Very interesting, have you thought about not having the night shield regenerate at all after it's destroyed? An enemy with a shield that regenerates personally I consider it a bit too hard, especially if there are many of them.

Thanks for the feedback, you are making a very good point. I have been playing with night shield regeneration time and will have your concerns in mind! At the moment, I am still in favor of them regenerating. My reasoning is that a night lasts for around 3 minutes, which is a lot longer than a combat encounter, which is usually only a few seconds to a minute long. If shields don't regenerate, I feel like the whole mechanic would lose the weight I want it to have. But we will see, I'll definitely play around with the regeneration!

I just realized that you are also in UE. Man, I have been tweaking the navmesh in my game for literally years and it is a never ending story. I assume you are in UE5, maybe improvements have been made to the system by now.

I like the concept of the Fitrat maps. They trigger my D2 nostalgia by giving me some Arcane Sanctuary vibes

Sounds great, looking forward to see some more enemies in action!

Thank you!

In the last quarter, we will focus on optimization improvements.

It will be our most challenging phase, probably

I'd like to read about that! As I saw, your release is not too far in the future, so you're almost on the finishing line!

[BATTLEJUICE ALCHEMIST DEVLOG:]

BATTLEJUICE ALCHEMIST DEVLOG:

Shields & Breaking Them

Hey folks,

in the last devlog I gave a little sneak peek on a base-building element that's called an illuminant. But before I can explain what it does, I have to get to the main topic of this post: enemy shields. At nighttime, enemies become encapsulated by a protective night shield.

Night shields protect enemies from taking damage once, before they disperse. But while it is still nighttime, they regenerate. The player can disperse night shields with regular attacks...

...or utilize the tower element I was talking about. These illuminants disperse shields, which makes fighting close to your tower a very valid option.

Another very efficient way to deal with night shields are multi step attacks. For example, you can utilize barrels. Your explosive flask disperses the shield and triggers the barrel, which then spawns more flasks that deal damage to the now unprotected enemy.

I still have to do some testing e.g. on how fast night shields regenerate. If you want to have a look yourself in the Steam playtest, I would appreciate to hear your feedback.

Thanks for reading and have a wonderful weekend!

Alain

Awesome, the biggest of congratulations to you for the release. It is impressive what you have achieved and you can be so proud! Having played the game as a big fan of the original X-Com and TFTD I can simply say I love it. I also got a copy for my artist Patrick, who loves Vermintide (and everything rats actually), pixel art and strategic games. Reviews incoming!

Looking good! How much would you say is done greybox wise?

Cool, also glad to hear you are back cracking on this!

Hello!

Thank you for your kind words and wishes!

For your question;

After running a rail function from the character to the camera and determining all the mesh components in between, we mask the parts of the meshes in the middle of the screen.

I hope this helps you

Thanks for getting back to me! That's how I approached it as well. I think if you already have collision enabled on objects that could block vision, you might not have taken a performance hit like I did before optimizing.
Looking forward to follow your game!

Congratulations on the Award! I will keep an eye to your devlog

Thanks for the congratulations and joining the ride

Your game seems to be coming along great and I love how ambitious it is!

There will no longer be any walls or trees blocking the camera. A circular cutting system will support your view.

I am especially interested in this system you implemented. I recently built quite exactly the same system and was wondering how you approached it from a technical side. I assume you have a master material/shader for all objects that cuts out the circle after being told by a raycast from the camera to the player to do so? I had a bit of trouble with performance, because it requires me to enable collision on objects that I usually would not have collision enabled for. I got it working fine, but I am still wondering if there maybe was a more performant way to do it.

Looking awesome, Veterum looks like a game that's right up my alley. Love the art direction and vibrant retro feeling!

I am both hyped and curious for your release

Yeah, me too. The question that I am asking myself all over again is whether my indie gamedev job can be a business that is sufficient for me to provide for my family. Time will tell!

I am 100% certain it can be for you. Shardpunk will do great, but even if it doesn't, you can build on it and mitigate the risks for your next game.

Cool, I'm looking forward to see what traps etc. you come up with!

Although late, congratulations on the grant and award. The game clearly deserves it. The visual presentation is immediately captivating. I love the art style and color palette use, and I expect the character animation to become better as development progresses.
Gosh I have always marveled the the complexity involved in designing and implementing a game such as yours. And then getting it optimized to run smoothly. Seems like a very daunting task. That being said, it already looks amazing and quite satisfying to play.

Thanks for stopping by and your kind words! When I look at the title screen of your game, I feel like we both draw inspiration from some similar sources.

Regarding animations, I think they might improve a bit, but it will not be a giant leap. When defining the benchmark for the animations, I use Salt and Sanctuary as a reference. Characters move in a retro/simplistic way that is sometimes reminiscent of string puppets. The limitation is what I am able to produce and I am not a character animator in the first place. But you are not the first one bringing it up, so I will see if I can improve on animations!

The whole undertaking has been quite daunting to me as well. I hope it does not sound cocky, but I never doubt I can see it through. Turns out the biggest challenge for me was to get the project properly and securely funded. But I am close to the finishing line in that regard, fingers crossed

Thank you, that comparison to D2 is a huge compliment. D2 is a big inspiration and BattleJuice Alchemist will also be separated into acts. The second will be in a desert-like environment, the third in the swamps. There won't be a fourth in hell though. But that's maybe something for an expansion

Hmm, that reminds me of something. I have an idea for you for another possible expansion. Nordic, tundra-lika environment!

Funny that you mention it, here is a page from our pitch deck:



There are already story bits in the game that hint at the "frozen tundra of the North" and the expeditions of our protagonist's uncle there. Actually, your companion Plato is from that area

The hand stitched on the cat's tail is a fun premise :D Great main menu screen, love the shadow play!

Thanks for sharing your devlog! As I am very interested in everything Unreal related, it was fun for me to hear about your process, the problems you encountered as well as the solutions. Keep up the good work!

That's great, congratulations!