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Changelog for 1.3.0

• 🌟 [Community] Full leaderboards pages
• 🌟 [Graphics] Remove AI contents, redraw backgrounds
• [UX] Rework UI and navigation, mostly optimizing gamepad support
• [UX] Add confirmation modals for “destructive” actions (discarding, archiving)
• [UX] Split ingame menu into preferences (will get more stuff later) and leave modal
• [Gameplay] Calven wheat fields rework
• [Gameplay] Greythorne Keep rework: give more importance to contracts
• [Gameplay] Executioner’s Blade now cannot appear when you have less than 3 non empty rows
• [Graphics] New transmutation animation
• [Graphics] New cauldron liquid animations with better support for various liquid colors
• [Graphics] New sprite for Hot-Headed Dynamite to better differentiate with vertical dynamite
• [Graphics] Better uppercase characters for rich font, small symbols adjustments
• Fix unlocking of objects coming from crates
• Fix replay and paused games when first pair is a Four Leaf Clover
• Fix some graphical glitches
• Fix some replay issues
• Game no longer crashes when you play 512 games in a single session

Note: if the game feels slow, try enabling hyperspeed (from ingame preferences menu or Profile -> Preferences).

AI contents removal

While it has been a great help to get started with nice placeholder graphics, using generative AI for backgrounds came with issues:

• the game was flagged as having AI contents, which it did
• generative AI is generally a bad thing, although my intention was always to replace it with proper content once I had a solution
• the game lacked visual cohesion between places
• some backgrounds had glitches / weird stuff

Winlu’s tilesets is what allowed me to create proper contents for backgrounds, with the added advantage of being pretty much the same graphics as what I used for the world map, but upscaled. Not all backgrounds have been replaced yet, but all AI contents have been removed so some places use their region’s background in the meantime. I will work on that in next releases.

Added leaderboards

Full leaderboards, both global and region/place scoped, all-time and weekly, have been added. Try to get the best score of all time, or make your way to the Champions or Legends meta rankings.

New cauldron liquid animations

While the previously used water surface animation by GandalfHardcore worked very well, I went with a new shader based approach which gives me more flexibility, especially when it comes to liquid color.

Reworked Greythorne Keep

Greythorne Keep is a place with a strong connection to contracts (and will be central to quests in a later update), but so far the gameplay around countracts was underwhelming: rewards were not reliable, so simply ignoring contracts was a good option.

There are now several new contract rewards which should greatly improve the impact of contracts. And to make it more reliable, contracts with no rewards are now rare and guaranteed to happen at most once per contract chain (pity system reset on contract failure).

Reworked wheat fields

Calven outskirts had 3 wheat fields levels, all with pretty much the same gameplay. A new Harvest Sickle “helper” object has been added there, and Field Rake object can now move horizontally to let you select the columns pattern.

The westmost level roughly keeps that gameplay, and the two other levels have been reworked both visually on map and gameplay wise:

• [8,7] Yolkmere - new henhouse-based gameplay, new objects, new achievements
• [9,7] Skirlmill - new windmill-based gameplay

Oh, forgot to mention: if the game feels slow, try enabling hyperspeed (from ingame menu or Profile -> Preferences).

It’s not lag, but I still need to tweak default values for an optimal game feel…

Hi!

No worries about getting the game for free! I might even set the base price to zero at some point, once I figure out a way to monetize it some other way (DLC mostly) without adding ads or usual F2P micropayments.

Anyway, I’ve (finally) released version 1.2.2 which should be performing way better; I hope you can test it at some point and have a better experience :)

As for the game status, I don’t really know either x) I still have a lot of features and content (at least 3 more islands) I want to add so it’s definitely not final stage, but I think it’s also far from a alpha version. I guess a vague “early access” fits, somehow?

Happy new year everyone!

This update comes later than expected because I worked on other projects last month and shifted the focus of version 1.2.2 because the game’s performances were not good enough for my taste. I reduced the scope of new features (that will come with 1.2.3) and reworked internals to optimize many things, then spent a couple weeks fixing regressions x)

Changelog for 1.2.2

• 🌟 [Performances] Optimize game
  • Fix memory leaks
  • Reduce allocation
  • Rewrite animation engine
  • And more engine optimizations
• 🌟 [Map] rework world map
  • Rework [un]locked objects
  • Better map scale handling, fix blurry overlay on some zoom level
  • Always display overlay for unmet unlock conditions
  • Fix graphical issues with some water tiles
• 🌟 [Profile] Rework inventory page
• [Profile] Improve navigation
• [Achievements] Add new Black Hole (rank 13) related achievements
• Add support for fullscreen toggling with F11
• Added basic screen transitions
• Tooltips now make sure to render inside window bounds
• Fix some places with objects impossible to unlock
• Fix a crash that could happen with some gamepad models
• Fix scrollbar issues with replay/paused games lists

Features postponed to 1.2.3

Note that some of these could be postponed again if I end up releasing 1.2.3 earlier to get some important fixes out there.

• 🌟 [Community] Full Leaderboards pages
• 🌟 [Map] Overlay rework
• 🌟 [Ingame] Accidental game over prevention
• [Ingame] Game menu improvements
• [Ingame] Add a way to see what objects can appear in current place
• [Barrels & Brine] Fix crates not unlocking objects for current place
• And more ~

I have just enabled the community section with discussion board, with the unfortunate side effect that previous comments cannot be seen anymore… Will see if I can bring them back in some way; I have saved all of them for now.

