List of every Dev Diaries can be read here
Come join us on Discord!
Hello, everyone! I'm @pietro.cavalli, and today I'll be showing off the newest update of Medieval Arts.
It's been a while but we're back and with a bang!
As you may have noticed, work on the mod had slowed down since this past summer. Changes in my personal life meant I could devote less time than I'd have liked to this mod, but I also felt a little unsatisfied with the direction Medieval Arts was taking. The Ruins updates and their incorporated mechanics have been received very well, but I could not help but feel like the mod was becoming increasingly bloated. With every update, more content was added, more decisions and events, but that's not what Medieval Arts should be about!
There's plenty other incredible mods out there adding more and better content than this one after all.
I didn't want to fall into that trap. Medieval Arts should be about beauty first and foremost. While not entirely cosmetic, it should not try to just add content for content's sake. It should try to express the complexity of art, its flexibility and ever-changing nature. It should be a tool you can use to make your games into better stories.
So, with that in mind, here is the new direction I've decided to take Medieval Arts to.
Here's 2.7 Vasari, named after one of the first and greatest art historians.
The Art School
A look at the new window
With tonight's update you'll gain access to a new UI. A button on the right side, right below the hud icons.
Through this new window you will be able to interact with the main protagonist of 2.7 and Medieval Arts as a whole: the Art School.
The School abstracts the whole entourage of craftsmen, artisans and artists in your court, under your direct patronage. They are guided by your prerogatives, and will shape the kind of artworks you choose to focus on throughout your game.
Their physical manifestation is the new court position of the Chief Artist, whose role we will look at with more detail in a second. Currently the court position is relatively barebone, but I would like in the future to assign it a few tasks, as introduced by Legends of the Dead.
The window is divided into three parts:
The upper one is focused on the patronage of the Art School in question. It depicts and allows you to change, if you choose to, your School's Aesthetic Tradition, a concept you should be familiar with, especially as the decision has been left relatively untouched. It also allows you to select the School Authority, choosing whether to make it more rigid and grant yourself more control over its activities, or allow it more freedom to grow by itself.
The middle part of the window focuses on the Arts. These are four main kinds of artworks:
Sculpture: the many sculptural art forms, from statues to reliefs and incisions
Court Art: a broad ensemble of artworks that need the patronage of a court, or tailor to their tastes
Migratory Art: a just as broad ensemble of personal art forms that are more nomadic in nature
Painting: the various forms of painted visual arts, from manuscripts to altar pieces
The four Arts
Inside each of these Arts, there are several Aspects, more specific types of artworks. Sculpture for example has the Monolithic Aspect to show the specific kind of sculpture that involves carving directly into the rock, while Painting has for example Landscape painting, particularly popular on the eastern half of the map. Some of these Aspects are broader and available to all cultures, while others are more specific, such as Icon painting for Art Schools that adhere to the Byzantine Aesthetic Tradition, or High Crosses for the Gaelic people.
You will always have one Aspect for each Art active at a time. These Aspects however can, and will, of course change, allowing you to shape the art produced by your School depending on the choices you make throughout your game. You will be able to do so directly through the interface, by clicking on the specific Aspect you wish to adopt.
The adoption process takes time - that time depending on a few variables including your Chief Artist and School Authority - but will eventually allow you to swap from one Aspect to another inside the same Art.
The adoption of a new Aspect
These Aspects are currently entirely cosmetic and in some small cases allow you access to other content, but in the near future will also include effects. For example, the High Crosses Sculpture Aspect will allow you to actually construct some.
In the lower third finally, you will - apart from accessing The Ruins window - be able to construct the new buildings of Medieval Arts. This is available for your current capital only, but as you evolve and change capitals throughout your game you will always be able to access all of them. These buildings are, for each province, a Palace and a Temple.
The Palace of
The buildings are not actual buildings. They are story cycles, virtual storages of variables and information. That means you won't actually find them on the map, only in the window. It also means that they won't cause any compatibility issues with any other mod!
