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[marcgfx]

Looks like you were well prepared for Gamescom and had quite some success. Love the flask idea!

[Alain]

Looks like you were well prepared for Gamescom and had quite some success. Love the flask idea!

Thank you! You are from Germany as well, right? Maybe we can meet next year!

[marcgfx]

Nope, Switzerland. I've been to Gamescom myself once, in the Indie Arena Booth. It was really tiring (on my own), but I did not feel like I managed to make the most of it. I had a pretty cool setup as an Arcade-Machine. But the screen was not that big and I was used to showing Devader on a really large screen for multi-player. Just didn't really work that well + I'm just not good at gathering emails and wishlists (asking likely helps).

It was an interesting experience, but I'm not so sure I would do it again. Maybe as a guest or to help out at another booth.

[vdapps]

Congrats Alain for Gamescom event, very cool! And pop-up book is awesome, very original idea. Flasks are also cool. Hard to imagine better marketing, this is pro work.

[Alain]

Nope, Switzerland. I've been to Gamescom myself once, in the Indie Arena Booth. It was really tiring (on my own), but I did not feel like I managed to make the most of it. I had a pretty cool setup as an Arcade-Machine. But the screen was not that big and I was used to showing Devader on a really large screen for multi-player. Just didn't really work that well + I'm just not good at gathering emails and wishlists (asking likely helps).

It was an interesting experience, but I'm not so sure I would do it again. Maybe as a guest or to help out at another booth.

Thanks for sharing your experience. I also find it very hard to ask people to wishlist and the like. The booth you came up with sounds pretty cool and creative despite the small screen.

Congrats Alain for Gamescom event, very cool! And pop-up book is awesome, very original idea. Flasks are also cool. Hard to imagine better marketing, this is pro work.

Thanks for the kind words as always vdapps!

[Alain]

BATTLEJUICE ALCHEMIST DEVLOG

New Dev Stream

Hey everyone!

I hope you're all doing well and looking forward to a well-deserved weekend. After fitting Gamescom into our milestone schedule, we've been quite busy catching up. But don't worry, we're doing fine, and production is right on track.

For those of you who follow us on social media or visited us at Gamescom, you may have seen what we've been working on recently, particularly a new quest location in the game. I thought it was a great opportunity to record a new developer stream, take a stroll around, and chat a bit about exploration, building your tower, and, of course, the new town:

I actually enjoy making these kinds of streams/videos and would love to do them more frequently. However, as you can imagine, finding the time isn't always easy.

I hope you enjoyed watching, and as always, I'd love to hear your thoughts and answer any questions you may have!

Wishing you all a fantastic weekend,

Alain

[Ramos]

Good progress on the game and you seem to be getting better at YouTube.

It's nice to see how your game evolves, you seem to have a very steady development.

 

[Alain]

Good progress on the game and you seem to be getting better at YouTube.

It's nice to see how your game evolves, you seem to have a very steady development.

Thanks Ramos! I actually enjoy the whole talking and playing thing quite a bit


We also made our official platform announcement today...

BattleJuice Alchemist will be coming to all platforms: PC, Playstation, Xbox and Switch!!!

[Ramos]

The PS port is hard to achieve so big Congratulations on this!

If you like to play on youtube maybe we can send you press kit from our games in the future 

 

[Alain]

The PS port is hard to achieve so big Congratulations on this!

Thank you

If you like to play on youtube maybe we can send you press kit from our games in the future 

Sounds like a plan! I will become the next Splattercat (just with a German accent), and just promote games from the TIGForums

[vdapps]

Congrats @Alain! Big news indeed, releasing on all major platforms.

I was working with PS devkits, but some 15+ years ago ( PS2 times oh geez ), devkit weighted like 20 kilo :D

Wish you consoles submission process to be nice and smooth!

[marcgfx]

Sounds like a plan! I will become the next Splattercat (just with a German accent), and just promote games from the TIGForums

Sign me up 
Good job on presenting BJ Alchemist! ....interesting acronym.

Is it hard to port to consoles, or does Unity do most of the technical work?

[Alain]

Congrats @Alain! Big news indeed, releasing on all major platforms.

I was working with PS devkits, but some 15+ years ago ( PS2 times oh geez ), devkit weighted like 20 kilo :D

Wish you consoles submission process to be nice and smooth!

Thank you! Hahaha, the good old times when all tech was insanely big and heavy

Good job on presenting BJ Alchemist! ....interesting acronym.

Is it hard to port to consoles, or does Unity do most of the technical work?

BJ Alchemist is interesting indeed

I'm using Unreal and it is doing a lot for you. In my case, our publisher will do the porting work. I expect to be involved, but they will do the heavy lifting.

[Alain]

BATTLEJUICE ALCHEMIST DEVLOG

So beautiful... what's the catch?

Hey folks!

Welcome back to another develog! This time we delve into the realm of particle systems. Understanding them is crucial for enhancing our hyper-stylized, low-poly look while maintaining good performance.

For those non-developers among you, a particle system is a simulated group of tiny, individual objects known as particles. These particles can represent various elements such as fire, smoke, sparks, you name it. Particles are lightweight and dynamic and using them we can add a lot of vividness to our game.

But we have to be cautious... as we continue our journey, we encounter a formidable adversary: overdraw. It transpires when transparent objects stack atop each other, causing rendering complexity to increase. The cost of rendering transparency intensifies with each overlapping layer, jeopardizing our game's performance. Luckily, Unreal Engine bestows upon us a nice tool: Shader Complexity mode.

Green signifies efficiency, whereas red warns of rendering extravagance. By looking at Complexity mode, we can pinpoint areas where overdraw festers, allowing us to optimize our particle systems at the critical points. Our low-poly, hyper-stylized art style grants us a boon, sparing us from the complexities of naturalistic rendering. Yet, transparency, especially lit transparency, can become a problem, if we are not careful.

Let me end with two Unreal specific best practices that I found useful regarding the performance of particle systems:

1. I always manually set every particle system to "Use Fixed Relative Bounding Box" to keep e.g. fast, far-travelling sparks under control.

2. I avoid using the light module in emitters. They are tempting but hit performance pretty hard in my experience.

That's all for today, thanks for reading! Until next time, happy playing / designing / coding

Alain

[Alain]

BATTLEJUICE ALCHEMIST DEVLOG

Climbing Peaks and Diving Deep

Hey folks,

okay, you caught me. There was a devlog on verticality before this one, but I couldn't squeeze in everything I wanted to share. So, I'll touch on the topic again. I'm sure it will be worth your time

I always wanted to have vertical diversity, such as mountains, because I think having them adds a sense of grandeur to the game world. And I wanted players to be able to climb them and not just look at them from a distance.

So, we have these high places, but what about the low ones? It is part of our design philosophy not to block off areas from players that they feel they should be able to traverse. Remember those platformers from our childhood where the hero dies as soon as his feet touch the water? These games are cool in their own way, but they can break your immersion at these points. That's why we decided to let players swim and even dive.

This, in combination with our Freeze Flasks, adds another aspect to vertical landscape diversity. Players can interact with verticality in a very direct way: they can manipulate it! In the following GIF, you can see me freeze a water surface.

This not only separates me from the creatures that are underwater but also allows me to move faster than swimming. I just have to dodge those ice crystals and accommodate for my slippery feet. Now it feels like playing one of these platformers from our childhood again

I have not really seen this way of working with verticality in many other games, and I think it is a concept worth exploring more. I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.

Have a great rest of the week!

Alain

[vdapps]

Hi @Alain,

that's cool! This post touched me and brought me memories. With climbing I immediatelly recall World of Warcraft, Oblivion and mainly Skyrim where I wanted always to climb as high as possible to every even local mountain. I think this add a lot to the game and your animation from the top of the mountain is really new refreshing perspective in which I can see the game.

And diving bring me World of Warcraft memories where whole new world was below the water surface and it greatly deepened immersion. Freezing the water surface is already icing on the cake.

And in order to also suggest something instead of just praising, I would say, this swimming looks clunky. I guess animation will be enhanced yet? (one part of underwater experience in WoW was this graceful swimming animation).

[Ramos]

Well, I think it is safe to say your game quality starts to go in AA direction.

This is good evolution

 

[marcgfx]

I like the idea of adding some height. But it looks like you are switching to a different perspective for this to be effective? How does verticality work with the normal "isometric" view?

Can I also separate myself from the creatures at the top and get stuck under the ice?
I'm not a big fan of the ice-sliding, maybe you need to have some ice-skates for the alchemist. Makes him slower on normal ground but elegant on ice, something like that. Making it worth while ice-bombing everything all the time.

[Alain]

Hi @Alain,

that's cool! This post touched me and brought me memories. With climbing I immediatelly recall World of Warcraft, Oblivion and mainly Skyrim where I wanted always to climb as high as possible to every even local mountain. I think this add a lot to the game and your animation from the top of the mountain is really new refreshing perspective in which I can see the game.

And diving bring me World of Warcraft memories where whole new world was below the water surface and it greatly deepened immersion. Freezing the water surface is already icing on the cake.

And in order to also suggest something instead of just praising, I would say, this swimming looks clunky. I guess animation will be enhanced yet? (one part of underwater experience in WoW was this graceful swimming animation).

So cool to hear that seeing the gifs brought back some good memories for you. In BattleJuice Alchemist, it is quite easy to get on top of a mountain and you may not get the satisfaction that you get in Skyrim or Wow when reaching a high place after a difficult journey up. But getting a better view over the world is a little reward, I hope

Thank you for your honesty regarding the animations. Clunky old school animations are what I tell myself I am going for, but you are not the first one to mention the propeller-like swimming animations. So I'll put it on the to-do list. I animated it very quickly many years back, maybe the time for an overhaul has come

Well, I think it is safe to say your game quality starts to go in AA direction.

This is good evolution

 

Thank you so much! I'd say we are still quite far away from AA, but I also always say, let's aim for iii (triple-i, i for indie

I like the idea of adding some height. But it looks like you are switching to a different perspective for this to be effective? How does verticality work with the normal "isometric" view?

Can I also separate myself from the creatures at the top and get stuck under the ice?
I'm not a big fan of the ice-sliding, maybe you need to have some ice-skates for the alchemist. Makes him slower on normal ground but elegant on ice, something like that. Making it worth while ice-bombing everything all the time.

You are right, when you want to make use of the fact that you are on a mountain to get a better view, you have to zoom into 3rd person mode. In top-down perspective, it does not make too much of a difference.

It is funny you mention the ice-sliding: we actually have that. When on an ice surface, you are not slower, but a bit faster. The downside is, that it is difficult to stop, because you keep sliding into the direction you last moved.

[marcgfx]

It is funny you mention the ice-sliding: we actually have that. When on an ice surface, you are not slower, but a bit faster. The downside is, that it is difficult to stop, because you keep sliding into the direction you last moved.

I remembered you describing how it works + I think I saw it in the video? I didnt like the endless sliding, thats why I suggested a more elegant way to move on ice