Post Jam Changes

As this project was entered in a jam, it would be against the spirit of the jam to add updates (other than bugfixes which are allowed in the OLC jam rules) - however there are some changes I do intend to make as soon as the Jam finishes, based on feedback received, things I noticed while playtesting post launch as well as things I did not have time to get implemented in time.

1. Ability to preview the radius of dropped food before placing

This is important as a core part of the game is setting up parts of your route in advance, which requires precise placement - and placing a food item just out of range of the previous in the change (or too close to your chicken causing it to run before you are ready) is very annoying.

My intention is to have a long press highlight the position, and if you don't like it, you can flick your finger (or cursor) away and the placement will be discarded. I could add mouse hover - however this would give mouse users a big advantage (and different experience) to touch players and I want to keep this as close as possible.

2. A pause button, and the ability to place while paused, and a "restart level" button.

I think that having the ability to pause the map, place items, and then unpause (with undo allowed during a paused frame of reference) will allow for much more complex puzzles to be set up. It will also help with the problem with 1. Once all the food items and dog types are added, there will be many combinations for complicated puzzles to be created.

I may actually do this by use of a food type,  (the ability to place while paused) - so it's possible to have the game provide a mixture of 'reactive' action puzzles and the more complicated types where you need to stop and think - but also have puzzles which are a mix of both.

3. Ability to place food in the inactive areas.

The game currently only allows you to place food in the active (green) area. My intention is to change this, but only have the chicken go to food in the green active area. The active area limitation was motivated by a quick way to prevent the chicken from moving to a food item outside of the map (although it's actually possible to make it move outside of the map if you are quick enough when the chicken is at a junction) as well as provide an additional constraint on the player to make the game more challenging. However, I think it is ultimately confusion and does go against the general premise of "setting up a  finite state machine" that the chicken runs through.

4. Have the chicken consume food it walks over

Presently the chicken only consumes the food it is actively targeting, meaning that even if it is 0.001 pixel away, and then targets a new food, that food won't be consumed. I have found this anti-intuitive even though I coded the mechanic, so my intention is that if the chicken's blue circle moves over a food item's origin that food will be consumed (And the effect of the food applied to the chicken, if it has one)

5. More levels, and better designed levels (and more food / dog types)

The current levels only really demonstrate an overview of the mechanics, with the level 3 to 4 being the only ones to actively 'teach' a mechanic (ie, it's easy to get past level 3 with just using tomato, but the speed boost of the lemon makes the harder version of the puzzle a lot easier (it is actually possible to complete with only tomatoes though)

This is because 2 hours before submission, I only had level 5 made, and in the final 2 hours (along with submitting the game and other quick fixes) had to throw together 4 quick tutorial levels to explain the mechanics. None of these truly demonstrate the true potential of the puzzle aspect of the game (it relies on someone playing it 'getting it' after playing with these simple examples) For that though, I need to build a level editor, as presently the maps are all coded by handed in JSON, which is fine for the simple ones, but not so much for the more complicated ones I have in mind.

I also have plans for more food types:

* Ice Cream - makes the chicken invisible for a period of time

* Chocolate - chicken will fly to the next waypoint (so won't be visible)

* Dog Bone - dogs will stop to eat the bone

* Corn - infinite range - the chicken will always head to this no matter how far it is, but is lowest priority for the chicken to eat

* Coffee will slow down the game time

And also more dog types

* Greyhound - an interceptor dog that will chase the chicken once triggered, rather than sticking to a defined path

* Poodle - instead of a circular hitbox, it has a spinning bar (or wedge) that rotates, allowing for timing based movement