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[Alain]

BATTLEJUICE ALCHEMIST DEVLOG:

Town Overhaul & Thoughts on AI Concept Art

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 (patch 0.20701)! 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

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.

Speaking as someone with an arts degree, and probably also speaking for everyone else with an arts degree: hear hear!

All the articles I've seen on programmers trying to use AI to redesign their website logo or whatnot is just making me think "wow, automated programmer art is still programmer art"

Glad you are of the same opinion If I had the resources, I would have Felix design every single thing that can be designed. Working with him I once again realized that I am a generalist who is okay-ish at many jobs that make up game development, but master of none. Somebody who puts all their time into a single one of these jobs will of course be better in that field.

LOVE how much polish you all have been putting into the game. It's always so cool to see rough concepts and the final pieces. They really do feel like they're more tailor-made to BJA. Nice job and all without you needing to leave the AI work. Side note, finally got around to joining your Discord.

I'm glad you like the designs! Thanks for joining the Discord, I'll see you there and I found yours as well

[kevin andersson]

Do you have any gameplay clips so I can see more how it all flows? It all looks great but I haven't really seen minutes of gameplay

[Alain]

Do you have any gameplay clips so I can see more how it all flows? It all looks great but I haven't really seen minutes of gameplay

Yes, sure, here is a let's play that shows the tutorial level quite well, which should give you an idea:

[Alain]

Just in case you need something to listen to while you are working on your games: I had a really nice chat on the Orcocast about my work as an indie dev, RPGs and the gaming industry in general.

[Ramos]

Just in case you need something to listen to while you are working on your games: I had a really nice chat on the Orcocast about my work as an indie dev, RPGs and the gaming industry in general.

Just saw it yesterday, I enjoyed it a lot.

 

[Alain]

Just saw it yesterday, I enjoyed it a lot.

 

That's cool, glad you listened to it and enjoyed it

[Alain]

BATTLEJUICE ALCHEMIST DEVLOG:

New Gameplay Trailer

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

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

Alain

[JobLeonard]

Very nice!

The synths are an interesting choice in the trailer music, I usually don't associate retrowave with gothic horror.

[Alain]

Very nice!

The synths are an interesting choice in the trailer music, I usually don't associate retrowave with gothic horror.

Yes, well it is also the soundtrack for the game. I hope the visuals, narrative themes and soundtrack somehow work together. But to be honest, synth- / retrowave is my favorite genre and therefore was the only music I felt able to tackle making myself.

[bryku]

Just in case you need something to listen to while you are working on your games: I had a really nice chat on the Orcocast about my work as an indie dev, RPGs and the gaming industry in general.

Oooh how come I missed that! An hour-long podcast! Gonna hear it during my next evening while I'm de-stressing and playing Minecraft

[Alain]

Oooh how come I missed that! An hour-long podcast! Gonna hear it during my next evening while I'm de-stressing and playing Minecraft

Cool, hope you enjoy the podcast and have a stressless evening

[oldblood]

Think I commented on it in your Discord, but if not, I do love the new trailer showing off all the updated assets. Nice work!

[Alain]

Think I commented on it in your Discord, but if not, I do love the new trailer showing off all the updated assets. Nice work!

Thanks! Yes, it was really about time to update the trailer. I tended to put marketing and marketing assets too low on the priority list and recently have been forcing myself to change that

[Alain]

BATTLEJUICE ALCHEMIST DEVLOG:

Gameplay Stream, Interview & More

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:





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.





Ramos and bryku were also part of it, as Ramos already mentioned in his Chromosome Evil devlog. Make sure to check out those as well: Chromosome Evil, Shardpunk.

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

[JobLeonard]

Aaaaaah!!!

Congratulations!

[TimeSlip]

Congratulations Alain! BattleJuice Alchemist looks really neat - can you summon creatures in it? Summons as part of deck building seems way less common than they used to be.

[bryku]

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.

Congrats! As a father of two, I'll say that you better be prepared to experience some, well, productivity hiccups in the nearest future Good luck!

[oldblood]

Congratulations (again) on the birth of your child! Finally got a chance to watch your dev stream and you do such a great job talking through your game and its features. Nice work!

[Alain]

Aaaaaah!!!
Congratulations!

Thank you so much

Congratulations Alain! BattleJuice Alchemist looks really neat - can you summon creatures in it? Summons as part of deck building seems way less common than they used to be.

Thanks! Summoning creatures is not a core mechanic in BattleJuice Alchemist. But there is your companion Plato which you can unlock early on, with whom you can also have some fun story interactions and who helps you in fights.

Congrats! As a father of two, I'll say that you better be prepared to experience some, well, productivity hiccups in the nearest future Good luck!

Thank you! Oh yes, I already see how the little one shakes up routines. I imagine two of them takes it to another level

Congratulations (again) on the birth of your child! Finally got a chance to watch your dev stream and you do such a great job talking through your game and its features. Nice work!

Thank you I'm glad you watched the stream and it was enjoyable in its way. I see a lot of flaws in how I presented the game, but also think it works well enough for now.

[Alain]

BATTLEJUICE ALCHEMIST DEVLOG:

UI Overhaul

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