Restaurant Tycoon Core Loop

About this model

This diagram models a resource management and progression system for a game, focusing on cooking and restaurant management. It involves processes such as ingredient acquisition, product production, and serving, alongside XP gains and various upgrades (e.g., cooking, food unlocking, and staff upgrades). Key elements include pools for storing different types of resources (ingredients, produced products, XP, etc.), converters to change one resource type into another (such as converting ingredients to products or activities into XP), and sources indicating points of resource generation. Delays and state connections are used to model time and condition-dependent interactions, such as the time it takes to produce goods or the conditions for leveling up. The system accounts for the accumulation and expenditure of resources, with the ultimate goal being efficient restaurant operation and progression through levels and upgrades. The interplay between different types of nodes (pools, converters, sources, delays, and state connections) allows for a dynamic simulation of a restaurant’s economy, including how actions like serving food and fulfilling orders generate XP and how certain upgrades can impact production capabilities and resource flow.

“Restaurant Tycoon Core Loop” is a public Machinations diagram by Doğucan Gelbal, shared in the Machinations Community.

You can open the original diagram in the Machinations app, press Play to watch how resources move through it, and change its values to see how the system responds. Machinations is a visual tool for designing, simulating and balancing game economies and other systems, where resources flow through sources, pools, drains, converters and gates. In a diagram, a source creates resources, a pool stores them, a drain removes them, a converter changes one resource into another and a gate decides where they go next.