I am working on version 1.2.2 which includes a lot of internal changes and should be released this month. In the meantime, there are two known issues with current version 1.2.1:

Not optimal performance

While still being largely playable on most hardware, the game is not as light as one could expect from a puzzle game, and minor lags can be experienced. This is being addressed on 1.2.2, which is why the update will take more time than usual (need to re test everything to hunt for regressions).

this game seems to cook my laptops both on windows and linux during several brief sessions, didnt expect it to be so demanding that it would cause fan noise but it does fsr. […] what i found is that noise generally lasts about 3 minutes while pause inbetween seems to be 5 min average. so basically fans spin louder 3 to 4 times within half an hour on average.

Thanks @spoiledbobcat for the report!

“Unsupported” gamepad (patch available)

Alchimix can be played with gamepad, and officially supports xbox and Nintendo Switch controllers. Due to a mistake on version 1.2.1, other controllers, which can be used to play Alchimix, will crash on screens that have a “Menu” button..

This can be fixed easily by putting this 255KB patch file res1.pak inside your game folder (so alongside res.pak): 1.2.1 patch files

Thanks @WanderingShadow for the report!

Sorry it took me a bit more time than expected; turns out I’m not comfortable doing a re-release at the moment because I’m in the middle of big internal changes for next version and I don’t want to mess things up..

Luckily, a fix can be applied by just providing the image that the game is looking for. I’ve been able to confirm the patch does work when applied to 1.2.1 with an old usb gamepad x)

Just put this 255KB (had to replace the whole spritesheet) res1.pak file in your game folder (alongside res.pak) and restart the game: https://kla.bz/shared/d-LAOGRzgKv_-XHwsyAgQ_WP3_z6GiwD2N4qDLSpgWQ

Let me know if you prefer other ways to share the file or if you have trouble applying the patch

Hi, yes :/ I see what’s going wrong, what version is that? windows, linux or linux/appimage? I will reupload soon with the fix, sorry about that..

Thanks! That could “just” be GC hits.. will check if allocations haven’t gotten too bad recently, it’s been a while since I last optimized that.

Hi, thanks for your comment! I assume that’s about the downloaded version, not only the web demo?

This is a bit surprising but not totally unexpected. The framework I’m using is hugely based off GPU usage, which might not be available (or low end) on your laptop so CPU might have to do more work (and work that is not optimized for a CPU to do).

I’ve also been adding stuff lately, so the game really does more stuff than before, and is currently single threaded (mostly), and might not give enough pause to the CPU (though outside the occasional GC spike, it’s fine here with a old-ish computer).

I should be doing another optimization pass in the coming weeks/months (depending on the time I manage to spend on Alchimix); hopefully that’ll make it good enough for your laptop!

There was indeed some issues, it included some sound effects meant for the web version, and that was crashing..

I updated the AppImage with the binary + resources from the 1.2.0 release, worked fine in my VM.

Thanks for the report!

Uh, I might have included a bad data file in the AppImage version.. I will check that tomorrow if I get the chance, or Sunday :/

Thanks for playing :)

I agree, I plan to add/refine animations and sound effects; so far I mostly focused on gameplay (and gameplay variations). Drawing attention to the contracts when failed/fulfilled is definitely something that needs to be done indeed!

Agree with these; I just got the money ticker and then the bet amounts (well, money in general) and rapidly even the games outcome didn’t matter much; I was just getting xp to unlock stuff, and then I’d pretty much just need to go all-in a few times with basic strategy to get to 10B.

Also fun fact: you can win with a 4 x) the dealer should be made a bit smarter and stop asking for card when he’s already winning..

Still enjoyed playing it :)

I added Alchimix.AppImage to the downloads, it worked for me on a Bazzite VM. Please try it and confirm if it worked for you too 🙏

(indeed Bazzite is special when it comes to dependencies; it didn’t let me install dependencies like ubuntu-like distribution, but wanted a self-contained app..)

Edit: seemed to be missing other dependencies on a non-Bazzite system, will update the AppImage but it should already work for you

Can you try running it from a terminal? (running ./alchimix inside the extracted zip’s directory)

Also, using itchio app https://itch.io/app did work for me in all my tests and supports auto updating, if that’s something you’d be interested in. (edit: and would fit nicely in such a distribution I think?)

Will look into your distribution to see what dependencies you might need.

Loved this game, and its kid mode :)

Note to non-windows users: this game can run on linux and non-M1 mac:

• Download and extract "Nuclear Blaze (OpenGL)" somewhere
• Remove "NuclearBlaze.exe"
  
• Download hashlink-latest-linux-amd64.tar.gz (or the mac version for mac) from https://github.com/HaxeFoundation/hashlink/releases/tag/latest
• Extract hashlink release files on top of your nuclear blaze files, replacing hdll files (don't need the "include" folder)
• Rename "hl" to "NuclearBlaze", make it executable (chmod +x NuclearBlaze)
• Run ./NuclearBlaze and enjoy :)

That's an issue for me as well. Is there another way to buy this pack? (doesn't matter if it costs a little more)