Hell's Dining Room - Now Available!

[Wavelength]

I'm pleased to announce that Hell's Dining Room is now available to the entire Pavilion!

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Summary

Hell's Dining Room is an Action/Puzzle game for RPGM3 that plays a bit like a cross between Diner Dash and Simon.

You are a waitress working under the irritable Chef Ramsey (yes, THAT Chef Ramsey) in a restaurant frequented by demons, monsters, and ugly American stereotypes alike. You will have to juggle the needs of up to ten guests, remembering their orders and bringing them their dishes before they become too impatient.

Serve a customer the correct dish, and they'll tip you and order their next course. Give a party perfect service and they'll even give you some sweet bonuses. Get even one dish wrong, and the offended guests will ATTACK you after the meal!

You have to fight them off in a quick but challenging RPG battle, where you use the skills and items you earned from other guests to pummel your unhappy customers. If they defeat you, it's Game Over!

Your goal is to earn as much money as you can in seven dinner services--assuming you can survive that long. The more money you earn, the higher your Rank. Can you reach the legendary "Dining Room Deity" Rank?

I refuse to slap an ESRB rating on my game, but please be aware that Hell's Dining Room contains moderately strong language and some coarse humor.

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***Highlights***

Hectic Real-Time Gameplay: Customers' statuses change in real-time as you move around the Dining Room (except, of course, when you're reading a message). You can't serve a customer while they are eating a previous course, and they will get impatient if you make them wait too long. Things get chaotic to say the least, and you'll need equal parts planning and quick thinking to pull through!

Never the Same Twice: A set of three "random number generator" variables dictate what customers order, what rewards you earn for good service, and so on. And since these change with both player decisions and with time (see above), they practically guarantee that your game (and strategy) will be different each time you play!

Power-Ups: Aside from money, items, and skills, you can also earn a variety of Special Dishes by giving a party good service. These are best used if you forget what a guest ordered and have a variety of different effects on gameplay. Plus, it's just amusing to see a guest run away, for example, after they realize you've added a laxative to their dinner!

In-game Tutorial: I'm planning on improving this with future builds of Hell's Dining Room, but the main character hosts an in-depth storyteller tutorial which will help you understand the game and its mechanics in case things get too confusing.

Tons of Personality: Finally, I didn't forget to just have fun with it. Each of the ten guests has their own distinct personality. You'll meet dysfunctional families; rivaling siblings; a wealthy lady who fancies herself God's gift to the world; a very irritated Bobby Flay; the most boring Treant ever; a grumbling salaryman; a precocious grade-schooler who knows karate; a downright disturbing rendition of The Burger King; and more!

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Wanna Play?

You can download the Enhanced Version of Hell's Dining Room here.

I'd truly appreciate any feedback, suggestions, or criticism you are willing to offer, and I promise to give them the thought and attention they deserve.

If there seems to be a lot of interest for Hell's Dining Room, I plan to create more levels for the game. This would involve new dining rooms, and a completely different (and tougher) set of customers and celebrities to serve, satisfy, and beat up. You'd play every level in a full game, progressing to a harder dining room after surviving a few dinner services. It would be a lot of work because of the inability to copy entire events in RM3, but I feel it would be well worth it if people are enjoying my game.

[Wavelength]

Re: Hell's Dining Room - Now Available!

((Reserving the second post in case I need to expand my game info.))

[Ωbright]

Re: Hell's Dining Room - Now Available!

Well as someone who has played this game, I must say it was fun.

I was amazed at the complexity of the action, and the fact that Wave pulled it off with no loop traps. It REALLY IS like working a busy restaurant floor! There are times when it's a bit frustrating (just like working a real dining room), but it's also rewarding when you get it right.

This (as far as I know) is the FIRST action game ever made for RM3, and it's done very well, so the action is smooth. I was impressed by that, to be sure.

Yes, it IS a game of memory, but it's SO much more than that. Wave added elements of strategy as well, which I though added to the fun nicely. Then there's the action element, of course. It's not TOO OMG crazy, but it keeps you on your toes.

