BattleJuice Alchemist News

Hey everyone,

in the last devlog I already talked in depth about the upcoming UI overhaul. It is now completed and live on the public branch of the alpha playtest. So you might have already seen bits of the new UI and I'll only show you the local map here (because working on it is an evergreen for me) as well as the overhauled HUD tooltips:





I also took a close look at the combat behavior of our companion Plato. His freeze attack was quite unpredictable, which should now be fixed. Plato should now freeze your opponents like a champ. He is just such a good boy.



As always, there are a lot more minor changes. The full list of them can be found on our Discord as usual. I'm currently working on a quite big addition to the game that I will hopefully be able to talk about next time.

Cheers,

Alain

Hey everyone,

let's dive right into what I have been up to recently. Everything presented here will be within the next patch, which will be published in a couple of weeks. So, less talking, more moving images!

I overhauled the visual effect of interactive objects like the workbench when vision onto them is blocked. This (optional!) feature is not entirely new, but the old version did not support readability that much. Here is an example:



As you can see, the workbench (as well as the fire on the right) have a slight outline and transparent color when occluded. The same also goes for enemies.



The second and a lot more work-intensive task was working on the game's UI. When I initially designed it, I wanted it to be vivid and colorful. But it turned out that when everything is colorful, it is hard to see what is important. So I stripped away a lot of color and ironed out a new design guideline. So here is the new inventory as an example:



I could not bring myself strip away all the visual fluff, which is why there are still decorative elements, e.g. in the character sheet and quest log:



I would really appreciate some feedback on whether I should streamline these elements even more. I'm looking forward to hear your thoughts and hope you have a nice weekend!

Alain

Hey everyone,

this fine Friday I have a mixed bag of devlog-worthy goodies for you, so let's dive right into it.

I had to talk to a lot of people in the wake of Gamescom, which was fun, but also time-consuming. Afterwards I also got around to recording me playing BattleJuice Alchemist a bit. I skipped the tutorial level to showcase what the gameplay will actually be like. You can watch it over on Youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mz3gsKwSA0o

I actually enjoyed doing this quite a bit, maybe I can do it more often in the future.

The second video I want to share with you is an interview I gave for Fear Fest '22 this week, a games festival celebrating horror games of all sorts. Check it out if you really can't get enough of me rambling about BattleJuice Alchemist.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXLlxgroTpk

Last but definitely not least, I have some wonderful personal news: I'm a dad now! Two weeks ago our little son was born. He and his mom are well and we are simply over the moon.



That's all for now, enjoy your weekend everybody!

Alain

Hey everyone,

it was about time that I fired up Premiere Pro and made a new trailer. BattleJuice Alchemist has been overhauled on so many ends over the last months and so many things have been added that I almost felt bad not having that represented in a trailer. So without further ado, watch it on our Steam page:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1384060/BattleJuice_Alchemist/

Or in case you prefer all the 1440p glory watch it on YouTube:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

I hope you enjoy it and continue sticking with me over the course of development!

Alain

Hey everyone,

in the last devlog/preview post I already announced that I was working on a dash move. It is now done and you can try it out within the Steam alpha playtest! But this is not what this post here is mainly about. Today I want to give you some visual impressions of our creative process and ramble about Midjourney.

With the help of our art director and concept artist Felix I overhauled our starting town Caribou Creek. In times of AI generated imagery I have regularly seen the discussion come up, whether images from tools like Midjourney can replace a concept artist. Midjourney creates images that look a lot like concept art you see on ArtStation. Am I saying this is not concept art for a flaming octopus dagger?



In my opinion there is a common misconception of what concept artists do: create beautiful images. I'd say their job is to solve design problems. In deed, to communicate their solution they often create images. But if they can solve a design problem without creating a piece of visual art and simply explain to you on a call what the solution is, they perfectly accomplished their task.

So in this post I'd like to show you some concept art as a part of our production pipeline. It is not polished and would not be posted on ArtStation, but it did perfectly do the trick for us.

The first problem was that Caribou Creak missed a unique feeling. Felix decided that we needed crank up the occult vibe. It is a town rebuilt after an alchemical explosion. Not many people live there anymore, so it must be protected against the forces of evil by charms and straw guardians.





The second problem was that our alchemist's workshop, which is built into the former blacksmith's workshop, is the place the player spends most of the time and it was just not well thought out and "alchemical" enough, so Felix redesigned it.



Here is a montage of how things look after their implementation in game.

Charms:


Straw persons:


Alchemists workshop:


One of the reasons why I think Felix did an amazing job is that he took a close look at what assets we already had and he did his redesigns on the basis of that. He created designs that were tailor-made for our production. I am the only one making 3D models for the game at the moment and I could not spend weeks on this overhaul. At the stage where AI is right now, it can't take these production related circumstances into consideration.

I derailed these patch notes a bit, the full list of changes can be found on our Discord as always. I'd appreciate feedback and thoughts, especially thoughts on AI generated art, because I've been thinking about that a lot lately.

Cheers,

Alain