Y'all need to think a little more 'ghetto' when it comes to food.

[Gargoyle Girl]

Or 'bachelor' or 'poor', or however you want to say it. xD

Who says Spaghetti *needs* to be made with beef instead of lamb, or chicken? ...or dog or cat food for that matter?

Why can't you sub in chicken soup for soup stock?

Why are there *only* canned pears, and *no other fruit*, and they can't be made into *anything else*?

The idea that, here you have people living in an apocalypse, where good food is paramount to survival being too snooty or such sticklers for a recipe that they would refuse to substitute one type of meat for another when cooking not only makes no sense, but it goes against the basic spirit of being a good cook, which is to experiment and explore new flavors and possibilities.

So go ahead... tell me why spaghetti with lamb or chicken isn't possible? Why doesn't roasted chicken with pear sauce glaze exist? Why can't certain things just get mixed up into some random mashup and still work? You have Hobo Stew in the game, which actually uses rotted, zombie infected flesh as one of the ingredients for god's sake, but you can't use chicken in your stew?!

[Crashtian]

Originally posted by Gargoyle Girl:

Or 'bachelor' or 'poor', or however you want to say it. xD

Who says Spaghetti *needs* to be made with beef instead of lamb, or chicken? ...or dog or cat food for that matter?

Why can't you sub in chicken soup for soup stock?

Why are there *only* canned pears, and *no other fruit*, and they can't be made into *anything else*?

The idea that, here you have people living in an apocalypse, where good food is paramount to survival being too snooty or such sticklers for a recipe that they would refuse to substitute one type of meat for another when cooking not only makes no sense, but it goes against the basic spirit of being a good cook, which is to experiment and explore new flavors and possibilities.

So go ahead... tell me why spaghetti with lamb or chicken isn't possible? Why doesn't roasted chicken with pear sauce glaze exist? Why can't certain things just get mixed up into some random mashup and still work? You have Hobo Stew in the game, which actually uses rotted, zombie infected flesh as one of the ingredients for god's sake, but you can't use chicken in your stew?!

You wanna make something...WITH OUT A RECIPE?

Our characters, fully grown adults in the apocalypse can't boil meat. They don't know how. Substitutions is well beyond our player characters comprehension.

[mathaniel]

Because it wasn`t coded into the game? Just a wild guess? I guess I don`t understand the question. Is it rhetorical? Or are you asking the devs to make this possible? Can`t warsh my clothes in a warshing machine in the game either lol. jk. Cheers

[Shurenai]

Rotting flesh isn't really zombie infected. It's just rotten.

And the answer to the opening question is that this isn't Cooking Simulator 2022.

You don't see minecraft with a million substitute recipes either. Or any other survival game for that matter. Recipes are what they are for game balance and/or theme (and maybe other reasons)

Another significant reason is that the crafting system doesn't do substitutions- In order to make spaghetti with chicken as an alternative, you need a whole separate recipe. And then one for lamb. And then one for this, and one for that, etc, etc, etc.

We're not here to be good cooks- We're here to survive. We eat what we can, and if that sometimes is a larger meal, cool.


That said, of all the mods I can think of, new recipe mods are probably the easiest to pull off- So go ahead. Make a thousand different recipes to account for all the potential permutations of food you can potentially throw together. I'm sure there's some people that would appreciate it even.

[JimmyIowa]

I pick what I feel to be the optimal food, and pretty much only eat that one thing and beer for the rest of the game. So the variety matters not at all to me.

However, adding new recipes is super easy to do in recipes.xml. For example, if you wanted to make a new recipe with canned pears and rotten meat, just copy an existing recipe rename it "Gargoyle Girl's Nasty Fruit Glop", and add the ingredients.

Or make "Gargoyle Girls Vegetarian Spaghetti" or whatever you want. If you want further instructions, I can provide them in the modding sub forum. (This requires backing up some files, and editing the XML in recipes.xml)

[Trooper Bri]

I'm pretty sure the word ghetto doesn't mean what you think it does...

