Potion Craft: Alchemist Simulator News

In our previous devlog we told you how bellows animation was created, but there was another important aspect we needed to think over in order to make the usage of bellows really responsive, and that was the fire under the cauldron.



When the coals are heated they first turn hot and red, then begin to spark and glow.



Each coal can be animated separately as we wanted to imitate the response to a current of air from the bellows. If you never noticed it, please, take a closer look: they got hot from left to right!



Before settling on the current glow appearance, we tried other visuals, but they fit poorly with the game style and drew too much attention.



To gaze at fast intertwining spark tracers might be the most absorbing aspect of looking at fire. We wanted to catch this feeling with our sparks, but it was not so easy to find the right approach when it came time to animate it.





Finally, we created 5 spark trajectories for each of the three levels of coal heat intensity. Additionally, the pivot point and the angle of each spark is randomized, which makes each whirl of sparks unique.







[h2]Stay tuned[/h2]

While it is not easy to take your eyes off the fire, do not forget to grind, stir, brew and also follow our Steam Page and make sure to join our Discord, so you don't miss other upcoming devlogs!

It's sometimes tricky to create a smooth animation, but as smooth animations are totally our thing, we're ready to put in as much effort as it takes to create something truly magical (pun intended). To animate the bellows was one of such cases.

Bellows is one of the key laboratory gear items: you just can't create a potion without heating some coals with them, that's why we put so much focus and effort into them so it would be nice and handy to use.





We always aspire to make smooth animations. With the bellows, it was important to come out with a way to animate them so that with any speed of compression it looked good. At first, we tried to draw frame by frame, but this appeared too visually jarring and intense.



We increased the number of frames up to 65, but that didn't help either – the tremor was still too visible.



Almost all art in Potion Craft is executed in raster, but this time it seemed that just wouldn’t cut it, so we made the left bellows edge a vector line and animated it.



All that was left to do was to apply some filters to make it look rougher and voilà! The case was solved!



To achieve desired smoothness we rendered this animation in 130 frames with the angle changing for 0,16° per frame. Now next time you are firing up your coals you will know the story behind all the trial, error, and subsequent visual tricks used to create such a simple looking and smooth animation!



We'll also tell about sparks in some of the subsequent devlogs, so
[h2]Stay tuned[/h2]

Follow our Steam Page and make sure to join our Discord so you don't miss other upcoming devlogs!

All potion-making starts with a cauldron, a pestle and a mortar, the art of Potion Craft follows suit. And here's one of the first images created in the process of the game’s development (it's almost two years old already!):



We had been searching for the right visual style for the game on the main gear: an overall look and feel as well as smaller details such as paper roughness and rendering of shadows.





Sometimes you have to concoct the most strange and absurd variants to figure out the right way.





While searching for the bellows shape, we had to consider how historically accurate it is, how we are going to animate it, and how convenient it is to use it. The handles, for example, had to be quite large so the player could easily catch them in the heat of the Magnum opus.



Before we decided to use the ladle as a potion base container, we had been experimenting with a jar, but it proved to be not as practical as we wanted it to be, though you can still check out some tests we've made.





As you can see, we tried out quite an array of visuals before coming up with one you can see in the game now. There was still the challenge to animate the liquid pouring from it, but this is a story for another devlog.



And some old spoon visuals as a bonus (find the right one!).



[h2]Stay tuned[/h2]

Follow our Steam Page and make sure to join our Discord so you don't miss other upcoming devlogs!

Currently Potion Craft features 23 different potion effects. And since it's possible for players to put more than just one effect into a single bottle, we had to come up with something that allows us to control how different effects interact with each other when you create another wombo-combo potion.

[h2]Table of compatibility[/h2]



As both names imply, it's a Google Sheets table which is used for reviewing and adjusting the effects compatibility. When a change is made, the contents of the table are pasted in a TXT file within the game project for the new configuration to take effect (no pun intended).

On game start the TXT file is parsed for effects names and 0 and 1:

• 1 means the effect has synergy with the other and mixing them both can make the potion somewhat better.
  