But I digress. These "buildings" can be constructed through the buttons in the lower third of the interface. Once clicked, a menu will come up allowing you to choose certain features of this building. Let's begin the construction of a Palace for example.
Worth noting, these are all cosmetics at the moment
Once you have selected the features you prefer, you will gain access to another new interface representing the Palace, with information such as its founding and who its first patron was.
The Palace of Paris
From the interface you may also see the modifiers granted by the Palace (the modifiers scale with the building's construction progress) as well as the general status of the construction, indicated by a progress bar with four numbered landmark points. As you unlock progressively each of these points, you also gain access to an Addition each (so four in total). These are more specific additional features of the building you wish to add, such as Thermae in the picture. Like Arts' Aspects these are also dynamic depending on your current character, the province you're constructing it in, as well as the kinds of Features you chose beforehand. They are also all currently cosmetic, but I intend to add effects relatively soon.
Similar structure is also of course available for the Temple building, dynamic depending on your faith too.
All these aspects, features and additions I hope will help in allowing you to forge an ever more elastic and interesting game experience, a richer story.
State of the mod
As you may have noticed from this Dev Diary, the update is not entirely complete.
It is perfectly playable and its mechanics are fully working and in their final state, but they are going to receive much of their content at a later date, hopefully in time for ModJam later on. Much of the existing content from previous updates is also going to get vetted and either updated or removed, according to my judgment and your suggestions (which I strongly encourage you to give).
While I cannot give more details right now because I don't know them either, some things you can expect are:
Aspects and Additions: there's going to be a lot more and they will all eventually receive some form of individual content and effects
Patronage dynasty legacy: a fan favorite, it will be entirely dissected and integrated fully into the new Art School system
Embellish a City: will likely be retired and integrated in a more polished way into the new mechanics
Translations: expect full translations for each of the non-english languages supported by the game
So, while 2.7 is not exactly a beta, it does still need some polish and interaction. As many of these are big changes, I have decided to introduce them gradually, and to first wait for your suggestions and feedback. I welcome all your opinions.
Until then, have a great week and have fun! : )
Come join us on Discord!
Hello, everyone! I'm @pietro.cavalli, and today I'll be showing off the newest update of Medieval Arts.
It's been a while but we're back and with a bang!
As you may have noticed, work on the mod had slowed down since this past summer. Changes in my personal life meant I could devote less time than I'd have liked to this mod, but I also felt a little unsatisfied with the direction Medieval Arts was taking. The Ruins updates and their incorporated mechanics have been received very well, but I could not help but feel like the mod was becoming increasingly bloated. With every update, more content was added, more decisions and events, but that's not what Medieval Arts should be about!
There's plenty other incredible mods out there adding more and better content than this one after all.
I didn't want to fall into that trap. Medieval Arts should be about beauty first and foremost. While not entirely cosmetic, it should not try to just add content for content's sake. It should try to express the complexity of art, its flexibility and ever-changing nature. It should be a tool you can use to make your games into better stories.
So, with that in mind, here is the new direction I've decided to take Medieval Arts to.
Here's 2.7 Vasari, named after one of the first and greatest art historians.
The Art School
A look at the new window
With tonight's update you'll gain access to a new UI. A button on the right side, right below the hud icons.
Through this new window you will be able to interact with the main protagonist of 2.7 and Medieval Arts as a whole: the Art School.
The School abstracts the whole entourage of craftsmen, artisans and artists in your court, under your direct patronage. They are guided by your prerogatives, and will shape the kind of artworks you choose to focus on throughout your game.
Their physical manifestation is the new court position of the Chief Artist, whose role we will look at with more detail in a second. Currently the court position is relatively barebone, but I would like in the future to assign it a few tasks, as introduced by Legends of the Dead.
The window is divided into three parts:
The upper one is focused on the patronage of the Art School in question. It depicts and allows you to change, if you choose to, your School's Aesthetic Tradition, a concept you should be familiar with, especially as the decision has been left relatively untouched. It also allows you to select the School Authority, choosing whether to make it more rigid and grant yourself more control over its activities, or allow it more freedom to grow by itself.
