Cafe/Restaurant Scripting Question

[Ceilidh Noel]

hi everyone,

i hope i'm asking this in the right place, but i figured this would be a scripting question. i've opened a cafe and i need a solution for the menu offerings. i hired a scriptor (and paid), but i haven't heard from him in 20 days and i really need to progress on the project.

i need something like a tabletop menu that people can click which will provide them a drop down menu of what's available. some of the foods will need to be rezzed in front of them and eaten with a spoon/fork etc).. while other foods will be eaten out of hand. i'd like the handheld items like drinks or sandwiches to be auto-attach.

i have full-perm foods i'll be using, but i need to figure out a way to:

A) charge for the items

B) something that could accommodate different animations depending on what's being eaten and different ways of eating it (on a table vs hand-held) and attach proper utensils and dishes.

C) able to rez different objects like tea trays, drinks, foods on plates etc.

i have Experiences available to me on the sim, but i'm honestly at my wit's end on figuring out how to accomplish these things. and, like i've said, i haven't heard from the scriptor i hired in 20 days to complete the project. i've looked at placemat rezzers on the marketplace, but nothing really mentions paying for the items. nothing from the rezzers will go into their inventory (i have a grab n go fridge for to-go foods), but if anyone has any suggestions on how to accomplish this, i'd be eternally grateful. also, i don't necessarily want people to have to pay for each item, more so pay to interact with the menu while they're there. so they don't end up having to pay at each "course" or each item they want to try (like paying for water, then paying separately for the sandwich, then paying for dessert separately). the price would include use of the menu while they're there.

any help, suggestion or insight would be appreciated. every week i'm paying for an unscripted cafe that no one can use because i have nothing to serve them. also, it's a XeoLife-enabled cafe, so the items will improve a user's stats.

please help!

thanks in advance....

-Ceilidh Noel

[Rolig Loon]

Unless your scripter is either very fast and experienced or has a lot of time on his hands, I suspect that it will take him a while to script and test all of the features you are requesting.  None of them is terribly difficult, but there are plenty of ways to screw up or at least to make the scripts much more complicated than they need to be.  If I were you, I wouldn't be shy about asking for a progress report.  Just don't be too surprised if he says that it's taking longer than he expected.

Auto-attaching is not particularly hard. If you want the attached object to end up in the person's inventory, the thing to do is to rez the object and simultaneously give a copy of it to the person.  You can then attach the rezzed copy with llAttachToAvatarTemp.  If you have an Experience to work with, you can do that in a single step but it's just as logical to expect the recipient to click on the object to trigger the attach event.  When the recipient has finished using the attachment and detaches it, the object vanishes automatically.  The copy that you gave him, unused, remains in his inventory.  BTW, any of the actions that trigger rezzing/giving the attachable objects can be triggered by clicking on a placemet or a HUD menu, or anything else you want to use.

Paying for the items simply involves triggering a money event in the script.  As you suggest, it may be cleanest to have the person "order" items from a menu (a HUD perhaps) and then click a button to sum up the cost of the items and trigger the money event. That could also be the action that triggers rezzing/giving the items.

So, neither of those operations is terribly difficult.  The things that can make them challenging to script involve customizing the actions to the mesh objects that you use for all the components, getting them to rez in the right places, attach to the right places, trigger animations, and clean up properly so that the user ends up getting what he paid for and the place is ready for the next user.  There's a lot of fiddly detail in all of that, and the scripter needs to anticipate all the ways that things are likely to go wrong (communication problems, permissions, spam clicking, leaving when the meal is only half-finished, ....) and get there first.  Whenever you script something that asks a user for money, you want to be extra sure that it's secure and foolproof.  Between designing ways through all the fiddly stuff and testing the heck out of the system, it could take a while to script a good, working system.

 

[Ceilidh Noel]

hi Rolig,

thank you for taking the time to respond to me. the scriptor actually got like 90% of the work to me pretty fast, like the next day sorta fast. his price for including the rezzer and the ability to de-rez items would have been L$20,000 and that was waaaaay more than i wanted to spend. however, he said i could get a full-perm multi-item rezzer and then everything would be only L$8000 for what he needed to do. i have the rezzer, but i haven't heard back from him to complete it. so i have a half completed item, and people still have to pay for each item they want to attach/rez. which isn't really what i wanted. but i'm not ragging on him or anything, and i do know things can come up in real life. it's just been 20 days since last communication, but i sent him two gentle reminders that i'd like to progress.

i am familiar with a tiny bit of basic scripting, so everything you suggested doesn't sound impossible to me. i can understand how it should work. but, like you said, it's the fiddly bits, especially with people  having to pay... i really want to get it right and create a nice experience for people.

the HUD idea is excellent! lol although i don't know how to implement it necessarily, and me figuring it out just take more time away from actually being fully open.

but, i'll take all the suggestions you gave me, at least i have a direction to go because i may need to have to do this myself.

i really appreciate your input. thanks!

Edited January 29, 2021 by Ceilidh Noel

[Rolig Loon]

Pricing a scripting job is usually tricky.  On the surface of it, the price he quoted you isn't bad.  It's probably a fair estimate of how much time it will take him to write everything, get it all working with your components, and test the heck out of it.  The question, of course, is whether you think the finished product will be worth that much to you.  If you were planning to sell it, or generate enough traffic in your cafe to pay for what you invest in it, you may have to wait for a long time or have a super good marketing plan. If you're more interested in absorbing some of the cost as a fun project, that's different.  In any case, asking the scripter to do a L$20K job for L$8K probably won't get you everything you wanted, or at least not very fast.  

[Ceilidh Noel]

i had no idea what the cost would be. but i wrote out a detailed notecard explaining what i need/would like. he quoted the L8,000,  then after we worked out more details i found out the rezzer and de-rez aspect would increase the price. but we agreed on the work he would be willing to do at the L$8,000 price. i'm ok with the system he started, it's just not completed so i was looking into other options so i could get up and running. if the L$8000 project was finished, i'd be a happy camper because i can work with that.

i do have what he sent me, i'm just not entirely sure what else needs to be done to get it complete. now i'm a little worried i have to start from scratch again.   or approach it in an entirely different way.

once again, i appreciate the insight!