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[JobLeonard]

I did not know about Tetris as an e-sport at all. I was assuming there are hardcore players but it is amazing to hear they are a community with their own lingo and all!

Oh man if you're even remotely into e-sports you gotta check this out then, the 2018 finals are almost legendary:





Context: Classic NES tetris is a game of who scores the most points (since there is no true versus mode). At the time, Jonas Neubauer, the guy on the right, was the seven time world champion, having won almost every Tetris world championship until then. Joseph Saelee, the kid on the left, is in the tournament for the first time and using (at the time) novel technique called "hypertapping" that lets him move pieces more quickly. That last bit matters because it makes his game last longer once he reaches the "kill screen". The kill screen is level 29 in NES tetris, where the pieces fall so fast that you cannot give normal controller input to fast enough to place them. Hence, level 29 was considered the "game over" screen. But hypertapping changed all of that.

[Alain]

Oh man if you're even remotely into e-sports you gotta check this out then, the 2018 finals are almost legendary:

Wow, that was really fun! Now I know what tucks and L-spins are :D I love that they are playing on these tiny CRTs and that Joseph is holidng his controller in such an unconventional way, I assume that is the hypertapping. The final seconds when Jonas is already out are so intense, would not have expected that!

[JeremyNunns]

Alain - just wishlisted. I love the considerations, tweaking and effort you're putting into your game. Also signed up as a playtester so hopefully I can be of service.

[Alain]

Alain - just wishlisted. I love the considerations, tweaking and effort you're putting into your game. Also signed up as a playtester so hopefully I can be of service.

That's really cool, thank you so much for the encouragement, whishlisting and joining the playtest!

[Alain]

BATTLEJUICE ALCHEMIST DEVLOG:

Basic Tower Building

Hey folks,

this week came with quite a surprise: BattleJuice Alchemist was (and still is) featured by Epic Games as the top Weekly Spotlight project. This means everybody who launched Unreal Engine this week through the Epic Launcher was greeted by one of our screenshots, which I think is very cool!

But let's get to what I worked on in the game. I already showed you a little teaser of our new base building mechanic in the past. The foundations of the system are now in place and you can design your own structures.

What you see here is just a quick foundation, but your tower can eventually be multiple stories high. I'll show you more in the future when there are new building elements to utilize. And to remind you: The unique thing in our game is that the alchemy tower you construct will aid you in battle and you are able to summon it to any open patch of land:

I have to head out for today, but before I forget: a warm welcome to the people who joined our Discord after seeing us at the Epic Spotlight!

Have great weekend everybody!

Alain

[Ramos]

I hope the Epic Store bonuses can keep you financially independent from publisher's deals.


Keep up the solid work, your results are awesome

 

[Alain]

Keep up the solid work, your results are awesome

Thank you! I'm excited for another year and planning some good stuff :D

I hope the Epic Store bonuses can keep you financially independent from publisher's deals.
Keep up the solid work, your results are awesome

The feature was in the Epic launcher, not the Epic store itself. But it brought a bit of visibility nevertheless I'm still strongly considering working with a publisher. In my opinion they can bring a lot more to the table than financing development. For example, you (in a team with your partner) are a great example showing how important it is that somebody with the right skills dedicates a lot of time and effort to marketing. I can't do that myself and I don't have you, Ramos  Nevertheless, I raised enough funds from grants, awards and other funding opportunities this year (will talk about it in the future) to keep me afloat and more is in the works. So I am not forced to take just any deal and will hopefully be able to make good decisions.

[JobLeonard]

I like the idea of this take on base-building - it's one tower that you can customize, but because it's just one that you summon, instead of build new structures everywhere, that probably still keeps it "small" enough to not turn the game into a full fledged base-building RTS.

Don't know if that's how it feels like in real life, but that's how it comes across

[Alain]

I like the idea of this take on base-building - it's one tower that you can customize, but because it's just one that you summon, instead of build new structures everywhere, that probably still keeps it "small" enough to not turn the game into a full fledged base-building RTS.

You nailed it, that is exactly what I had in mind and hope the system will feel like

[James K. Isaac]

Hi Alain,

Your comment on my post drew my attention to this project. I love creative, new worlds to explore, with their lore and characters. This looks right down my street, a deep, engrossing experience, full of customization and atmospheric art; a joy for fellow explorers, with a variety of mechanics to engage with the world.

Good luck with everything, it's looking great!

[oahda]

Wow! Congrats! Well deserved Best of luck figuring out publisher stuff too, nice to hear you're doing well for budget in the meantime.

Agree that tower stuff is really cool and that being able to magically move it around instead of having to rebuild it is a fantastic idea.

[Alain]

Hi Alain,

Your comment on my post drew my attention to this project. I love creative, new worlds to explore, with their lore and characters. This looks right down my street, a deep, engrossing experience, full of customization and atmospheric art; a joy for fellow explorers, with a variety of mechanics to engage with the world.

Good luck with everything, it's looking great!

Thank you so much for stopping by and the very kind words. I'm happy that you like what's to see of the game so far

Wow! Congrats! Well deserved Best of luck figuring out publisher stuff too, nice to hear you're doing well for budget in the meantime.

Agree that tower stuff is really cool and that being able to magically move it around instead of having to rebuild it is a fantastic idea.

Thank you for the continuous support! I am quite confident that the tower stuff will be a cool and unique element to play with and really looking forward to working on it more

[oldblood]

That tower building is coming along really great! Looks quite intuitive and even more open-ended than I expected. And congrats on the Epic exposure! What a nice Christmas gift to end the year haha.

[Alain]

That tower building is coming along really great! Looks quite intuitive and even more open-ended than I expected. And congrats on the Epic exposure! What a nice Christmas gift to end the year haha.

Glad you like the base building so far! I'm having a blast working on that system





Happy Holidays to all of you!!! I hope you can take some time off, have a lot of good food and drinks and enjoy some great company!

[Ramos]

Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas Alain!
 

[marcgfx]

Great minds think alike? I remember we were both playing around with fire at the same time. Now you are making a tower. I've actually been playing around with some tower-def stuff myself. Probably completely different, but still a little similar. Always nice watching your progress Happy Holidays!

[oahda]

Happy holidays!

[JobLeonard]

Happy holidays!

[Alain]

Thanks JobLeonard, Prinsessa & Ramos! Also, have a good start into the new year

Great minds think alike? I remember we were both playing around with fire at the same time. Now you are making a tower. I've actually been playing around with some tower-def stuff myself. Probably completely different, but still a little similar. Always nice watching your progress Happy Holidays!

Yes, I also remember us both working on burning down trees at the same time Looking forward to see your tower experiments!

[Alain]

BATTLEJUICE ALCHEMIST DEVLOG:

Navigating Complex Structures

Hey folks,

I hope you had a great start into the new year! After a few days off, I committed myself to some interesting problems that came up while working on the new base building system, which I'd like to share with you.

BattleJuice Alchemist is mainly played in top-down view, so it is more difficult to deal with buildings, especially multistory ones than let's say in an FPS game. Our game has to set elements invisible in a clever way, here is how we handle it:

Now that base building comes into play, I did not want a floor/story based system, but one that provides more freedom for players who want to create things like this:

The solution is quite simple: blocks that are at a certain height above the player and obstructing vision on the player are turned transparent. But there is another problem to tackle that is related to movement. The common way to move in BattleJuice Alchemist is "mouse click to move", no problem here. But you can also move with direct input keys such as WASD. All movement takes place on a navigation mesh, which can pose a problem.

So with the possibility for all kind of weird structures that players can come up with, we can't simply move right, when the player presses the key for moving right. I came up with a solution that takes into consideration the angle between the player's current and target location, but also the ratio between linear distance and navigation path length. When pressing right, it is desirable that your character automatically navigates around a pillar instead of bumping into it and stopping, but you would not want the character to walk the way as shown in the right image above.

I hope this small peek into the everyday challenges of development was interesting to you.

Thanks for reading and have great weekend!

Alain