Hello everyone! First big update since release of Tavern Master is here! I carefully read all of the suggestions both on Steam forums and Discord and packed many small and big requests in this update.
The most requested improvement by far was to increase the area on which the tavern can be built so I increased the area by 25% (from 48 big tiles to 60). This is just the first step, it was fastest to do, but in future updates I will try to increase area even more in a meaningful way.
When I read negative reviews there are 2 things that always appear - the game is too easy and the game doesn't have enough content.
I realize that there are different types of players. Many people like Tavern Master because it's a relaxed game where you don't have to micromanage and stress about losing while others would like a bigger challenge. That's why I'm introducing game difficulties. When game starts, you have a choice between relaxed, normal and hard. - Relaxed difficulty has exactly the same parameters as game had so far - it's easy to make money, in late game there is much more money earned than you can spend and disasters are not dangerous. - Normal difficulty is much more balanced in terms of economy. Drink price cannot explode to very high amounts, disasters are moderately dangerous and staff requires a bit higher salary than on relaxed - Hard mode is even more tough than normal. The economy of the game is very tight so you have to make the right choices in order to grow your tavern
Difficulty can always be changed from the settings, so if you pick a wrong one, you can change later on :)
Second big complaint is that there is not enough content. Addressing that takes a bit more time, and I will try to improve it in every update of course. First new feature that I managed to add is a new disaster besides thieves - fires
Fires happen occasionally and the chance for fire to happen depends on the quality of wax and oil that you pick and on number of light sources. When fire does happen, you have to order your staff to extinguish it by using medieval fire extinguishers - buckets of water of course :)
Next thing on the menu was adding toilets. Every customer has a chance to require one after you unlock them, and if you don't have enough toilets and queues are long, customers will leave angry
Kitchen also got a big improvement. Grill, counter, crate and cauldron are now upgradable. Upgraded crate can hold more ingredients, upgraded counter can hold more food, better grill can be used by more chefs at once and upgraded cauldron allows for more soup to be stored in it.
I had quite a bit of time to experiment as well and during that time I managed to make customers inside the tavern interact with each other. They can now talk, laugh, nod and express other emotions. This doesn't have any functionality, it just makes the tavern a more natural place.
There are many new decorations available as well including many more plants, 2 new seats and kitchen decorations
Shop and staff popup got a huge rework. They are much easier to use now and I hope much less annoying than before :)
Doors are also a thing now, no more holes in the walls
Cauldron now has much nicer textures for soups
Besides these things with nice screenshots attached, I will just list other new things below: - Linux support! - All warnings are now clickable - Adventures popup now has amounts for every ingredients so it's easier to decide which adventure to start - Mac M1 problems are fixed now - New paint tool so you don't have to click on every item to change its color, you can do it faster now - More detailed summary popup - Hotel guests are now coming during events - When you load the game some guests will be using hotel rooms already - A setting to disable edge scrolling - Many new warnings to help you understand what is wrong with the tavern - New outline effect - Destroying walls costs money as well as buying doors and windows - All reported bugs from Discord and Steam forums are fixed - Added the Untitled Studio splash screen
I really hope you like these changes and as always please let me know what you do or don't like and what you would like to see in the game in the future. I plan to post a new roadmap next week with some of my ideas what to work on buy I want to hear your feedback as well!
I would also like to thank everyone who played the game and especially those who left positive reviews because reading those really motivates me to continue improving Tavern Master even after the release. I have some big plans for future updates so stay tuned!
~Luka
Sneak peek into the next update!
Hello tavern owners! I wanted to write a bit about the next update and to share some information since it will be by far the biggest update since launch. As you know from the roadmap, in February I was supposed to work on bigger area to build, weather and some other smaller things but I decided to spend more time on disasters, customers and economy. So far it is going amazingly well, I am super satisfied how things are going but I am only half way through with development, so I don't expect to release until end of March or mid April. Since the beginning of February I have worked on many things and in this post you can read a very short preview of things to come!
First thing that was on my schedule was to improve customers visiting your tavern. They really stood out as unnatural because they were very stiff while sitting, looking only forward and doing only 2 animations - for drinking and eating. Now there are animations for talking, listening, looking at other people sitting at the table, laughing, cheering and so on. You can see the results in the gif below where 4 people at the table are talking with each other.
Next in line was improving the staff popup. With the addition of custom waitress spot came the problem of having more staff than before, and old popup was already pretty bad. You couldn't see a lot of information on it, and it was tough navigating through it. I have reworked it in a way that you see much more info for every employee (floor that they serve, responsibilities and priorities, salary). You don't even have to open each employee now to change that information, you can do it much easier straight from the staff popup. Besides that there is a special highlight for staff that is ready to level up and you are automatically scrolled to that person so you don't have to search yourself. It is also now much more intuitive how to change staff names and you can now do it for the guard too. Below is the screenshot of the new popup:
After this I worked on improving the shop user experience. Icons were huge in the shop, it was not clear how to move carpets and with constant addition of new decorations and items it became really hard to find what you are searching for. I decided to rework the whole shop so icons are smaller, and when you choose an item you can read more information in the highlight section on the top. Carpets are now in a completely separate button so it's clear how to move them around and you no longer have to go back between switching build modes. You can directly go to carpet menu from building walls menu in one click. Besides these changes there is a new button for painting so it's much easier to paint multiple items at once. You just select the color and then drag across all furniture that you want to paint.
