"Not 'to be, or not to be' — tonight's question is to shake, or not to shake. It's the only way to keep your late grandfather's bar alive."
Hey everyone!
At the end of the last devlog we said we'd take a look at the room your grandfather left you. But the art for the room isn't ready yet, and we'd rather show it when it is. A lot changed behind the counter in the meantime. This devlog is about pouring: where the drink lands when it leaves the bottle, what happens when the pour hits the edge of a container, and how ice and lemon get into the glass. After that we'll introduce two new characters. At the very end there's a short list of smaller things we added this week.
The pour lands on the first surface
The glass sits on the counter, and the jigger and shaker sit on the shelf below it. In our playtests we noticed a problem: if you held the bottle up high, the pour could go straight through the counter and the glass and fill the shaker underneath. That's fixed. Now the highest container under the bottle's mouth is the one that catches the pour. If you want to fill something on the shelf, you have to lower the bottle below the counter line.
When the pour hits the edge
It used to be that a single point decided whether the pour went into a container. If the middle of the stream was inside the mouth, all of the drink went in, even if half of it was outside. If the middle was outside, all of it went on the counter.
Now, however much of the stream lines up with the mouth is how much goes in. The rest runs down the outside wall of the container, spills next to its base and leaves a stain there. Bottles, the shaker and the jigger all follow the same rule. And whatever spills over the edge is wasted, it's gone from the bottle.
Which hand, which way?
Like we said in Devlog #1, left click is your left hand and right click is your right hand. This week we tied the pouring direction to the hands too: a bottle you pick up with your left hand tilts to the right to pour, and one you pick up with your right hand tilts to the left. Before, a bottle tilted toward whichever side of the glass it sat on in the shelf, and the shaker and jigger always poured to the left. Since the bottle turns around its mouth, the spot where the pour lands doesn't change, so your aim stays the same.
Ice and lemon
You now pick up ice, lemon and lime from the shelf and let go of them over a glass or an open shaker, and the piece drops in. Let go anywhere else and it goes back to the shelf.
Dropping pieces brought a few new situations with it. Drop ice into a glass that's full to the brim and the liquid spills over. When a glass tips over, the drink runs out first, then the ice and slices fall out of the mouth onto the counter in one piece. If the strainer is on, it holds them back. Ice that lands on the counter melts after a while and leaves a small water stain, but slices have to be wiped up with the rag.
Muddled lemon, lime and ice now also turn into water, as much as you've crushed. That water sits as its own layer at the bottom of the glass and mixes into the drink when you stir. This week the Daiquiri recipe also got a muddling step.
Layers
When you pour different drinks on top of each other in a glass, each one forms its own layer. We changed two things here this week. Pouring the same drink in a few goes used to leave a dark line between the pours, now it looks like one piece. Where two different drinks meet, the colors now blend into each other over a few pixels. A full mix still only happens when you shake or stir.
Thoughts now bump into each other
In Devlog #2 we talked about the thought bubbles that show up when you stay sober. This week we gave them some physics. The bubbles now slowly drift toward the middle of the screen and gather there. They can't overlap, and when a new bubble shows up the others make room for it. If you fling a bubble hard, it passes its speed on to the bubble it hits, like billiard balls.
Your own inner voice now shows up in these bubbles too when you talk to story customers. The game also remembers how you answer them, and the same customer can treat you differently the next time they come in.
Enes and Ceren
Last week we introduced Master Ege and Erdem. This week there are two more, but we didn't want to introduce them separately.
Enes and Ceren are old friends of yours. They come into the bar together, and their story moves forward together too. They're a couple. They're based on two friends of ours who are together in real life, so we didn't split them up in the game either. The rest of the story is fiction, as always.
If you look closely at their portraits, you'll see that each of them has the other's name as a tattoo.
Added this week
There's now a pause menu you open with Esc. You can pause the game, open the settings, restart the current day or go back to the main menu.
Every new day starts clean: the stains on the counter are gone, the shaker is empty and clean, and the bartender is sober. Before, replaying a bad day meant starting it drunk.
A bottle or tool that tips over now stays where it fell until you pick it up. Things that fall near the edge of the screen don't fall off it anymore, they tip inward.
A quick click on a dirty glass picks it up, holding the click cleans it. The shaker already worked like this, now the glass does too.
In a stemmed glass the drink now fills only the bowl and doesn't run down into the stem. Drops that splash while you pour don't fall through the glass or the counter anymore either, they fade where they land.
Master Ege got an animation for getting angry. Last time we said we hoped you wouldn't see his angry face too often, and we still hope so.
What's next
Over the coming days, the temporary art in the game will start getting replaced with the real thing. Bottles and glasses are first. We'll cover the room your grandfather left you in its own devlog once its art is done.
So, when you spill something, do you wipe it up right away, or do you wait until the end of the day? Let us know in the comments or on Discord, we read everything.
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See you behind the counter,
Team Sheer Cat