The ONLY thing I thought the game could do with was a day counter. You have to serve dinner for 10 nights to beat the game, and it would be nice to know which day you're on.

Other than that, I thought it was a fun, relatively short game, and an impressive piece of coding.

[Wavelength]

Re: Hell's Dining Room - Now Available!

Thanks, Obi! It means a great deal to me that you enjoyed it, first and foremost. Really, to hear stuff like that, makes all the time and frustrations worth it.

I was amazed at the complexity of the action, and the fact that Wave pulled it off with no loop traps.

Well, I already told Obi about this, but funny story for everyone else: Based on the way everything interrelated in my game, I scripted about 90% of the code before I ran a single playtest. When I DID run the playtest, it got caught in an infinite loop trap about 30 seconds in! I couldn't figure out what was happening, because I was so confident that my early scripting was good! In frustration, I called it a night (I think it was around 2am anyhow).

The next evening, when I came home from work, I decided to add sound effects to the scripting to figure out exactly where the loop was occuring. I narrowed it down to an Auto Event which happened upon the clock hitting Noon. In theory it should have circulated with an event that set the Time to 11:50am. But I couldn't figure out what was going wrong.

I decided to search the Pav and see if anyone had a similar problem before. I found Pagerron's thread from about three years ago, part of which mentioned that Noon events actually occur at 11am, not 12pm! WHAT? Well, I changed the code to set the Time to 10:50am instead, and BINGO. The rest of the code tested out nearly perfect.

This (as far as I know) is the FIRST action game ever made for RM3, and it's done very well, so the action is smooth. I was impressed by that, to be sure.

Smoothness was one of my main priorities for the action phases. As such, I really examined my code and had each event transition to other Auto events where possible, rather than using long branches, and streamlined the game so each code would be hit fewer times overall. I had to make a couple of sacrifices, but for now I'm happy with them. The less code the game had to run through, the smoother the experience would be. To be honest, I think it came out well.

The ONLY thing I thought the game could do with was a day counter. You have to serve dinner for 10 nights to beat the game, and it would be nice to know which day you're on.

I'll include this in a future build.

[Wavelength]

Re: Hell's Dining Room - Now Available!

I'm making this post for my sake as much as anyone else's. I'm feeling really pumped after my strong review in the Minigame Contest, and I'd love to get the next build of Hell's Dining Room out by the end of next weekend. This will be the first version I will submit to the Pavilion, so that members and lurkers alike can have their shot at Foodservice Hell!

With no stern deadline looming, I don't want to make any promises about a release date (especially because I may need to work some overtime at my office the next few weeks); it's a lot more fun to work at my own pace. (Having said that, I'm really glad I did have that deadline for the Contest, because there was no way in hell that HDR would have become a reality without it.)

Here's a tentative list of enhancements and bug fixes I plan to make for the new build (partially completed enhancements are in Gold, and fully completed ones are in Lime):

GAMEPLAY:
* Tweaked enemy stats and behavior (and removed all enemy Critical Hits) in order to improve Battle Balance.
* Added coding to save and view a player's all-time highest Rank earned, and also added a Save Point so this will be saved forever.
* Shortened the game to seven dinner services (from ten), based on tester feedback. Adjusted Rank requirements, Service Rewards, and Player HP accordingly.
* Added code to start the player off with one Wonder Dish, to make the first day a bit less punishing.
* Rigged the "Guest Populator" to make all 10 guests automatically appear, rather than choosing a random subset, in the last two nights of service. Accordingly, Chef Ramsey will remind you that it's crunch time.
* Increased the number of events in which the Random Number Generators change, in order to eliminate situations where several diners order the same dish.

BUG FIXES:
* Fixed a bug which negates a perfect night of service (thanks, Perversion!)
* Fixed a bug which automatically marks the player wrong if Violet orders a Baked Ziti.
* Could not reproduce a bug which occasionally grants bonuses and runs extra dialogue without any player action; I assume I inadvertantly fixed it at some point.
* Fixed a bug which starts the player with less than full HP/MP if the previous service was a success.
* Fixed a bug which set your points to zero mid-game.

