Potion Craft: Alchemist Simulator News

New ingredients, game mechanics and alchemical tricks are important, but even more important are those for whom we brew our potions – your customers! That’s why we strive to keep creating new NPCs to make the Potion Craft world rich with characters and their stories.



If the Monster Hunter looks a bit familiar to you, rest assured it is a complete coincidence! When he was only a sketch, our white haired friend originally wanted to wear two swords. But in the end he came to his senses and now wears only one.



An interesting tidbit, each time a new NPC is created we have to divide their hair into layers so it will lie correctly against clothes and armor without clipping.



Some of you may remember the Master Alchemist from the very first playtest. Now he’s back and he will finally tell you how to manipulate the Alchemy Machine!



Who can guess what is going on inside the head of the Dwarf Miner when his face is reflecting such a range of emotions?



Whatever he was thinking about, we’ve asked him to keep his pickaxe put away just in case, it's not safe to swing sharp metal objects in such a crowded shop! He does not approve.



But it’s rogues who might really pose danger! While the night is dark and full of terrors, our Rogues’ appearance is full of variations.



They say any game is better if there’s a fishing mini-game in it. We don’t have such a game, but we do have a fisherman!



[h2]Stay tuned[/h2]

Tell us in the comments what new NPCs you’d like to see in the game! Follow our Steam Page and make sure to join our Discord, so you don't miss any upcoming devlogs!

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!