• 0 means that an effect is incompatible with the other, and will weaken should it be mixed with the latter.
  

Here you can see how all battle/damaging effects are perfectly compatible, except for fire and frost:



Also, all damaging effects are totally incompatible with recovery effects:



So making some, say, "Sneaky Healing But Actually Poisonous Potion" will require a combo of at least 1 Healing and 2 Poisoning effects to make it work. Any less Poisoning will leave you with a bottle full of useless slipslop and disappointment.

It's worth mentioning that effect compatibility is not always symmetrical. For instance, if a customer demands a Fire potion, any combination of Fire and Light effects will suffice:



On the other hand, if it's a Light potion that is required, adding too much Fire to the potion won't make your guest happy at all:



We tried to make our effect compatibility follow a specific logic and common sense (hopefully), and while the current balance seems legit, we may need to re-adjust and tweak some things in the future.

[h2]Stay tuned[/h2]

Follow our Steam Page and make sure to join our Discord so you don't miss other upcoming devlogs!

It’s about time we talk about the shop's reputation, one of the important mechanics in Potion Craft.



[h2]What is reputation?[/h2]

You’ve probably noticed this meter in the top part of your inventory:



This is your shop's reputation meter. It basically shows how much love (or hate) you get from your fellow townsfolk. The higher the reputation, the better: your potion's base price goes up, customers are more patient and willing to haggle with you. Should your reputation go down too much, you'll start gradually losing said benefits. Moreover, if your reputation hits 0 by the end of the day, it's game over, no more customers or traders for you!

So, how do you build up your shop's reputation? By completing orders, of course! But be careful: not all visitors intend to use your potions for good. And if someone uses your "rat poison" to get rid of their husband or wife, the townspeople will surely find out who helped them (spoiler: the only alchemist in the town), and you can bet they won't like it.

Okay, that's the basics. Let's get to the good part!

[h2]3 types of quests[/h2]

There are currently 3 types of quests in game: good, bad and neutral.

[h3]Good quests[/h3]

Let's have a look into how a good quest is set up.



This is the quest editor. You can see the following options available for adjustment:

Desirable Effects determines what kind of potion an NPC with this quest will be willing to buy. In some cases it may be more than 1 suitable effect for the same quest.

Potion Cost Multiplier determines how much gold an NPC with this quest will pay you. 1 means a standard, normal price. The Cost Multiplier is set to 1 for mostly all the good quests in the game.

Reputation Reward Tier N, where N is potion's tier (quality). Depending on how strong the desired effect in your potion is, the reputation reward may vary. For good quests the reputation reward is usually equal to the potion's tier.

Reputation Reward Kick basically means the amount of reputation penalty incurred when refusing to fulfill a quest. When you reject a person with a good quest, your reputation decreases by a certain amount. For good quests the penalty is usually set to -3.

[h3]Bad quests[/h3]



In bad quests reputation reward and penalty are reversed. You lose reputation by completing the quest and gain it by rejecting an NPC with malicious intent. We decided to make the reputation loss from bad quests substantially higher, so the penalty for working with baddies varies from -10 to -30. But, we also set the potion cost multiplier to a whopping 3 to make such deals more tempting to accept (and we feel like it works just fine).

[h3]Neutral quests[/h3]



Neutral quests are just what the name implies: they offer no reputation reward or penalty, so the player is free to handle them as they please. But neutral quests still feature a doubled cost multiplier, so it's still worth the squeeze. Currently, there are only a few NPC with neutral quests. One of them is The Witch.

[h2]How to keep your reputation high[/h2]

To make sure your shop's reputation does not drop to zero, please follow these easy tips:

Read the quests carefully! Don't just skim the text for potion effects needed by the customer. Especially if they ask for some poison.

Always sell your strongest potions! The stronger the potion you sell is, the more reputation you gain. You can worry about if they can handle your potions later *wink*.

If you are running low on gold and have some reputation to spare, it's okay to make a shady deal or two... Just remember to sell a potion of the highest tier possible to make it worth it!

[h2]Stay tuned[/h2]

Follow our Steam Page and make sure to join our Discord so you don't miss other upcoming devlogs!