The Chemist
Dev update: What has happened and the future of The Chemist
Essentially what happened is:
"Hey folks, apologies for leaving you without a response thus far. We wanted to give you an update so that you know, at the very least, that we are not dead. We've not abandoned the game, however, one of the three core people that were working on the game has decided to part ways with us unexpectedly, leaving us in a situation where we were unable to meet our goals for the game's future. Moreover, our 3D artist has had some rather drastic changes in his personal life (as he's been posting form time to time) and found himself unable to work as efficiently as before. We are, of course, not in any financial position to hire anyone to fill these gaps in our team either. All in all, we're quite sad that we did not manage to go through with the game's development as per our plans and still unsure as to how we will cope with these issues going on from here. The truth is, we did not abandon the game and truly wish to see it finished, however we are unsure as to how that will happen for the time being. As soon as we have a realistic plan on how we'll be developing The Chemist further and a timeline to accommodate this plan, we'll announce it on Steam."
Right now we are discussing about the possibility of continuing development over the summer, but we can't say anything with certainty thus far.
We definitely do not want to abandon the game since there is so much potential in it, but sometimes personal life just gets in the way of things.
Hopefully more on this soon!
Where are we? BIG next update!
We know that it looks like we were lost after announcing that we will add VR (which is still a thing) but do not worry, we are alive and working on a lot of new and shiny things and we are here to talk about it!
After all of your lovely and constructive criticism, and a bit of critical thinking of ourselves, we realised that this game has a greater potential, so in our absence we planned and worked on new content and improving every aspect of the game.
Now we can promise you that BIG updates are coming soon and so I will leave a sneak peek for you to see where things are going:
https://youtu.be/NkGNIjUBT94
Don’t forget to follow our other pages so you can check up on what we’re working on and keep getting updated:
Twitter: twitter.com/thechemistgame
Instagram: instagram.com/thechemistgame/
Facebook: facebook.com/thechemistgame/
Discord: https://discordapp.com/invite/hwHSSMK
Giveaway! & VR News & New Dev. Friends
To make up for the rather slow-ish patches of this month and to celebrate for our successful-ish release (could've been worse!) we're hosting a giveaway on indieDB! Gonna be giving out some 50 copies to the lucky few. Go sign up even if you have the game - you can always make a friend happy!
What's more is; we've officially started our VR development. Don't fret, we're actually getting help from another experienced fellow coder on this so it won't interfere with our own agenda. Not much is clear on how long it'll take yet but I'll give a full-fledged report on our VR development plans as soon as things are a bit more clear.
And lastly, I've realized that given how much work the game needs I am just not able to keep up with the discussions as much as I did before. To remedy this and ensure that we keep listening to you good people I've asked help from a couple of my fellow developers. They'll be around in the discussions from now on, keeping a list of the bugs&suggestions&ideas etc... You'll hear from them over in the discussions!
News on the next update
Unfortunately, while working on the said update, I ended up breaking more things than I fixed. While the content part of it is ready (liquids from famous games!), I do not wish to release an unstable patch so I'm holding off releasing it till I'm sure everything is fixed.
This new patch will include:
-fixes to almost all of the bugs that were reported on the discussions
-a whole new content pack that's made of various liquids from famous games, all with their various outcome events
-a more beginner friendly start to the game (rent is lower in the beginning, contracts don't require traits etc.)
-modding support improved to include the adding&editing of events. I'm working on a functional GUI to make it easier to add&remove content to the game, not sure if this'll make it to the next patch though
I'm also glad to announce that we will be focusing on adding two major things after this patch - VR support and multiplayer. If I were to let myself get a bit ambitious, I'd say we're planning on having these two in the game till the end of February.
Thank you all for taking your time to write your thoughts on the discussions, for reporting the bugs and for making recommendations so far! I hate to be in a position where I'm not delivering on promised deadlines but alas things tend to go wrong when you're just a mediocre coder.
Hotfix v0.2.11 & Info on Next Patch
Changelog
- Bug Fixes
- Save Game button was disabled after loading a game
- Basement contracts were not appearing up on the paper behind the desk
- When you get to the Demigod renown rank, and
- somehow* get 99999 exp., and then some more, the renown bar would revert to zero
- Save Game button was disabled after loading a game
Onwards to our near future plans: the main emphasis of the next patch will be to introduce some form of "hand holding" for new players. I've been hearing a lot that the game is very difficulty when you are starting off, and not in a good way either. This also has to do with the fact that our tutorial is just outright terrible at the moment so I'll see about improving on that as well.
I will also be working on modding support either in the form of an extensive documentation for it or as an actual separate GUI. Will also make the events moddable as well at which point literally everything content-related will be open for modding. I would be very glad to hear your ideas on this.
On the topic of the next patch, we'll of course have some more contracts&outcome events! I'm guessing ~30 more contracts and some whopping ~270 more events.
ETA for this next patch is the 3rd of January - trying to make sure we're rolling out patches in intervals of about 15 days at maximum. As always, hotfixes and minor additions are not included as I'll roll those out whenever necessary.
Lastly, from now on all our major content additions (contracts, resources, events etc.) will have a theme! The next one (to be included in the aforementioned patch) will be the Celebrity Pack introducing some famous liquids from both new and old-school famous games&movies. We wanted to spice things up a bit and found ourselves asking the question "what would happen if the liquid that the HEV Suit injects was made with aphrodisiac?". Only one way to find out now!
Big Patch - Sandbox and Modding!
Yohohoho! You heard that right fellow chemists; modding! I know this patch was supposed to be only about introducing the sandbox mode but as I was working on it some demon appeared after which I instantly traded my soul for having Star Wars given back to Lucas and for figuring out how to make the game moddable; and here we are! Waaaait a minute...
First off, a proper changelog:
Changelog
- Sandbox Mode
It is here as you requested!- Unlimited money
- All contracts unlocked
- Access to many of the internal game parameters through the toggle UI
- Access to misc. parameters such as the length of a day
- Create your own difficulty and play at your own pace! These parameters can be assigned to presets which can be loaded and saved later on
- Use your custom difficulty presets the next time you're starting a new game
- Share your difficulties! The custom presets are assigned to save files so they can freely be shared between any fellow chemists.
- There are still lots of things that I can expose to the sandbox menu. Let me know what you'd like to see added to the list and I'll look into it!
- Unlimited money
- Modding!
This is right now a very primitive idea that I had that I wanted to test out. It will be buggy beyond your wildest dreams but it is a beginning!- Right now you can add new or change the existing of
- Contracts
- Companies
- Expenses
- Resources
- Loans
- Renown levels
- Traits
- Properties
- Contracts
- Events are not moddable yet but I've already got a few theories on how to add them to the list.
- An actual workshop support will come later, perhaps in a couple of patches, when the system is running smooth
- This is a VERY primitive method right now. I will make it much more smooth as per your feedback and may even end up releasing a separate tool with a GUI
- Mods that use game.ini override the difficulty right now. If a mod is enabled that has its own game.ini, that means that your chosen difficulty will not matter.
- I will need A LOT of feedback on this. Will open up a separate sub-forum for it.
- There is a Mods folder under "\Steam\SteamApps\common\The Chemist\Chemist" , that's where the magic happens. I've written down some basic instructions there but it may take some time till I can ready up an actual documentation about how everything works so till then feel free to ask me all your questions on the modding discussions
- Technically, you have access to all the game content meaning that you should be able to rewrite it all and create a whole new setting
- Right now you can add new or change the existing of
- Minor additions
- 2560*1440 resolution support
- Some 10ish contracts
- 2560*1440 resolution support
- Bug fixes
- In the basement, between the table and the entrance there was a field where flasks were not being pickable and collision was bugged
- Some resources were missing descriptions
- A couple of contracts did not have a name
- The pouring indicator was not showing up for some people. I have no means of replicating this on my end so we'll have to see whether this fix actually fixes it
- Coffee machine sometimes had an indicator like a flask
- Some plastic bottles still made continous sound
- A couple of trash items were not being registered as trash
- In the basement, between the table and the entrance there was a field where flasks were not being pickable and collision was bugged
-end of changelog
There are some bugs that I couldn't fix for this patch, most of them reported by our humble community's beloved TōkËtin . He also had some great ideas such as a daily needs system (food, toilet, water etc.), text typing much like drawing on the whiteboard, toggle-able highlighting of flasks, usable microscobe and so on.
I am also aware and am noting down all your requests such as a storage system for flasks and usable water sink. I realize these (and a few more) features have been asked a lot but the thing is that I am one mediocre coder in over my head trying to tackle all this!
A few words on the sandbox mode
There's almost no limit to the parameters I can expose there from the rain frequency to the coffee MLs. I'll sticky a post for this where you can make requests on what I should be adding to the list.
A few words on modding
Wow!
Sandbox Patch News
The reason is that I also want to include the recently reported bug fixes, minor additions and a few new contracts&events to make this one big patch instead of rolling out 2 patches in succession.
See ya tomorrow!
Patch Release 0.1.3 & Hotfix 0.1.31
This update adds some ~50 contracts, mostly to the early game since the contracts are too repetetive for our taste on early levels, all with their relevant outcomes accommodating your odd combinations and desire of adding aphrodisiac to just about anything.
The update was actually live earlier but I couldn't get to post an accouncement for it because immediately after we noticed a bug and I had to work on a fix.
The accompanying hotfix also includes a fix where the in-progress illegal contract outcomes would trigger out of nowhere.
