Final Project | Cooking Nana

Concept

This project is a cooking simulation game, inspired by the DS game Cooking Mama. Players interact with the game using physical buttons connected to an Arduino, allowing them to select ingredients and create virtual dishes across three courses: starter, main course, and dessert. Visual feedback is provided through animations (GIFs) that I created using Procreate.

How it works

  1. Starting the Game:
    • The game begins on a start screen, with an animated GIF displayed.
    • The player presses the space bar to advance to the menu.
  2. Choosing a Course:
    • The player selects a course (starter, main course, or dessert) using a keyboard key (1, 2, or 3).
    • The game transitions to the selected course with an animated visual prompt.
  3. Making Ingredient Choices:
    • For each course, the player makes three ingredient choices (e.g., base, protein, garnish) by pressing buttons:
      • Button 1 selects the first option.
      • Button 2 selects the second option.
    • The game responds by showing an animated GIF representing the selected ingredient.
  4. Final Dish Display:
    • After three choices, the game displays a final animated dish based on the player’s selections. I had to draw 8 versions for each course to account for all outcomes. I did 53 GIFs for the whole thing.
    • Players can restart the game by pressing the reset button.
  5. Reset Functionality:
    • Pressing the reset button at any point restarts the game to the start screen.

Project Demo

user testing video 

Code

P5: link to the P5 fullscreen page, GitHub

Arduino:  Github

Digital Arduino and Schematic

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reflection

Overall I’m really happy with my final project and I’m proud of myself for getting it done. I like how the animations came out and I’m glad I got the logic down to work regarding the user choices for ingredients.

challenges: 1. I originally wanted to use LEDs to inform the users of their progress throughout the game. But one of the LEDS didn’t work so I had to scratch that idea. 2. The animations took way longer than I anticipated so it set me back a lot with this project. 3. I struggled a lot trying to make the serial communication happen the way I wanted to. 4 I wanted to include sound effects for the cooking  because I think sound is a really big part in feeling immersed in something, but it was too much on p5 since I had 12 different audios with the 53 GIFs; it kept lagging and wasn’t worth it, so I just stuck with background audio.

future improvements: If I had more time I would’ve added better instructions on how to play the game, to make it more user friendly.

screen shots of the P5 interface GIFs

Leave a Reply