Next thing was something many people requested from day one, and that is doors :)
I always felt like kitchen is too simple, so I am now actively working on adding more depth to the kitchen and cooking. First in line was having upgradable furniture in kitchen. You can now upgrade 4 items - kitchen counter which allows you to place more plates on it, crate which allows you to store more ingredients, cauldron which allows you to store more soup in it and grill which allows more chefs to use it at once. There are 3 upgrade levels for each item.
Final big thing that I have already finished developing is the first big disaster - fire! Before I continue, I just want to be clear that I want to keep Tavern Master a stress free game for people who like it that way which means that I am paying extra attention to not make fires a stressful thing :) At start I wanted to make a very simple system where fire could break out in the kitchen but only grill and cauldron could burn down. I decided to give up on that since it felt too boring and I moved in the direction where your whole tavern could burn down if you don't pay attention to the risk of fire. I created a system where any wooden furniture could burn (bars, kitchen, tables, seats, decorations etc) and I introduced medieval fire extinguishers or otherwise known as buckets with water :) This means that fire can break out on any floor now and it will be triggered by using low quality wax and oil for candles and torches. If you improve the quality of those which increases maintenance costs, you will also reduce the risk of fire. When fire starts, game will pause and you will have to choose which staff is going to try to extinguish it. You will have to tell each employee which fire extinguisher to use and they will do their best to stop the fire before it spreads. Fire extinguishers can also be upgraded to have more buckets which enables more employees to participate in extinguishing. Below you can see a gif of all tables burning at once:
There are also some smaller things that I did like using a new font for the game so all characters are consistent in all languages, added a lot of new researches, new seats, new lux long table...
For the next 30-45 days I plan to add a lot of new content as well :) My end goal is to increase play time by 50-100% with this update. Here is also a short preview of things I am yet to implement:
- Toilets
- Various tavern games
- More plants
- More disasters like poisoning, rats, bar fights etc - Improve economy so you don't have too much money in late game which you don't know where to spend - Add difficulties so people who want more challenge in the game can get it
Everything that I am yet to develop is subject to change of course. As I develop I try to get a feeling of what seems fun or doesn't so I will not add features that bloat the game and don't have any meaning. Please also note that after this update your tavern will probably need some redesigning :) You will need to find space for toilets, maybe add some more space between furniture so in case of fire it doesn't spread super fast.
I also want to say once again that I am reading all the suggestions but I don't answer to everything :) I think 90% of features that I added so far have came from the suggestions board. As always, please write your thoughts and feedback in the comments! It helps me immensely to create a fun game for everyone!
Until next time, cheers!
Hotfix for v1.05
Fixed bug where it was impossible to move the new lantern Waitresses serve food with much bigger efficiency Fixed bug with deleting save files from main menu People can now walk over waitress slot
[UPDATE] AI improvements (v1.05)
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:
AI improvements
In the next big update I want to improve AI (behavior of chefs, waitresses and bartenders) so I created this post and a thread in the game hub where I would like you to write your frustrations and wishes regarding AI only (I am reading the suggestions topic as well, I just want to make sure I don't miss something). I really love including people who play the game in the development so I thought about trying this format 🙂 Here are a few things regarding AI that I am already working on: - Bars and kitchen counters will not be able to hold 4 waitresses - You will be able to purchase individual waitress spots so you will be able to hire many many more waitresses without the need to have a bar or a counter. Also it will be possible to put those individual spots on floors where you only have hotel rooms - Chef will get a priority system where you can tell each chef which food they should prepare and what is the priority of that food for them so you an make chefs with traits for desserts make only desserts and no one else 🙂 - I will remove "Floor to serve" feature. It was really confusing and I plan on making it much more clear. If someone orders a drink, then bartender from that floor will take that order. If someone orders food then chef on that floor should take the order, not from other floors. Only if you don't have a bar or kitchen should staff from other floors take orders - Bartender will be able to pour multiple different drinks in one go. He will be able to go fill 1 mug of beer, and then go and fill 3 goblets of wine, and then bring back all 4 at once - Chefs will get 4 smaller cauldrons instead of 1 big. That way they will be able to create a soup which will stay in cauldron for 5 servings total. That way they will not spend too much time making soups on average. Also I plan on making new upgradable props for the kitchen, for example a grill where 2 different meals an be prepared at once - Basin and spice shelf will be usable by multiple chefs at once so it doesn't create big lines
This is it for now, but let me know here or in the pinned topic what would you like to see 🙂 My goal is to make AI that is serving more customers than the current one on average 🙂
