Now we have a free and paid version. Unfortunately, I don't have access to itch's payment tools, so I can't get the paid version now. I have the money, it's just the payment tools.
So I decide to play the free version for a while, and buy this game later, and then transfer my save file to the paid version. Is the save file compatible between the two versions?
Idk if im impatient or my laptop just too old for this game, but i can't seem to progress with the horse.... it just freeze when i interact with them..
It's not currently possible. I will consider adding such an option, but don't expect it too soon, as it's going to take some thought to implement.
There's also another option for diagonal movement aside from rebinding keys: you can point at the target in examination mode and then press the "confirm target" key (default Z, enter, space). Try it, maybe you'll like it more.
WAIT!!! Wait! wait, put down the pitchfork, let me explain.
There would be 2 type (tier) of potion: lesser and greater. For example: Lesser strength potion would increase youre meele attack damage by 1 and the greater by 5, the greater would cost 4 time more to create then the lesser. Speed: 10 and 50%. HP: 1 and 5 ETC
How can you obtain the recipe: All the "bosses" (the goat, the poison wyvern, the shadow spawnin skeleton) have a 1% chanse to drop 1 lesser and 0,1% chanse to drop the greater recipe. These recipes would be unique so you would't get a duplicant of them. The real kicker come from the cost of the recipe. I'm talking like 1000 metalic 500 holy 500 fey and similar cost for the lesser.
Easy to obtain: no Easy to farm: definitely no Would give a further goal: for some definitely; others ehh not so much. Would be some crasy people out ther how would grind it like crasy: absolutely (including me).
This is just an idea, but maybe you can considered it puting in somting similar, I know it supposed to be a difficult game, but it would be a great reward for thos who put a lot of time and effort in the game and . . . I JUST GOT AN EVEN BETTER IDEA:
Who about if you put this in the 1 life mode because you have "the knowledge of all mortal languages" so you can read this ancient books about the recipe.
It's not a terrible idea, and I might consider something like that in the future. But I mostly want to keep permanent upgrades in the "tools" category.
A high fixed cost for permanent stat increase might be difficult to balance. I have a better idea: not make the potion cost high, but as you drink more of the same potion, the effect of each additional potion will get lower.
I think a square root or cube root diminishing return is good enough. That means the total effect scales with the square (cube) root of the amount of potions drunk. For certain special stats that have a large influence, you can use logarithm.
For players that want to grind, they can get relatively high stats, but not too high that would break the game. (A mage with 100 melee attack is certainly broken.) And for players that don't want to grind, they can still benefit from the potion.
Fantastic game! It's been a while since I've checked in on your progress, and I'm excited for all the new stuff! I've decided to name all my characters after St. Patrick, because I *will* kill all the snakes :P
My only real gripe (other than snakes, which you are addressing) is that you seem to have a rounding error in your code? Sometimes I'll wind up with 1.001 of something. Or it'll say that I have 1.0 of something, but then I cannot make a recipe that requires 1 of that thing; my guess is that I actually somehow have 0.999 of that thing, but it displays as 1.
A few suggestions and nitpicks for down the road, if I may...
When skipping the intro, it'd be nice to have all of the stuff in the Heavy Purse done (stuff picked up, bartender talked to, first location acquired). That part is a bit tedious.
It seems as tho remapping the shift key doesn't work as intended. The other key doesn't make actions happen twice, and shift still does.
Tooltips in the journal would be nice, such as being able to see what other stuff can be made from a raw material when you see it in the Components tab.
Being able to pin a recipe, including which materials you plan to convert into ingredients, would be super helpful.
I know it's not the intended way to play, but an accessibility option to enable reloading would be helpful for various folks who struggle with the traditional rogue permadeath, like if you misclick and blow yourself up O.o
This is a very fun game, and I'm eagerly awaiting future progress :)
>is that you seem to have a rounding error in your code
There is some weird display issue that causes things like 1.01 to display when there shouldn't be. As far as I know, actual calculations are not affected, but I should probably get to fixing that either way.
>It seems as tho remapping the shift key doesn't work as intended.
Thank you, there was a bug with this command. I'll fix it by next release.
>Being able to pin a recipe
Planned for a while, but will probably not do it right now.
> There is some weird display issue that causes things like 1.01 to display when there shouldn't be. As far as I know, actual calculations are not affected, but I should probably get to fixing that either way.
I've definitely run into the problem several times where I was unable to make something despite having enough ingredients. Would it be helpful to screenshot such things, or send in a save file?
Interesting. I looked into it, seems like there is an issue with floats comparison. Thank you for the save file, it helped.
I've added rounding of the items' quantity and tested again with the save that you gave me, and it seemed to have fixed the issue, so expect it to be gone in the next release.
I love this game so much, and now that I’ve finally completed all the research, I feel that I can give my thoughts on it.
Firstly, the praise:
The alchemy system is really well done. I like how it actually feels like I’m putting together a complex concoction out of different components, rather than just clicking around a gui. It also avoids being so complex that it’s hard to use. Brilliantly done.
The overworld art style, despite being taken from google IIRC, is very cohesive and sells the atmosphere of the game really well. Nothing feels out of place.
There are certain situations, specifically in the destroyed mage’s house mission, where the game really throws a excellently timed emotional punch. The little note at once you’ve travelled there; about how nobody is visiting anymore, or how the forest would be beautiful if not for the nearby tragedy; hit harder when you remember that these people aren’t really all that different from the protagonist, and he’s probably feeling some level of kinship with them at that moment.
The game is very fair. Even the snakes, as complained about as they are, aren’t that bad, and normally just require some careful navigation to get around. I do have my criticisms of them, but 99% of the time, when you die it feels like it’s your fault. The game as a whole falls squarely into the hard but fair category.
Secondly, things that I noted while playing, but don’t feel are strictly good or bad things:
The homeward crystal is, objectively, the best item in the game. I’m guessing that the delay was to stop you from using it to run from a fight, but that only works if you’re being swarmed. It’s easy to run around for 20 turns and avoid, for instance, the lich, and then come back and explore around elsewhere in the level. I’m not sure whether this is intentional, or even a bad thing, as too long a delay would be even worse. However, I feel that it bears noting.
There are a large amount of resources which only have a sorting or grinding recipe, and no others. I’m not sure if you’re planning on giving them more recipes, or just leaving them as something to immediately be converted into essences.
Why can you push stuff around? This isn’t a problem with the game, it’s just something I’ve never used, and I kind of want to know why it was added.
Thirdly, criticism and feature requests:
Let’s get this one out of the way first: Snakes. I know that in your latest devlog you mention that you are going to make them less likely to move towards the player, which I think is a great change. My problem with them, however, is that semi frequently they will “chase” me, repeatedly moving towards my character. I’m not sure how this specifically could be fixed, but it’s somewhat annoying.
This one’s more of a quality of life tweak, but could you change it so that you treat bats like passive animals while the character is holding a light source? Please? It gets somewhat annoying to go into my settings and turn on “ignore hostiles” whenever I want to move halfway across a dungeon without clicking a million times.
I would like to see more uses for ecclesiastical knowledge, but you shouldn’t feel pressured to add it. This isn’t a big deal at all.
That’s about it. Sorry for writing an essay, but I have a lot of thoughts on this game.
Thank you for writing this. Actually, the fact that someone got so impressed by the game as to write such a post is the highest praise I could hope to have.
