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[James K. Isaac]

Congratulations, Alain, great news! Such an exciting project, so polished and thematic. I didn't realise all the different layers you've considered in the presentation of every aspect of your project. Amazing work.

[marcgfx]

Considering how good everything can look rendered in Unreal it really would make sense if it was animated in the engine. On the other hand 600mb does not seem to be considered much anymore. Guess just do what gets you to your goal quickest. I would love to do something similar for my project, but I have no idea where to start.

Congrats on the Award!

[JobLeonard]

Regarding benefits of using the engine: don't forget it basically gives your animation a free HD upgrade in the future

Kinda like watching old Flash animations with Ruffle on Archive.org

[Alain]

Congratulations, Alain, great news! Such an exciting project, so polished and thematic. I didn't realise all the different layers you've considered in the presentation of every aspect of your project. Amazing work.

Thank you so much, I'm glad you like the overall presentation!

Considering how good everything can look rendered in Unreal it really would make sense if it was animated in the engine. On the other hand 600mb does not seem to be considered much anymore. Guess just do what gets you to your goal quickest. I would love to do something similar for my project, but I have no idea where to start.

Congrats on the Award!

Thank you! You're right, 600 MB more or less does not seem to matter when downloading games anymore. I'll do as you say and mainly make the decision based on what is most practical for my workflow.

Regarding benefits of using the engine: don't forget it basically gives your animation a free HD upgrade in the future

Kinda like watching old Flash animations with Ruffle on Archive.org

Funnily I never thought about it this way, you are right! That makes working in engine a lot more attractive, thanks for pointing it out!

[Prinsessa]

Missed a few updates. Congrats on the award!! Read the thoughts regarding the tower mechanic; might not be for everyone I guess but hope you can balance it. Do you personally enjoy playing with all these things in place? Upgrading video to an in-game cinematic sounds beneficial in many ways.

[Alain]

Missed a few updates. Congrats on the award!! Read the thoughts regarding the tower mechanic; might not be for everyone I guess but hope you can balance it. Do you personally enjoy playing with all these things in place? Upgrading video to an in-game cinematic sounds beneficial in many ways.

Thank you! The tower building is something I enjoy a lot myself, yes. But I will try to not force it onto the player too much, because as you say, it might not be for everyone.

[Alain]

BATTLEJUICE ALCHEMIST DEVLOG:

Day-Night Cycle and UI Animations

Hey folks,

I can see the end of the tunnel regarding base-building implementation. As I already announced, it will be tied to some mysterious underused system. That system is the day-night cycle, which except for certain minor buffs has been mainly cosmetic so far. It has been overhauled visually and mechanically.

The world of BattleJuice Alchemist is always dark, even at daytime, so it was a challenge to make the days distinct from the nights without compromising the atmosphere I am going for. Beside brightness, I worked with shadows, colors, particle systems and Unreal's exponential height fog. And that new UI element . In the gif above, you might have spotted a splash animation at nightfall. I implemented these animations, which are visually based on our pop-up book style cutscenes, so the player can't miss daybreak or nightfall. Here is a top-down shot that shows both animations.

These new animated splash UIs made those for level-ups, demon-spawning and dying look underwhelming, so I overhauled these as well.

And this wraps up today's devlog. Next time I'll show you how we bring together the new day-night cycle and the base-building system, so stay tuned for that!

Thanks for reading and enjoy your weekend!

Alain

[JobLeonard]

It looks great! But if the daytime is dark I think the art of the sun should somehow reflect that, no? Not sure how but it kind of clashes with what we see on the screen as it is

[oldblood]

I know I commented on Twitter already, but I absolutely love these. They tie in so well to the trailer/intro with the pop-ups (which I think are incredible). Really adds some nice touches of polish.

[Alain]

It looks great! But if the daytime is dark I think the art of the sun should somehow reflect that, no? Not sure how but it kind of clashes with what we see on the screen as it is

I see your point that the animation for the sun gives the feeling of a bright day to start, which is actually not the case. I'll have a look at the colors of the animation again. I want to be careful though because I want this to stay readable and bright yellow/orange can easily be read as daybreak. I'll experiment a bit. Thanks as always for the feedback JobLeonard!

I know I commented on Twitter already, but I absolutely love these. They tie in so well to the trailer/intro with the pop-ups (which I think are incredible). Really adds some nice touches of polish.

Thank you! When I look at the 2D animations of your game, I feel like mine are so basic that they are not even worth posting about :D So I'm even more happy you say they have an appeal to you for what they are!

[JobLeonard]

Obscuring wispy clouds maybe?

[Alain]

Obscuring wispy clouds maybe?

Good point! There already are some clouds, maybe they could be more pronounced!