Potion Craft: Alchemist Simulator News

If you’ve ever sold a potion to a guy who’s kind of shady, but is willing to pay a lot... Or if you purchased a bunch of ingredients from a merchant leaving them with empty stock, you may have noticed that not only coins but gems and goblets also appear on the scales.



To make this system work we have created 77 sprites: 69 coins, 6 gems and 2 goblets plus 65 more sprites for cases when money shares a scale with a sack.



There is a lot of work put into each object in the game and sometimes we have to go through many variants before finding the one which would look and work just right. So here is an exclusive look at some of the original visuals created for the scales that didn’t make the final cut.



It's always sunny in a rich man's world, and it's always cool to follow our Steam Page so you can stay up to date on all the latest Potion Craft news and devlog posts!

Since new and unique characters enter the player's shop every day, we have created a system for convenient and fast generation of them.



In-game characters come to the player's shop every day to purchase another potion. We experiment a lot with the visual part of the game while working on the project. To make it easer and faster we have written a complex but flexible system for choosing the appearance of shop clients.



NPC is a set of different elements of appearance – body, hairstyle, eyes, face, hat, earrings, scars, tattoos and other. As of today NPC can be a container for many elements of appearance from 15 categories at the same time. In addition, NPC object itself contains more than a hundred graphic layers to fit these elements.



We have created a special tool to make the addition of new unique characters and their appearance elements as simple and convenient as possible. This tool allows us to completely automate the process of changing elements of the characters' appearance – we just need to name appearance sprites correctly and put them into special folders. NPC generator will create the necessary files and organize them into categories.

Based on the created basic characters, we can create unique in-game characters using the NPC browser.



Almost every character in the demo is one or another modification of one of just three basic characters – warrior, female citizen and male citizen. The NPC browser allows us to customize each variation to the smallest detail – choosing the skin tone, clothing form and colors, hairstyle, eyes, face shape and other elements of appearance.
Special attention is paid to accessories and body features – scars, tattoos, necklaces, earrings, armbands, chest medallions, shields, etc.

NPC generator allows us to create unique NPC variations quickly and conviniently. We spend time and energy on drawing parts of the characters' appearance only, which can be put together as a constructor details.

We will make more Devlog posts in the future, so make sure to follow our Steam Page (you will get notification in Steam when we make a new Devlog post).

This week a familiar face will hold the tools to help you with your next challenge, just be sure not to sample too much of your own potion!

[h2]This Week’s Challenge: Mushroomer's Secret Recipe *wink*[/h2]
Use only mushrooms (anything that Mushroomer sells goes). Your potion must contain the Hallucination effect and at least one other effect. Your combination of effects, name, and description of the potion must make sense. Any order of effects is allowed, and each Alchemist may submit unlimited challenge entries!

[h2]Join our Discord to participate[/h2]

Join our Discord to participate in the challenge and read more about the rules (in #weekly-challenges channel)!
Work together to reach community goals and unlock emojis for the whole Discord server.
The most interesting/creative recipe will be highlighted on our social media next week along with the new challenge!

[h2]Last challenge highlight[/h2]
This week we wanted to highlight a submission by extranji for the previous “Potion of Poetry” challenge.

Salutations and good morrow to thee!
A new challenge has emerged
Your next feat is a Potion of Poetry
You must describe your creation in verse

Take care that in your ingredients
Or perhaps effects all rhyme
Every challenger may submit their brews
An unlimited number of times

[h2]This Week’s Challenge: Potion of Poetry[/h2]
Make a potion with the description in verse. You must include the ingredients used or potion effects in your rhyme. Including your full recipe in verse is a good idea as well.
Each alchemist may submit unlimited times!

[h2]Join our Discord to participate[/h2]

Join our Discord to participate in the challenge and read more about the rules (in #weekly-challenges channel)!
Work together to reach community goals and unlock emojis for the whole Discord server.
The most interesting/creative recipe will be highlighted on our social media next week along with the new challenge!

[h2]Last challenge highlight[/h2]
This week we wanted to highlight a submission by Cheese Wizard for last week's “Flying Zombies, what could go wrong?” challenge.

Our team is working on lots of new features for Potion Craft. One of those features is Salts. Feature is still in development, but we can show you our progress so far.



Salt is a new ingredient type. Salts are different from herbs, mushrooms and other common ingredients: you don't have to add the full stack of ingredients into the cauldron. Sometimes it will be enough to add just one pinch.

[h2]Rotation salts[/h2]



There will be different types of salt, but first and the most common ones will be Sun Salt and Moon Salt (not to be confused with Moon Sugar!).

• Sun Salt will rotate potion on the map clockwise
  
• Moon Salt will rotate potion on the map counterclock-wise
  

[h2]Erasing and other salts[/h2]



There will be other salts. For example salt that will erase path on the map. We will come up with other ideas of salt with time, but if you have any suggestions, feel free to share it with us in the comments or in our Discord.

We will make more Devlog posts in the future, so make sure to follow our Steam Page (you will get notification in Steam when we make a new Devlog post).