[Midas]

Yeah, it's a shame it doesn't have a more dynamic recipe system where instead of 'beef stew', it'd just be 'stew' and you use whatever protein and veg you have on hand to make it.

Then again, in this game the hobo stew made from rotting meat is somehow better for you than the normal stew, so it's a safe bet that the devs are not people you'd ever want in a kitchen.

Maybe that's why the game operates on the assumption that none of us know how to cook anything by default?

[Flakstruk]

Dont overthink it

[comet_65cali]

I just want a "catfood on crackers" recipe.

[Gargoyle Girl]

Originally posted by Shurenai:

Rotting flesh isn't really zombie infected. It's just rotten.

And the answer to the opening question is that this isn't Cooking Simulator 2022.

You don't see minecraft with a million substitute recipes either. Or any other survival game for that matter. Recipes are what they are for game balance and/or theme (and maybe other reasons)

Another significant reason is that the crafting system doesn't do substitutions- In order to make spaghetti with chicken as an alternative, you need a whole separate recipe. And then one for lamb. And then one for this, and one for that, etc, etc, etc.

We're not here to be good cooks- We're here to survive. We eat what we can, and if that sometimes is a larger meal, cool.


That said, of all the mods I can think of, new recipe mods are probably the easiest to pull off- So go ahead. Make a thousand different recipes to account for all the potential permutations of food you can potentially throw together. I'm sure there's some people that would appreciate it even.

Ok. Unexpected snark here, but... xD

I'm not asking you to turn this into cooking simulator. Where did *that* come from? All I'm saying is that, in real life, people often just use what comes to hand when they don't have recipe specific ingredients. You would think people willing to eat Cat food as is would also be willing to use it in Spaghetti as 'meat', or any other meat-like substance.

I'm not suggesting you add anything new food-wise to the game. Just make it so all the existing stuff can be combined in some way, weird seeming or not.

I understand that it would require some effort on the part of the devs and coders to make something like that an option. Doesn't mean it would be pointless or wrong to 'make it a thing'. And yes... someone tried to go into exhaustive detail with making cooking into some complex affair. It turned out to be kind of a mightmare, as they never finished inputting all the descriptions and effects of the various things you could make, added insane numbers of steps to each dish, didn't try to balance any of the items to be sellable or even worth the effort, and a lot of other things.

And you suggesting *I* do it, like I have the slightest idea how? xD If I knew how to do these things, do you really think I would comment on anything at all, instead of working on it? I really enjoy this game, despite all my posts (or perhaps I should say 'I make all these posts because I really enjoy this game'?) but if I could *make* this game, I probably would, and you wouldn't hear anything from me at all.

Sorry if my commentary here seemed to clip a nerve or just catch you at a bad moment. It was just a thought I had.

[Gargoyle Girl]

Originally posted by Trooper Bri:

I'm pretty sure the word ghetto doesn't mean what you think it does...

Which is why I used some other words to try to suggest more appropriate ones and not insult anyone. And I think you know what I meant in any case. Food you just throw together because that's all you had on hand. Cereal with water. Banana sandwiches. Biscuits fried in a pan with butter on the stove. I think another way people describe it is 'struggle food'.

[SylenThunder]

Originally posted by Shurenai:

That said, of all the mods I can think of, new recipe mods are probably the easiest to pull off- So go ahead. Make a thousand different recipes to account for all the potential permutations of food you can potentially throw together. I'm sure there's some people that would appreciate it even.

Just be aware that more recipes = inventory lag.
There is a reason they stuck 1300 shapes in a radial menu.

[Crater Creator]

My understanding of the game’s design is that, if you are in the struggling, grateful-for-anything stage, then you’ll just eat the canned foods straight out of the can. Very hobo. That’s why, unlike most crafting ingredients, they are consumable in their own right.

When e.g. all canned meat is interchangeable, the game loses something that makes it more distinct. This is how the game used to be. There were no recipes to use beef, lamb, or chicken rations. They were just food you ate directly.

And the result? You didn’t care at all which type of ration was in an air drop or cupboard. Food was food, just with a different picture.

More recently, they went out of their way to come up with more interesting recipes, so that you can make at least one unique dish from each canned food. Again, the setup we have now supports both ‘struggle food’ in the early game, and getting more fancy in the later game. The surviving phase and the thriving phase, if you will.

Do you just eat the can of food now, or do you wait until you can make something better with it later? That is the interesting choice you get to make as a player. Being able to make the complex/fancy food no matter what you have on hand would be washing out that progression curve into something more bland and homogenous.

[jynx]

You could always add nutraloaf.........

[Bourbinski]

It's not spaghetti though, it's space wizard magic food that can heal a dieing person back to their prime in minutes, and takes as much 'knowledge' to make as a flying Da Vinci copter made out of junked car parts.

[Shurenai]

Originally posted by Gargoyle Girl:

Originally posted by Shurenai:

Rotting flesh isn't really zombie infected. It's just rotten.

And the answer to the opening question is that this isn't Cooking Simulator 2022.

You don't see minecraft with a million substitute recipes either. Or any other survival game for that matter. Recipes are what they are for game balance and/or theme (and maybe other reasons)

Another significant reason is that the crafting system doesn't do substitutions- In order to make spaghetti with chicken as an alternative, you need a whole separate recipe. And then one for lamb. And then one for this, and one for that, etc, etc, etc.

We're not here to be good cooks- We're here to survive. We eat what we can, and if that sometimes is a larger meal, cool.


That said, of all the mods I can think of, new recipe mods are probably the easiest to pull off- So go ahead. Make a thousand different recipes to account for all the potential permutations of food you can potentially throw together. I'm sure there's some people that would appreciate it even.

Ok. Unexpected snark here, but... xD

I'm not asking you to turn this into cooking simulator. Where did *that* come from? All I'm saying is that, in real life, people often just use what comes to hand when they don't have recipe specific ingredients. You would think people willing to eat Cat food as is would also be willing to use it in Spaghetti as 'meat', or any other meat-like substance.

I'm not suggesting you add anything new food-wise to the game. Just make it so all the existing stuff can be combined in some way, weird seeming or not.

I understand that it would require some effort on the part of the devs and coders to make something like that an option. Doesn't mean it would be pointless or wrong to 'make it a thing'. And yes... someone tried to go into exhaustive detail with making cooking into some complex affair. It turned out to be kind of a mightmare, as they never finished inputting all the descriptions and effects of the various things you could make, added insane numbers of steps to each dish, didn't try to balance any of the items to be sellable or even worth the effort, and a lot of other things.

And you suggesting *I* do it, like I have the slightest idea how? xD If I knew how to do these things, do you really think I would comment on anything at all, instead of working on it? I really enjoy this game, despite all my posts (or perhaps I should say 'I make all these posts because I really enjoy this game'?) but if I could *make* this game, I probably would, and you wouldn't hear anything from me at all.

Sorry if my commentary here seemed to clip a nerve or just catch you at a bad moment. It was just a thought I had.

I didn't say you said you wanted it to be cooking simulator- I said it isn't cooking simulator.

What I meant by that is that this game isn't meant to have a supremely robust multi-combinational any-ingredient in any-recipe 100-kinds-of-tools-to-cook-with kind of game- It's not a cooking simulator.

Just like it's not a farming simulator, and we don't have to weed our crops, or deal with pests or have to water them, or have realistic growth times or harvest amounts.

In both of these respects the game trades away complexity for ease of use because it's a system that while important, simply doesn't need to be complex- And it doesn't need to be purely realistic either. They're not the star of the show. The cost of that trade off is that you can't just use any ingredient in any recipe- You get the recipes defined by the developers.


And lets be real here- If you're desperate enough to eat cat food, You're still probably not going to mix that cat food into perfectly good spaghetti noodles when you find them.

You might eat the cat food and then the spaghetti noodles to get the atrocious flavor of the cat food out of your mouth; But you likely wouldn't mix them because it'd frankly be ruining perfectly good food with something you're only eating because you're desperate. Well, in fairness, Maybe you would.. But I sure as heck wouldn't.