Tutorial and Data

So this week was about trying to wrap up loose ends for the alpha builds to shake out remaining issues. I managed to finish up getting the game data format adjusted to the new format which seems to be working well. This is both great since it shows the power of my new scripts for processing data. 
The other big thing that went in is the tutorial. It ended up being a fairly substantial undertaking. That is ironic since it occupies about 20 seconds of the users time (and I am actually thinking of dropped a quarter of it; leave the rotate & stack mechanic as interesting discoveries). The amount of time comes down to a few things. The first is planning, so to speak, took a lot of time. Figuring out a sequence that works minimally in the game to show the player how the game is played in a 'natural' setting, without any extra fluff. The second is that I still had a lot of code from various gameplay experiments floating around. Since that is mostly settled it was time to get it out. Removing it before progressing on the tutorials allow the tutorial system to go in much more cleanly. Granted I am still not 100% happy with it since it doesn't obey my thread splitting in the most ideal way... Alas. I am also slightly conflicted since ideally I would no tutorial, however getting that right can be an even more involved task than I have time for (already a month behind schedule).
I also managed to clear up a whole slow of bugs mostly around playing banquets and the restaurant. There were a few gameplay issues like it appearing that you were getting double coins and such.

This week will be another batch of bug fixing, bringing in transitions (to hopefully help with some messaging issues that still exist), and another update to dish appearance. And maybe, finally, some proper test IAPs. I am hoping that today's Alpha build be the last. There isn't much major to change and little gameplay changes (I am trying out one suggestion w/ this and that is about it besides the tutorial). Still plenty to be done though...