>The alchemy system
To be clear, it's directly inspired by Prey's recyclers. So if you like my take on the crafting system, you'll probably like theirs.
>The homeward crystal is
It is, of course, intentionally pretty powerful. It's, after all, one of the later researches, and pretty costly to make. But there are plenty of items that allow you to escape danger, sometimes out of way worse situations, like the rift potion or the frozen time potion. Most of the time, if you can survive 20 turns, you can probably reach the exit anyway.
>I’m not sure if you’re planning on giving them more recipes, or just leaving them as something to immediately be converted into essences.
Some might receive additional properties, but in general there will always be simple items with only one use. I am considering adding some kind of autoconvert feature for those later.
>Why can you push stuff around?
Mostly niche tactical uses. Like moving a barrel of gunpowder to cause an explosion where it would be most useful, arranging debris to make a large fire, building an improvised barricade.
There's also something I forgot to mention anywhere in the game (I should), and it's that you can move stunned or crystallized creatures. You can move them out of your way, into hazards, or even push them into chasms, which is an instant kill. Try it, it's fun.
>My problem with them, however, is that semi frequently they will “chase” me, repeatedly moving towards my character.
The aforementioned update is probably going to help here. As they will be less likely to move towards you in general, they will be even less likely to do so repeatedly.
>change it so that you treat bats like passive animals while the character is holding a light source?
Good idea, I'll arrange that.
>I would like to see more uses for ecclesiastical knowledge
Not promising anything right away, but I am planning to expand the research tree in general, so there probably will be.
So one of my problems with the game is the vipers, sometimes there's too much of them and they surround me and I now carry at least more than 10 of those alcohol hand potions and antidotes since I got killed bunch of times because of that. I also think that maybe you should make the start more engaging since I thought of quitting two times before I got hooked to the game. I also made another run that lasted a year and four months before I stupidly punched a tomb from a witch forest, after that I just didn't wanna play again since I played it for 2 days and unlocked almost all the potions. I think you should add a normal mode where you'll just get back to your laboratory after you die since it's so depressing when you lose the save file that you worked hard for.
Some notes I took while I was playing the tutorial for the first time:
First of all, I appreciate the option to play on Mac.
Great Menu upon loading the game, immediately made me feel like this game could be epic.
A bit too much talking from the Alchemist at the start of the game in my opinion. Consider making the very start of the game a bit more actiony? Perhaps the devil saves you from an intro fight before you make your pact? You gotta remember new players don’t know what they’re getting into, they don’t know it’s the awesome game you know it to be as the developer. You need to hook them early. Starting the game to find I’ve made a pact with the devil was interesting, but then got a bit text-heavy and boring after that.
I liked the torch to illuminate hidden passages thing. I hope this isn’t a one time tutorial thing and is actually introducing me to a mechanic that is used throughout the game.
Once I met Ricardo I got a better understanding of the story. Tutorial got better after that when got to my Alchemy room.
Got killed by a bunch of Vipers in the first fight. It wasn’t clear to me how to cure the poison?
So Idk how to "kindle" the flame under the cauldron, how do I do that? I tried wielding a torch and interacting with it but it still doesn't work, am I missing something here?
That's just flavour text. So long as you have all the necessary components and the recipe, you just click whatever you want to craft, choose the amount and hold the button to confirm.
Oh, ok, I also have another question, I'm stuck on the "Ricardo's Friends" because there's no clue or instructions on how I actually do it. Can you add like a clue or instruction on where to start? It's really confusing and I would l love some help. Thank you and great game as well.
Lots of good ideas here, and lovely presentation, but the terrible mouse handling made it so painful to play I don't think I can bear to do it again. Making this mouse-compatible would make it open to a much wider audience.
(basics like: dont make the player tap z, click 4 times because your mouse handler is guessing the wrong thing to do, then click z a million more times, for stuff that is directly achievable by the user clicking on things. You even have the popup context-sensitive menus already, so there shouldn't be any need for the 'forced keyboard' stuff)
Hello, so i have this problem whenever I try to mount the horses at the stable, meaning i haven't even left the first area. What happens is the screen freezes black with the game still running I can hear music and footsteps when I touch movement buttons.
am I the only one with this problem? any idea how to solve it?
No, you're not the only one. It seems to happen on certain old graphic cards. Go to the "troubleshoot" section in Options - System and switch the "Complex map colouring" option.
I've encountered a problem that some of the people here have experienced before. When I go to the stables at the beginning of the game and interact with a horse, the game freezes completely, leaving only the audio of the game in the background. I have a low-end PC. If anyone has any solutions please comment below.
I had another run, and I have unlocked most of the recipes before accidentally dying.
The run lasted 1 year and 2 months ingame, and I have solved all of the areas except the tier 2 woods. I have also gathered a lot of materials, and here are some things I noticed:
Something dead is surely overabundant, I have about 3000 of them when I died.
Something epiphemeral is scarce until late game, and then you get many bats to kill. I think this is by design.
Something umbral is rather scarce, and this severely limits the use of frost potions. Potion of rust is almost taking all of my umbral essence, and thus frost potion becomes almost useless.
I haven't figured out how to use potion of chaos. I just can't think of a situation that I need the effect of a random potion, and this potion is not cheap enough for me to try in large amounts to get the desired potion effect. Perhaps it's used to use the effects of locked recipes?
I've unlocked homeward crystal, rift potion and potion of frozen time. In theory, these 3 items could save from any danger, but I wasn't careful with my HP and got killed by a trap.
Collecting items indeed becomes tedious late game. I think it does need some work, either auto collection of some sort, or resource compression, and ideally both.
I have some new thoughts about auto collection: autocollect with queued action. With a given amount of movement steps, the game marks all items reachable in X steps and in sight. Then the character moves to each item and collect them.
I'm going to wait for the next update, and play again when I get to disable permadeath.
I've noticed another problem: with the toggle resource display option, it's difficult to tell whether you had it toggled on or off, when there is no resource in sight. This could cause confusion when the player enters a new area, when there is resource but he turned it off.
I think there should be a small icon that shows whether the resource display is turned on. This icon should have a tooltip to let the player know what it does.
1.Large amounts of low value items repetitive to collect
More condensed items are a good solution, but I also like the auto collection. Perhaps we can have some sort of telekinesis potion, that auto collects most simple items within 2 tiles and within sight, and lasts for a duration. It might not work on the core loot of the zones, as this could break balance.
With permadeath players are expected to experience the "refine forest for charcoal" stage quite many times, and this stage needs lots of collection. So this potion should become avaliable shortly after this stage, maybe this recipe could be included in forest zone loot list.
2.Gardening?
This is mainly about exploring locations, so gardening may not quite fit the theme. However, some items are mainly bought, and can't be reliably found in exploration. These items include food and beverage. Probably these items can be gardened. And gardening is also a good place to go for my 300+ something dead, which is overabundant from refining forests.
3.snakes
For gameplay, I'm okay with the snakes as they currently are. In forests they are very easy to deal with, also easy in farms, but much more difficult in swamps, because fire no longer works. Perhaps I need to freeze them instead. I have completed a few forests, so I'll talk about snakes in forests.
The special loot of forest area is near the path (bag in zone 2, mangrove in zone 3), and the only natural threat is snakes. In the lore, snakes recognize the path as human territory and try to avoid it. In the game however, I have to go off the path very often to avoid snakes. The path is still important because it leads to the loot, and the open space helps me avoid the snakes. I'm ok with the snake challenge but not the conflict between lore and gameplay.
