Hi everyone!
Today I'm uploading version 0.9 to the playtesting branch, which comes with a few big new features and (hopefully) a few big bugfixes. I'll update the demo too soon.
Decorations
The main feature this week is a new decoration system. If you're a front-of-house player who has been watching all the cooking updates, this is the update for you!
You can now purchase decorations every three days which will provide nearby tables with boosts. Building a cozy pub, exclusive establishment or maybe you're focused on fast food? Decorate your restaurant with items of the same theme to gain big benefits.
Each decorative item gives points towards (or away from!) some themes. For every three points of a theme a table is affected by, it'll gain a level and a new benefit.
This update brings in five different decoration themes and a total of 12 new decorative objects!
This is very much a work-in-progress, so look out for lots more decorations to be added
(as a note, the old decorations are still in the game with their old benefits, although they'll be swapped over to the new system soon)
Layer-based placements
To support the new decorations, the game now supports layer-based placements. In short, this means you can now put rugs* underneath chairs, pictures on walls behind tables and hang chandeliers above tables.
(*while typing this I realise the "old" rug hasn't been set to go under things, so not that rug)
Card based XP
Experience gained is now based on the cards you've chosen. In practice all cards are worth the same, so it should end up being very similar to how it was before, but this means in the future choosing harder cards can give extra XP.
Table and chair interactions
Chairs now act as interaction proxies for their tables. In other words, if you want to interact with a table you can now interact with an adjacent chair instead. This mean less pushing customers off their chairs to take their order, which is nice.
Also, customers now tuck their chairs under the table when they leave, because really it was just impolite not to.
Bug fixes
Thanks so much to everyone in the Discord who has been reporting bugs, especially everyone sending videos of the completely perfect
work-in-progress networking going wrong. There's definitely still some bugs with multiplayer (as expected!), particularly with 3 players, which I'm working on at the moment.
But if you've had a problem joining where the bar would fill and unfill or flicker, that should now be fixed in v0.9, together with a few other bugs.