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TIGSource ForumsCommunityDevLogsBattleJuice Alchemist – Base-building patch is live on Steam!
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Author Topic: BattleJuice Alchemist – Base-building patch is live on Steam!  (Read 75560 times)
vdapps
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« Reply #300 on: December 25, 2021, 04:06:52 PM »

Congrats to making up team and looking forward for updates!
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Alain
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« Reply #301 on: December 28, 2021, 01:23:04 AM »

Congrats on growing a small team and looking forward to the future updates!

Congrats to making up team and looking forward for updates!



Thanks for the encouragement to the three of you! There will of course be more updates in the future. The struggles we are facing are of financial nature, although until a few days ago we thought everything was safe on that front. My holidays were quite terrible because of that. But I will figure it out and BattleJuice Alchemist will get done, that is for sure.
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oldblood
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« Reply #302 on: January 02, 2022, 09:11:44 AM »

Thanks for the encouragement to the three of you! There will of course be more updates in the future. The struggles we are facing are of financial nature, although until a few days ago we thought everything was safe on that front. My holidays were quite terrible because of that. But I will figure it out and BattleJuice Alchemist will get done, that is for sure.

Sorry to hear about the challenges with finances and the rough holidays. I'm glad to hear that despite the challenges, that you're bound and determined to finish BJA. I hope (and am confident) you'll find some solutions to these problems in this new year. Hope 2022 is the best year for your project yet.

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Alain
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« Reply #303 on: January 04, 2022, 12:55:14 AM »

Thank you oldblood! Yes, let's make 2022 a great gamedev year Smiley
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vivaladav
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« Reply #304 on: January 04, 2022, 10:00:58 AM »

That's great news Alain!
When are you going to introduce your team to the forum? 
Beer!
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Alain
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« Reply #305 on: January 05, 2022, 12:34:12 PM »

That's great news Alain!
When are you going to introduce your team to the forum? 
Beer!

I will soon make a post, maybe even a video where I introduce the guys. We have been working together closely in December and will continue doing so in January. Unfortunately, because of the financial shake-up, we have to drastically cut back their hours after that and until I have figured out a solution. It's really sad, because I enjoy working with them a lot and they bring great skills to the table.
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oahda
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« Reply #306 on: January 06, 2022, 03:23:06 AM »

Belated happy holidays! Sounds really good to have had a team like that, I'm sorry it's having to come to an end Sad Hope the solution comes soon!
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Alain
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« Reply #307 on: January 06, 2022, 04:12:39 AM »

Belated happy holidays! Sounds really good to have had a team like that, I'm sorry it's having to come to an end Sad Hope the solution comes soon!

Thank you Prinsessa! At the moment, I feel confident we will figure things out. Fingers crossed!
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Alain
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« Reply #308 on: January 14, 2022, 07:37:28 AM »

Hey everyone!

beside working on more content inside the game and another quite substantial visual overhaul with the help of my art director Felix and 2D/3D artist Patrick, I edited a very short video to introduce people to BattleJuice Alchemist. I went for the YouTube shorts format, which has to be vertical and under 60 seconds long. I guess that is how the cool kids roll these days, so I gave it a try. You can watch the cinematic masterpiece here:





I hope you all enjoy the upcoming weekend and do something fun Smiley

Ah, and I totally forgot that I never posted about the updated Alchemical Works website, where I also introduce the great people that helped me in the past. Hopefully we will be able to continue working together in the future.
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oahda
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« Reply #309 on: January 14, 2022, 07:53:51 AM »

Nice! Website looks good too, and hey, there's the team! Grin

Based on my experience browsing shorts on my phone I wonder if the most important keywords ("action RPG") might not be visible in the tiny thumbnail and lose you some potential viewers who would be interested in that, so I wonder if you should reorder the words so that "My action RPG" comes first, and then the rest? Shocked
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vdapps
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« Reply #310 on: January 14, 2022, 09:01:21 AM »

Website nice and clean and wow that's quite a team! Smiley

Regarding YT short, it's up to you to evaluate, but my impression and experience is that it's hard to attract and promote to people browsing their phones infinitely (Instagram, Tik-tok, FB..) with such product (desktop game). I have impression that people which spend lot of their time on phones, like to spend their time at phones and they not switch to desktop a lot. I personally prefer attract smaller but more dedicated communities which just prefer desktops and have higher probability to become part of community around you or your product.

But my up-to-date achievements in marketing are abysmal so I don't feel qualified to give advices. It's just my lay experience/observation.

And have a nice week-end to you too and looking forward for next updates!
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Ramos
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« Reply #311 on: January 14, 2022, 09:58:21 AM »

Great content.

Strong essence is kept in small quantities approach is a good choice for promotional material especially if you combine it with an strategic marketing funnel

 Hand Thumbs Up Left
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oldblood
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« Reply #312 on: January 16, 2022, 09:49:09 AM »

Really digging the new website, Alain. Very clean and professional. Hope you're making progress through the challenges!
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Alain
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« Reply #313 on: January 17, 2022, 01:43:39 AM »

Nice! Website looks good too, and hey, there's the team! Grin

Based on my experience browsing shorts on my phone I wonder if the most important keywords ("action RPG") might not be visible in the tiny thumbnail and lose you some potential viewers who would be interested in that, so I wonder if you should reorder the words so that "My action RPG" comes first, and then the rest? Shocked

Thanks for the head-up, I very new to Youtube shorts and I will definitely make sure important infos come first in the title!


