As another week comes to an end, your scheduled fix of Ale Abbey's news is up and ready!
This week we found ourselves finishing up the work on the Monastery's environs - well... the first version of 'em, anyway ;) - and we have gone back to working on ever more Monk and Nun animations. Adding to that we are also finishing up the work on the Storage room and experimented with a few UI ideas for good measure.
We are very content with how we are progressing through our internal milestones, and knowing what's coming, we can't wait to show you more!
But... onwards to the news!
-- Final touches on the "first" biome
You read that right. The work we have been doing with Ale Abbey's exterior is one of the three potential biomes the player can choose as their starting location for their Monastery. So far the idea is to have three different biomes; Mountains, Hills, and Plains. All biomes will come with their advantages and disadvantages and will also be visually distinct.
You've already seen the Mountains which we are about to file under "finished" with this week's additions of bushes, trees, and rocks!
Since we got that cat out of the bag, for the time being (remember this is all still very much WIP), the advantages/disadvantages of the 3 biomes are as follows:
- Mountains
- Mountain Water Spring: +5% max Quality for ale
- Bad Roads: +1 to the cost of each ingredient unit
- Hills
- Hops Paradise: each unit of Hops costs 25% less
- Banditry: Bandits require 20% ale to appease and their actions are 10% more impactful
- Plains
- Easy to Reach: +20% on the occurrence of Pilgrim events, -25% on ingredient delivery times
- Bad Water: -5% min Quality for Ale
-- Storage room and more UI
The Storage Room is far from over but is in a very good spot. Having invested a good amount of time in deciding what to do in terms of quality of life, we are comfortably working through the aesthetics of the room. Even though the Ledger that will accompany it is not yet ready, that too is on its way!
Remember that the Storage room comes with a lot of work under the hood since it's a scene chock-full of information that needs a number of quality-of-life mechanics to be beneficial, without becoming a redundant gameplay mechanic down the line. This is why the Ledger (that will be present on the rightmost side of the room) will be an integral supporting part of this room's UI.
And of course, we are still testing general UI ideas across the Monastery. Something we've been experimenting with this week is an abacus-looking element to showcase the calendar/days of the week.
-- New Animations
With the first biome nearly complete, we can now focus our attention on the animations of the extra Monk and Nun models we produced a couple of months ago. Since our internal milestones entailed at least one biome up and running, we had to put these animations in the back seat for a while.
Still very keen on giving all inhabitants of the Monastery their own personality and quirky behavior, you will notice that these new Monks and Nuns come with a lot of attitude. Straight from Raimo's desk, a taste of our pixel artist extraordinaire's work...
-- How does water quality affect your beer?
See how we gave the Mountains biome an actual advantage because of the water they supply? Exactly.
Beer is for the most part water, so it only makes sense that the quality of said water would directly impact the quality of the resulting brew. The two main properties of water that you need to keep your eye on are alkalinity and hardness - and that comes with the territory.
Many believe that successful hyper-local beers have a distinctive flavor and quality because of the water of the area. Although partly true, nobody talks about how the brewer had to treat that water prior to brewing. You can brew good beer with any water, but you always need to make sure that there is some controlled balance between alkalinity and hardness (usually accomplished with dissolved minerals, water softeners, etc.).
So, before you brew you should always test your water with a water test kit, or simply use your municipality's/city's water report. This should give you enough information about your water and what you need to do to prepare it for brewing; always keeping in mind the type of beer you want to prepare and what characteristics you want to accentuate (drier, fruitier, fuller, etc).
For a quick and detailed overview of water for brewing (with numbers!) you should check out this amazing article!
Make sure you tune in next week for more news! Thank you for your time and enjoy your weekend responsibly ;)
-- Hammer & Ravens
Do you want to know more about Ale Abbey and chat with the team? Find us on:
