it's Patch Friday! I already gave a preview about it in the last devlog, now the new mini map and camera controls are available on the Steam open alpha playtest. If that does not rock your socks, maybe the latest entry in the environmental effect series will: There are arcane environments now!
You could already freeze rivers and burn flammable objects like trees or bushes. Now you can activate sites of arcane power: Places like graves and defiled churches are triggered by arcane damage. I love how things are really coming together now, because so many objects in our world that were just decoration before now can be interacted with in cool ways.
When an arcane area is activated, a Hell Skull spawns and follows you until its lifespan runs out or until it hits you.
You can maneuver the skull into enemies so they take the damage that was meant for you. Also, the skull occasionally spawns arcane crystals that stay on the ground after its demise and can also be utilized in combat.
Defiled churches is where the real fun starts, because cultists are immune to arcane damage and their ranged attacks happen to do arcane damage, so they tend to bring Hell Skulls about quite often. A Hell Skull exploding in an arcane environment can itself produce a new skull, which can can result in fun chain reactions.
If you want to follow the development closely or simply want to say hi, make sure to join our Discord. Have a great weekend!
Alain
DevLog: Preview on Minimap and New Camera Controls
Hey everyone,
recently I decided that I could no longer make this a future-me problem: some playtesters found camera movement not perfect in places. You could freely move the camera in zoomed-in third person mode, but not in top down view. Implementing free camera movement is a bigger can of worms than one would expect, but your wish is my command.
So why is this so difficult? Here is the deal: BattleJuice Alchemist now is a game where you can play in top down perspective and in third person, move by clicking and by WASD input and switch between all four combinations seamlessly. In top down mode you expect the character to move "down" when you press down. But what actually is "down"? If you rotate the camera in top down mode, "down" is not aligned with south anymore. You expect to move in reference to your camera rotation. In third person on the other hand, you maybe do not want your character to move towards the camera when you press down. Should the character walk backwards? Or should the camera pan around the character until it is behind the character again? One person might expect that the left and right buttons in third person perspective rotate the camera, another wants them to rotate the character and a third person might want them to move the character. You want keybindings and UI buttons to turn the camera in 45 degree steps, but also want to have complete freedom to look with the mouse. How do you do that when you also walk with the mouse? All these things and quite a lot more had to be taken into consideration and new control settings and bindings hat to be implemented.
To make all of that camera movement and input comfortable to use, I had to tie in a second feature: A minimap and compass.
The minimap provided its own challenges, which were mainly performance related, but I won't bore you with that. For now, I am happy that only a bit of testing and polishing has to be done and the new features will be ready to be rolled out within the next patch.
Thank you for sticking with me and have a great weekend!
Alain
Update: Patch Notes 0.19603
Hey everyone,
I crunched like crazy for the last few days, because I did not want to do a simple devlog this Friday. I also wanted to release the features I have worked on, so players can check them out right away in the Steam Playtest. I made it and I think it was worth it. So everything I talk about today can be explored by all you fine people right away.
Those of you following along might know that I have been implementing environmental effects lately. The first one allows you to freeze rivers and lakes, now you can light things on fire. This one turned out really cool in my opinion, because so many systems interact here: Fire has a chance to propagate, which is connected to the weather system. It is less likely for fire to spread if it is raining.
Trees burn down bit by bit. The first time you set them on fire their leaves burn away, then the upper part and so on until only the roots are left. Everytime a part burns, ash and wood materials spawn.
The spiky circles as seen in the image above indicate where fire causes damage to you and enemies. So you can utilize burning objects by kiting enemies into them.
The game world feels so much more alive now that the environmental effects are getting done one by one and I can't wait to continue working on the "arcane" environmental effect.
Let me know what you think or if you have questions on our Discord and have a great weekend!
Alain
Update: Patch Notes 0.19402
Hey there!
I am a firm believer that getting feedback from you, the players, is the key to make a fun game. That's why I decided not to wait until all environmental effects are implemented before pushing an update. So here we go: 0.19402 brings you the ability to freeze any environment that contains a body of water. Just use a Juicified Freeze flask or wait for your icy companion Plato to do it for you.
I already talked about this mechanic in the last devlog in detail. Now you can freeze and slide around to your heart's content in the Steam playtest version.
Beside that, cooldowns of the Frog Hop, Smoke and Freeze flask were reduced, items were tweaked and bugs were fixed.
If you are interested in more details, you can find the full patch notes on our Discord server or in the usual text file within your installation folder.
Thank you for reading and I'm looking forward to hear what you think!
Alain
DevLog: Preview on Ice Effect
Hey everyone,
to be honest, I did not have the greatest week after catching covid. I had to lay low for a couple of days but now I am back at my computer where I belong.
What I managed to work on is making you a more powerful alchemist. Juice is not a tough person splitting their foes' heads with a Claymore. But you are supposed to have a strong feeling of agency nevertheless. I want your actions to have an impact on the world that surrounds you, which is why I started implementing environmental effects. If you use a damage type in an environment receptive to it, something big happens.
The first effect I want to share with you is the freeze effect. If you use a Juicified Freeze flask in any tile that has a body of water in it, that area freezes. This does not slow Juice down, but lets the player move faster by sliding over the ice. Furthermore, ice crystals are spawned. You can utilize these crystals by pushing or pulling your enemies into them for some ouch.
Last but not least you can use the freeze effect to traverse bigger bodies of water quickly: Just freeze the surface and walk over it instead of swimming.
Environmental effects will be there right when you start the game. They are not some kind of ultimate power and can even be triggered by enemies or your companion Plato. I have just started on the fire environmental effect and am very excited to see if it turns out as fun as the ice effect.
Thank you for reading and have a great weekend!
Alain
Update: Patch Notes 0.19202
Hey there!
Those of you following the BattleJuice Alchemist devlogs might have heard me talking about this for quite some time. Now it is finally here, our new beginning for the game, the big new tutorial level, "The Mountain Pass". We got some great internal feedback and now want to share it with the alpha playtesters on Steam. So let's dive into the content of the update.
General Notes
Update 0.19202 includes all changes from 0.18604 and above. Your settings will be reset upon updating to this version, but you can still play your old characters as always. To experience the new start of the game in the intended way, creating a new character might be a good choice though. By the way, we overhauled the character creation options as well, so you can create characters now that look a bit less weird. But just a bit.
Content
We usually split these patch notes into various categories like mechanics / items / enemies and so on. This time, let us just say we completely overhauled the start of the game. The experience is quite a new one, you get the chance to easily understand what the game and its quirky mechanics are all about. You get to experiment with various flasks from the beginning on, try the different types of combat and solve riddles before you start the actual story of the game.
After completing the new tutorial level you will continue your journey to play the first quests in Caribou Creek.
Those of you who are interested in more details can read the full patch notes on our Discord server or in the usual text file within your installation folder.
If you want to support us, please provide us feedback on Discord or anywhere else.
Have a great rest of the week and I hope you enjoy the new level!
Alain
DevLog: Preview on New First Level
Hey everyone,
those of you following along might already know that I have been working on a new tutorial level for some time. As I explained in my last devlog video, I had to build a system that allowed me to "quickly" create levels that are not fully procedural. It worked out great and the tutorial level is done now. Here is a sneak peek of the "Mountain Pass" tutorial map:
BattleJuice Alchemist had tutorials before. It was quite basic stuff: windows popped up and explained some aspect of the game or asked you to do something. Watching people play I often saw them closing the windows instinctively in the way you close an ad popping up in your browser. I could not remove 100% of the pop-up tutorials, but drastically reduced their number and got rid of them for the whole Mountain Pass level completely. The level takes about 20 minutes for a new player to complete and mainly uses two new elements to teach the game's mechanics:
1. Tutorial Scrolls
You find scrolls scattered around the level that you can pick up and read. I found this a lot more satisfying, because who does not like to pick up loot, right? In the GIF above you can also see a little magic swirl that spawns in front of the player and points towards tutorial scrolls and other quest items.
To make the process of learning more fun, I made pictograms for every scroll to teach gameplay elements in a more visual and riddle-like way than plain text. This for example is one of the first scrolls that teaches you to equip and use a flask that replenishes your mana (called "Liquid" in our world):
There is also a written version for every tutorial scroll in your quest log if you can't figure out the meaning of a pictogram.
2. Tutorial Shrines
These shrines are text messages left for you to make sure you can make your way through the Mountain Pass. Nothing to ground-breaking here, but I think it is a good thing the players activate these themselves instead of getting pesky pop-ups and also that the shrines are rooted in the game's narrative.
I will test the Mountain Pass level with a few more players and it then should go live on the public branch of the Steam playtest pretty soon.