That all we can do?
This update is nowhere near the size we wanted it to be and the reason is because we are reworking our event-writing system in a way that it will allow future modding support. This was not planned but as I was working on the sandbox mode I had to tweak the system to allow for the changing of certain parameters and I figured I might as well give it some time to make modding easier in the future.
Speaking of the sandbox mode, it's coming along great! We will keep true to our deadline of 13/12/2017, and it might even be ready beforehand.
New Faction!
With this update I had to disable the story progression events (the mystery faction) due to the reworked event system. However, to make up for this, we are introducing a second faction to the story! This is a surprise addition on top of our regular schedule so we can't pinpoint an exact deadline for it but expect to meet the Helios Genotech sometime during this week!
And lastly, apologies where they're due
I also haven't had much time to be active on the forums this past week due to the unexpected work on our event system and couldn't respond to some of your carefully written feedbacks. Now that I'm back on track with our schedule I'll be back to bugging you all with feedback requests and ideas.
Hotfix 0.1.2 and Future Plans&Deadlines
This hotfix should address most of the issues that were reported after the 0.1.1 version. It also includes a couple of requested changes.
Good news is that the 0.1.1 version did not break anything too big (which was probable given how extensive it was) which means that I can get to work on the sandbox mode. ETA is 3 weeks (13/12/2017) but as usual I'll try to get an early build ready on the beta branch sooner.
As work carries on on the sandbox mode, we'll also be rolling out content updates consisting of new contracts, resources and contract outcome events. The first of such an update will be live on 1/12/2017 so ETA is 9 days. We'll try to roll out these content updates once every two weeks regardless of what other gameplay patch is being worked on. I feel that it is important to announce these deadlines and to respect them strictly so you all know when and what to expect.
Naturally, none of this affects the hotfixes - I'll be rolling them out as fast as possible whenever an important bug is reported or an important request has been made. There may also be occasional surprise patches introducing some random thing that we may or may not have accounced (like the no-gravity cheat) just to keep things interesting. All in all, a very fun and dynamic early access journey awaits us!
Happy brewing!
Hotfix 0.1.2
Changelog
Patch Release 0.1.1 (No Gravity Cheat!)
This patch includes fixes for all the bugs that have been reported so far as well as all the changes and additions that were requested. Thank you all once again for all your feedback, bug reports and ideas. Been one tiresome journey since our launch, sleep has been a rare commodity but it is all worth it to see people playing some The Chemist and enjoying themselves at the end of the day!
Let's get to it:
Changelog
- Bug Fixes:
- Changing resolution messes up mouse detection.
- After changing resolution, the "Keep" button does not actually save the resolution.
- Invert Mouse option was interting both X and Y axes.
- Musics get mixed up when game is saved&loaded with the lights closed.
- Packaged boxes would sometimes noclip through walls.
- Postbox starts to randomly eat up boxes and the corresponding contract goes to limbo.
- Rain particles tend to ignore the roof.
- If an event procs while pouring a flask, it keeps pouring afterwards. It'll now stop pouring once event screen is gone.
- Staircase collision is messy, makes for a jumpy ride.
- Trash throws your character up in the air.
- Trash container decides not to work after loading a game.
- White board becomes non-writeable after loading a game.
- Loading game refills stamina.
- Can quickload even without any quicksave resulting in a faulty game being loaded.
- Mixing machine ending beep was not controlled by any volume modifiers.
- Changing resolution messes up mouse detection.
- Changes:
- Percentage text font size increased on monitors. Should help players with vision problems.
- Liquid flow speed while pouring is lowered. Should allow for more precision mixing.
- Resource colors are now fixed.
- Rain volume is lowered.
- Rain chance is lowered.
- Basement shady guy door knocking duration increased.
- Percentage text font size increased on monitors. Should help players with vision problems.
- Additions:
- Cleaning service.
This will feel quite overpriced initially, that is on purpose since otherwise you would easily spam it lategame. Will tie it to prestige with the next patch. - An actual crosshair.
- Changing the color of the crosshair from the game options.
- Invert mouse X as a separate option.
- Cleaning service.
Bonus: Alright alright, boring stuff is over. Type "bedsareburning_1" in the search bar of the resource monitor and go crazy. Be sure to save your game before!
bedsareburning_0 turns it off.
I will be keeping the previous version in the beta branch in case this somehow breaks the game for someone.
And lastly, allow me to quote myself:
Also, and I hate to be asking this, but we would really appreciate it if you could drop us a review in case you haven't already done so. The game still appears as "not rated" due to not having enough reviews and it'd be wonderous to get a few more reviews to be given an overall score - would help us a great deal : )
My apologies for writing this a second time - this is the last!
Now get back to mixing aphrodisiac into people's mold removers ;)