The middle part of the window focuses on the Arts. These are four main kinds of artworks:
Sculpture: the many sculptural art forms, from statues to reliefs and incisions
Court Art: a broad ensemble of artworks that need the patronage of a court, or tailor to their tastes
Migratory Art: a just as broad ensemble of personal art forms that are more nomadic in nature
Painting: the various forms of painted visual arts, from manuscripts to altar pieces
The four Arts
Inside each of these Arts, there are several Aspects, more specific types of artworks. Sculpture for example has the Monolithic Aspect to show the specific kind of sculpture that involves carving directly into the rock, while Painting has for example Landscape painting, particularly popular on the eastern half of the map. Some of these Aspects are broader and available to all cultures, while others are more specific, such as Icon painting for Art Schools that adhere to the Byzantine Aesthetic Tradition, or High Crosses for the Gaelic people.
You will always have one Aspect for each Art active at a time. These Aspects however can, and will, of course change, allowing you to shape the art produced by your School depending on the choices you make throughout your game. You will be able to do so directly through the interface, by clicking on the specific Aspect you wish to adopt.
The adoption process takes time - that time depending on a few variables including your Chief Artist and School Authority - but will eventually allow you to swap from one Aspect to another inside the same Art.
The adoption of a new Aspect
These Aspects are currently entirely cosmetic and in some small cases allow you access to other content, but in the near future will also include effects. For example, the High Crosses Sculpture Aspect will allow you to actually construct some.
In the lower third finally, you will - apart from accessing The Ruins window - be able to construct the new buildings of Medieval Arts. This is available for your current capital only, but as you evolve and change capitals throughout your game you will always be able to access all of them. These buildings are, for each province, a Palace and a Temple.
The Palace of
The buildings are not actual buildings. They are story cycles, virtual storages of variables and information. That means you won't actually find them on the map, only in the window. It also means that they won't cause any compatibility issues with any other mod!
But I digress. These "buildings" can be constructed through the buttons in the lower third of the interface. Once clicked, a menu will come up allowing you to choose certain features of this building. Let's begin the construction of a Palace for example.
Worth noting, these are all cosmetics at the moment
Once you have selected the features you prefer, you will gain access to another new interface representing the Palace, with information such as its founding and who its first patron was.
The Palace of Paris
From the interface you may also see the modifiers granted by the Palace (the modifiers scale with the building's construction progress) as well as the general status of the construction, indicated by a progress bar with four numbered landmark points. As you unlock progressively each of these points, you also gain access to an Addition each (so four in total). These are more specific additional features of the building you wish to add, such as Thermae in the picture. Like Arts' Aspects these are also dynamic depending on your current character, the province you're constructing it in, as well as the kinds of Features you chose beforehand. They are also all currently cosmetic, but I intend to add effects relatively soon.
Similar structure is also of course available for the Temple building, dynamic depending on your faith too.
All these aspects, features and additions I hope will help in allowing you to forge an ever more elastic and interesting game experience, a richer story.
State of the mod
As you may have noticed from this Dev Diary, the update is not entirely complete.
It is perfectly playable and its mechanics are fully working and in their final state, but they are going to receive much of their content at a later date, hopefully in time for ModJam later on. Much of the existing content from previous updates is also going to get vetted and either updated or removed, according to my judgment and your suggestions (which I strongly encourage you to give).
While I cannot give more details right now because I don't know them either, some things you can expect are:
Aspects and Additions: there's going to be a lot more and they will all eventually receive some form of individual content and effects
Patronage dynasty legacy: a fan favorite, it will be entirely dissected and integrated fully into the new Art School system
Embellish a City: will likely be retired and integrated in a more polished way into the new mechanics
Translations: expect full translations for each of the non-english languages supported by the game
So, while 2.7 is not exactly a beta, it does still need some polish and interaction. As many of these are big changes, I have decided to introduce them gradually, and to first wait for your suggestions and feedback. I welcome all your opinions.
Until then, have a great week and have fun! : )
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