Dev Blog #1: Building the World

Welcome to our first dev blog for Cup and Counter: Coffee Shop Simulator. This is the first game from me (Emmet) and Angus. We previously worked on writing and operating the tech guides website Pi My Life Up.

In these dev blogs, we will explore some of the work we completed on our game over the previous week. We hope these posts will give you an idea of what we are working on for our game and gather any feedback.

Over the last week, we have both focused on building out the game world for Cup and Counter and making it feel more like a living city.

If you don't feel like reading, be sure to check out our vlog below. This vlog gives a quick overview of most of what we cover below.

Emmet

This week, my focus has been on setting up systems to make the outer game world feel more alive. We have had a big focus on making the Coffee shop's systems work, but these have kind of suffered a bit.

Implementation of Pedestrian and Traffic System

The first part of my week was focused on building the basics of our pedestrian and traffic system. These are primarily here to bring the game world to life. While they don't directly contribute to gameplay at the moment, they do significantly improve the vibe.

In future pushes, I plan to flesh out both pedestrians and traffic. At the moment, they simply go from one location to another, but I want to make them a bit smarter than that. For example, taxis pick up passengers from the side of the road, and pedestrians sit down and interact with their surroundings.

Improving the Lighting System

One thing you may have noticed from the screenshots is that our lighting isn't the best. It's something we briefly touched on when we set up the day and night system, but we really left a lot on the table.

Over the week, I focused on making the world feel a lot less flat, adding depth to the scene, and making nighttime actually look and feel nice.

Improving the user Interface

A major overhaul of the user interface was completed over the last week. There isn't a single bit of it that we haven't overhauled in some way.

With Cup and Counter, we do not expect you to actually understand how to put together every type of coffee, and we very much needed our interface to be a major driver of that.

The interface will now inform you how each order needs to be satisfied. Don't know what an Americano is or what a Long Black is? Don't worry, as the interface will tell you the ingredient order and the amount needed.

I have also added a dial to the world to provide a visual representation of the time of day. It still needs a bit of work, but I'm fairly happy with how it operates now.

Adding Weather

There is one final missing piece that I felt the game world really needed before I started focusing solely on improving what we currently have, and that is a weather system. In the existing world, every day was always clear, but I felt I really missed out on a very particular, cozy vibe. That vibe is NPCs sitting and drinking coffee, with gentle rain in the background.

Luckily, this was one of the easier things to implement in Cup and Counter. The plan is to make this change to how your customers order, but some planning is still needed.

You can't really see the weather in this still shot as it definitely works better in video.

Angus

This week, I focused on a wide range of improvements to the game, with a particular focus on enhancing our 3D assets and their implementation in the world.

Adding Visual Effects to our Coffee Machine and Grinder

One of the primary focuses this week has been polishing both our coffee machine and grinder. One of the best ways to do this is by adding visual effects and sound to each piece. Prior to this week, there was no obvious indicator that the machine was doing anything.

Coffee Grinder

I have updated the grinder so that it now actually dispenses coffee grounds whenever you use it, no magically filling the portafilter.

The buttons were also updated to show the machine's status. Red indicates there are not enough beans in the hopper, orange means it is currently in use, and green signals the machine is idle and ready to work.

Coffee Machine

The coffee machine was a little trickier, as there was a lot more that needed to be done to make it feel right. The first thing I did was implement an effect that makes it look like the coffee is actually being dispensed through the portafilter into the mug. The hot water dispenser uses a similar effect but a different colour.

Sound effects have also been added, so everything sounds like it's actually operating like a coffee machine would.

Just like the coffee grinder, the buttons now give you a good idea of what the machine is actually doing. Orange for operation, red for something isn't right, and green for when everything's ready to go.

After adding these, one major thing was still missing: steam effects. Adding these helps make the liquid actually feel like it is hot to the end player. The steam gradually fades as it cools down. These effects are still a work in progress, and we will refine them more as we get closer to release.

Converting the Alleyway

With our original concept for Cup and Counter, we were going to have an alleyway as the way the Cafe was connected to the outer world. However, after testing and playing around with it, it just never felt quite right and kind of made the pedestrian and traffic systems hidden.

To improve this, we decided to significantly expand the front area, transforming it from a small alleyway into an inner-city plaza. It enables all our visual work and systems to be better shown and also gives us a significantly larger area to expand our Coffee shop simulator into if we ever need to.

I took inspiration from many inner-city plazas that blended things like trees into the inner-city atmosphere. I added raised beds filled with flowers and trees, and modeled a new light to add to the world so everything wouldn't feel the same. I also added seating that I hope to have implemented for the city's citizens.

Road Improvements

The next big task that I focused on this week was improving our roads. There was a lot that needed doing here to make them pop a bit more and feel like they fit the rest of my art design.

Part of the redesign was to introduce more pronounced curbs, improved asphalt for the cars, and a nicer, more visually pleasing pavement texture. I completely overhauled the road markings, moving them from being baked in to decals. This will enable us to paint the road markings wherever we want them.

I also modeled some traffic lights so that our pedestrians will eventually be able to cross safely. It's still a bit early, with the lights not scripted in yet, but you can see roughly how we want them to look in the game.