BattleJuice Alchemist News

Hey everyone,

recently I decided that I could no longer make this a future-me problem: some playtesters found camera movement not perfect in places. You could freely move the camera in zoomed-in third person mode, but not in top down view. Implementing free camera movement is a bigger can of worms than one would expect, but your wish is my command.



So why is this so difficult? Here is the deal: BattleJuice Alchemist now is a game where you can play in top down perspective and in third person, move by clicking and by WASD input and switch between all four combinations seamlessly. In top down mode you expect the character to move "down" when you press down. But what actually is "down"? If you rotate the camera in top down mode, "down" is not aligned with south anymore. You expect to move in reference to your camera rotation. In third person on the other hand, you maybe do not want your character to move towards the camera when you press down. Should the character walk backwards? Or should the camera pan around the character until it is behind the character again?
One person might expect that the left and right buttons in third person perspective rotate the camera, another wants them to rotate the character and a third person might want them to move the character. You want keybindings and UI buttons to turn the camera in 45 degree steps, but also want to have complete freedom to look with the mouse. How do you do that when you also walk with the mouse? All these things and quite a lot more had to be taken into consideration and new control settings and bindings hat to be implemented.

To make all of that camera movement and input comfortable to use, I had to tie in a second feature: A minimap and compass.



The minimap provided its own challenges, which were mainly performance related, but I won't bore you with that. For now, I am happy that only a bit of testing and polishing has to be done and the new features will be ready to be rolled out within the next patch.

Thank you for sticking with me and have a great weekend!

Alain

Hey everyone,

I crunched like crazy for the last few days, because I did not want to do a simple devlog this Friday. I also wanted to release the features I have worked on, so players can check them out right away in the Steam Playtest. I made it and I think it was worth it. So everything I talk about today can be explored by all you fine people right away.

Those of you following along might know that I have been implementing environmental effects lately. The first one allows you to freeze rivers and lakes, now you can light things on fire. This one turned out really cool in my opinion, because so many systems interact here: Fire has a chance to propagate, which is connected to the weather system. It is less likely for fire to spread if it is raining.



Trees burn down bit by bit. The first time you set them on fire their leaves burn away, then the upper part and so on until only the roots are left. Everytime a part burns, ash and wood materials spawn.



The spiky circles as seen in the image above indicate where fire causes damage to you and enemies. So you can utilize burning objects by kiting enemies into them.

The game world feels so much more alive now that the environmental effects are getting done one by one and I can't wait to continue working on the "arcane" environmental effect.

Let me know what you think or if you have questions join our Discord and have a great weekend!

Alain

Hey there!

I am a firm believer that getting feedback from you, the players, is the key to make a fun game. That's why I decided not to wait until all environmental effects are implemented before pushing an update. So here we go: 0.19402 brings you the ability to freeze any environment that contains a body of water. Just use a Juicified Freeze flask or wait for your icy companion Plato to do it for you.



I already talked about this mechanic in the last devlog in detail. Now you can freeze and slide around to your heart's content in the Steam playtest version.

Beside that, cooldowns of the Frog Hop, Smoke and Freeze flask were reduced, items were tweaked and bugs were fixed.

If you are interested in more details, you can find the full patch notes on our Discord server or in the usual text file within your installation folder.

Thank you for reading and I'm looking forward to hear what you think!

Alain

Hey everyone,

to be honest, I did not have the greatest week after catching covid. I had to lay low for a couple of days but now I am back at my computer where I belong.

What I managed to work on is making you a more powerful alchemist. Juice is not a tough person splitting their foes' heads with a Claymore. But you are supposed to have a strong feeling of agency nevertheless. I want your actions to have an impact on the world that surrounds you, which is why I started implementing environmental effects. If you use a damage type in an environment receptive to it, something big happens.



The first effect I want to share with you is the freeze effect. If you use a Juicified Freeze flask in any tile that has a body of water in it, that area freezes. This does not slow Juice down, but lets the player move faster by sliding over the ice. Furthermore, ice crystals are spawned. You can utilize these crystals by pushing or pulling your enemies into them for some ouch.

Last but not least you can use the freeze effect to traverse bigger bodies of water quickly: Just freeze the surface and walk over it instead of swimming.



Environmental effects will be there right when you start the game. They are not some kind of ultimate power and can even be triggered by enemies or your companion Plato. I have just started on the fire environmental effect and am very excited to see if it turns out as fun as the ice effect.

Thank you for reading and have a great weekend!


Alain

Hey there!

Those of you following the BattleJuice Alchemist devlogs might have heard me talking about this for quite some time. Now it is finally here, our new beginning for the game, the big new tutorial level, "The Mountain Pass". We got some great internal feedback and now want to share it with the alpha playtesters on Steam. So let's dive into the content of the update.



[h3]General Notes[/h3]
Update 0.19202 includes all changes from 0.18604 and above. Your settings will be reset upon updating to this version, but you can still play your old characters as always. To experience the new start of the game in the intended way, creating a new character might be a good choice though. By the way, we overhauled the character creation options as well, so you can create characters now that look a bit less weird. But just a bit.


[h3]Content[/h3]
We usually split these patch notes into various categories like mechanics / items / enemies and so on. This time, let us just say we completely overhauled the start of the game. The experience is quite a new one, you get the chance to easily understand what the game and its quirky mechanics are all about. You get to experiment with various flasks from the beginning on, try the different types of combat and solve riddles before you start the actual story of the game.



After completing the new tutorial level you will continue your journey to play the first quests in Caribou Creek.

Those of you who are interested in more details can read the full patch notes on our Discord server or in the usual text file within your installation folder.

If you want to support us, please provide us feedback on Discord or anywhere else.

Have a great rest of the week and I hope you enjoy the new level!

Alain