EDIT: Date was changed from 20th to 24th.
EDIT2: New staff training rooms will not be part of the patch. It will be included in the following patch.
So, evaluating where the Dev Build is at the moment, I have completed all that I planned for this patch. But, after several gameplay testing, I decided to delay the patch another week as there are few things that the game really needs.
1. Remove the current relocation workflow completely.
Until now, relocating (or moving furniture around after placing it) required clicking on the "relocation" button then selecting the furniture then clicking "relocate". When Tavern Tycoon was first designed, I had very little issues with this approach, but now that the game is working at its full capacity, this workflow is very tedius and unintuitive. Hence, I am moving to the "new workflow".
Basically, players can now simply move the cursor over any furniture and it will be highlighted (until now, only staff members had this behavior). Clicking on it will prompt a small panel with buttons and information about the furniture. From here, you can either move, replace with new, call for repairs or sell it.
This change was made quite late but it is currently fully functional and ready.
2. But the rooms still work like the old times
After play testing for several hours, I realized how the new workflow for furnitures felt "right" and almost "perfect". But the rooms, which is still based on the old workflow, now felt "outdated" and sort of "hard" to work with. At this point I really had to re-evaluate and ask if the room workflow should be changed to the new workflow as well. And my conclusion was yes. I begun porting codes last night and so far, I like how it is going. It is not done yet, but should not give any unexpected surprises.
Left is the old workflow with new UI, but I want to implement the new workflow on in as well.
3. New staff balance and training
Staff in general has been changed in many ways. For example, staff members now have perks! Staff avatar and UI had a facelift as well. This part is done and fully functional. But, after playing testing, I realized that there needs to be a some sort of training room so that players can choose who gains what sort of perks and who levels up. Currently, staff members level up steadily over time and gain perks after each levelling up which eliminates the player's input in general. This made every staff after few years a master level staff at very low wage. This is broken in terms of gameplay and it needs to be redesigned. The goal is to give the choice to the players as the manager and decide who will be a long term staff and who is not.
Conclusion
I think polishing the game and spending more time on balancing the gameplay have revealed areas of the game that needs to be reinforced. It is unfortunate that the patch has to be delayed, but the three things mentioned above is quite critical for the game to play as it was intended, so the delay was inevitable.
My current goal is to polish the DB010 build and release it before the end of October and following it up with a pushdown to the Main Build early November.