Jaja's Diner
Jaja's Diner is a 2D pixel art game based on the hit Flash game Penguin Diner. I created the entire game, all the assets and code, by myself as a gift to someone very close to me.
You play as Jaja the hamster. You must seat customers, wait on their order and deliver food in a timely manner in order to reach a daily earnings quota. Each day gets progressively harder, gradually increasing the number of customers required to serve, how long they are willing to wait, and how much money the player is required to make. With their excess money, players can upgrade their various stats to allow for faster movement speeds, higher earning potential, and longer periods of customer patience.
Tools: Unity, Visual Studio, Aseprite, Miro, Trello
Roles: Programming, 2D Art, UI UX Design
Team Size: 1
Timeline: 3 months
TL;DR
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Created all original art and animations from scratch in a pixel art style
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Programmed all systems and functionality from the ground up
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Implemented the Finite State Machine pattern to allow for the creation of a robust NPC AI that is decoupled and easy to design within
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Created menu navigation and interaction that is intuitive to the player and provides feedback to player actions
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Implemented Scriptable Objects to store player data and control game difficulty
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Created an entire game from start to finish
Customer Finite State Machine Overview
One of the main things that I started to get really familiar with while working on Jaja's Diner was implementing Finite State Machines (FSM). An FSM essentially boils down to a collection of states that the Customer can be in (e.g. reading the menu or eating), and transitions between those states in response to external input (e.g. the customer will transition from waiting for their food to eating when the player brings them their food).
The FSM diagram for the customer's in Jaja's Diner looks like this...
The FSM is fairly simple and linear set of stages that the customers will go through during their lifecycle in the game.
They will spawn and wait until they are sat at a table by the player.
They will navigate to the table chosen for them, read the menu and order their food.
Once a customer's food has been brought to them, they eat it for a bit, and then leave a tip on their way out.
This is the general flow of the customer's State Machine, it tends to be very linear. There are, however, a few states where the customer is waiting. If kept waiting for too long the customer will break out of the loop and become increasingly more impatient the longer they are kept waiting.
The player's potential tip is diminished for every stage of annoyance a customer goes through and if the customer is angry for too long, they will leave the restaurant. The player gets no tip, and may have to throw out any food that they had ordered.
Customer was left waiting for too long and is leaving the restaurant
