Creating regions to allow for custom buildings

I've been following the development of the game for a while and I've also been watching as much content as I can find for this thing and I thought I'd finally throw my two cents in for a concept that I think would be really interesting.

I feel that we should have the ability to set up regions for custom buildings. Allow me to elaborate. I remember back in March watching Silvarret put together that beautiful Alpine themed restaurant structure within the game and it was awesome. The trouble being that his only options if he wanted it to actually be functional would be to shove either a stall in there or, if we follow what has been suggested in the restaurant thread to just have larger pre-made structures that can be customized. What if instead a region could be specified around the restaurant and then set to be a restaurant which then opened up a menu similar to that of what you get once you've placed a ride that requires you to place the needed parts, say a kitchen, a cashier, and depending on if it's a quick service or server style a host at the front. With this region the game then recognizes any tables and chairs already placed together and people will order and sit there. This could be extrapolated into interestingly designed gift shops and non-ride guest experiences such as character meet and greets. Maybe I'm wrong and no one else feels the same about this but I feel that it would really add to the immersion of the game and keep all these big beautiful buildings people have created from just having an itty bitty stall stuffed into the corner of them to force guests to come inside.

I think having restaurants is important. I think a bigger building with a bigger variety of food options is important. Then maybe somehow we could link the nearby seats with the restaurant so peeps know thats where they sit and eat. Maybe they go inside a large building and eat and we can customize and build around the outside. Somehow we need to be able to link the restaurant and the seating area.

That would be the point of creating a custom "restaurant region"! Once the region is created and you select what type of region it is and place the required objects then anything inside the region is set to be part of the restaurant. That way any type of seating placed within can be utilized by guests. Basically you take a building like this one here

and you place that whole building in a region, place down the required things, and the game will recognize any seating within the region area for guests to utilize as seating. That way you don't have guests just buying food and then walking out and eating their plated meal on some random bench.

Would be great to have functional sit down restaurants and seating areas for stalls. Of course this would also require specialized staff to work as waiters. Maybe instead of making a region, though, you have a separate stall type that functions as the "kitchen" for a restaurant. Tables and waiting staff could be assigned to the "kitchen" creating a custom restaurant. This way you don't have to worry about assigning walls or regions so you can stick to open designs if you want. Or if you want to create a food court style setup or a cafeteria, tables could also be assigned to stalls and you could even assign tables to multiple stalls, indicating that they're open for anybody buying food in that area to use.

isukun said:

Would be great to have functional sit down restaurants and seating areas for stalls. Of course this would also require specialized staff to work as waiters. Maybe instead of making a region, though, you have a separate stall type that functions as the "kitchen" for a restaurant. Tables and waiting staff could be assigned to the "kitchen" creating a custom restaurant. This way you don't have to worry about assigning walls or regions so you can stick to open designs if you want. .

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I imagined it more utilizing just the grid system to set the regions so that it just assigned anything within that grid up or down to the restaurant so you didn't have to sit there and assign each table to the kitchen, but I think either way would work.

Its a good idea, and others have suggested similar ones.

Personally, I can't see them adding working "kitchens" to restaurants outside of being scenery only.

There have been posts about open style shelves of shop items/souvenirs being available for guests to select items from and bring them to a register, and tables for restaurants is also a pretty big deal to most of us.

creaper said:

Its a good idea, and others have suggested similar ones.

Personally, I can't see them adding working "kitchens" to restaurants outside of being scenery only.

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Oh absolutely I agree that the kitchen shouldn't be a working extra mechanic other than it has an employee and the employee has animations and that's it, maybe larger ones have to have more employees which is more upkeep which adds on to balancing park expansions (Although that sort of talk is more for the restaurant idea thread).

As for the shop items yes definitely I like that. It would again tie in with setting a building inside a region so it registers all the shelves and what not inside of it as being of that store. That way you don't have guests picking up an item and pathing to just the nearest register and end up walking out of one store and into the next one over [haha]

The "kitchen" is basically just a different kind of stall. I guess technically it wouldn't be needed if you assign wait staff to an existing stall it could work the same way. Basically it's just a central node to link wait staff with tables and a particular menu. This could just be a switch you flip in a stall, though, whether the stall functions like a cafeteria counter where customer order and pick up their food or like a kitchen requiring wait staff to take orders and deliver food to tables.

I'm not sure it would necessarily be more work assigning tables to a stall. You could just have it so you can select multiple tables or even group them in the game. Ultimately, I think that approach would also be better for defining shared seating for food court style dining where you have multiple food stalls that all use one central seating area.

Another consideration might be how to deal with over crowding. A sit down style restaurant would need to make diners wait if they are full. This could have an impact on the mood of the guests or even drive them away if the wait is too long. For self service food stalls, there wouldn't be an issue of not being able to serve the guest, but if the seating is all filled up, that may have a negative impact on the guest, as well. They'll still seek out a bench outside the dining area, but you could get complaints about over crowding.

It might also be nice if there were a way to manipulate the quality of the food served, so sit down restaurants could serve higher quality food at a higher price without guests thinking it's too expensive.