This game is really nice, and burning down whole forests is fun, but the permadeath is frustruating.
Some other roguelike games I've played have options to disable permadeath, like noita(via mods), and wayward(via an option on creating a save). I think a causal mode option when creating a save would be nice, so I don't have to start from scratch if I got killed when exploring something new.
I've only reached the point of being able to mass craft amber potions from burning down forests, then I died in a dungeon. It seems that homeward potions (in the tech tree) could save me from such danger but I'm way too far from unlocking that.
Edit: I've also noticed another problem: As you play a save for longer, you will have more and more unlocked locations, but it seems there is no way to delete them after completing a location. This will cause the save file to inflate as the player progress. So we should be able to delete a location after completing it (or if it becomes no longer possible to complete).
I am indeed planning to add such an option in the next release.
Save file size only becomes noticeably large after extremely long games (and I mean, longer than you'd need to unlock everything). Even at that point, the only noticeable difference would be time it takes for the game to save or load. File size is a pretty far-fetched concern here.
The casual mode will be really nice, it'll surely improve my gameplay experience a lot. I just wonder how long will I need to wait for it.
For deleting completed locations, I originally thought that this would help reduce UI clutter with lots of locations. Now looking at it, it's somewhat unnecessary, as new locations are abundant, and therefore usually I will only ever visit a location once. I originally thought that I would need to come back to a previous location when I get better equipments, to search it more completely, and it turns out this isn't the case.
A few months? I certainly can't wait for the new version, so I guess I'll play the current version more and also die a few more times LOL
Another important thing is savefile compatibility. If you add the multiple life system, pls make it avaliable for old saves.
This game really has quite some potential to become a successful rougelike game, perhaps as successful as Noita.
This game isn't really a rougelike yet, it is lacking a core mechanism: limited resources. I could think of 2 limitations: Either limit days, or limit the amount of locations, or perhaps limit both.
Location limit: After exploring this number of locations, no more locations will be provided by the bartender, until you complete his quest, which provides another limited supply of locations.
Time limit: Starting from some point (like day 20), the bartender asks you to pay him rent every some time (in the form of "something that glitters", can have debt but must pay off the rent to get more locations) , and this amount increases gradually to make time a limited resource. This way rent acts like the hunger mechanism of other rougelikes, making time a limited resource. Completing quests for him will reduce this amount by some, giving you more time to get resources.
Perhaps past some point, this amount no longer grows, or is even completely removed, as the bartender wants you to focus on creating powerful potions for him. This could be simply implemented by adding a constant supply of quests, as long as you complete enough quests, you no longer have to pay rent, and the quests are relatively easy for late game.
If this game is to be converted to a rougelike this way, then it's important to add QoL improvements, like collection convenience.
And of course also a casual mode without rent and permadeath, perhaps customizable when creating a save.
In Noita, the main limiting resource is HP. Methods of regaining lost hp is extremely limited, until you get extremely powerful spells to break out of the main dungeon, and then the player can grind as much resource as he want, allowing a save to be persistent, until the player makes a mistake and dies.
Noita doesn't have ingame option to remove permadeath, instead it's provided by mods. Mods are a good thing to have, many successful games have either a dedicated modding platform, or steam workshop for mods. The only problem is the coding difficulty, but it's rewarding enough to pay off its cost.
I'm afraid not. Even though you can choose the name, you really are playing as an established character in a story. That part will probably become more obvious with the next update, as I will include more story there.
Moreover, there is a problem of effort, as the game already contains a ton of dialogue, and planned to have even more. Writing that to account for many posibilities is going to complicate things a lot, or unnecessarily neuter the writing.
That makes sense! It was just a little jarring to name my character after myself and then get called “he” straight away, so I wanted to check. I’m looking forward to seeing more of the story you have planned!
Is there anything (or multiple things) planned that use large amounts of one or two specific resources? I do have to do something with 100+ of something dead. Something luminescent + something dead = blinding powder, maybe?
There might be a use that I just haven't encountered, though, since I didn't get hugely far before dying to a mushroom while attempting to hunt witches. I should've gone back home to make more rust dust to carry on through an abandoned fortress.
It might also be interesting to see potions applied in different ways, like as traps.
For now, the main use for something dead is in antidote recipe, but it is, in fact, overabundant. The economy will definitely be changing as I add new recipes.
- Potions, as traps or with creative uses (Possessed weapons vs rust dust? Poison potions as herbicide? A potion as a repellant that makes snakes wander away from you?)
- *Some* gardening aspect. I do need some permanent source of pine sap without having to burn down new herb groves. Perhaps Ricardo allows you to get some potted herbs for your cellar, which regrow periodically?
- An unlockable material stash in your workshop. Once unlocked, you get the ability to leave, say, 10% of any (or all of) your materials there. If you die after leaving that 10%, it appears in a chest in the cellar.
- Golems/elementals! I saw this mentioned by someone else lower down. Unconventional materials on golems would be fun (After all, why not? Why shouldn't I make a golem out of something sticky?). I know I wouldn't be too big on party mechanics though.
Perhaps an easy mode for those who love the style and idea but are looking for a bit more chill playstyle?
It would be a huge win for accessibility, I have a condition where concentration is something I have on a good day. I would love to play this on good and bad days.
Really enjoying this game, but think it would be less frustrating if there was an option to lighten the consequences of death a bit. I keep exhaustively clearing out the missions one by one, but then one bad encounter makes me lose the dozens or hundreds of stockpiled ingredients. So far my record is managing to die near the end of the third mission.
It would be super nice to be able to make consistant/permanent saves when I'm back at the basement between missions, so I only have to repeat the most recent one if I die. Or, if permadeath is important, maybe adding some roguelite new-game-plus features -- like starting with an amount of each raw ingredient based on 10% of your highest previous total. It could be leftovers salvaged from your previous shop.
I will probably not do exactly that, but I am planning to give the player multiple "lives" instead (Devil saving you and transporting you to the lonely tree), which is likely to help this issue.
So far the only way I can survive is through getting some distance and throwing fire potions, so once creatures get too close to me I'm ruined unless I can lose them. I gained access to shock/stun potions once via plot progression, but was saving them for the quest. I haven't managed to unlock anything on the technology tree aside from torches and fire potions. I suspect armor or access to more tools would help, but I keep not getting that far.
It is nice that massive forest fires produce plentiful resources for more fire potions.
I think I should mention here for anyone curious that I've figured out the way to circumvent the issue mentioned below (with help from B R U H moment), and the next release will have a troubleshooting option for that case.
I have the exact same bug as goaty14. I have it both with the windows and .love version. Specifically, it seems like the screen itself freezes but I can still interact with the menu? or move? after I select the horse. I'm not sure what actually happens, but I know if I hit buttons (z and movement keys) until the music changes, then quit the game and reload, the game loads properly in a new area. I haven't figured out yet how to properly choose what area I want to go to yet as I still don't actually know what happens when I use the horse. I really like the concept of this game but this is a pretty difficult bug.
That's very unusual. Thank you very much for this description, I will try to reproduce and fix that.
By the way, it would be very helpful if you gave me a screenshot of what it looks like during the issue. Ideally, if you could record the whole process, that would be super useful.
I'm also interested to know what happens if you close the map (esc or X)
Also, does this only happen with the horse, or when you enter the map by road (from areas that are away from the town) too?
File is too big to post and I didn't feel like uploading to YouTube so I left you a screenshot.
