Good day, aspiring hotel managers!
We’re a little late on bringing you today’s update, but rest assured that this is only the case because we have been working diligently towards some major milestones. We are close to finalising our development roadmap for all of the good stuff to come, so you’ll soon be able to follow along more closely. While the team has really gotten into the swing of work and nurtured blissful comradery, we still face challenges as a result of how few of us there are. Therefore, we want to inform you that we are on the hunt for a talented 3D character and prop artist to liven up the game and another programmer to spread the technical load and speed things up.
If you know of anyone who fits the bill, or you’re quite the marvel yourself, please contact us at: [email protected]
Now, time for a peek at what we’ve been doing!
Character Art:
The process of designing the visuals and functionality of guests and staff in the game is something we have been working hard on over the past month. To create enough NPC variety without breaking our art budget, we need to implement a dynamic system that randomises clothing, skin colour, facial features, and body types from a collection of assets. This saves time and precious resources while still offering a pretty fantastic result. Here’s an early concept drawing of a few guests and staff members that’ll help guide the final model designs:
Saving & Loading:
Voilà! A big piece of the puzzle has finally been solved! Saving & loading is officially a thing, at least for the systems we have in place at the moment, like building/furniture placement. This is quite a substantial milestone, as we have had issues in the past with efficiently (and accurately) saving walls and floors.
UI Progress:
More important UI work has been completed, such as the addition of simple tooltips to help players traverse the interface (like whether or not a button will bring about certain doom) and the initial designs for the various management screens. However, most of the work done on management screens admittedly had more to do with gameplay than visual design, but it’s still a great improvement over what we had before.
Room Rating:
This one is still a bit of a work in progress, but we have, at the very least, designed a preliminary system for how a given room is perceived by guests and how it is ranked against other rooms. This will absolutely become far more elaborate as development continues, but it should suffice for now.
Essentially, a bedroom’s “real room value” can be rated up to 5 stars. This is determined by the room’s contents, like a 1-star room will at least need a bed, a 2-star will require a bed and a TV, and so on. Additionally, a part of these requirements for improving a room’s rating will be in the form of overall $$$ spent on it. This enforces that players will need to have sponged out a little more cash in addition to the furniture requirements to ensure the room is functionally better.
Once the room is ready, players will be able to market it in any way they see fit. If it’s barely worth 2 stars but you want to market it as a 4-star experience, go for it. However, most guests will call you out on your exaggerated definition and pricing, which will lower your hotel’s global rating. This system is still very much a work in progress, so please let us know your thoughts and suggestions. We appreciate all of your comments!
If you’d like to get in touch with us and join the community, ring the bell over on our Discord server at https://discord.gg/fYkJWWk. See you around!