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