It’s been a while since I last released an update, but I have been hard at work improving and testing the game. I’m really excited to share this update and hope it was worth the wait.
Tutorial Rework
One of the biggest changes I made was removing the tutorial and incorporating it into the game. This has been my goal for a while now because I feel that the game can be taught more organically and intuitively this way. It allows me to space out the teaching of different game mechanics instead of trying to teach everything at once in a separate tutorial section.
The tutorial window itself also received a rework. It can now be accessed in every game mode and tries to provide the most relevant information for the current situation. In addition, it can now display video’s and dynamically scale to fit the content of the window, which prevents it from being unnecessarily big.
The new system still has room for improvement, but I hope that it can make the game a lot easier and more fun to learn. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.
Toilet System
I made some big changes to the algorithm that determines when guests have to go to the toilet. Previously this was solely based on how long guests were in the restaurant. The issue with this was that guests would only go to the toilet when the restaurant's waiting time was really long. The new algorithm makes sure that going to the toilet is decoupled from waiting time. You will now need to have enough toilets regardless of whether or not your waiting time is long or not. Guests will also care more about how clean the toilet is.
In addition to this new algorithm, I also added the ability to change the cleaning frequency of a toilet. This allows you to make a tradeoff between having really clean toilets, and not overburdening your staff.
UI Rework
I felt that the UI of the game looked a bit cluttered and inconsistent at times so I reworked a lot of it. The tooltip system that I added a while back is now utilized more often to hopefully make the game more intuitive. I also reworked the toolbars to make them look less cluttered.
Another area that received improvements is the item window. Previously, every item tile displayed the item name, which was problematic for longer names and required larger tiles, limiting the number of items that could be displayed at once. In the new design, item tiles only display the price and an image of the item. You can hover the item to see more information, including the name. I also added a scrollbar to the window, which should remove any limit to the amount of items I can add to the game. Lastly, I added more detailed descriptions to items that require it.
I also remade a lot of the icons in the game as the old ones could often be unclear. I’m still not entirely happy with all the icons in the game, but I think that this should be a good first improvement.
Balance Changes
In the last month, I have conducted a lot of playtests. These tests enabled me to make some significant balance changes to the game. I’d like to thank everybody who participated in the tests.
The most common problem I encountered was that the first hour of the game started off very slow. The low profits at the start of the game resulted in the player having to wait a relatively long time for enough money to buy items. I have improved this by making it a bit easier to make a comparatively high profit at the start of the game, and increased the price range of items to hopefully make progression a bit more interesting.
I also reworked the guest spawning algorithm. It now reflects the reviews and customer satisfaction much better. The spawn rate is now also a little less sensitive to changes in menu prices.
Besides these bigger points I also made a lot of smaller changes and I rebalanced the scenario’s. I hope that all these changes will make for a better and more engaging experience.
Reviews Rework
I’m preparing to translate the game and ran into some challenges with the review system. The old review system used to dynamically create sentences, which created challenges in translating the reviews into different languages due to variation in grammar.
I decided to completely rework the review system since it was already quite a flawed system to begin with. The guests' comments are separated and highlighted by a color. I also improved the usefulness and relevance of the comments. Although the new system is a big improvement, it is still not perfect and I plan to continue improving it.
Items
As mentioned in the balance section of this blog, I aim to improve the price range of items in the game. This means that there are cheaper and more expensive options for items in order to facilitate a sense of progression.
Chairs
For a game about designing a restaurant, TasteMaker was seriously lacking in furniture. I added 8 new chairs, which doubles the amount of chairs in the game.
Tables
I also added 5 new tables. One table was removed because it was too similar to other tables. I plan to add more furniture in a future update.
Kitchen Appliances
I added 3 new kitchen appliances: A small fryer, a stand mixer and I replaced the normal shelf for a big and a small shelf. The small shelf holds 12 ingredients and the big shelf 24. I hope that having cheaper and more expensive versions of kitchen appliances can give the game more of a sense of progression.
I also reworked the big mixer so it now contains 3 servings instead of 1.
Connecting cabinets
A feature that has been requested often is to make the cabinets connect. I finally got around to implementing this. The cabinets also connect in corners.
Small Changes
- Plates not being collected bug fix
- Main menu improvements
- Fixed Farm Scenario road issue
- Camera tilt range increased slightly
- Cutting board is now moveable
- Changed food quality settings
- Improved the plate model
- Reworked staff hiring mechanic slightly
- Removed the "once" option from ingredient ordering