Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #6 (Class Icons, New Look, & Action Camera)

This is running in Unity!

I just have to make the buttons do stuff.

     BGP is looking really good these days. While everyone else was watching the Super Bowl I was listening to it from my bedroom, working on the interface sprites for Battle Gem Ponies. It's weird, but working on this project is my idea of fun. With all these snow day class cancellations I'm able to get a lot done.

     It's been a very productive week as I'm inching toward a playable state. I should have primitive combat working by the end of next Sunday at this rate. You can check out what made this week so good for development below the break.

Highlight of last week. I love these things.

   Completed:

• Class Icons
• Misc. Move Icons
• Updated Moves List (360 Moves & New Names)
• Rebalanced Many Moves
• Class Descriptions
• Condensed Pony Race List (Land, Pegasus, Unicorn, Bat, Sea, Fairy, Alicorn, & Chimera)
• Pause Menu Sprites
• Graphical Class Chart
• Running Dual Cameras (One For HUD, One For Gameplay)
• Battle Camera Setup (Pokemon XY Style Zooming)
• Redesigned Interface
• Basic GUI Scripts

     Lessons Learned:

• Having pretty things to look at does wonders for morale.
• What people are looking forward to most with my game is all the stuff you can't do in Pokemon.
• Icon recognition is learned. The symbols will be instantly recognizable to those who play.
• Unity's Random.Range(int,int) does not include the second number. Important to know for chance-based calculations.

       The look of the class icons inspired me to do a GUI overhaul for the game. I want all the buttons to be gradients with dark outlines and readable symbols or text. It's giving my game the heavily detailed feel I thought I wasn't capable of when starting Unicorn Training. I guess with all the sprites I've been making I leveled up along the way and can do fancier stuff now.

     Another trick I learned was getting 2 Unity camera working at the same time. This way, I can have the HUD stuff stay put while another camera zooms all over the place to make the battles look exciting. There's a lot I could do with this, but all the ideas that came to mind are best saved for a sequel when I have the time and skill to make tons of flashy fighting animations.

      If I can get everything onscreen to pop with colors and shading my game will have an even more polished feel that I imagined. This aesthetic change combined with the moving camera makes this project feel more real than ever. I can't wait to see it all come together!
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   Downloads:

   This looks to be the worst week sales-wise so far. I've seen a lot of 1, 2, and 0 download days. Unicorn Training is still at #164 on Google Play but seems to have fallen off the radar. I may have to start looking forward to $30 or $20 a month. As long as I can still inch toward that Macbook I'm thankful for the progress.

    Featured:

    I'm getting more and more reviews saying people would love my games written in their language. It's a good thing I plan on localizing Battle Gem Ponies to as many popular languages as I can. I'll have to handle it after launch, but it's good to start coding things around multiple languages now.
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     I'm so excited to see this come to life that I can hardly sleep! I keep telling myself "Just one more hour" so I can get just another small detail in. I really want to get to a point where there's something to play. Guess it's back to work for now. Expect a post about pony moves on Friday.