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Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #22 (Macbook is Here! Menus Are Up!)


     Progress is steady and the menus are functional (just for the demo). Now it's time to play with animations! A huge step toward making the battles feel alive. This week be be all about getting the moving ponies to look right. Then I'll be doing flashy move animations so the attacks are finally cool. That's when the game I see in my head can be seen by anyone else.

A new addition to the Yotes Games family.
I'll squeeze out all the use I can get.
And these are the specs for the Macbook Pro.
   Completed:
  • Pony Stats Menu
  • Inventory Menu (Shell Waiting For Functionality)
  • Bought 2 Joypads (Purple & Blue, like the Blog)
  • Setup Macbook For Game Development
  • Built Unicorn Training for iOS (Needs Testing)
  • Got 3000 Extra Blog Views From Indie Video Games Site
  • In-Game Draft of Battle Music
     Lessons Learned:
  • I now have access to iMovie and GarageBand! Any game development bonuses to justify the Macbook purchase are appreciated.
  • Amazon trade-ins take longer than expected. For a moment I thought my package was lost/forgotten, but I got an email about my credit the same time I got one about my payment for last month.
  • Make sure to add 2 days to how long you think a menu will take.
  • Make sure to add 1 day to how long you think a pony sprite sheet will take.
  • Macbooks are shiny and nice, but that price just leaves a bit of resentment for Apple in the end. My current laptop has nearly the same specs and cost $800 four years ago.
Animation test for Thestra vs Thestra.
       On June 1st I'll be buying my Apple Developer's license and spend the day building and testing Unicorn Training on iOS. I'm all set to release it for either mid-June or July and just need the license to test on an actual iPod and submit the game. It's coming sometime after the first Battle Gem Ponies demo Unicorn Training is going up, so keep an eye out if you've been waiting to try.
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   Downloads:

Let's hit 1000 Unicorn Training downloads by next week! Woo!
Unicorn Training is on the way!
   Big bucks won't be coming my way for a while longer. I'm basically in the red right now after the Macbook and the dev license on top of that. My goal is to sell 700 downloads of the full Unicorn Training game before going back to school. It'll get me the money I need to register as an official LLC. My games will be easier to protect, I can more carefully manage business expenses (before taxes chase me down), and I can walk onto campus (or even BronyCon) as a proud business owner taking charge of my destiny. I'll truly be a CEO of my own small company: Yotes Games.

That'll be a pretty cool feeling.

    Featured:
Saw this site on Twitter, linked to the game, and now
there's one more link to my game on the web.
     Unicorn Training was shared on a promotional site called Indie Video Games recently. This post boosted my blog by over 3000 sets of eyes, but numbers dropped immediately to the 100-200 range in the days after. It's fine if that was a one time thing. It was absolutely free and tons of new people (assuming these weren't bots) have at least heard of me now. Even if they ever forget Yotes Games anytime soon hopefully my products will remind them later.

The post included the trailer, a screenshot slideshow, the game description,
some fancy red text recommending the demo, and a bunch of my links.
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Here I am $1,300 later. Time to earn some money back.
 That November release date is looking harder and harder to reach each day. This game may not be out til my graduation day, but it would be worth the wait. I'm really going all in with Battle Gem Ponies so it has to work. It has to be a good game worth more than the $5 every player gives for it.

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