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[charredfire96]

Link to the itch page where you can download.https://charredfire.itch.io/emergent-magic

Emergent Magic has been my hobby project for a while now. The goal is to create a block based magic system where the player can create a virtually endless amount of unique spells. The system is comprised of elemental blocks that move based on positions to other elements following this graph

so a block of fire behind a block of wind will create a chase effect and so on and so forth. Additionally some elements have a connective behaviour. Earth forms rigid shapes and water loosely chains together. To get more complex behaviours I am working on a rune system that can be overlayed the regular blocks to do things like spawn in additional parts of the spell when and enemy is hit such is the case with this fire ball spell

I plan on adding many more elements and runes than are currently in the demo.

Players design a spell and set its duration and a cooldown is calculated using some weighted values, the spell can then be equipped and used in combat!


I have a demo with 3 playable levels the first is mainly concerned with teaching the player how to create spells and play. I would love feedback on this aspect of the game as well as how combat feels.

if you are more interested in this premise you can check out my youtube channel which has several devlogs

[jbarrios]

Hey charredfire96,

I tried your game

- I like how my friend follows me around
- Seeing the library was pretty epic
- I opened my inventory to assign spells.  It wasn't a problem, but the GUI was larger than my screen.  My resolution is 1920 x 1080.
- I destroyed the gate and entered the portal.  I only saw the skybox.  I looked up just in time to see the level disappearing.  It seems I spawned below the level and fell.  I wasn't able to progress.

[charredfire96]

Hi Jbarrios,

Thank you so much for trying, that is embarassing... I will take a look at fixing the GUI and making it scalable to different resolutions. As for falling through the first level, I have not been able to replicate that, but it definately needs to be fixed. Can I ask were you perhaps pushing the movement keys during the loading screen? I did find out that players can still move while the game is loading which I definately need to fix, I wasnt able to fall through the map this way, but perhaps in certain circumstances it can happen. Did this happen multiple times or just once?
Thanks again for trying!

[jbarrios]

If memory serves I think I jumped into the portal.  I wonder if I was still "falling" during the loading.

[charredfire96]

I just updated the demo on Itch.io with some minor changes including fix for the level transitions and a save feature that tracks inventory player settings and levels completed

[Jerboa]

Hello! I played this and like the concept.

I ran this on linux (ubuntu 22.04) through wine(64, v6.0.3) which worked (gtx 1080 ti, i7 cpu, 16 gb ram)

I got up to the wheel diagram where you create spells, I can see what the mechanic is, and I do really find it cool! But I found it hard to understand.

I managed to create some "spells" but the blocks just floated or flew off.

I think you should make a really on rails spell building example/tutorial when the player first gets to that point. A walk-through spell construction. Something to really show the principals on one or two simple working spells.

As a prompt for that, how can I make a fire spell (fireball) that works like the ones I was given to fight the goblins? Show the player as explicitly as possible; all the steps for one spell.

As a tester, I really now want to only build some spells without going through the rest at the start. Not that its terrible I simply want to make spells, of course as a game those story/introduction elements should stay.

Maybe consider creating a demo with just that spell building bit, especially for play testing. Perhaps a "battle arena" with some target dummies? This could be an option on the main menu, so people can mess around with it.

I think the spell building mechanic has potential!


A few bugs (remember this is wine on ubuntu so could be releated to that):

There is bad lag from the start, when looking towards the rotating bookcases (the ones immediately after dashing over the gap), even when they are not visible and behind walls. This goes away when they are out of the camera (frusutrum). I guess there is view frustrum culling but not any visibility/occlusion culling?

If I swap to another window such as my webrowser and back (e.g. pressing the windows button) I loose control in the game (can't click, or move) seems window focus is lost.

With the spell building I often had difficulty getting the blocks to place where I wanted them. That is often I'd place a block and it appeared to not be placed where my camera was looking on already placed blocks (i.e. it did not feel as clean as minecraft with block placement).

[charredfire96]

Thank you for your feedback!
The battle arena is a good idea I can probably implement relatively easily. I appreciate the commentary on the tutorial as well it is an area I have continually struggled with so I guess I am still not quite there.

I am unfamiliar with wine and ubuntu for gaming, do you typically have worse performance or is that unusual? The big bookcase spinning bookshelf is graphically expensive, but my number one peice of commentary is "book case cool" so I guess I just need to optimize it better. I will take a look at the losing focus issue as well

[Jerboa]

No problem, I hope it has helped!

It is not unusual to have issues running windows programs through wine generally e.g. Battle.net and other Blizzard programs I simply can't run on my machine through wine...

I would not overly worry as you are specifically targeting windows.

Perhaps at most check over to see if there is any low hanging fruit optimization wise on rendering. RenderDoc can help a lot. I am unfamiliar with Unity though.

The book case/library is cool so do keep it

Best of luck!

[charredfire96]

I just updated Emergent Magic with a sandbox arena mode, some level redesigns, new enemies and some aesthetic changes.
Enjoy! try it out here https://charredfire.itch.io/emergent-magic