Re: making accessable fast food simulation game
Hi guys, sorry it has been so long since I've posted here on the forums.
The game is not released because of 2 problems I have run into, which both need to be solved before everyone can get their hands on it. The first problem is that the game isn't as fun as I want it to be... yet. I frequently throw together small game prototypes that are virtually tossed into a garbage pile if/when they don't seem worth fleshing out into finished games. Most of the time I figure out early on whether or not a game idea is going to be fun, but sometimes I hit that snag later in development. This is one of those cases, where I found myself not really enjoying playing the game like I expected. I do believe I know what caused this, and I do have a few ideas on how to correct it.
As the game grew the number of foods, equipment types, and tasks started to become too much for the player to handle all manually. The computer controlled workers got better and better AI coded into them, allowing them to correctly do these various tedious tasks so that the player wasn't bogged down doing them. That cycle sort of ran away from me and I think the workers are now too smart and can do too much without the player being needed to make decisions. It's hard to get the correct amount of enjoyment while playing when the restaurant can basically run itself without you doing anything. I need to figure out a good place to dial back the AI to, so that the player is once again vital to the success of the business.
Another change to help this was suggested by my wife. She believed the player should be able to jump in to perform any of the jobs (normally done by the AI workers). This is a great way to engage the player more, so I'll need to come up with some game mechanics to represent each of the tasks for the player.
The second problem I've faced is the lack of free time. Last Summer/fall was the busiest I've ever been, as far as projects were concerned. Between my own house and those of close family members, I am the full-time handy man for 4 houses, and rarely help out on others. They each require work here and there throughout the year, but last summer/fall it turned out to be the perfect storm of house work, and the 4 houses kept me extremely busy.
Winter arrived and I entered the busy season for my work, and I expected to have free time again toward the middle or end of January. I did get a little more work done on the game around then, but life once again popped up to pull me away from the computer.
House repairs came back in full force. The main cause is that a family member is hoping to sell her house soon, and it had a huge list of needed repairs the city inspector gave her before she can put it up for sale. She got the house from one of those house-flipper fellows, who had purchased a house in terrible shape and fixed it up to turn a profit. Over the years we discovered that most (yes most) of his repairs were just cosmetic coverups that hid problems to fool whoever was going to wind up buying it.
I'm not sure I could even remember the whole list of things I've done lately, but a few random ones come to mind. I had to re-shingle a portion of the roof and all of the caps, fixed a poured concrete shower that had been torn up with a chisel, re-plastered walls, and replaced aluminum siding. The list of repairs over there is just about complete, but I already have tasks piling up for the other houses. My wife is really riding me about building a book shelf around the ceiling of her reading room, I'm supposed to replace the door and windows of someone's garage, and my in-laws' need their bathroom re-caulked.
A cousin is running a children's camp next week and I've signed up as one of her volunteers, so even all this house work is on hold for the next 6 days until the camp ends.
So there are 2 issues that have kept this game from being finished, and it's safe to say that the second issue is the harder one to solve. One of these days perhaps these projects will all be completed and I can get back to coding. In the mean time, everyone has my apologies for me falling off the face of the audio games planet for so long.
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