"Does this only happen with the horse, or when you enter the map by road (from areas that are away from the town) too?"
-Yes, also when I go to map from other areas.
"I'm also interested to know what happens if you close the map"
-The game continues to run as it should, except the screen stays frozen. I can still move around though and I hear the audio from my footsteps.
Funnily enough, since writing this, the game properly loaded the map once. It was on a new save and the only noticeable difference was that I rushed to the stables to take a screenshot, and so 1. the file is very new 2. I don't have anything in my inventory except the contract 3. This was on Love, but as I said I have tested on Love before and it didn't work so this is an isolated case.
On the same save, I have not since seen the map, after trying both from a new area and the horses again. It has frozen every time after that (at least for a minute or so before I gave up). This was super useful for me though since now I know what the map looks like and how to navigate it. I will keep playing your game, I'm having a blast.
More information: The first time it happened I waited over 30 minutes so it's not just a load time thing Here's the screenshot
That's so, so weird. Thank you for explaining. Seems like some kind of engine problem that I'm not aware of. I'll keep looking into it and let you know if I find the solution.
Oh, if you don't mind, please tell me your GPU model, that might give me some clues.
And, I know it sounds like a very generic answer, but are your hardware drivers up to date?
I'm on a Dell e7440 laptop with Intel Integrated HD 4400 GPU and my drivers are up to date. The game only seems to ever take up about 30-40% of my GPU.
Also thanks for being so responsive! It's good to see your committed to this. I'm happy you're still working on it because I really love the gameplay. You differentiate from classic roguelikes in that the focus is entirely on alchemy (which I love) but the core feeling of game knowledge and preparedness being your best assets is still there. Keep up the great work!
Sadly, I haven't found anything conclusive. Seems that it really is a hardware compatibility issue. I will add some troubleshooting options to the next release that would allow disabling individual graphical features, and, hopefully, disabling coloring shader for the map will solve the issue.
Also (irrelevant for the issue itself but might be useful) can't help but notice that you seem to be using Windows display scaling. You might want to disable it for the game (in compatibility settings), and readjust the tile size in options (64 is the original size), this way they will look less blurry.
By the way, I just had a thought. If you're willing to experiment some more, would you mind contacting me via email? spellsweaver@gmail.com
I haven't encountered this bug before. If you could give some information on what happened beforehand, it could be useful. Does it happen every time?
It's also possible that you should wait a little. The game should be rendering the map when you first load it, so if your system is low-end, it might take some time.
Happens every time, but I'll try giving it time to load in. My computer isn't higher-end yeah (8 gb/~2.3ish GHz?), so I'll leave it an hour and see how it goes.
It's not that bad, and it would probably take something much worse for the game to actually lag enough that it would freeze for even a minute at this point. It's not that demanding, normally it doesn't take enough time to even notice. Are you saying that it happens even if you start the new game? If so, then I really can only assume some kind of hardware incompatibility, but that is strange.
If you don't mind, could you give me your GPU model? Maybe I'll be able to find something out.
Love2D's GUI "functionality" is what turned me away from the framework, but I think I figured out how to make a simple button module to simplify the creation of buttons, so I'll probably be using it in the future.
On the screenshot with the map and the list of locations, the locations are in a scroll box. I think I know how I might create the scrollbar, but how did you force the location list to clip only to the scroll box without the images overflowing? Is that what set scissor does? I found that on the wiki in my research, but it's kinda confusing.
I was planning to release certain pieces of UI as a standalone package, since it's been requested so much. But that isn't going to happen soon, as in their current state they are meant for a pretty narrow set of use cases.
so i came to ruins went down and there is one small room only but i can hear the sounds from behind the walls. is this a bug or i 'll get a pickaxe later?
i really need key reassigning, cause jumping between Z and E is uncomfortable.
There are probably illusory walls somewhere in the room. Try equipping a torch and walking near them.
You can destroy walls with fireball/shockwave potions and it can make your way easier but this shouldn't ever be necessary to reach the end of the dungeon.
We are planning to add keys remapping later on in development, thanks for confirming that it's needed. Also it might be more convenient for you to scroll through actions with mouse wheel, if you're using a mouse, or through 'A' menu.
Fantastic game, loved the ideas on it and eagerly awaiting for more content. One criticism I would point though is that gathering large quantities of ingredients became tedious a little later into the game, my suggestion would be to make common ingredients 4x rarer but yield 4x more, that would also increase the dopamine hit of finding them.
I feel like it could really use some things to streamline gathering- some things I thought of:
A "gather all" button that grabs everything within reach
Making the s/highlight function a toggleable mode that you don't have to re-enable every time you want to look at things
Some kind of upgrade that extends your reach early on, just because while I understand the reasoning for it only being one tile, it sure is annoying to need to be that exact with your positioning
A checklist of ingredients you can add to.
More readily available fuel, because I don't know if I'm missing something maybe but I'm like constantly out and my only way of getting more involves venturing ever further into snake territory. Just a small renewable source would make things so much less frustrating.
>Making the s/highlight function a toggleable mode that you don't have to re-enable every time you want to look at things
There already is an option for this in game. Aside from that, I will consider those suggestions. As for easy sources of fuel, you could try burning the forest for charocoal or fell the trees with shockwave.
snakes should avoid slithering towards you, not necessarily run away, but they shouldn't willingly walk into range of you (and then proceed to attack you in "self defense")
or if they do slither towards you, you should be able to stay still to avoid them biting you...
It makes sense but that would probably make the snakes way too easy to avoid. Which is already a pretty trivial task. Consider this case as though the snake was trying to intimidate the intruder and when that failed, attacked.
I will be adding a lot of new things as time goes on (which will quite possibly include what you mentioned) but for now my targets are mostly about setting up the core gameplay loop.
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Finally the game is out!
Now we have a free and paid version. Unfortunately, I don't have access to itch's payment tools, so I can't get the paid version now. I have the money, it's just the payment tools.
So I decide to play the free version for a while, and buy this game later, and then transfer my save file to the paid version. Is the save file compatible between the two versions?
Yes, of course. The save files, settings, etc are all shared between versions.
very great game, I enjoy playing it.
Also, how can you get your save file and will it be compatible for newer versions?(I have Alchemist 0.1.2)
If you're playing on Windows, the save file should be in Users/.../AppData/Roaming/Alchemist/saves
There will be two files of the same name, called something like 12323.save and 12323.metadata. You'll need both.
Unfortunately, it will not be compatible with the next version due to major changes. For smaller patches, saves are generally compatible.
Idk if im impatient or my laptop just too old for this game, but i can't seem to progress with the horse.... it just freeze when i interact with them..
It's a known issue that happens on some hardware. Go to Options -> System -> Troubleshoot and switch "complex map colouring" off.
thank you!! Works well now
Is it possible to set a multi-key combination for a single keybind (Shift+Up Arrow)? If not, could this be added?
I can't get the hang of vi keys and would like to setup an alternative for movement.
It's not currently possible. I will consider adding such an option, but don't expect it too soon, as it's going to take some thought to implement.
There's also another option for diagonal movement aside from rebinding keys: you can point at the target in examination mode and then press the "confirm target" key (default Z, enter, space). Try it, maybe you'll like it more.
Great game; patiently waiting for 0.1.3.
I have an ... idea.
A permanent stat increase optionts.
WAIT!!! Wait! wait, put down the pitchfork, let me explain.
