BGP DevLog #162 (Getting It Together)
Finally coming to grips with the new tools and having something to show for it! There's been a real headache and a half over this, but hopefully it pays off with a bunch of dropped jaws and people saying "Oh, that's cool." when they first open the game..
I need to settle into a groove! Time to crank out some content!
BGP DevLog #163 (Interfaces In Your Faces)
Menus, menus, menus... Looking fresh though. Still going through the process of making sure all the interfaces work and feel better than ever before. Cleaner sprites, dynamic sizing and positioning for every possible device, and helpful new tools like scrollviews and shaders to add some extra polish. Plus, it all runs 40 times smoother now since it gets compressed to one draw call at runtime, meaning no more horrendous lag just from opening a menu!
Read More: yotesgames.com
BGP DevLog #164 (Still with the Menus? Come ON!!)
Another week in and the game's revamped menu systems still aren't done! Feels like I'm running in place sometimes, but week after week new things are being added and I'm feeling more and more capable as a developer. I just want the alpha build done already!
Take a look at what I managed to do this past week. (The Yotes Games Blog)
BGP DevLog #165 (Game Engine Bone Structure)
A lot of time has been spent remaking the components needed to make the game run smoother and look nicer. Way more time than I originally intended, but I feel too deep into the mess to turn back now. The results are showing, but it seriously delayed the game's progress and the makeover still isn't complete.
I'm hoping that with these menus out of the way and all the fancy scripting stuff simplified into usable tools, the post-alpha development will come easy. Much like a house, the game's gotta have good bones. A foundation to build an entire series of games on top of, actually. Each one more polished than the last.
Read more on the blog.
BGP DevLog #166 (Demo Ready?)
Just powering through and coding my heart out. Nothing to show yet, but things are progressing behind the scenes.
Working towards that Minimum Viable Product with a few days to go til showtime! Pretty much every feature from the last demo needs to be remade and bug free using the new development tools I have. The next demo has to be ready by Saturday morning, or I'm going to have to introduce countless strangers and fellow devs to my buggy pre-alpha from December!
Can't let that happen. It's crunch time. Check out the devlog.
BGP DevLog #167 (Orlando Overdrive 2018)
Showcasing the game to new folks, meeting other developers, learning from their experiences, making friends, and dancing my legs off. That's the TL;DR of my Orlando Overdrive experience this past weekend.
Battle Gem Ponies had a booth right in the middle of the indie game hallway leading to the bar & dance floor of The Geek Easy. Turns out the whole brony thing wasn't a passing fad, and lots of people still smile when they see marshmallow horses with super powers.
Check out this week's devlog to see how the indie showcase went. 👾 - www.yotesgames.com
Ignore the garbled text. That is a bug for another day.
Been taking my time making these menus and such, and glad to see that stage of development is finally coming to an end. Chewed hard to figure out some bugs and the most efficient way to make things flow, but I think I've got it now and just need to rinse and repeat to get the rest of the menus done.
See my latest (mis)adventures in game development on the Yotes Games Blog.
BGP DevLog #169 (May 2018...)
Can't believe I'm still working on recreating these dang #BattleGemPonies menus! I feel horrible for taking so much longer than I keep promising out loud, but I can feel in my bones that delaying is the right thing to do...
See #GameDev Log #169: www.yotesgames.com
BGP DevLog #170 (Re-Coding)
Once again, starting from scratch. But this time it's in regard to how I code things. Going forward I'll be using new organization tricks to make sure I understand how the entire game works inside and out. No more endless bug hunts because I'll know exactly where they are and what that line of code interacts with, all to better help me deduce the cause of any problems.
Also took a stab at rearranging the development schedule to aim for a July 25th release. The path is laid out, but the main factor determining if I can make it is getting to that Alpha build I've been yapping about for years now.
All this reorganization stuff should help with that, because things will be more efficient than ever. No more hardcoding, no more just copy/pasting from solution forums, and no more being stingy with line spacing, name lengths, or comments.
Read More: Yotes Games Blog
BGP DevLog #171 (Cleaning Up n' Keeping Up)
Feels like every day now I'm discovering some new and better way of doing things. The project is crawling towards a point where all systems exist and are easy to tweak. So good news is I can both feel and see myself becoming a better game developer. Bad news: I'm already a week behind schedule. Again. That won't fly. Time to crunch up and catch up.
For this week in gamedev featuring my thoughts on a rather impressive Pokemon fan game coming out soon, check out the Main Yotes Blog
BGP DevLog #172 (Map Mastery)
The Map System I've been subconsciously dreading has finally been implemented and the rest of the menus are coming together bit-by-bit as I program all the pieces separately and connect them together (instead of cramming everything I could into one giant, unreadable script like before). The results?
See the latest gamedev update to find out.
Not much was done in terms of progress this week since I took about 5 days off to basically see all my friends one last time at the local convention MegaCon before swearing to lock myself away until BGP's completion.
In place of that there is tons of Pokemon news. A fan game was released and a bunch of new spinoffs were announced so there's lots of interesting things to reflect on and talk about on this week's blog.
Read up on it here!
BGP DevLog #174 (Where's The Game?)
Getting REAL tired of this game not being close to finished. I admit to dying inside just a bit each passing week as I fall behind on the schedule I laid out just because the very first bullet point is the hardest pill to force down.
Maybe I'm crazy and doing this wrong. Time to take a different route to the end. As for what exactly what that route is? You'll need to read the ending thoughts to this week's devlog to find out.
