This week's development left the team's Discord server choke-full of technical points and details going back and forth between the front end and back end once again! Working on the Monks' and Nuns' perspectives (looking towards and away from the player's PoV) started to make sense as we started putting everything together and in good use.
Apart from that, we worked on more perspectives for the other inhabitants of the Monastery and we started revamping the Cellars!
So first things first...
-- Revamping the Cellars
It's been a long time coming since the Cellars were one of the first rooms we designed to test Ale Abbey as a concept. The amount of detail has since changed as has the scope of the game. The Cellars now had very clear design guidelines they could follow and - of course - Raimo and Francesco worked their magic to make it so.
Today's preview image worked as a bit of a hint, but how about we show you where the Cellars are heading, with some WIP?
-- Free mugshots for everyone
Following our last couple of weeks' momentum, Raimo also worked on the different perspectives of the Monks and Nuns of the Abbey. This will definitely streamline their use in the more... technical endeavors that will follow.
But what would those endeavors be?
-- Why are these mugshots so important
Bringing everything together... apart from climbing stairs up and down the Abbey, different perspectives of the Monastery inhabitants will help make the transition from walking to a room, towards a set of equipment, and actually using the equipment at hand much smoother.
This has been a procedure of many steps. It started with changing which side of the equipment would be the default selected to use it,
making sure that pathing towards the equipment is considered and set,
and - finally - making the transition from walking to using said equipment (combining two sets of animations we've worked on, using the equipment - that was tested quite a while ago - and the latest addition of walking towards and away from the player's PoV).
-- Game changers in homebrewing you might be taking for granted...
What makes homebrewing today different from what happened behind those Monastery walls in the late Middle Ages? Did things change that much? Did any of those changes make any real difference?
We are in no way minimizing the immeasurable effort and ingenuity that farmers and scientists alike had to portray to keep ingredients' quality not only safeguarded but improved over the years. But when it comes to brewing, the actual process has remained largely unchanged. The steps are the same, the ingredients are the same, and the list of things that make a good beer is still the same.
But when it comes to making the process all that more straightforward and accessible to everyone there were two major tools that really made a dent in the world of homebrewing: the thermometer and sanitizing agents.
While thinking about the amount of brewing detail Ale Abbey would depict we were caught by surprise by the thought that thermometers were not even invented yet in the time period we were considering. How could these Monasteries have any level of control over the brewing process when they couldn't even measure the temperature of their mash!? They had devised ways to deal with this, but introducing a thermometer definitely allowed more and more hopeful brewers to make efficient and tasty enough brews on their own, without spending ages in apprenticeships...
And then, sanitization. We have talked about this in earlier posts, but it is hands down the one thing that can assure that you have a brew to work with. Sanitizing agents to clean surfaces, your bottles, your utensils, and your brewing kit are common today. They were not back then, and there is no amount of today's scattered attention that could protect your brew from the number of ways it can get spoiled.
Respect all the work your Monks and Nuns put into those brews, they had it very hard back in the day and they still produced some awesome beer!
Join us next week for more of Ale Abbey's news! Thank you for your time and enjoy your weekend responsibly ;)
-- Hammer & Ravens
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