There would be 2 type (tier) of potion: lesser and greater.
For example:
Lesser strength potion would increase youre meele attack damage by 1 and the greater by 5, the greater would cost 4 time more to create then the lesser.
Speed: 10 and 50%.
HP: 1 and 5 ETC
How can you obtain the recipe:
All the "bosses" (the goat, the poison wyvern, the shadow spawnin skeleton) have a 1% chanse to drop 1 lesser and 0,1% chanse to drop the greater recipe. These recipes would be unique so you would't get a duplicant of them.
The real kicker come from the cost of the recipe.
I'm talking like 1000 metalic 500 holy 500 fey and similar cost for the lesser.
Easy to obtain: no
Easy to farm: definitely no
Would give a further goal: for some definitely; others ehh not so much.
Would be some crasy people out ther how would grind it like crasy:
absolutely (including me).
This is just an idea, but maybe you can considered it puting in somting similar, I know it supposed to be a difficult game, but it would be a great reward for thos who put a lot of time and effort in the game and
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I JUST GOT AN EVEN BETTER IDEA:
Who about if you put this in the 1 life mode because you have "the knowledge of all mortal languages" so you can read this ancient books about the recipe.
It's not a terrible idea, and I might consider something like that in the future. But I mostly want to keep permanent upgrades in the "tools" category.
A high fixed cost for permanent stat increase might be difficult to balance. I have a better idea: not make the potion cost high, but as you drink more of the same potion, the effect of each additional potion will get lower.
I think a square root or cube root diminishing return is good enough. That means the total effect scales with the square (cube) root of the amount of potions drunk. For certain special stats that have a large influence, you can use logarithm.
For players that want to grind, they can get relatively high stats, but not too high that would break the game. (A mage with 100 melee attack is certainly broken.) And for players that don't want to grind, they can still benefit from the potion.
Fantastic game! It's been a while since I've checked in on your progress, and I'm excited for all the new stuff! I've decided to name all my characters after St. Patrick, because I *will* kill all the snakes :P
My only real gripe (other than snakes, which you are addressing) is that you seem to have a rounding error in your code? Sometimes I'll wind up with 1.001 of something. Or it'll say that I have 1.0 of something, but then I cannot make a recipe that requires 1 of that thing; my guess is that I actually somehow have 0.999 of that thing, but it displays as 1.
A few suggestions and nitpicks for down the road, if I may...
This is a very fun game, and I'm eagerly awaiting future progress :)
>is that you seem to have a rounding error in your code
There is some weird display issue that causes things like 1.01 to display when there shouldn't be. As far as I know, actual calculations are not affected, but I should probably get to fixing that either way.
>It seems as tho remapping the shift key doesn't work as intended.
Thank you, there was a bug with this command. I'll fix it by next release.
>Being able to pin a recipe
Planned for a while, but will probably not do it right now.
>an accessibility option to enable reloading
There will be an option for extra lives.
> There is some weird display issue that causes things like 1.01 to display when there shouldn't be. As far as I know, actual calculations are not affected, but I should probably get to fixing that either way.
I've definitely run into the problem several times where I was unable to make something despite having enough ingredients. Would it be helpful to screenshot such things, or send in a save file?
Yes, it would. Please do.
Here's a screenshot showing one instance:
Here's the save files:
https://anonfiles.com/H8a9Xf7ay8/alchemist-saves_7z
I'll keep an eye out for more instances.
Interesting. I looked into it, seems like there is an issue with floats comparison. Thank you for the save file, it helped.
I've added rounding of the items' quantity and tested again with the save that you gave me, and it seemed to have fixed the issue, so expect it to be gone in the next release.
I love this game so much, and now that I’ve finally completed all the research, I feel that I can give my thoughts on it.
Firstly, the praise:
Secondly, things that I noted while playing, but don’t feel are strictly good or bad things:
Thirdly, criticism and feature requests:
That’s about it. Sorry for writing an essay, but I have a lot of thoughts on this game.
Thank you for writing this. Actually, the fact that someone got so impressed by the game as to write such a post is the highest praise I could hope to have.
>The alchemy system
To be clear, it's directly inspired by Prey's recyclers. So if you like my take on the crafting system, you'll probably like theirs.
>The homeward crystal is
It is, of course, intentionally pretty powerful. It's, after all, one of the later researches, and pretty costly to make. But there are plenty of items that allow you to escape danger, sometimes out of way worse situations, like the rift potion or the frozen time potion. Most of the time, if you can survive 20 turns, you can probably reach the exit anyway.
>I’m not sure if you’re planning on giving them more recipes, or just leaving them as something to immediately be converted into essences.
Some might receive additional properties, but in general there will always be simple items with only one use. I am considering adding some kind of autoconvert feature for those later.
>Why can you push stuff around?
Mostly niche tactical uses. Like moving a barrel of gunpowder to cause an explosion where it would be most useful, arranging debris to make a large fire, building an improvised barricade.
There's also something I forgot to mention anywhere in the game (I should), and it's that you can move stunned or crystallized creatures. You can move them out of your way, into hazards, or even push them into chasms, which is an instant kill. Try it, it's fun.
>My problem with them, however, is that semi frequently they will “chase” me, repeatedly moving towards my character.
The aforementioned update is probably going to help here. As they will be less likely to move towards you in general, they will be even less likely to do so repeatedly.
>change it so that you treat bats like passive animals while the character is holding a light source?
Good idea, I'll arrange that.
>I would like to see more uses for ecclesiastical knowledge
Not promising anything right away, but I am planning to expand the research tree in general, so there probably will be.
So one of my problems with the game is the vipers, sometimes there's too much of them and they surround me and I now carry at least more than 10 of those alcohol hand potions and antidotes since I got killed bunch of times because of that. I also think that maybe you should make the start more engaging since I thought of quitting two times before I got hooked to the game. I also made another run that lasted a year and four months before I stupidly punched a tomb from a witch forest, after that I just didn't wanna play again since I played it for 2 days and unlocked almost all the potions. I think you should add a normal mode where you'll just get back to your laboratory after you die since it's so depressing when you lose the save file that you worked hard for.
I will be adding that. There will be an option for additional lives.
Some notes I took while I was playing the tutorial for the first time:
First of all, I appreciate the option to play on Mac.
Great Menu upon loading the game, immediately made me feel like this game could be epic.
A bit too much talking from the Alchemist at the start of the game in my opinion. Consider making the very start of the game a bit more actiony? Perhaps the devil saves you from an intro fight before you make your pact? You gotta remember new players don’t know what they’re getting into, they don’t know it’s the awesome game you know it to be as the developer. You need to hook them early. Starting the game to find I’ve made a pact with the devil was interesting, but then got a bit text-heavy and boring after that.
I liked the torch to illuminate hidden passages thing. I hope this isn’t a one time tutorial thing and is actually introducing me to a mechanic that is used throughout the game.
Once I met Ricardo I got a better understanding of the story. Tutorial got better after that when got to my Alchemy room.
Got killed by a bunch of Vipers in the first fight. It wasn’t clear to me how to cure the poison?
>Perhaps the devil saves you from an intro fight before you make your pact?
Indeed, there will be a new intro in the next release.
>I hope this isn’t a one time tutorial thing and is actually introducing me to a mechanic that is used throughout the game.
You are correct.
>It wasn’t clear to me how to cure the poison?
Antidote is an unlockable recipe. But in general, the best tactic is not to get poisoned, or at least not let it stack too high.
