After our last post dedicated to yet another team member, this time we got a few more recent developments to share with you!
This week has - yet again - been both focused on the creative and the technical. We made some progress in the way the player will be placing objects in the Monastery, added more to the complexity of the frames separating the Monastery's rooms, and got some new mood boards from our Art Director, Francesco!
Let's go through the points!
-- Object placement in rooms
First and foremost, the most technically challenging subject these past couple of weeks was refining the placement of objects in rooms and relevant spaces.
With extra attention to art direction (mostly on object sizes and animations) and the actual technicalities behind making the objects smoothly snap into place, (minding an object's position within the room), we have finally reached an iteration we feel pretty happy with.
Time to experience Emiliano's frantic snapping!
-- More detail to room frames
Finding the best way to show where a room begins and ends, how that room connects to the ones attached to it, and how a group of rooms looks like when the player zooms out for an overview of the Monastery makes the room framing quite an important matter.
We have gone through quite a few iterations so far, all of which have resulted in where we are today. The frames are thinner to allow for more "scene," solid to better define boundaries, and with a new bit of added detail to make them feel more detailed and complex, specifically when it comes to texture.
Still a WIP, what you can look forward to is different versions of the frames to discreetly accentuate differences between rooms; like lighting on the sides of the frames, different ceilings in between room types, etc.
-- New Mood boards for Ale Abbey!
We are always looking forward to sharing insights into our creative process with you. Being the Creative Director for Ale Abbey, Francesco gave us a glimpse of how he envisions the serenity in Ale Abbey using a few mood boards he prepared and shared internally.
Mood boards are a very important part of the creative process as they make sure the vision of the direction is understood and almost "felt" by the rest of the team working on it. It serves as an amazing tool to get almost all other artistic parts of the game (the pixels you see, the BGM you listen to, the quests you read) not only right but concise.
True to the craft, the mood boards came in "analog" format! Simple in form, yet quite impactful, they drive across the true Ale Abbey feeling that has to bleed into its gameplay.
-- So this happened...
We love kidding around in our Discord server. But how plausible is a beer made out of beans?
Well, now... The explanation is rather simple. There's a lot of fiber in red beans and fiber can be broken down into more basic structures, like sugars. Red beans are known to be used to make desserts, for example, Mizu Yokan, a traditional Japanese dessert made from red bean paste. Now let's use all this information, bring in some yeast (which we already know loves producing alcohol from sugars), add the rest of the amazing materials, and you'll probably get beer.
Emiliano even remembers trying a bean-based beer in his hometown in Northern Italy, which he found a little too salty for his taste.
What weird beers or beverages have you discovered in your adventures? Come to our Discord server, and let us know. Yes, we have a channel for that ;)
Thank you for your time and enjoy your weekend responsibly!
-- Hammer & Ravens
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