Update #29 August

Hello fellow Magnates! We’re happy to report we’ve made even more improvements on our new AI backend, UI implementation, and character animations. 

UI Improvements

We’ve continued to improve the UI, in particular the Facility, Staff & Guest menus. Previously you’d have to select a room and then pick a facility or facilities that the room would contain. This was done over two different menus (one for the room, one for the facility). The new design combined these into one.

The old menu used text placeholders that helped us develop what needed to be in the system. Now we are able to focus on creating a more simple and easy to navigate experience for the player by utilizing more icons and cleaner layouts.

Below is a sneak peak at the Staff and Guest information menus that you will see when selecting a character. Bare in mind the colours are still a bit of a work in progress and will change over time.

AI Activities

Our improved AI system is steaming ahead with lots of new functionality for bringing more life to your ultimate hotel. In last month’s update we talked about how this new system will allow us to easily create more activities for guests and staff. Characters will now do things like go to the gym, sleep, eat, and etc. 

The most complex of these activities is going to be a restaurant. A guest will go to the restaurant, be assigned a seat, then wait for a waiter to take their order. At this point a chef will receive the order in the kitchen, start to gather the required ingredients/resources, prepare the food, then cook it. This whole time the guest will be waiting and if they’re not alone will try to start conversations with other guests. Once the food is ready, it will be placed at the “serving station” in the kitchen, where it will sit until a waiter will take it to the guest. The guest eats the meal and then pays. This whole process is very involved and requires a lot of planning for edge cases like if the player removes any of the furniture involved or if the activity is interrupted or canceled at any point. 

Some objects are now also carryable. Guests and staff will be able to pick up certain things and move them to other places, like a meal from the kitchen to the table. It will also make it possible for guests to pick up random objects like plants and art, move them somewhere else, or even steal them!

Animations

Jay has been working hard to add more animation variations including ones for different body types and genders. He has also been cleaning up the character models, making new textures and improving old animations like walking.