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Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #44 (Tile Maps Tested!)


     Battle Gem Ponies now has levels that you can travel between. Full maps you can walk around! Judging by what's happened so far, I won't be making that Birthday deadline I wanted for tomorrow. The game is looking good, but the road ahead is still a long one. I cut of an extra 30 mins of sleep time just to get a little bit more work time before I eat breakfast and head to class.

Get some details on this busy week below.

The first area of what I'm calling "Pinto Island".
This is the first test area for the pre-alpha demo.
   Completed:
  • Placeholder Tilesets (for Town, Meadow, & Cave)
  • All Placeholders for Demo Map
  • Reorganized Tilesets for Easier Level Creation
  • Tile Map Experimentation
  • Surf Tile Coding Redesign
  • Rebuilt Map
  • Field, Islet, Cave, and Town Tile Maps (Pinto Island, Pinto Cave, & Pinto Town)
  • Discovered The Relic Castle (Where I can get feedback from Pokemon fangame creators)
  • Code for Numerous Overworld Tile Features
  • Tile Map Scene Loading
     Lessons Learned:
  • I can see the value of team members right about now. An artist knocking tiles and NPCs out, a musician refining the soundtrack, and a programmer figuring out the battle system would all be nice to have right about now. But I'm in this for my career so I need to make it work. My reward will hopefully be enough money to live in freedom.
  • Fired up from the Them's Fighting Herds finished campaign and some Pokemon fangame interviews.
  • I should plan my larger games for 20 month cycles. 18 for development and an extra 2 for beta testing and launch hype.
Gotta find placeholders for each possible tile so I can
start redrawing each asset needed from scratch.
       November is already breathing down my neck and the V3 demo still looks to be a month away from public release quality. The school version is due December 2nd so I'm scrambling to get things done on at least a base level. I even started using placeholder tiles from Pokemon Emerald pulled randomly from Google Images screenshots to save time.


     Drawing each tile myself and making them look as perfect as the grassy set seen above will take a lot of time. There's a bunch of art and sound assets that will eat time when you think about it, but I want this game to exist. It will be done.
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   Downloads:


   With my birthday coming tomorrow I'm hoping to get a big enough financial boost to get a few months ahead on my quest to LLChood. I've been thinking a lot about Let's Players showcasing my games and even started forming a list of all the ones I could find that play games similar to BGP. I specifically searched for Pokemon, Brony, and RPG Maker YouTubers.

    Featured:


     The closest thing to buzz I've generated this week has been some increased Twitter activity. Follower count danced around 620 this week and I've been getting more retweets, favorites, Facebook views, etc. Just a matter of time before I release another demo and jump back into the spotlight for a bit. Right now, the game needs to get its makeup on.

(As well as something to wear.)
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     Now that I have this system all worked out, I can start coding things that make the overworld really feel alive. People, ponies, pickups, and doors incoming! Once the bulk of the game is complete (hopefully January) it's just a matter of planning scenarios, coding attacks, and animating everything. Once it hits alpha, everything gets easier to chew on.

3 comments:

  1. Glad to see development is moving along smoothly. How do you manage to do all this work by yourself? *.*

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    Replies
    1. I thought so, it all looks amazing. I can't wait for when it releases! :D

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