BGP DevLog #175 (E3 2018)
After such an amazing E3, I feel reinvigorated. Gotta admit to feeling pretty jaded/apathetic about AAA gaming lately, but leave it to the Sony & Nintendo press conferences to remind me of why I love gaming in the first place. The hype I felt over the past couple days is the same feeling I want people to have for the things I'm working on someday. Unprecedented levels of polish, earnest interviews and announcements by hardworking developers, shocking surprises, gameplay to analyze, and jaw-dropping tournament moments...
And at the heart of it all? Hours of fun promised by teams I know can deliver. I'm hype ya'll. Now I want to work hard to make sure starting next E3, I'll be there to show off something in person every year.
See more thoughts on this at yotesgames.com
Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #176 (Summer Makeover)
Notice a bit of a facelift? I worked on some of the Ultra Pony designs this week, just filling in those gaps in design I was drawing a blank on for the longest while. Now I can say I'm satisfied with how everypony looks and can clearly see them animated in my head.
Actually animating the sprites is a step to come much later in development, but I can roll with these for now. Come see the steps toward a new playable build featuring a new level editor and a few more motivating surprises in this week's gamedev update!
BGP DevLog #177 (Sculpting a World)
It's finally happening! Converting the maps from graph paper notes and doodles into working sandboxes that I can actually roam around in the Unity engine! Every single map in Battle Gem Ponies is coming to life AS. 👏 WE.👏 SPEAK.👏
Getting all the different tiles, placeholders, and animations setup took days longer than I expected, but I finally have the process down and can get to work! I'll be using mostly borrowed and temporary tile sprites to have a basic but functional version of the entire game world up and running. This is one of the Top 5 remaining extremely tedious tasks of the game's development I'll be glad to have off my back. (Read to the end to see the other 4.)
So I hope to emerge next week with another monumental task behind me. To see what hills have already been climbed in the last 7 days, why don't cha take a look on the official blog?
BGP DevLog #178 (Refocus on the Hook)
Starting to build out all the actual tile maps to be used in the beginning segment of the game, up to the first badge and a little beyond, just to get players hooked and hungry for more.
Now, while the completed Alpha won't be a thing until the entire game is playable start to finish, I do believe I can get the first part of the game out within the month of July. While everyone is enjoying the new story, learning the mechanics, interacting with the world, and getting that first badge, I'll be working on getting the demo in as many Let's Player's hands as possible by day and implementing the rest of the design notes by night.
Time to put everything I've got into a super-polished build that'll make people go nuts when they try it. Time to make sure every 30 seconds of the game gives players a Ben & Jerry's sized chunk of fun to chew on. Time to get Battle Gem Ponies on the map!
Read More: yotesgames.com
BGP DevLog #179 (Summer Stalling)
Pretty slow work week if I'm being honest. Life got in the way and the game's delayed yet another week. You know, going in you always assume you can handle the workload but only expect it to be a certain amount of time. Then you get so far into it you can't justify changing course because the end just has to be near by now...
I really wonder exactly how long it'll take for this game to be completed and how long the people supporting me or waiting for me to finish will tolerate this crazy passion project of mine. You can imagine how many times I hear "get a real job" on a regular basis.
Feeling all kinds of negative things right now, but I need to carry on anyway. This game needs to be made, and I need to do it. If I can just make this super polished Alpha go even just a little viral, I'll finally know if it's all worth it. 25 thousand players is all I'm asking the cosmos for.
More of this week in gamedev here.
BGP DevLog #180 (Coding, Cures, and Confidence)
Hope rises as pieces of the overworld are coming together.
Weighed down by post-delay sad vibes all week and only just now getting back into the swing of things as I write this at 3:30am on a Wednesday. This week was code fever and I wore a programmer cap tight while sprucing up BGP's bones.
Lots of things are working better than ever, and lots more are sure to come. The real issue right now is seeing how much can get up and running before BronyCon. The panel is going to be a slideshow about game development in general, some Q&A between slides, how I came up with and created BGP, and what features I have left to create and how I plan to implement them.
And all that will be sandwiched between a Trailer to show off the game and a gameplay demo of the battle system and overworld. Then I'd like to have some sort of teaser finale to send everyone off with and encourage them to download the demo to their phones on the way out so they can remember the game later.
But how much I can show depends on how far I get in the next 6 days, so fingers crossed, I won't hit any more road blocks. Every precious minute counts right now, and I think I might just barely make it. So let's see what's been done in the past few days.
Read More: yotesgames.com
Brainstorming New Patreon Plans, Rewards, n' Goals
I'm brainstorming some new plans for making the Yotes Games Patreon a much bigger deal. My general idea is that I need to put more effort into my YouTube channel due to the level of engagement that gets out of people.
But I'd like to hear some feedback from you! It'd be super great to hear someone else's take on where I should take this crazy train next. Or hear exactly why you personally wouldn't donate to my Patreon but would to another. What rewards would you like to see? Should the project be more polished? I wanna know how to get strangers completely HYPED about this game!
Trying to emulate the success of ALBDifferent, Exiled, & YandereDev here, and a solid YouTube effort is the key ingredient I'm neglecting. Even just read an article today about how Fighting is Magic might not've exploded if that demonstration trailer didn't get shared left and right earning 900,000 views. Nerds like me read development blogs, but everybody watches videos. I outta make some videos.
Check out the huge list of ideas about how I'ma to do just that on the official development blog!
