On fine-Tuning a Hotel’s Logic (and Ethics) in Godot

TONS of updates, focusing on creating buttery-smooth logistics and game mechanics while maintaining an exciting narrative with unexpected twists and turns.

Over the past days, I have worked hard to fine-tune the flow (and logic) of the luggage.

The backbone of the Grand Capybara Hotel is an antiquated cart luggage delivery system connecting all the floors with the lobby and intended to deliver luggage (and later special deliveries and supplies) to the hotel’s floors and rooms. In a future update, the system will also have a return function, as it will transport laundry and trash bags down to the lobby. The staff (who often gets overworked from the stress) is tasked with organizing the piles of items the flow creates.

It is the job of the General Manager (the player) to analyze the data, feedback, and adjust the game’s settings on the fly. This is not always without consequences; each slider does direct staff to readjust their behavior, and this sometimes creates a direct conflict with the behavior of other NPCs (both on screen and off screen). It is the game’s objective to find a workable and ethical balance between these extremes.

What I am working on

My main focus lies with creating a fun, challenging, and bug-free environment that offers the player multiple angles to interact with the Hotel. I am deep-diving in the code (100% GDScript) to fine-tune the parameters of the hotel system’s behavior.

While I have some ideas on the Art Direction, I have not put much effort in the graphics other than making sure the layout is clean, easy to navigate, and without clutter. Behind the scenes, I have laid groundwork for further development of this part of the game (as well as sound design, sound fx, etc), but first, I want to make sure everything works the way it should.

Here is a playthrough of testing if everything reacts the way it should. Judging from the debugger log, this session did not create any headache-inducing issues, so hopefully, the next time I post an update, all my intended new features are ready to be showcased. Stay tuned for more of “the Grand Capybara Hotel”!

Development Details

The game is entirely designed in Godot and runs in Godot’s Python-like GDScript.

The behind-the-scenes tools to create the game are my Creative_EngineOS suite of development tools to make sure I can keep track of all the editorial and creative decisions during the often complex debugging sessions.

For prototyping and graphic design, I used good old pencil and paper, Affinity Photo (the old one), and Blender, all glued together by Antigravity (IDE) in “VSCode mode”. The current size of the entire project’s codebase (with some placeholder graphics) is just below 200MB.

The testing is only simple script-based, but I am considering to elevate the strong analysis-based tools (non-AI!) of the CEOS to take over this part. The project’s development is documented in fine detail, and I feel I can leverage some of the CEOS tools to dissect and fine-comb the game logs to create suggestions for even better game experiences. This was my initial idea, and the first version, written in JavaScript, was entirely focused on this self-testing ability. From this version flowed the development of tools like CEOS _WorkBench and _DeepDive.

These tools are now on standby in the process of developing this version. So it is basically a full circle moment, and I feel there is even more potential in the system once I am at the level I can use the ’Scenario Based Gameplay’ I have in development (and partly implemented, as some of the game events are already ‘JSON scenario-based’) will take full effect.