Yeah, coding could be an issue, and it depends on how much you plan to do. It's also the difference between tearing it all down and redoing it or making minor tweaks.
One thing you could consider is allowing rooms to be repaired ahead of time. So instead of using the quest trigger to unlock the room being repaired ("I have no need of this for now") just let the player repair the rooms in advance. Would also speed up some portions of gameplay since sometimes you have to run back and forth to unlock the quest point to repair the room then run back to tell them a room is ready to recruit (EG: Jessie). Just a change in dialogue. If flag = 0 then "There all clean. Ready for someone to move in" If flag = 1 then "This room would be perfect for X" where X is the survivor you can invite to that room.
Difference in execution I guess.
Going back and checking Kate's recruitment process I finally noticed it only mentions the 2nd house when you finish repairing her room and that's only as an afterthought with the tutorial messages about increasing food/water costs for each survivor you add. It also hints about it when it says 'the living room of the house next door' in her character introduction. Though her walkthrough for workshop just says 'start by building her a workshop' instead of upgrading the workshop that technically already exists. She never actually outright says she is creating a workshop because the workshop is created immediately after recruitment and she just vanishes out of sight.
I guess it's embedded, but not in places you'd expect to see it. You also can't 'pay attention to the movement of the NPC' since she just poofs and appears indoors of the 2nd house which is not visible unless you go into the house which theoretically you don't need to after collecting all the cloth.
Maybe add a transition quest step to build the workshop? Move her outside House 2 after recruitment and when its not mealtime and when you talk to her she asks you to clean up the living room and provides you the materials for the first level. Then reword the Workshop lvl02 quest to 'improve her workshop' so it doesn't imply you need to build it and you would already know its in House 2.
It's just a bit clunky as a new player since you build her room in house 1, get a few lines after you repair and at the tail end of a tutorial message about food and supplies per survivor which is very similar to the messages you get when you repair the kitchen (hence why I blew past it and missed the note at the end). Then she vanishes and doesn't mention it ever again.
Sophie is an example of things linking together partially. She actually stands outside House 3 till you repair a room for her. This tells you her room is in House 3 and it's even Room 1 of the house. When its repaired she stands in the kitchen and tell you a workshop can be made there. Telling you the kitchen would be her workshop.
Lin gets a room in House 2 and tells you she would like a lab which is the kitchen of house 2. Though the flags here are broken since you can actually repair the Kitchen before recruiting Lin to give Lin a lab even though you technically have no clue who that is.
Kate gets a room in House 1 and her workshop is in 'the living room', but I thought it would be House 1's living room, but instead she is in House 2.
Charlotte stands outside of the Farm so you know she needs a room in the Farm, but good luck guessing it's room 6 unless you read the walkthrough.
Jessie is even worse since she stays on her farm and wants room 8 in the farm. Again, just have to plow through all the other rooms unless you read the walkthrough.
Sophia, Charlotte and Jeanne (3rd not yet available) are the 3 who will fight with you so I preferred to offer the recruitment directly without the bedroom. I could have done the same thing for all the other NPCs but I find it a bit normal that they don't want to move until they have a place to sleep.
As Kate is the 1st to be recruited, I found it much more logical that she uses a room in the 1st house and as the living room of the 1st house is going to be a real living room to spend relaxing evenings (unlocked threesome), it was better to put the workshop in the 2nd house. yes, Kate mentions the 2nd house after she was recruited because she says she would like to use the living room to craft equipment to fight zombies.
About the workshop, Kate is simply in a dirty room, with debris everywhere to make the first equipments but you clean the room for her and set up a desk for her to work with so yes, you make her a workshop to move on to lvl2. Given the importance of equipment in combat, I thought it was better to make the lvl1 available directly. And for those who haven't seen it, the workshop really gets better with the lvl because the room changes too.
I defined the bedroom of each NPC because each hour that an NPC spends in her room, it's 1 event, if I give the choice of the bedroom, it means that each NPC will have to be created 20 times for each hour she will be in her room (20 times because 20 bedrooms). And it is normal to look at the walkthrough to know the bedroom in which they are going to move because this is the kind of information that it must give, moreover this information is indicated for each of them.
The goal of blocking the repair of a bedroom until the NPC has been found, shows that you still have NPCs to find. If the room is repaired but you don't see an NPC inside, has she been found or is she traveling into the base?
When I talk about the movement of NPCs, I'm just talking about where they are in the base. You found Lin and Sophia but there's also Charlotte and Jessie.
Can the kitchen in the 2nd house be fixed before recruiting Lin? If so, I have to block it.
For those who may not have seen it, some NPCs change locations with base repair. Example: NPCs use the toilet when the bathrooms are repaired. NPCs are in their rooms or on the street when they have nothing to do, but some rooms will give them something to spend their time. For the moment, only Sophia does it 1 more time than the others with the room added with Charlotte but all the NPCs will do it with new rooms that will arrive (Gym, swimming pool,...)