Vipers aren't actively aggressive, but I know a lot of people have issues with them.
So Idk how to "kindle" the flame under the cauldron, how do I do that? I tried wielding a torch and interacting with it but it still doesn't work, am I missing something here?
That's just flavour text. So long as you have all the necessary components and the recipe, you just click whatever you want to craft, choose the amount and hold the button to confirm.
Oh, ok, I also have another question, I'm stuck on the "Ricardo's Friends" because there's no clue or instructions on how I actually do it. Can you add like a clue or instruction on where to start? It's really confusing and I would l love some help. Thank you and great game as well.
You'll just unlock the recipes for the potions naturally as you keep exploring the areas.
You should probably have some of them unlocked already.
Lots of good ideas here, and lovely presentation, but the terrible mouse handling made it so painful to play I don't think I can bear to do it again. Making this mouse-compatible would make it open to a much wider audience.
(basics like: dont make the player tap z, click 4 times because your mouse handler is guessing the wrong thing to do, then click z a million more times, for stuff that is directly achievable by the user clicking on things. You even have the popup context-sensitive menus already, so there shouldn't be any need for the 'forced keyboard' stuff)
Thank you, I'll see what I can do to make it more convenient.
Hello, so i have this problem whenever I try to mount the horses at the stable, meaning i haven't even left the first area. What happens is the screen freezes black with the game still running I can hear music and footsteps when I touch movement buttons.
am I the only one with this problem? any idea how to solve it?
No, you're not the only one. It seems to happen on certain old graphic cards. Go to the "troubleshoot" section in Options - System and switch the "Complex map colouring" option.
I can clearly see the resources used in the TOME. How is the project related to this?
It's not related. ToME does not own game-icons.net, which it what you're probably talking about.
Okay, thank you, projects are linked by resource source.
I've encountered a problem that some of the people here have experienced before. When I go to the stables at the beginning of the game and interact with a horse, the game freezes completely, leaving only the audio of the game in the background. I have a low-end PC. If anyone has any solutions please comment below.
It's a known issue that some people had before. Go to the "troubleshoot" section in Options - System and switch the "Complex map colouring" option.
It worked! Thank you very much.
Very addictive game. But also very frustrating. The amount of times I’ve died due to there being way too many freaking snakes is ridiculous
I can't say how much I can relate to that.
I had another run, and I have unlocked most of the recipes before accidentally dying.
The run lasted 1 year and 2 months ingame, and I have solved all of the areas except the tier 2 woods. I have also gathered a lot of materials, and here are some things I noticed:
Something dead is surely overabundant, I have about 3000 of them when I died.
Something epiphemeral is scarce until late game, and then you get many bats to kill. I think this is by design.
Something umbral is rather scarce, and this severely limits the use of frost potions. Potion of rust is almost taking all of my umbral essence, and thus frost potion becomes almost useless.
I haven't figured out how to use potion of chaos. I just can't think of a situation that I need the effect of a random potion, and this potion is not cheap enough for me to try in large amounts to get the desired potion effect. Perhaps it's used to use the effects of locked recipes?
I've unlocked homeward crystal, rift potion and potion of frozen time. In theory, these 3 items could save from any danger, but I wasn't careful with my HP and got killed by a trap.
Collecting items indeed becomes tedious late game. I think it does need some work, either auto collection of some sort, or resource compression, and ideally both.
I have some new thoughts about auto collection: autocollect with queued action. With a given amount of movement steps, the game marks all items reachable in X steps and in sight. Then the character moves to each item and collect them.
I'm going to wait for the next update, and play again when I get to disable permadeath.
Thank you for your very detailed feedback. I'll take it into account.
>I haven't figured out how to use potion of chaos.
No one had. It's just for fun. But accessing the locked recipes is one way it can be useful.
I've noticed another problem: with the toggle resource display option, it's difficult to tell whether you had it toggled on or off, when there is no resource in sight. This could cause confusion when the player enters a new area, when there is resource but he turned it off.
I think there should be a small icon that shows whether the resource display is turned on. This icon should have a tooltip to let the player know what it does.
I have some more thoughts about this game.
1.Large amounts of low value items repetitive to collect
More condensed items are a good solution, but I also like the auto collection. Perhaps we can have some sort of telekinesis potion, that auto collects most simple items within 2 tiles and within sight, and lasts for a duration. It might not work on the core loot of the zones, as this could break balance.
With permadeath players are expected to experience the "refine forest for charcoal" stage quite many times, and this stage needs lots of collection. So this potion should become avaliable shortly after this stage, maybe this recipe could be included in forest zone loot list.
2.Gardening?
This is mainly about exploring locations, so gardening may not quite fit the theme. However, some items are mainly bought, and can't be reliably found in exploration. These items include food and beverage. Probably these items can be gardened. And gardening is also a good place to go for my 300+ something dead, which is overabundant from refining forests.
3.snakes
For gameplay, I'm okay with the snakes as they currently are. In forests they are very easy to deal with, also easy in farms, but much more difficult in swamps, because fire no longer works. Perhaps I need to freeze them instead. I have completed a few forests, so I'll talk about snakes in forests.
The special loot of forest area is near the path (bag in zone 2, mangrove in zone 3), and the only natural threat is snakes. In the lore, snakes recognize the path as human territory and try to avoid it. In the game however, I have to go off the path very often to avoid snakes. The path is still important because it leads to the loot, and the open space helps me avoid the snakes. I'm ok with the snake challenge but not the conflict between lore and gameplay.
This game is really nice, and burning down whole forests is fun, but the permadeath is frustruating.
Some other roguelike games I've played have options to disable permadeath, like noita(via mods), and wayward(via an option on creating a save). I think a causal mode option when creating a save would be nice, so I don't have to start from scratch if I got killed when exploring something new.
I've only reached the point of being able to mass craft amber potions from burning down forests, then I died in a dungeon. It seems that homeward potions (in the tech tree) could save me from such danger but I'm way too far from unlocking that.
Edit: I've also noticed another problem: As you play a save for longer, you will have more and more unlocked locations, but it seems there is no way to delete them after completing a location. This will cause the save file to inflate as the player progress. So we should be able to delete a location after completing it (or if it becomes no longer possible to complete).
I am indeed planning to add such an option in the next release.
Save file size only becomes noticeably large after extremely long games (and I mean, longer than you'd need to unlock everything). Even at that point, the only noticeable difference would be time it takes for the game to save or load. File size is a pretty far-fetched concern here.
The casual mode will be really nice, it'll surely improve my gameplay experience a lot. I just wonder how long will I need to wait for it.
For deleting completed locations, I originally thought that this would help reduce UI clutter with lots of locations. Now looking at it, it's somewhat unnecessary, as new locations are abundant, and therefore usually I will only ever visit a location once. I originally thought that I would need to come back to a previous location when I get better equipments, to search it more completely, and it turns out this isn't the case.
I can't give you the exact date, since I don't work full-time on the project and it's currently a very turbulent time for me. A few months, I think.
As for deleting areas from the map, I see how it could be useful in some cases, I'll consider that.
A few months? I certainly can't wait for the new version, so I guess I'll play the current version more and also die a few more times LOL
Another important thing is savefile compatibility. If you add the multiple life system, pls make it avaliable for old saves.
This game really has quite some potential to become a successful rougelike game, perhaps as successful as Noita.
This game isn't really a rougelike yet, it is lacking a core mechanism: limited resources. I could think of 2 limitations: Either limit days, or limit the amount of locations, or perhaps limit both.
