Dine Out Reloaded - Future Plans & Tips for Performance (Patreon)
Content
As you may know, I have several awesome ideas for making Restaurants in Dine Out one of the deepest gameplay systems for a Sims 4 pack. I've had a few problems that slowed development recently, but I want to share what is coming in 3.2 and some issues I'm aware of and how you can prevent them.
Farm to Table
Farm to Table? Or, should I say Farm and Pond to table. You will soon be able to use your own gardening ingredients to offset costs on cooked meals. High quality foods will actually BOOST The profit of a restaurant. This is one of the main ways I want to tackle the low profitability of restaurants. By giving you an incentive to work for more.
Transfer all ingredients is a thing I want to use to help make this easier, and I've just finished work on it. I'm not the first modder to do this, but I want you to be able to mark a refrigerator using Set as Produce Inventory. Then, when your Sims cook they will make use of these ingredients over time and boost the sale value of meals (with a markup).
The system will encourage you to have a large variety of harvestables and some fish on hand in order to benefit fully. If you only have 1 type of high value item like a dragonfruit in your fridge, you will be penalized. More items to use = more used items. Simple.
Known Issues with Loading
I want you to be aware that Dine Out in general is buggy with loading restaurants that are open, and even entering build mode when a restaurant is open. I very much suggest you avoid this at all costs. Only modify your restaurant while it's closed. Expect problems if you come to your restaurant while it's open and you're off lot. This is meant to be a feature, but I will work on making this more stable in the future. There are issues with dining spots that happen when you visit a loaded lot and it will require further investigation on my part.
Sous Chef System
Right now the game is buggy when you are playing as chef and using a 2nd chef that is an NPC. This because the NPC is so on the ball they will steal all the meals you are trying to cook. For this reason, I am creating a Sous Chef System that you can optionally use. This will allow other hired chefs to do nothing except aid you, cutting down the cooking times for your main chef who will finish and plate meals.