Website nice and clean and wow that's quite a team! Smiley

Regarding YT short, it's up to you to evaluate, but my impression and experience is that it's hard to attract and promote to people browsing their phones infinitely (Instagram, Tik-tok, FB..) with such product (desktop game). I have impression that people which spend lot of their time on phones, like to spend their time at phones and they not switch to desktop a lot. I personally prefer attract smaller but more dedicated communities which just prefer desktops and have higher probability to become part of community around you or your product.

Thank you vdapps, I think you are right. I feel like my marketing skills are kind of a shotgun approach, I just keep trying things. It makes a lot of sense that it is hard to attract people on their phones on TikTok etc. to a desktop game like BattleJuice Alchemist, which could be considered quite old school and hardcore-ish. I will keep that in mind and put finding more dedicated communities onto the to-do list.
Regarding the team size, I must admit it appears like more than it is: I am the only one working full time currently, and four of the six people are freelancers Wink


Great content.

Strong essence is kept in small quantities approach is a good choice for promotional material especially if you combine it with an strategic marketing funnel

Thank you, although I think you are giving me too much credit :D


Really digging the new website, Alain. Very clean and professional. Hope you're making progress through the challenges!

Thank you! Small progess is being made on the organizational challenges, but at least the progress in development is very strong, because of the additional manpower I have in December and January.
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Alain
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« Reply #314 on: January 28, 2022, 01:16:40 AM »

BATTLEJUICE ALCHEMIST DEVLOG:
Flask Re-Drawing Mechanic and Fog of War



Hey everyone!

I have been thinking about devlogs and progress reports recently. I decided that I want to post written devlogs more regularly (biweekly) and video devlogs only on bigger events or updates. I want to keep these write-ups brief and juicy, so let's dive right in.


Flask Re-Drawing Mechanic

Over the last couple of weeks, I got quite some feedback from people who played the game for the first time. Some of them said that fighting was fun, but they felt it got repetitive after a few hours. There is a lot of depth and possibilities for different builds, so I think the problem is that I am not encouraging players enough to experiment with all the possibilities already in the game. I will address that with various changes over the next weeks. In the end, I also want to make a new tutorial to familiarize players with all the abilities they have at their disposal beside throwing explosive flasks and simply blowing up enemies.

The first change is a re-drawing mechanic. You have 2 fixed flasks and 3 random flasks at you disposal. The 3 random flasks are drawn from your "deck" of 10 flasks in your cauldron. To have control over their "hand" of 3 flasks, players tended to only put 3 flasks into their deck. To encourage branching out, I implemented a mechanic that lets you re-draw your hand when using a Juicified Liquid flask.





This way, you do not necessarily have to use a flask and waste resources on it, just to free up a drawing slot. We have to do some testing on this, but it feels like a good change right now. It should give players agency and opportunities for strategic decision-making.


Fog of War

Game development is a process of iterating. We go over things again and again until they feel satisfying for the time being. For me, one of these never-ending stories is maps. As JobLeonard mentioned here, after my last update the square nature of the tiles made the local map look a bit unpolished. So I went over the system again visually and mechanically and man, it feels a lot better now. Thanks again JobLeonard for pointing out this weak spot.

We now have two stages of discovery. You discover a large circular area around you. When moving out of a discovered area, a fog of war creeps back. Discovered special places stay visible though.

Before:


After:


Please note that these changes are on our internal testing branch only and not yet on the public playtest version on Steam.

That is it for today, thank you for reading and have a nice weekend!

Alain
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JobLeonard
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« Reply #315 on: January 28, 2022, 06:46:48 AM »

Map definitely looks better! Hand Thumbs Up Left
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oahda
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« Reply #316 on: January 28, 2022, 02:19:07 PM »

That looks great! And I hope the mechanic works out, will we be getting more playtest videos? Smiley
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Ramos
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« Reply #317 on: January 29, 2022, 04:58:16 AM »



This is definitely an improvement.

And this is also the perfect example of why I like to read some of the dev blogs here - because I see how the game actually evolves and grows from early concepts and prototypes to a beautiful polished creation - your post is a perfect example of this.

Gj Alain  Cool
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Alain
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« Reply #318 on: February 01, 2022, 12:58:19 AM »

Map definitely looks better! Hand Thumbs Up Left

That's great, thank you!


That looks great! And I hope the mechanic works out, will we be getting more playtest videos? Smiley

There will definitely be more playtest videos. They will not be as long as the the playtest videos I did with my friend Markus, but I plan to do some walking around and talking about new features.


And this is also the perfect example of why I like to read some of the dev blogs here - because I see how the game actually evolves and grows from early concepts and prototypes to a beautiful polished creation - your post is a perfect example of this.

Thank you! Posting progress here is such a huge opportunity to get valuable feedback, which is why I'm looking forward to make more posts like this that focus on one or two specific things.
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oldblood
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« Reply #319 on: February 01, 2022, 05:19:18 AM »

The updated maps look great! Nice job implementing suggestions, its crazy how sometimes small adjustments can go so far with how polished a feature is. I love the fact that you're still getting feedback from playtesters and looking to improve the experience and gently nudge them towards exploration with the flasks.
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