Location limit: After exploring this number of locations, no more locations will be provided by the bartender, until you complete his quest, which provides another limited supply of locations.
Time limit: Starting from some point (like day 20), the bartender asks you to pay him rent every some time (in the form of "something that glitters", can have debt but must pay off the rent to get more locations) , and this amount increases gradually to make time a limited resource. This way rent acts like the hunger mechanism of other rougelikes, making time a limited resource. Completing quests for him will reduce this amount by some, giving you more time to get resources.
Perhaps past some point, this amount no longer grows, or is even completely removed, as the bartender wants you to focus on creating powerful potions for him. This could be simply implemented by adding a constant supply of quests, as long as you complete enough quests, you no longer have to pay rent, and the quests are relatively easy for late game.
If this game is to be converted to a rougelike this way, then it's important to add QoL improvements, like collection convenience.
And of course also a casual mode without rent and permadeath, perhaps customizable when creating a save.
In Noita, the main limiting resource is HP. Methods of regaining lost hp is extremely limited, until you get extremely powerful spells to break out of the main dungeon, and then the player can grind as much resource as he want, allowing a save to be persistent, until the player makes a mistake and dies.
Noita doesn't have ingame option to remove permadeath, instead it's provided by mods. Mods are a good thing to have, many successful games have either a dedicated modding platform, or steam workshop for mods. The only problem is the coding difficulty, but it's rewarding enough to pay off its cost.
amazing game but....
snakes they are everywhere!
Snake problem is something I'm working on. Latest devlog mentions some changes I'll be making to them.
its nice to see a game dev do someting with the comments/comunity.
This seems really interesting! I’m looking forward to digging into it a little deeper.
Are there any plans to allow you to customize your character’s gender – or better yet, specify preferred pronouns/nouns (woman/man/person, etc.)?
I'm afraid not. Even though you can choose the name, you really are playing as an established character in a story. That part will probably become more obvious with the next update, as I will include more story there.
Moreover, there is a problem of effort, as the game already contains a ton of dialogue, and planned to have even more. Writing that to account for many posibilities is going to complicate things a lot, or unnecessarily neuter the writing.
That makes sense! It was just a little jarring to name my character after myself and then get called “he” straight away, so I wanted to check. I’m looking forward to seeing more of the story you have planned!
I understand your problem.
I'll think of a better way to convey the question. Probably rephrase it as "What's his name?" or something similar.
Is there anything (or multiple things) planned that use large amounts of one or two specific resources? I do have to do something with 100+ of something dead. Something luminescent + something dead = blinding powder, maybe?
There might be a use that I just haven't encountered, though, since I didn't get hugely far before dying to a mushroom while attempting to hunt witches. I should've gone back home to make more rust dust to carry on through an abandoned fortress.
It might also be interesting to see potions applied in different ways, like as traps.
For now, the main use for something dead is in antidote recipe, but it is, in fact, overabundant. The economy will definitely be changing as I add new recipes.
So far things I'd be interested in seeing:
- Potions, as traps or with creative uses (Possessed weapons vs rust dust? Poison potions as herbicide? A potion as a repellant that makes snakes wander away from you?)
- *Some* gardening aspect. I do need some permanent source of pine sap without having to burn down new herb groves. Perhaps Ricardo allows you to get some potted herbs for your cellar, which regrow periodically?
- An unlockable material stash in your workshop. Once unlocked, you get the ability to leave, say, 10% of any (or all of) your materials there. If you die after leaving that 10%, it appears in a chest in the cellar.
- Golems/elementals! I saw this mentioned by someone else lower down. Unconventional materials on golems would be fun (After all, why not? Why shouldn't I make a golem out of something sticky?). I know I wouldn't be too big on party mechanics though.
>Possessed weapons vs rust dust?
There are animated armours that are specifically weak to this potion.
>*Some* gardening aspect.
That's possible, but not very likely, as I expect the player to go explore anyway.
>An unlockable material stash in your workshop
Probably won't happen, I have certain plans for the story that won't fit with this mechanic. But I do plan the "lives" mechanic instead.
>Golems/elementals!
In all likelyhood, there will be one golem, since I, too, don't enjoy large parties very much. But I haven't yet decided on the details.
Perhaps an easy mode for those who love the style and idea but are looking for a bit more chill playstyle?
It would be a huge win for accessibility, I have a condition where concentration is something I have on a good day. I would love to play this on good and bad days.
I am planning to add optional extra lives in the next update.
Next update! :) That is awesome thanks
Really enjoying this game, but think it would be less frustrating if there was an option to lighten the consequences of death a bit. I keep exhaustively clearing out the missions one by one, but then one bad encounter makes me lose the dozens or hundreds of stockpiled ingredients. So far my record is managing to die near the end of the third mission.
It would be super nice to be able to make consistant/permanent saves when I'm back at the basement between missions, so I only have to repeat the most recent one if I die. Or, if permadeath is important, maybe adding some roguelite new-game-plus features -- like starting with an amount of each raw ingredient based on 10% of your highest previous total. It could be leftovers salvaged from your previous shop.
I will probably not do exactly that, but I am planning to give the player multiple "lives" instead (Devil saving you and transporting you to the lonely tree), which is likely to help this issue.
That would probably help! I'll give it a rest for a while and come try again when I remember next. Really neat game in general by the way
By the way, if there were some specific things that gave you trouble, feel free to tell.
I am interested in how people perceive the game's difficulty.
So far the only way I can survive is through getting some distance and throwing fire potions, so once creatures get too close to me I'm ruined unless I can lose them. I gained access to shock/stun potions once via plot progression, but was saving them for the quest. I haven't managed to unlock anything on the technology tree aside from torches and fire potions. I suspect armor or access to more tools would help, but I keep not getting that far.
It is nice that massive forest fires produce plentiful resources for more fire potions.
this game look so good, but i cant seem to be able to open it?
What is your OS and what did you do?
Fantastic! Looking forward to more development.
I think I should mention here for anyone curious that I've figured out the way to circumvent the issue mentioned below (with help from B R U H moment), and the next release will have a troubleshooting option for that case.
I have the exact same bug as goaty14. I have it both with the windows and .love version. Specifically, it seems like the screen itself freezes but I can still interact with the menu? or move? after I select the horse. I'm not sure what actually happens, but I know if I hit buttons (z and movement keys) until the music changes, then quit the game and reload, the game loads properly in a new area. I haven't figured out yet how to properly choose what area I want to go to yet as I still don't actually know what happens when I use the horse. I really like the concept of this game but this is a pretty difficult bug.
That's very unusual. Thank you very much for this description, I will try to reproduce and fix that.
By the way, it would be very helpful if you gave me a screenshot of what it looks like during the issue. Ideally, if you could record the whole process, that would be super useful.
I'm also interested to know what happens if you close the map (esc or X)
Also, does this only happen with the horse, or when you enter the map by road (from areas that are away from the town) too?
File is too big to post and I didn't feel like uploading to YouTube so I left you a screenshot.
"Does this only happen with the horse, or when you enter the map by road (from areas that are away from the town) too?"
-Yes, also when I go to map from other areas.
"I'm also interested to know what happens if you close the map"
-The game continues to run as it should, except the screen stays frozen. I can still move around though and I hear the audio from my footsteps.
