Hello everyone! New update just got released with the main focus on improving behavior and AI of employees and customers. I want to thank every single person who wrote suggestions and problems with old AI. I have read every single comment and I hope I addressed all of the issues properly. The biggest reason why I continued doing free updates after the full launch is because there is so many engaged players and I thank you for that! There is no bigger joy for a game developer than seeing so many people actively involved in the game :)
In the roadmap I said that in January I would work on AI improvements, disasters and more customer interactions, but the effort for AI proved to be much higher and I wanted to do it properly before continuing to other features. That means that the next thing I work on are disasters and customer interactions :)
Here is the changelog of new features, but I suggest reading the whole post to see in details what are new changes :)
- Bartender now serves multiple drink types at once
- Waitress has much better path finding
- Waitress is more focused when cleaning and delivering drinks
- Chef has a new way of making soups
- Priority for chefs to prepare only certain types of food
- More slots for waitresses by the bar and kitchen counter
- Ability to buy individual slots for waitresses
- Indicators for walkable areas, icons for staff, icons for customers and angry timers for customers
- Customers now sit anywhere in the tavern when they walk in
- Delete button for save files
- Reroll button when hiring staff
- Lantern to celebrate Lunar New Year
First big change is how the bartender works. Before the update, he would wait until a customer orders a drink, then he would go fetch that drink and return to put it on the counter.
Now, the bartender will wait for an order, go to fill the drink, and when he finishes pouring he will check again if there are more orders, and if there are he will go to the next barrel to fill the next required drink. By having this change in behavior he manages to fill 10-20% more drinks during the day.
Next up was the waitress which got a lot of improvements. Biggest one is how path finding works. Before the update, if you make 2 tables next to each other, waitress would prefer to go around them if there is more free space because it looked more natural than slipping through narrow spaces between tables. I have changed that and added a different penalty for putting too many tables close together.
Around each table there is an area where everyone will move slower, like in real life. If you have to pass through narrow spaces you move slower than in open space. In order to see this, there is a new tool which shows walkable areas and it can also help you see if you accidentally blocked a patch with some piece of furniture.
Besides this waitress works much smarter when delivering drinks and cleaning. For delivering drinks, she will only take drinks from the counter that need to be delivered in a certain radius so she doesn't go all around the tavern delivering drinks, but actually has a bigger focus on one area and then, when she finishes, on another. For cleaning empty drinks, she will not only clean from one table, but actually clean all near-by tables as long as she has enough space on her tray.
All of these changes for the waitress increased the amount of drinks she delivers by around 30%.
Besides these behavior changes, I have also increased the amount of slots for waitresses from 3 to 4 besides the bar, from 2 to 4 besides kitchen counter and, most importantly, you can now also buy individual waitress slots which can be placed anywhere so you can have waitresses on floors with hotel rooms only for example.
Chef also got a big rework, specifically for soup making. Instead of having one big cauldron where a chef spends a lot of time making a single soup, he has a bunch of smaller cauldrons. Big difference is that when a chef makes a soup in the small cauldron it actually holds 5 plates of soup instead of one. That means that chef makes the soup once and then he can serve it 5 times.
Besides this chefs can also use basin, spice shelf and plate shelf without waiting.
These changes made chefs create about 100% more soups in the day, and because waitresses work faster, they also manage to make about 20% more desserts and main courses.
There is also a priority system for the chef so you can tell each chef which food to prepare and which not.
For the customer behavior, besides having better path finding like the waitress, they also come into the tavern a bit differently. Before this update they would first fill the ground floor before going up the stairs to sit on the second floor. I have changed that now so they pick a seat anywhere in the tavern when they come in. That relieves the stress from workers on the first floor because they would be overworked while staff on fourth floor waits half a day for anyone to go there.
I have kept the option to tell each employee which floor to work on, but you can now select multiple floors. There is also a new option for waitress to forbid them from doing a certain task completely.
Since all of these changes speed up money making I had to decrease the price of certain drinks and food to negate super fast money making. I am aware some people want really relaxed experience and other wish for a more challenging experience, so I will work on adding a difficulty option soon.
Big focus for me was also creating tools to investigate where you could improve your tavern layout and to see what is not working well. To do this, I have added a bunch of indicators that you can activate. One of them I already mentioned, for checking walkable areas, but other indicators include icons above heads of the employees, indicator above special customers so you can easily spot them and timer above customers heads to see how long they are willing to wait before they leave angry.
Since there were a lot of requests, I have also added a delete button for save files and a reroll button when hiring staff :)
One last bonus feature is the new light source - a lantern to celebrate Lunar New Year!
There were also many bugs fixed:
- Changing resolution sometimes didn't work, that is fixed now
- It's possible to complete achievement for 30% chance adventure when you are at maximum adventurer level
- Clicking on photo mode button where there is a bar below the button now doesn't make you go into the bar mode
- Condition for area of hotel room is now fixed
- Fences and short walls now render properly in the thief cutscene
- Animal hide carpet does not go through the bath and basin anymore
- Chef will not start making food for which he doesn't have enough ingredients
- Curtains are now counted towards decorations quest
As always, please write all of your impressions, suggestions and wishes for future updates, I always take it into consideration when I decide what to work on :)
Teasers for the next update:
