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
Upcoming Price Increase
I’m working towards the 1.0 release of the game, and have decided to slightly increase the price from 9,99 to 11,99. This price increase will happen at the start of next month, most likely on the 3rd of March. Until that time you will still be able to get the game for 9,99.
It has been a while since I last released an update, but I am working hard on a larger update that will hopefully be worth the wait. Determining the value of a game is hard because it is very subjective, But I hope that the updates made over the last 2 years, along with the upcoming update justify the increase in price.
Regional Prices
Some exchange rates have changed a lot since I last set the price for TasteMaker in 2021. I want to keep the price increase as low as possible in all currencies, but I also can’t completely ignore the current exchange rates, which means that some currencies will see a price increase that is bigger than 20%.
Looking for playtesters
I’m working on a new update that contains some big balance changes. But before it’s ready for release, I need your help to test the update and make sure that the changes actually improve the game.
That’s why I’m looking for a few people who have never played TasteMaker before and are willing to playtest the game. The test will take place over Discord and will likely last between 1 and 2 hours. As a token of appreciation, all playtesters can keep the game for free after the test.
If you're interested in participating, you can reach me on the Discord server or via email at booijjelle@gmail.com. I can’t wait to hear what you think of the game!
Devblog 39
Happy new year everybody! This is a bit of a smaller update that I considered making a patch. But because it does contain some new content, I decided to write this short blog.
Menu Changes
I’m not quite happy with the current menu tree and want to change it a bit. I decided to start with changing the beverages. The cocktails did not make a lot of sense from a gameplay perspective so I removed 2 of the 3 cocktails and added beer instead. I also replaced the cocktail glass item with a beer glass item, and added a beer tap item. Beer was already a part of the game before it was released in early access, but I ended up removing it, which I now think was a mistake. I hope that the progression of the beverages tree makes a bit more sense now.
Small Changes
Fixed dirt not being visible
Fixed wine not being able to be made by waiters in certain cases
Fixed not being able to close the scenario goal window
Fixed food quality being broken for chicken
Rebalanced staff wages
Rebalanced tableware dirtiness
Fixed pans not being displayed in inventory correctly
Fixed lag spikes when someone poops in your restaurant
While not everything I worked on in the past 2 weeks is ready to be shown yet, I did make a few important improvements and bug fixes that I wanted to release before the end of the year. This will probably be the last update for 2022. Hope you all have happy holidays!
Zoning improvements
When testing the game, I often found myself accidentally placing items outside of a zone. My restaurant would then break because employee’s couldn’t reach them. This caused a lot of confusion and frustration. I reworked the zone overlay to hopefully resolve this issue. The overlay now also gets enabled when you place items. This way you always know in which zone an item is.
Small changes
Fixed saving issue
Performance improvements
Tableware now get’s evenly divided between cabinets (while still adhering to the specified fill priority)
Dartboard “Item in use” bug fixed
Stove “Item in use” bug fixed
Income stats saved more accurately
Paintbrush icon reworked
Devblog 37
Stat window rework
I added a dish specific waiting time tab to the stat window. The rest of the window was also polished and reworked and I made sure that all the stats got saved properly, which was not the case before.
Wall Removal
Something that I see in tests quite frequently is that people don’t know how they can delete walls. I hope to solve this issue by adding a separate wall deletion tool. This tool has the added benefit that you can delete entire walls at once instead of having to click on each individual wall segment.
Zoning Polish
A few weeks back I added a new zoning system and I am generally quite happy with it. That said, it still needs a lot of tweaking. This week I improved employee’s adherence to their zone.
Small Changes
Fixed spelling issues
Added tooltip to decor and hygiene overlay button
Reworked menu icon
Fixed ordering chicken while it's not on the menu
Removed “Save Successful” message
Path moved to painting
Reworked wall icons
Zoning color saving issue fixed
Devblog 36
Update cycle
I will be experimenting with different update schedules. There is unfortunately only so much I can get done in a week, and I feel that the weekly update schedule is starting to get a bit counter productive. Releasing an exciting update and doing what’s best for the game are different and sometimes conflicting goals, and not every change fits neatly inside a weekly update. This week's update is also very small mainly because I spend the most part of the week working on a feature that I can’t reveal yet. I’m not exactly sure what the new update schedule will look like yet and will release one more weekly update next week. After that I will probably move to bi-weekly updates. I’m planning to increase the time between updates as the game approaches full release in order to make bigger updates.
Menu rework
I changed the menu unlock system a few months back and have never really been happy with it. In a lot of my tests people did not really get the idea that the payment for research was spread out over multiple months. After a lot of deliberation, I think that replacing the research cost with a simple single payment is a better system. The monthly payments did not provide enough gameplay value to justify the confusion they caused.
I also reworked the menu window slightly to make it a bit more intuitive to see the dish unlock requirements.
Casino games
This will probably be a bit of a controversial change, but I decided to cut the roulette, poker, blackjack and money wheel games for the game. My reasoning behind this is that TasteMaker at its core is a game in which you build and manage your own restaurant. The casino games did not really contribute to this and I feel that adding them might have been a mistake. I personally think that these games were not very interesting from a gameplay perspective, and therefore still needed a lot of work to polish. But as I mentioned earlier in this blog, my time and resources are limited. So I felt that cutting these casino games and investing the time that this saves into the core of the game, is the right thing to do. I’m very interested in your opinion on this change as I do realize that it might be a bit controversial.
Devblog 35
This week's update is a bit smaller. I’m considering releasing updates less frequently in order to make them more substantial.
Staff windows reworked
Previously, you often had to switch between windows when managing staff. This update separates staff managing and staff hiring in 2 separate windows, which should hopefully make it a bit more organized and reduce the amount of window switching you have to do.
I also added a tooltip in the priority window. This enables you to see an employee's stats without having to switch windows.
Window and Door Moving
You can now move windows and doors.
Small Changes
Fixed staff firing bug
Removed grass patch in corner of sandbox map
Fixed hair sometimes not being saved correctly
Fixed clothes being visible on the wrong floor
Devblog 34
Zoning Feedback
I reworked the zoning system this week. The game already had a simple system to restrict where staff was allowed to go, but I believe that it was too limited and had some major issues.
The main issue was that the game did not communicate whenever the employee could not reach a required item due to his/her zone being restricted. I tried to solve this by making employees adhere to their zone less strictly, but this made the zones less useful.
In this update employees adhere to their zones very strictly again, and I added notifications whenever zoning related issues are a bottleneck in an employee’s efficiency. This is communicated by displaying icons of out of reach items above the staff's head, and messages.
Zone Creation
There is now a separate window for creating zones. You can assign employees to zones in the individual employee option menu (the menu that pops up when you click on the employee)
Every zone can be renamed, and has color associated with it.
Table Settings
Setting dish settings on tables used to be a bit frustrating because you had to do it for every table individually. But tables now have a toggle that allows you to apply the dish settings to every table in the same zone as the selected table.
Dirty Tableware
In devblog 31 I introduced a particle that shows up when a plate has been sitting on a table for a long time. However, this was not really properly implemented. This update introduces several improvements to this idea.
The particle now shows up on all tableware instead of just plates. I also reworked the particle itself to look more like flies.
In terms of gameplay, dirty plates now actually reduce the restaurant's hygiene rating. I also made sure that plates are collected in order of dirtiness.
The hygiene overlay also received a small rework. Dirt on the floor, dirty plates and the dirt particle on tableware are now all visible in the overlay.
Small Changes
Added small delay to placement hints
Made negative profit red in stat screen
Fixed issue with staff walking while standing still and being stuck
Fixed wall / window decoration “Can’t place that there” bug