Thank you for reading and have a great weekend!
Alain
DevLog: Boss Fights and Haunted Places
Hey everyone!
We are currently knee-deep in the visual overhaul of the whole game. Patrick is doing a great job working on textures for 3d assets and I am grinding away on the UI. But that is something for another devlog when the results are presentable. Today I'd like to talk about our haunted place system a bit more.
This video is an introduction to haunted places, but I'll briefly explain them again. Ritual places and possession are predominant themes in the story of BattleJuice Alchemist and now they become even more relevant mechanics-wise. In the picture above you see our very first haunted place, the Chopping Block. You solve a small riddle to activate it and then fight the possessed site itself. It is able to do a multitude of attacks like spawning minions, AOE damage, debuffs and so on.
To make buildings more fun to explore, I decided to add two more haunted places that do not spawn in the wilderness but inside structures. The Begging Bowl spawns in churches and the Creepy Container in abandoned farm houses.
You can repeatedly activate a haunted place and defeating it gets more difficult each time you do so. In the end you get to choose a reward for your efforts. I found this to be a bit underwhelming and wanted to flesh out these events. So I decided that after "leveling up" a haunted place, you can activate it a last time, which spawns a unique enemy that is the warden of the place. Here is a little impression of the Biting Barrel that appears at the "Creepy Container":
So that's it for today. Please note that these changes are on our internal testing branch only and not yet on the public playtest version on Steam. I will update the Steam version not too far in the future, but want to wait for the big visual overhaul to do so.
That is it for today, thank you for reading and have a nice weekend!
Alain
We got an Epic MegaGrant!
Hey everyone!
as those of you following the development of BattleJuice Alchemist might know, I am a big fan of Unreal Engine. It is so accessible, especially its blueprint system gives developers like me who do not consider themselves a programmer first the opportunity to tackle big projects. Beside providing this great tool, Epic Games financially supports game developers and other creators using it.
About half a year ago I applied for an Epic MegaGrant and two days ago I received a congratulatory mail of acceptance from Epic Games. I am incredibly thankful and excited to be counted among the recipients.
At the end of 2021 I commited to developing BattleJuice Alchemist full-time and expanded Alchemical Works into a small team. The MegaGrant comes just at the right point in time for us, I almost can't believe it.
I am so happy and also want to thank everybody following along the development of the game. I know some of you are developers as well, so if you use Unreal Engine, consider applying for a MegaGrant. I wasn't sure if there was a chance of being chosen as an indie dev with his first title, but evidently it is.
Have a wonderful weekend everybody!
Alain
DevLog: Flask Mechanics and Fog of War
Hey everyone!
I have been thinking about devlogs and progress reports recently. I decided that I want to post written devlogs more regularly (biweekly) and video devlogs only on bigger events or updates. I want to keep these write-ups brief and juicy, so let's dive right in.
Flask Re-Drawing Mechanic
Over the last couple of weeks, I got quite some feedback from people who played the game for the first time. Some of them said that fighting was fun, but they felt it got repetitive after a few hours. There is a lot of depth and possibilities for different builds, so I think the problem is that I am not encouraging players enough to experiment with all the possibilities already in the game. I will address that with various changes over the next weeks. In the end, I also want to make a new tutorial to familiarize players with all the abilities they have at their disposal beside throwing explosive flasks and simply blowing up enemies.
The first change is a re-drawing mechanic. You have 2 fixed flasks and 3 random flasks at you disposal. The 3 random flasks are drawn from your "deck" of 10 flasks in your cauldron. To have control over their "hand" of 3 flasks, players tended to only put 3 flasks into their deck. To encourage branching out, I implemented a mechanic that lets you re-draw your hand when using a Juicified Liquid flask.
This way, you do not necessarily have to use a flask and waste resources on it, just to free up a drawing slot. We have to do some testing on this, but it feels like a good change right now. It should give players agency and opportunities for strategic decision-making.
Fog of War
Game development is a process of iterating. We go over things again and again until they feel satisfying for the time being. For me, one of these never-ending stories is maps. After my last update the square nature of the tiles made the local map look a bit unpolished. So I went over the system again visually and mechanically and man, it feels a lot better now.
We now have two stages of discovery. You discover a large circular area around you. When moving out of a discovered area, a fog of war creeps back. Discovered special places stay visible though.