The open shelving could work in a similar fashion as scenery that's linked to a stall that functions as the register, defining your shop space. This could also allow for multiple registers to speed up the checkout process for crowded shops. You could program park guests to randomly check out a number of the shelves before deciding on a purchase, taking into consideration the variety of products offered and how indecisive the guest is. A store that sells only one thing likely won't have a lot of people milling about making up their minds, but if you have a lot of different shelves, some guests may take longer to make purchases or may leave before they've decided on anything.

Yeah I had a similar idea a while back. Large custom restaurants are pretty important to the whole creativity aspect. I also wanted to use a similar sytem to create real gift shops with a sales floor.

This was my thread: https://forums.planetcoaster.com/showthread.php/3797-SALES-FLOOR!-(Dynamic-gift-shops-amp-restaurants)

Salmonman said:

Yeah I had a similar idea a while back. Large custom restaurants are pretty important to the whole creativity aspect. I also wanted to use a similar sytem to create real gift shops with a sales floor.

This was my thread: https://forums.planetcoaster.com/showthread.php/3797-SALES-FLOOR!-(Dynamic-gift-shops-amp-restaurants)

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Yeah that works! I just feel a region creation tool that works similar to ride placement requirements might have a wider range of uses? Although perhaps both ideas would be combined in a way that allows for linking of objects within the regions as well? Idk

I think we should have "restaurant regions". People would go there and the waiters would go and take their order.

TheGamingFungi said:

I think we should have "restaurant regions". People would go there and the waiters would go and take their order.

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That's what this post is discussing in simple terms yeah

Looking at the "Paved Areas" thread, this idea is looking pretty unlikely.

I was just agreeing so there are more comments so the developers will be more likely to take action.

Why not a restaurant with some sort of queue? Almost like a hostess. If the restaurant is busy then people line up. It could be apart of the management factor too. People would get angry if there was a long wait and they got too hungry.

TheGamingFungi said:

I was just agreeing so there are more comments so the developers will be more likely to take action.

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Just saying, if what they said in the "Paved Areas" thread is true, then the devs were already using the justification that free form paved areas were not doable because of the burden it places on the system to use a more complicated pathfinding system for guests in the park. Creating "zones" that essentially do exactly what they're trying to avoid seems really unlikely. Basically, it doesn't matter how much people want something if they've already stated it's impossible for them to add it.

Well, there will be table benches for dining guests. So we will be able to do some kind of food courts. The DEVs still have to show how this benches will work though. Will we be able to place them on any surfaces and the guests will be able to walk to it and be seated? Or will it only work for placement on roads? Grounds/grass fields? Platforms/terraces?

I really would like some kind of restaurant facility feature in the game. That would add a lot of fun gameplay and creativity. [happy]

isukun said:

Just saying, if what they said in the "Paved Areas" thread is true, then the devs were already using the justification that free form paved areas were not doable because of the burden it places on the system to use a more complicated pathfinding system for guests in the park. Creating "zones" that essentially do exactly what they're trying to avoid seems really unlikely. Basically, it doesn't matter how much people want something if they've already stated it's impossible for them to add it.

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There's quite a difference though. A large paved area with nothing about for guests to just mill about in would yes be a serious burden on pathfinding, however in a set region like this while it is an open space the guests have clear areas to go to. In a quick stop restaurant there is a line to get food and then there are tables for them to go to. In a server run restaurant there is a hostess to line up in front of and then a table to sit at. In a gift shop the guests can be randomly assigned to go up to different racks instead of being programmed to just roam about aimlessly, and then they head to the register. So unlike trying to pathfind on a large open area it instead is very methodical and simply looks as though they are freely milling about when instead they have very set paths with which they sort of follow to get to their location.

my idea for this was to make a new "shop" that is 2x3 or 2x4, which would basically be an order counter and food delivery area/kitchen,(mostly made up of the main back area of a restaurant) that had waiters and waitresses tht would spawn with it and be area restricted to the buildings grid. add scenery for tables and chairs and other small items to dress the interior and you have a restaurant that would fit perfectly into the systems they already have in place.

WendyIsWishing said:

There's quite a difference though. A large paved area with nothing about for guests to just mill about in would yes be a serious burden on pathfinding, however in a set region like this while it is an open space the guests have clear areas to go to. In a quick stop restaurant there is a line to get food and then there are tables for them to go to. In a server run restaurant there is a hostess to line up in front of and then a table to sit at. In a gift shop the guests can be randomly assigned to go up to different racks instead of being programmed to just roam about aimlessly, and then they head to the register. So unlike trying to pathfind on a large open area it instead is very methodical and simply looks as though they are freely milling about when instead they have very set paths with which they sort of follow to get to their location.

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Actually, the large paved area is simpler. People aren't just milling about, they're heading in specific directions towards specific places with nothing to interact with but each other. Their movement is mostly pretty much just a straight line from point A to point B while trying to avoid bumping into another person along the way. The reason it's an issue is because there isn't a set flow of traffic like with paths where you go either forward or back or leave the path. Restaurants defined only by a "region" can be far more complex and diners would need to interact with different things within the "region". This includes not only the tables, but also walls, props, stairs, floors, bathrooms, waiting areas, and other people. All of that will play into the pathfinding needed for these regions. Plus it's not likely that restaurants would just be one or two small areas in a park. You know players are going to build themed restaurants around every part of their park, creating mini pathfinding nightmares all over the place.