Sugarplum Devlog: QoL improvements

UPDATE: A new version of the game has been uploaded with the changes below! You will need to start a new file for this new version to work, but since most of these changes are related to guiding a new player, I think that makes sense anyway. I appreciate if you could help me playtest and see if any errors occur! (The expanded pantry art may look wonky when switching between extended and single row, please ignore this for now)

I have a couple of weeks before I start my new job, so I want to make the most of it by diving back into Sugarplum Cafe development! This month I have a few QoL (quality of life) improvements to share.

Slightly larger UI

Last month I got to have a call with Tanat, the developer of upcoming indie game Building Relationships, where he gave me some feedback that Sugarplum's UI could 1) be a little larger, and 2) have margins around the edges. The latter is usually for console compliance - not that I plan to port this to console, but it's just visually more appealing anyways.

I decided to take this chance to spruce up the UI in the top left and make it as polished as the top right UI as well, and I'm pretty stoked with how it looks right now!

Old screenshot:

New screenshot:

You may notice that the Cameo has been replaced with a menu symbol instead of numbers, and the menu button on the right is gone. During playtests I noticed that players had trouble finding the menu, and with the Cameo being such a focus point, I think it made more sense for this button to lead to the main menu.

But this is not only a visual change!

Active Quests

Another issue that arose in playtests was players not realizing what Quests they could work towards, which hindered their progression. Most of the time they were stuck serving the same Ladies, not realizing they could check their Quests to learn how to unlock the next Lady.

This text box in the top left used to only track Cameo benchmarks, but I've revised it to also show your latest assigned Quests. I think it'll be much more informative this way!

You also used to get notification messages in the bottom left corner whenever a Quest was complete or you unlocked something in the Shop, but now these will appear in the top left corner too, to reduce the number of UI elements. So basically, this corner message is a guide to help you progress through the game.

Fingers crossed this will improve future playtests! Maybe down the line I will implement a way for you to actively choose Quests to track, but for now it just shows the most recently assigned unfinished Quest.

Oh, and clicking this text box will take you to the list of all Quests for easy access!

Completed Quests

Previously, completing Quests and claiming their rewards would cause them to disappear, and you wouldn't be able to revisit them. Some players expressed a desire to see the completed Quests and I think this makes sense, especially if you completed a Quest by accident and need to reread the instructions to replicate the task.

So now you can see the quests you completed! They'll automatically be sent to the bottom of the list. You have no idea how annoying it was to code this lol you think it would be easy but no...

Scrollbars

Your eyes do not deceive you - there is indeed a scrollbar in the above pic. Previously there were many places to scroll through, but there was never a scrollbar to indicate where you were exactly...happy to say that's changed now! Sorry it took so long - it was harder to implement than I thought.

(It wasn't actually that difficult. I'm just lazy and not very smart)

Extended Pantry

Previously, all ingredients were in a row and you would scroll through the row to get the ingredients you wanted. Since I want to have 50+ Ladies, I think this is way too many ingredients to have in one row.

So my last update is a pantry that you can expand, and in the expanded version you can move ingredients around as you like, and click on any of these cloches to spawn ingredients just like the single row version. The single row pantry will still be there for aesthetics.

One issue I need to resolve is that the expanded pantry hides the orders, meaning you'll have to go back and forth between looking at the window vs the pantry...which defeats the point of the window. A couple of possible solutions:

1) Have a little "post it" at the bottom at the bottom of the expanded pantry, showing all the orders

2) An upgrade that automatically sets the single row pantry ingredients to ones that match the orders

If you have a preference, or an idea for a third solution, let me know!

Ending thoughts

Tanat and I mostly talked about his experience developing Building Relationships, but one big takeaway I got from our talk besides the UI feedback was about visuals. "Just get it to a point where it's 'there'," he said (paraphrasing). "I didn't even realize your kitchen art was a placeholder until you pointed it out."

When he says "just get the art to 'there'", I don't think it means ANY art is good enough. There are so many games where I'm immediately turned off because I think the visuals are ugly and unpolished. I think it just means that the creator's standard of visual polish is way higher than most gamers', because we're way harder on our own creations than we should be.

That really stuck with me given my perfectionist tendencies, and it made me feel less like I would have to keep redrawing the art over and over again. I'm not gonna lie, there was a part of me that wanted to redraw all the artwork to look like it was done traditionally, but that would have been a LOT of effort and now I'm pretty confident it won't be necessary. So it was a pretty reassuring takeaway, and I'm glad I had the opportunity to chat with him!