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WebCough132 days ago(+1)

I've since made it so chemicals that cancel out cannot be mixed together at all, e.g., the hotbar will flash red and error if you try to add a plasma to a water, and removed all circular reactions. I may rework this again.
There might be situations when the player wants to just remove one chemical without removing all of them, so they would use the "opposite" chemical.

I'm a bit against it due to it limiting the amount of combinations you can make

Ideally all combos should be made with one or two taps with your fingers in correct positions like

(this is even more important in your game compared to magicka, because the same fingers are used for movement)
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rodbotic132 days ago
There might be situations when the player wants to just remove one chemical without removing all of them, so they would use the "opposite" chemical.

Sure, but those are very rare situations compared to the amount of times you accidentally add an opposing chemical and mess up your attack. Not only that, I want to discourage players from holding onto one mixture for too long (mixture turtling if you will) and forcing them to rebuild their mixture to get rid of a chemical should help with that. Still, I'll think about it.

Ideally all combos should be made with one or two taps with your fingers in correct positions

Just to be sure, when I say "combinations" I mean permutations of individual chemicals (mixtures), not products from reactions. It's simply infeasible to have all unique mixtures in reach of such few inputs, attempting to achieve that would require heavy neutering of the mechanic. You don't need to create complex combos all the time, most mixtures for dealing damage take very few inputs (especially in the next build since you're able to fill your tank with a chemical by holding down its key). 

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WebCough132 days ago

If that's what you want to achieve, then maybe you could have chemicals not be limited by tank size, but clear chemicals after every use. I think hitting combinations after every shot o essentially reload could get hectic... in a fun way. If that's too extreme, then you could have some sort of stat that would keep current chemicals for x amount of shots/hits, and that number could be increased or decreased with some upgrades.

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WebCough123 days ago(+1)

I know it's been couple of weeks since DD, but I just got an idea.

imagine this set up:

wasd movement, shift for dash, LMB for attacking and RMB for Alchemy

like, I could move with wasd, but holding RMB would change QWEASD to chemical mixing.

Players would stop to mix, but they would always keep their fingers on same keys, and if they need to dodge then there is always dashing (maybe while holding RMB, players would always dash towards the cursor)

Let me know what you think

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rodbotic122 days ago

Interesting idea! Your suggested scheme would probably help with ergonomics and would be more familiar to players who come from Magicka. Being unable to move while mixing is a non-issue, you can't do it effectively with the current controls either. That being said, there is the drawback of relegating the secondary fire input to a less intuitive binding, which might make no difference in the DD57 build but could (and likely will) prove to be problematic in the future. 

What if I moved dash to space then used shift as the alchemy key? You'd hold shift, use QWEASD to mix your stuff, then let go of shift to return to normal controls. The alchemy key could also be a toggle, similar to the old mixing menu, but I fear this would muddy up the user experience by adding more buttons in the way of combat. It could result in some frustrating experiences where you forget to turn off the alchemy mode and try to fight an enemy, only for you to not move and for your mixture to get all messed up (picrel).

Additionally, the alchemy key could clear your mixture for you, removing the need for the "clear mixture" binding. This would free up the tab key for other stuff.

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WebCough121 days ago(+1)

What if I moved dash to space then used shift as the alchemy key? You'd hold shift, use QWEASD to mix your stuff, then let go of shift to return to normal controls.
I expect those keys to be rebindable, so anyone could swap them.

It could result in some frustrating experiences where you forget to turn off the alchemy mode and try to fight an enemy, only for you to not move
just make it a modifier key you need to hold to stay in alchemy instead of a toggle. I think having alchemy mixing work only when you hold the key would be easier not to accidentally leave it on.
when alchemy is turned off, you could still use Q and E key for things like weapon switching and clearing chemicals.

Basically I propose you to implement your controls as two states that change depending on if you hold down the space/shift.

for example:

None Mixing state (without holding Shift)

Q - use chemicals on yourself
E - clear chemicals
WASD - movement

SPACE - Dash with movement direction

Mixing State (While holding Shift)

QWEASD - all chemicals
SPACE - Dash towards the cursor

Both states

LMB - Primary Attack
RMB - Secondary Attack

Scroll Wheel - weapon switch

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