Funnily enough, since writing this, the game properly loaded the map once. It was on a new save and the only noticeable difference was that I rushed to the stables to take a screenshot, and so
1. the file is very new
2. I don't have anything in my inventory except the contract 3. This was on Love, but as I said I have tested on Love before and it didn't work so this is an isolated case.
On the same save, I have not since seen the map, after trying both from a new area and the horses again. It has frozen every time after that (at least for a minute or so before I gave up).
This was super useful for me though since now I know what the map looks like and how to navigate it. I will keep playing your game, I'm having a blast.
More information:
The first time it happened I waited over 30 minutes so it's not just a load time thing
Here's the screenshot
That's so, so weird. Thank you for explaining. Seems like some kind of engine problem that I'm not aware of. I'll keep looking into it and let you know if I find the solution.
Oh, if you don't mind, please tell me your GPU model, that might give me some clues.
And, I know it sounds like a very generic answer, but are your hardware drivers up to date?
I'm on a Dell e7440 laptop with Intel Integrated HD 4400 GPU and my drivers are up to date. The game only seems to ever take up about 30-40% of my GPU.
Also thanks for being so responsive! It's good to see your committed to this. I'm happy you're still working on it because I really love the gameplay. You differentiate from classic roguelikes in that the focus is entirely on alchemy (which I love) but the core feeling of game knowledge and preparedness being your best assets is still there. Keep up the great work!
Sadly, I haven't found anything conclusive. Seems that it really is a hardware compatibility issue. I will add some troubleshooting options to the next release that would allow disabling individual graphical features, and, hopefully, disabling coloring shader for the map will solve the issue.
Also (irrelevant for the issue itself but might be useful) can't help but notice that you seem to be using Windows display scaling. You might want to disable it for the game (in compatibility settings), and readjust the tile size in options (64 is the original size), this way they will look less blurry.
By the way, I just had a thought. If you're willing to experiment some more, would you mind contacting me via email? spellsweaver@gmail.com
Hey, I have a bug where the game freezes/blackscreens whenever I click on a horse in the stables. Is this something new, or is there a fix for it?
I haven't encountered this bug before. If you could give some information on what happened beforehand, it could be useful. Does it happen every time?
It's also possible that you should wait a little. The game should be rendering the map when you first load it, so if your system is low-end, it might take some time.
Happens every time, but I'll try giving it time to load in. My computer isn't higher-end yeah (8 gb/~2.3ish GHz?), so I'll leave it an hour and see how it goes.
It's not that bad, and it would probably take something much worse for the game to actually lag enough that it would freeze for even a minute at this point. It's not that demanding, normally it doesn't take enough time to even notice. Are you saying that it happens even if you start the new game? If so, then I really can only assume some kind of hardware incompatibility, but that is strange.
If you don't mind, could you give me your GPU model? Maybe I'll be able to find something out.
Love2D's GUI "functionality" is what turned me away from the framework, but I think I figured out how to make a simple button module to simplify the creation of buttons, so I'll probably be using it in the future.
On the screenshot with the map and the list of locations, the locations are in a scroll box. I think I know how I might create the scrollbar, but how did you force the location list to clip only to the scroll box without the images overflowing? Is that what set scissor does? I found that on the wiki in my research, but it's kinda confusing.
Thank you.
Stencil is the answer to your question.
https://love2d.org/wiki/love.graphics.stencil
I was planning to release certain pieces of UI as a standalone package, since it's been requested so much. But that isn't going to happen soon, as in their current state they are meant for a pretty narrow set of use cases.
This game is top-notch, lad! It's beautiful, challenging, and FUN! Thank you for your work!
But it seems works with the last LÖVE version, 11.3, sorry.
Ubuntu 18.04.5 LTS
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 blob driver 460.80
LOVE 0.9.1 (Baby Inspector)
Alchemist 0.0.3b (.love package)
$ love Alchemist.love
Error: functions/tryCompilingShader.lua:1: attempt to call field 'getSupported' (a nil value)
stack traceback:
functions/tryCompilingShader.lua:1: in main chunk
[C]: in function 'require'
shaders/gradientOutlineShader.lua:1: in main chunk
[C]: in function 'require'
functions/colorIcon.lua:1: in main chunk
[C]: in function 'require'
models/interface/images.lua:1: in main chunk
[C]: in function 'require'
models/player/playerActions.lua:1: in main chunk
[C]: in function 'require'
models/player.lua:3: in main chunk
[C]: in function 'require'
models/world.lua:1: in main chunk
[C]: in function 'require'
main.lua:4: in main chunk
[C]: in function 'require'
[string "boot.lua"]:360: in function <[string "boot.lua"]:241>
[C]: in function 'xpcall'
The version of love you're using is incompatible with the project. 0.9 is way too old.
so i came to ruins went down and there is one small room only but i can hear the sounds from behind the walls. is this a bug or i 'll get a pickaxe later?
i really need key reassigning, cause jumping between Z and E is uncomfortable.
There are probably illusory walls somewhere in the room. Try equipping a torch and walking near them.
You can destroy walls with fireball/shockwave potions and it can make your way easier but this shouldn't ever be necessary to reach the end of the dungeon.
We are planning to add keys remapping later on in development, thanks for confirming that it's needed. Also it might be more convenient for you to scroll through actions with mouse wheel, if you're using a mouse, or through 'A' menu.
yeah. accidentally scrolled my mouse and found out about this. xD
Fantastic game, loved the ideas on it and eagerly awaiting for more content. One criticism I would point though is that gathering large quantities of ingredients became tedious a little later into the game, my suggestion would be to make common ingredients 4x rarer but yield 4x more, that would also increase the dopamine hit of finding them.
Thanks. The game economy is likely to change but it's already moving in the direction of more condensed item sources.
I feel like it could really use some things to streamline gathering- some things I thought of:
A "gather all" button that grabs everything within reach
Making the s/highlight function a toggleable mode that you don't have to re-enable every time you want to look at things
Some kind of upgrade that extends your reach early on, just because while I understand the reasoning for it only being one tile, it sure is annoying to need to be that exact with your positioning
A checklist of ingredients you can add to.
More readily available fuel, because I don't know if I'm missing something maybe but I'm like constantly out and my only way of getting more involves venturing ever further into snake territory. Just a small renewable source would make things so much less frustrating.
>Making the s/highlight function a toggleable mode that you don't have to re-enable every time you want to look at things
There already is an option for this in game. Aside from that, I will consider those suggestions. As for easy sources of fuel, you could try burning the forest for charocoal or fell the trees with shockwave.
Thanks for the tips!
the toggle breaks on alttab
Alt is an alternative key for loot highlight as many games use this. So alt-tab causes it to switch as well.
snakes should avoid slithering towards you, not necessarily run away, but they shouldn't willingly walk into range of you (and then proceed to attack you in "self defense")
or if they do slither towards you, you should be able to stay still to avoid them biting you...
It makes sense but that would probably make the snakes way too easy to avoid. Which is already a pretty trivial task. Consider this case as though the snake was trying to intimidate the intruder and when that failed, attacked.
Would you add things like the ability to create homunculus, chimera or even golems in future update?
I will be adding a lot of new things as time goes on (which will quite possibly include what you mentioned) but for now my targets are mostly about setting up the core gameplay loop.
I'm finaly trying it ! I would have liked to do it sooner but I'm working a lot + school.
Looks good, UI is a little strange to use, however it has a lot of potential. Exited to see where it goes!
love the idea and interactions, im looking forward how it goes!