dense and moist,
Rejoice,
Her skin looked just like cream,
My dream,
The trees were dark and gritty,
My pretty,
My insides turn to goo,
I do,
And then random might give you:
My love was nutty,
But a real hottie,
It was a thought for me to chew,
How true,
And you’d want to choose the almonds for your first ingredient selection, and the toffee for your second. Since almonds are nutty and toffee is chewy.
Is this making sense?
@FairyGodfeather Absolutely! And even though it will be a sort of nonsense poem, I’m really liking it anyway! I’ve been mixing and matching pairs from the post earlier and this one, and I’m having quite a good time of it!
Oh good! I may code up the first part of the random generator for it. I’m trying to think of the sort of decorations. I may just go with colours for the last couplet since that should be easiest, but… hmm actually colours mentioned in the last two lines, but it’s not coloured frosting.
So if I had a rhyme with purple in it, you’d know to put the lavender flowers on top, and if it had red you’d use strawberries and roses as a decoration, and for blue the blueberries and a sapphire silk ribbon, and white would just be icing and a swan, and brown would be chocolate, and yellow honey and gold, and green mint-leaves,
Um yeah I’m having issues thinking up the decorations, as well as the bad rhymes for the last part.
More bad rhymes. I’ll get to coding this up.
Her hair was gold,
True love does hold,
Remember this song told,
Her eyes were blue,
Love’s most darling view,
Remember this song true,
Her hair was red,
My love, I plead,
Remember all I’ve said,
Her eyes were green,
Our love is seen,
Remember what we’ve been,
With her purple eyes,
She’s love’s dear prize,
Remember this, no lies,
With hair of brown,
Love’s exquisite gown,
Remember, with no frowns,
With teeth so white,
Such a delight,
Remember this tonight.
***************
The first passage will be the same for ever poem. The rest is randomised.
So a quick random poem will read:
We’re in a fix,
So let me mix,
A recipe for love,
Make no splatters,
For the order matters,
In our recipe of love.
My love was faulty,
My tears were salty,
The air was crisp and dry,
Oh my,
Her eyes were blue,
Love’s most darling view,
Remember this song true,
And that’s telling you that you need a bacon flavoured cake, with crispy rice, and blueberries on top.
That seem like enough of a puzzle?
@FairyGodfeather It seems enough of a puzzle to me! It might be better to add just another small bit at the very end that is the same for every combination just to wrap things up. Are you going to make the character have to go and find the ingredients somewhere, or will they just be on a list where you choose what you want to add?
By the way, I like corny, bad rhymes! Considering that’s all I can do with poetry, I must content myself with mediocre rhymes. Personally, I love these! I think they’re fun and definitely something I haven’t seen in any other choice game!
Not coded up yet (I’ll get there later) but the random poem generator, with the awful poems, is now at https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/154988802/scales/web/mygame/index.html
The formatting’s a bit messed up but I’ll fix that later and get to coding in the contest. I hope this is puzzley enough without being too difficult.
The ingredients are all on a table. You just pick the appropriate ones. I don’t think the contest’s important enough to do a search for ingredients. I want to keep it relatively simple. So it’s pick for a list for the first, second and third. For each ingredient you get right you get +1 if you get 3 you win.
I thought the Remember line wrapped things up well enough since it’s always remember. I’m hoping Recipe for Love and the Remember at the end, as framing devices will yell CLUES HERE!!!
If the player wants to ignore the song, there’s also an easier puzzle which I’m planning which is just make Rose/Briar’s favourite cake. Have a guess what sort of cake that is?
@FairyGodfeather Oh, DUH!! LOL! I forgot that not everyone who plays will know that there’s a puzzle coming up! Having the last line start with “Remember” will definitely be a good tip-off to anyone who does not know that there’s going to be a puzzle!
Umm… Well, I don’t know a whole lot about Rose/Briar yet. I’d expect something sweet with a note of betrayal and a hint of vengeance added for an extra kick!
@Galador Hahahahaaa. 
Yeah I wanted to be extremely obvious with the THIS IS A CLUE FOR THE RECIPE PUZZLE!!! REMEMBER!!!
I do have some scenes written up for Rose/Briar. I haven’t typed them though and not sure where to fit them plot-wise. I may include the “what is Rose/Briar’s favourite cake” as a flashback scene, if you decide that you’re just going to bake their favourite cake.
For all the coding, it’s just meant to be one option. It is the only way to win fairly.
There’s currently several ways through the Contest. There’s
@FairyGodfeather LOL!!! Those are some really great options for the contest!!! I might end up not even solving the riddle most of the time and just watching the judges gag on my awful concoction! Or I’ll just cheat to win! This makes it so much more interactive and fun to decide what to do now that there are those extra options!
And I think having a flashback to get to know more about Rose/Briar is a great idea! Nothing that will lock huge events in their main scene, though. Maybe just something that can help you win them back or that you can use against them when you meet again. Or you could use it to open another possible path when you meet them again, but make sure that there are still good options even if you do not choose to view that flashback.
I do need to show why the main character loved Rose/Briar. I can’t introduce Rose/Briar just yet though. They’re the end goal, kind of, the fairytale prince/ss who only gets rescued (or stabbed) right before the Happy Ever After.
I do like to have lots of choice in my games.
I think the baking contest will be the only path to actually get to Rose/Briar before the wedding, to finally get a chance to confront them. But lots of choices in how to deal with it.
Only the minstrel knows how to break into the palace so… well I’ll see. That may be an option, I suspect it’ll be tricky though.
That’s a good way to do it, I think. That way, you can have a potentially really important scene there, but if you don’t see it, you still deal with it later.
Breaking into places is always fun, especially when you have a bumbling fool with you who knows what they’re doing but at the same time doesn’t!
I think I may get more obvious with the texture choices, so that when you choose a textural ingredient it will then describe the ingredient to you and you can decide whether to add it or not. So if you choose ‘roast nuts’ from the list it will then describe them as ‘crunchy’ and ‘toasted cereal’ will be crisp and dry.
I may also institute a count so that if the player spends too much time procrastinating about choices they’ll run out of time so no checking everything on the list.
@Galador I’ll answer some of that on the Scales&Tales thread.
@FairyGodfeather I wouldn’t let a person check more than maybe four ingredients before running out of time and being told to make a decision. That, or you could just allow a certain total of actions, and if you run out of actions before adding everything, then they just run out of time and don’t finish the whole cake.