One more busy week comes to an end!
Lots of work on all fronts and it all culminates with the #PitchYaGame event on Twitter and your weekly Something's Brewing! Someone needs to keep you updated on Ale Abbey's development, right?
Quickly going through the points for this week, i) with light bending speeds we are close to finishing another room, ii) we put some more work on UIs, and iii) we give you a sneak peek of how we're thinking of dealing with story elements of Ale Abbey's campaign mode.
Enjoy the read and remember to leave any feedback or extra questions in the comments! ;)
-- Work on the Dormitory
Knowing our restless duo of artists you should have expected some kind of update on the Dormitory we started working on last week. A few small tweaks still need to take place here and there, but the work on the Dormitory is almost complete!
Finally, the Monks and Nuns of the Abbey will have a place to crash for the night!
-- Once again... UI you say!?
Emiliano - with his attention to detail - is not very keen on sharing WIP UI, but this does not mean we're not working on it! As a reminder, a quick throwback to the post regarding the very substantial changes we made to the Inventory/Storage UI (and its related gameplay mechanics!).
Still, this time on the brewing side of things, we already start to shape up the UI to make it look much more inviting and production-like! Rudimentary for sure, but more aesthetic and practical tweaks will follow!
-- So what IS the story?
Ale Abbey's campaign mode will run from the very beginning of the 1400s and for approximately 100-120 years. With the Abbots' and Abbesses' backgrounds affecting the Monastery - both during (their own Personal Traits) and after their term (Legacy Traits) - we were thinking of incorporating a few historically accurate elements to spice them up!
Just like the assets being produced for Ale Abbey, these elements and background stories that will accompany the characters should also be considered WIP which might make it to the final version of the game.
Having said that, you can expect historical references to events or artifacts, like the Oriflamme, the Habsburg Dynasty, Jean d'Arc, the Battle of Agincourt, the Fall of Constantinople, and many other anecdotal/trivial or highly significant events to color both Ale Abbey as a whole and its characters!
Editor's note: the approximate span of the campaign mode is still to be decided and is right now believed to be closer to 90 years divided over 3 Superiors' (Abbots and Abbessess) terms.
-- How different are the Hops of today from the Hops of old?
Trying to make this story extremely short here... Hops are an ancient plant. As such their connection to beer came much later. Its original use was that of a plant predominantly used as a salad herb, aromatic, and of course, preservative.
A capricious green that needed more attention than other crops, hops were used extensively in Germany during the 12th and 13th centuries and only became a brewing ingredient for the British after the 16th-17th century (which also marked the time it became profitable as a crop).
Although used as an additive to preserve ale (which was un-hopped beer in the past), it ended up making the resulting bitterness a trend and making beer (hopped ale!) the preferred beverage. Later the distinction between ale and beer was not made solely on whether they were hopped or not but also based on the type of fermentation that followed - top or bottom (henceforth called ales or lagers respectively).
By the 20th century, and with the use of hops in brewing actually becoming far more complex (now to be used not only for bitterness but for aroma as well), the development of more and more varieties produced was a major goal for most producers and researchers of the field.
So... hops might have started as a very standard green (still peculiar and with its own personality), but today it includes all these varieties that can be VASTLY different from one another in their resulting flavors and aroma. And, yes, we are thankful for that!
Thank you for your time and enjoy your weekend responsibly! See you next week ;)
-- Hammer & Ravens
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