FreeGameDev

Alchemy Quest is a puzzle game where players combine alchemic elements to create exotic combinations and score points. It is an adaption of a falling blocks game originally titled NaturalChimie created by MotionTwin. This game was replicated as a Free Software clone named OpenAlchemist by developers Guillaume Delhumeau and Antoine Morineau. Alchemy Quest utilizes the same codebase as OpenAlchemist, but it aims to expand the concept further beyond the single game mode.

The idea for this project came from an alternate NES-styled tileset, uploaded on OpenGameArt by pixel artist usr_share. OpenAlchemist has not had any development since some years ago, so this tileset was never implemented. Alchemy Quest aims to retake and improve the old OpenAlchemist codebase and merge it with this previously unused tileset, along with adding two-player mode and some more features. The goal is to quickly roll out a simple game a high quality level, that not only looks good, but is also very enjoyable to play and easy to port.

Alchemy Quest has just recently began development. We are still in the process of refactoring the original OpenAlchemist codebase.

All code for Alchemy Quest will be made available under the GPLv3. All artwork will be licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.

For our complete development plan, you may find attached below the first version of our design doc.

We are currently looking for volunteer programmers capable of working with C++ and have a taste for puzzle games.

The current team consists of:

- Dulsi - programmer
- Strato - additional pixel art
- Hythlodaeus - project coordination, PR, documentation
- Alex Gleason - additional tasks, moral support

Interested in helping? Post on this thread, drop me a private message, or join us at our Matrix channel:
https://riot.im/app/#/room/#alchemyquest:matrix.org

You can check out our official repo at:
https://gitlab.com/dulsi/alchemyquest

Media:


Concept animation by Siltocyn

Updated first post with repository link

But....What do you want to do? A story mode?

The design doc has some of the ideas. My big want is a two player mode. The cub scout arcade machine needs more games for it.

EDIT: I should mention the code in github will just run regular openalchemist by default. The make install will not setup the alchemyquest skin at the moment. You need to copy the /usr/local/share/openalchemist to /usr/local/share/alchemyquest. Then zip the alchemyquest-skins/aqua files and overwrite the aqua.zip in /usr/local/share/alchemyquest. After that --alchemyquest as a command line argument will display the new skin. Lots of things are not complete.

Not sure if a Dr. Mario type of game like this lends itself well to a 2 player mode or a single player campaign as it is pretty random with little options for players to interact with each other.

A really cool game that is a bit similar, but different gameplay mechanic is Tetris Attack for the SNES. I would love to see a nicely done FOSS version of that.

Julius {l Wrote}:Not sure if a Dr. Mario type of game like this lends itself well to a 2 player mode or a single player campaign as it is pretty random with little options for players to interact with each other.

A really cool game that is a bit similar, but different gameplay mechanic is Tetris Attack for the SNES. I would love to see a nicely done FOSS version of that.

Block Attack seems like a good clone. I haven't played the original so I don't know how close it is. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be completely controllable via keyboard so it doesn't work for the arcade machine.

I'm curious why you think this game wouldn't work as 2 player?

Ah, now I remember Block Attack... seems to me fully controllable by keyboard though. However I can't seem to find how to enable controller support or full screen mode, and the explosion sound is rather annoying. But really not to bad and still under active development.

Regarding AlchemyQuest, well maybe you can surprise me with a good way to have a fun competitive 2 player mode, but I am not aware of any Dr. Mario type of game that was anything but a fun single-player endless mode time waster...

There's also another one called "Blocks of the Undead", but I've always liked Block Attack better.

Julius {l Wrote}:Ah, now I remember Block Attack... seems to me fully controllable by keyboard though. However I can't seem to find how to enable controller support or full screen mode, and the explosion sound is rather annoying. But really not to bad and still under active development.

Regarding AlchemyQuest, well maybe you can surprise me with a good way to have a fun competitive 2 player mode, but I am not aware of any Dr. Mario type of game that was anything but a fun single-player endless mode time waster...

If I recall the retry screen didn't have a way to select yes from the keyboard. It wasn't a big deal cause you could use escape and then go back in. I would need full screen mode as well but hadn't looked to see if that was supported or not.

Dr Mario did have a 2 player mode.

Julius {l Wrote}:Regarding AlchemyQuest, well maybe you can surprise me with a good way to have a fun competitive 2 player mode, but I am not aware of any Dr. Mario type of game that was anything but a fun single-player endless mode time waster...

