Thursday, April 27, 2006

Restaurant Design

This morning I revamped the tooltips for the avatars 'mind state'. This lets you get more nicely presented and detailed information on what attributes such as"IQ" and "Culture" do in the game.
Then this afternoon I revamped the restaurant code. This has been tricky to design. I want a range from the cheap burger joints that you go to with close friends, to the exclusive restaurants that you can't get into, and some middling quality restuarants that arent hip, but do good food.
I've ended up with 4 restaurant styles:

CHEAPO
MIDRANGE
HIP
SNOOTY
And they break down like this:

Cheapo is burger king. you go there for cheap food. If your uber-cool and have high kudos, you will lose some (temporarily) for being seen there. Its easyish to get served, based entirely on how busy they are. Being cool and famous doesn't let you get served quicker here

MidRange is pizza express or similar. The food is not bad, and theres no kudos change either way. Your chances of getting a table are slightly higher (and the food quality better) if you speak the right language (italian for pizzas, chinese for chinese restuarants etc)

Hip is what you are looking for. The food is good, and there is mucho kudos for being seen there. Despite this, its not *that* hard to get in. You find out what restaurants are hip through gossip.

Snooty is expensive and hard to get in. They give a small kudos boost. The food is superb. You need wealth, culture, kudos, the language and to pick the right day. If you want to make sure your friends have a good time, and you can get in, this is where you go.

I am quite pleased with this part of the design. Im still thinking about the long term game, and what extra stuff you can aspire to. I still have a while to code it though.