Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #28 (Making Moves, Unicorn Training Launch Week)

     Well then. I certainly thought I could draw these things faster. Turns out I'll be spending over  half of this game's development time on the graphics alone. Unless I get this done I won't be able to hire an artist in the future, so I just need to keep at it. Unicorn Training's release was fun, but the numbers really need to be higher for me to have hope of living off this mad use of my free time.

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Starting on move animations!

   Completed:

• Renamed "Confusion" Move To "Confuse Ray"
• Sketched Move Animations
• 17 of 25 Move Animation Sprites
• Shortened BronyCon Feature List Even Further
• Added Dates to Games Tab

     Lessons Learned:

• You have to have fun for at least an hour a day to avoid burnout. These programming headaches can kill.
• iOS launches are very similar to Google Play ones. It's a slow buildup completely dependent on you. Once you get featured on either platform there may be huge differences in sales though.
• 100 Day One downloads is the number to beat from now on. Any less would be a failure.

Move animation ideas are drawn on paper first.

       There's so much drawing going on. Sketches on paper translated to pixels and animated in Unity. I'm hoping that like with the ponies, the more I make, the faster I get at making them. I find myself reusing tons of effects from Unicorn Training and getting fancier with Gimp effects.
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   Downloads:

   There's the spike! I'm surprised that it's actually lower than the Android launch, but that may just be the effect of being a port rather than a new game. Sales are much lower than I expected, so I definitely won't be a company in time for August 25th (my personal declaration of freedom date) but may combine sales with Christmas presents to become Yotes Games LLC on January 1st.

     I'm also starting to think Google users like to review more. I see new reviews for my games on Google Play all the time, but almost never on any other app store. Those are essential for rising through the ranks so if you tried Unicorn Training yourself, let me know what you honestly think of it in a review wherever you got it.

    Featured:

     I'm actually being interviewed by @kristianwriting at 5pm EST today. If you want to catch it, just follow me on Twitter @TonyYotes. This is a text interview over tweets so all my responses are archived on Twitter, so feel free to check it out on your own time. It's likely to go up on GameSkinny afterwards and I'll write about how it went in the next DevLog.
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Staying up til 2am staring at paper and pixels.
The work is fun, but the deadline isn't.

     At this rate I'll have to cut out a functioning overworld in the BronyCon demo. The move animations were supposed to take 3 days, but it looks like they'll take something more like 8. A PowerPoint is looking more and more essential these days. I really have to sell people on the potential and wow them with the animated battles.

     Full steam ahead. BronyCon approaches...