AESTHETICS:
* Switched the Morning/Noon loop to Evening/Night, as it is Dinner service after all! (thanks, Perversion!)
* Added Sound Effects to enhance the experience.
* Added Splash Screens (one-frame Storytellers) before each Dinner Service to inform the player which Day is about to begin. (thanks, Obright!)
* Adjusted Timmy Redthorn's dialogue to makes sense even when Gwen isn't present (thanks, Perversion!).
* Added and changed some dialogue in the "Rules of the Game" storyteller. This Tutorial can now be accessed even after the first Play.
Estimated Hours to Go: 0
Estimated Release of Public Version: May 12

[Perversion]

Re: Hell's Dining Room - Now Available!

Just caught this thread now, Wave. Congrats again. Keep up the good work.

[Ωbright]

Re: Hell's Dining Room - Now Available!

The changes and bug fixes sound awesome!

It's a good game made even better.

[Karr Lord of Chaos]

Re: Hell's Dining Room - Now Available!

what an awesome game idea. if i ever get rpg maker 3 ill try it.

[Marshmellowguy]

Re: Hell's Dining Room - Now Available!

I wish I can try it but I dont have a max drive(if thats what it is called).
It does sound like a game that would sell out at the game shops if you could have sony make it.

[Wavelength]

Re: Hell's Dining Room - Now Available!

In case this slipped under anyone's radar, I've been updating my List of Improvements (see post #5 of this thread) each time I make an update to Hell's Dining Room.

I've gotten about two-thirds of the Improvements done, so look for the Official Release soon! I'm hoping to have it done within a week. Sorry this has taken so long (I've made some nice progress lately after a long idle period), and I hope you guys are still looking forward to playing!

Also, on an unrelated note, once I link my digital camera to my PC, I'll add a thread into the Watercolor Lounge to show off some cool pictures of the world. It's time my forum lived up to its name, no?

[Pagerron]

Re: Hell's Dining Room - Now Available!

Hey Wavelength,

Sounds cool. I'm looking forward to giving Hell's Dining Room a try. I've been enjoying Lausen's Evil Fantasy game. As a matter of fact, I'm going to play a bit of that right now.

Your game sounds like it'll be lots of fun. I hope that you release it soon because I'm on my Spring Break now and will be for about a week.

Take care and happy game making!

[Pagerron]

Re: Hell's Dining Room - Now Available!

I finally had a chance to play Hell's Dining Room and I'm glad I did.

This game was very hard for me at first, I won’t deny it. Trying to remember everyone’s orders was a huge challenge on my first playthrough. I only made it through my second day and ended up with a 4/10 score. The customers kicked my behind in the battles, mainly because I had made a ton of mistakes in my food deliveries.

The second time I played through it, I was determined to do better, and I did. I had a perfect Sunday, and only made a couple of mistakes on Monday. Tuesday, however, was my last day of work there. I messed up with three of my tables, but I got a 5/10 overall.

Now I knew that I could do better than that, so on my third playthrough, I decided to do things a bit differently. I was going to use my rewards to my advantage. After each day finished, I wrote down the prize items that I received. (This isn’t cheating because I wasn’t using it to help me with the orders at all.) I had four perfect days during that service week. I had already gotten to know my customers and their personalities a bit, so that helped me remember their orders more easily. When I made it to Saturday, I decided to simply ignore one family and give them special orders to keep them quiet. I then made a point to kick the game’s butt and beat it. I made it through the evening appetizers and main courses, but failed royally at the desserts. The customers did me in on SATURDAY, the LAST DAY of the WEEK!!!

I e-mailed Wavelength to let him know about my dessert frustration, and he graciously told me that it may be the game’s fault, so I decided, all right, I’m going to play through another week and write down everything that happens. It ended up working perfectly. There were no mistakes in the programming at all!

Great game Wavelength! I know you spent a lot of time thinking through the characters and the game set up. Nicely done.