Potion Craft: Alchemist Simulator News

Devlog #24. Garden 2.0: Planting & Replanting (Work-in-Progress)

As we continue to share with you new garden mechanics currently being developed, today we would like to tell you about planting and replanting plants. As renowned horticulturists of the past used to say, a game mechanic starts with an idea as a plant starts with a seed. Can you guess which Potion Craft plants these seeds represent?

Gardening is no less a creative process than alchemy, that is why we want to give players full creative freedom to place plants as their sense of beauty demands. The only thing is, be careful not to plant them too close together or the saplings will get lost in the grown bushes.

Grown plants can also be replanted or put back in the inventory if you wish to plant them later. The plant's growth phase will be saved in this case – you will not need to grow it from the sprout again.

The growth point of ligneous mushrooms is defined by two axes instead of one like with ground plants. Moreover, they can be placed in front or behind the tree, making it tricky to calculate proper planting positions. However, we are working hard to make this process as intuitive and responsible as possible.

We are excited for our hard work to bear fruit for you to enjoy in the future! There is still a lot of work ahead to improve the garden, but we will continue to share interesting insights with you in upcoming devlogs. Be sure to follow our Steam Page and join our Discord so you don't miss anything!
In the meantime, we would love to hear which plants you would like to grow in your enchanted garden.

Devlog #23. Garden 2.0: New Plants System (Work-in-Progress)

We know that garden upgrades are among the most anticipated mechanics for Potion Craft. Thus, we are opening a series of devlogs to share new features that are currently being developed for the garden, including new planting, upkeep, and harvesting systems.

Time is of the essence not only in game development but also in horticulture. Even if one is lucky to have a magical tree which makes everything grow faster in their backyard, nothing will sprout without a grain of patience, that is why we decided to add transitional growing phases for each plant.

But daily watering is also essential for growing plants, and the watering pot is just the right instrument for this!

Working on garden plants for different plant types, such as flowers, herbs, root vegetables, mushrooms and ligneous mushrooms requires a different approach. It is necessary to hold on to several principles while creating garden plants:

They should be recognizable and distinguishable from each other even in the earliest growing phases;
They should grow credibly, i.e. flower sprouts cannot have a bud in early phases, it needs to grow a bit first;
The size of the plants should not be too big or too small, so they would not take too much space or, vice versa, get lost among other plants;
And the most important one – the players should feel satisfaction while growing plants!

Sometimes it’s a real challenge to decipher how, say, a ligneous mushroom grows!

A sustainable gardener would never cut the plant to the ground when harvesting it, that is why it is important that harvested plants should look like they will soon re-grow again and yield even more. In order to meet the requirements of the new system we had to change the appearance of some plants compared to their current in-game visuals.

There is a lot of work ahead of us on updating and enhancing the garden mechanics, and we will share the sweetest fruits of this development in further devlogs, so stay tuned and follow our Steam Page and join our Discord so you don't miss other upcoming devlogs! Meanwhile, please share what garden improvements you would like to see in the game the most.

Devlog #22. Ingredients Generator and Editor

At the very beginning of the development process when the structure of game objects was still unstable, game mechanics, one way or another related to the ingredients, were being constantly updated: for example, the grinding physics system, throwing ingredients into the mortar and cauldron mechanic, etc. Due to such changes in various game systems, maintaining previously created ingredients, as well as adding new ones, would become a very time-consuming job.

Realizing all these potential problems, we decided to create an ingredient generation system that could, firstly, save us from routine and time-consuming tasks, and secondly, take care of setting up things that we might accidentally forget about.

The result of our work was an ingredient generator, in which to “assemble” the desired ingredient, you only need to specify a folder with its sprites and press a single button. The main condition for this tool to work is the correct namings for the sprites in the said folder.

The generator automatically sets up all icons and sprites of the ingredient and creates all objects that should be set up manually, such as ingredient properties, its path, garden plant, etc. All settings have default values, which are also set by the generator. All this saves hundreds of hours and allows us to focus on the most important and interesting settings.

This is what an ingredient settings looks like.

Here we can, for instance, adjust the color of the ingredient in ground state.

The color of the crushed ingredient in-game is slightly different from the color in the settings, so it's best to adjust it with the game running.

In the ingredient settings, we can also choose its type and make it either common or a teleportation one. The ingredient path itself is configured in a separate object.

An ingredient’s garden plant that grows in the Enchanted Garden is also a separate object. Only those plants that grow on the ground require a bit of adjustment. It’s needed to move the plant sprite so its underground part is below the red dot.

The red dot corresponds to the center of the spot where the plant grows from in the Enchanted Garden. On the screenshot below, you can see several plant growth spots and how they relate to the red dot in the plant object.

For each ingredient, it is necessary to set up a stack that appears when the player pulls an ingredient out of the inventory. By default, the generator creates a standard stack, which we then manually tune. And it's not as easy as it seems! It is essential to rearrange leaves, mushrooms and crystals so that they not only please the eye with their composition, but also fit into the mortar without any problems.

We also have the ground state browser. Here, the generator puts together all the sprites needed for the grinding animation of an ingredient. There is a separate sprite for each state. Each sprite has a collider to interact with the mortar, pestle, and walls of the alchemy shop. The setup of colliders is also automated: first they are generated by the Unity engine and then our generator simplifies them using the Visvalingam-Whyatt algorithm. In rare cases, colliders are adjusted manually on top of that.

This is how, for example, different ground states and colliders look for soft ingredients…

...and for crystals.

Now you know a little more about the ingredients in Potion Craft! Stay tuned and subscribe to news about the game on our Steam store page, and join our Discord so you don’t miss our new devlogs!

Devlog #21. Creating Alchemy Maps

Hello, Alchemists!

During your research and experiments in your laboratory, surely many of you’ve wondered: how exactly are alchemical maps created for various bases? In today's devlog, we'll show you exactly how!

But first, let's talk a little about the "Zone Drawer" - a custom tool that allows us to draw and erase the relief of the map, as if we used a brush. It makes working with maps faster and more convenient. Here are the settings for this tool:

The first setting allows us to select one of the zone types that will be drawn with a brush.

The second setting defines the current radius (size) of the brush, and the third one is the step for adjusting the brush radius when it is changed via hotkeys, so that we can adjust the brush size on the fly, like in the gif below.

Now that we’ve familiarised ourselves with the main tool used for creating alchemical maps, let's try to create a small custom map with it!

To begin with, we need to set the limits of the map by drawing some impassable walls.

Having decided on the size of the map, we can then place the desired potion effects on it.

Next, let's add some danger zones to the map and surround the effect icons with them.

After that, we pave a path to the effect icons by erasing some of the skulls.

Also, let's throw in some swamp zones for good measure.

Let's not forget about everyone's favourite whirlpools. For each whirlpool, a location where it teleports the potion indicator to should be set, as well as a dotted line that leads to that location and shows up after the first teleportation.

Alright, the main terrain is ready, all we need to do now is to adjust it a little bit, as well as fill the map up with experience books. And so, our custom map is ready!

That’s how it looks in-game.

Now you know how new maps are made for Potion Craft. We hope this entry was interesting. Stay tuned and follow our Steam Page. Also, make sure to join our Discord so you don't miss the next devlog!

Get 20% OFF Potion Craft!

Greetings Alchemists,

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