To name only a few that have pretty cool 2P mode or which are mainly player vs AI or PvP games:
*Dr Mario
*Puyo Puyo
*Baku Baku Animal
*Bust-a-move

And so on.

Yeah, of course there are games in the wider genre that have very fun multiplayer modes. I was referring to the very specific Dr. Mario type with Tetris like falling pieces and a color matching mechanic. I very losely remember playing 2 player mode in Dr. Mario, but in my memory it wasn't very fun and might as well been to seperate single player games side by side.

I don't know if Dr. Mario does it but generally games like this have ways to inconvenience the other player in VS mode. Take Bust-a-Move for example. Any orbs that get dropped instead of destroyed get added to your opponents side.
A similar mechanic could be added to a Dr. Mario style game. Any time you destroy more than your standard three "orbs" (not sure what to call them here) your opponent could randomly get the additional orbs added to his field.
This would lead to a gameplay where you're not just trying to clean your own field but also fill the opponents by achieving as many combos as possible.

I would recommend you all reading the design doc attached on the first post. It already includes various options to implement 2P.

"Combo massing" seems like the only one of them that is more interactive. It would probably need testing with the penalty blocks are better added from the bottom, or as falling blocks from the top. But IMHO it still does't sound very competitive and the 3second timing aspect seems very random.

What would be nice though for both the single player and multiplayer would be a some deck building aspect (alchemy recepies) or at least some kind of choosable characters with special active and passive skills. Tetris Attact has the latter, but deck building is more trendy

Hythlodaeus {l Wrote}:I would recommend you all reading the design doc attached on the first post. It already includes various options to implement 2P.

Looks good. Although I'd say the combo stacking option is the only one I really like as that's the only one that lets you interfere with the opponents stack.
Not like you can just implement all of them though.

I saw no mention of online play. Are you planning on implementing it?

How about this, we could do a combination of combo stacking with tug of war the following way:

- There's a shared meter at the bottom split in two colors, one for each player
- A player can push his meter color by scoring and making chain combos.
- The higher the element used to score and the bigger the combo, the faster the meter fills up in one color.
- Once a player succeeds in pushing the meter on his side, the meter resets and a row of random elements is added on top/bottom (to be decided) of the opposing player's stack

This means the early game would be slower when compared to Puyo Puyo, with players having to transmute to higher elements in order to deal serious damage to their opponents. Players can also choose to perform quick chain combos with simpler elements in order to deal damage early on.

Hythlodaeus mentioned online play as it would allow more testing of 2 player mode. I'll keep that in mind so the design will hopefully won't preclude internet play. We first need to implement 2 player. The code is cleaner than Shippy 1984 which had a lot of little issues when I added 2 player so I'm hopeful it will go smoother.

Updated design doc on first post

Conversion from ClanLib to SDL2 (plus SDL2_image, SDL2_mixer, expat, boost, and physfs) is complete. I would expect it should be easy to build on any linux distribution now.

For debian users this is what I used on a fresh install:
apt-get install build-essential git autoconf zip libsdl2-dev libsdl2-image-dev libsdl2-mixer-dev libexpat-dev libphysfs-dev libboost-filesystem1.67-dev

We had a minor problem with physfs library not having pkg-config support on debian but the makefile has been updated to handle that.

I did a quick hack to add two player support. The two players do not interact at the moment. It is now running on the cub scout arcade machine. My wife had fun playing it.

This might give some nice ideas for the multiplayer interface as well as some "juice":
https://store.steampowered.com/app/5460 ... uyoTetris/

Design doc updated to v0.7

I posted an Open Game Source article about the initial development.

It’s a bit weird to me how this is organized for now.
Everything is still named OpenAlchemist and you have to launch «openalchemist --alchemyquest» to actually get the new skin.

And without this option you get OpenAlchemist but kind of broken by the modifications for the other skin (graphical glitches mostly, does not prevent playing)

What is the plan in the end, when the game will be released? Will it be completely renamed and only the alchemyquest skin/mode will be available, or will it somehow stay named OpenAlchemist?
What is specific to the alchemyquest mode that forces to make it an option and not just the default skin?

I’m quite happy that someone is forking OpenAlchemist, I tried to package it some time ago and with the clanlib dependency it was hell.

I’m not that much into the NES-style choice, but as long as the game is fun to play I can get along with it.