Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #47 (Game Jam & RoShamBo Complete!)

The Game Jam theme was "Uninteresting Jobs"
So I made one about watching paint dry.

     The big game jam I was looking forward to all week finally happened! It was nice to put my energy into a cute little project since Battle Gem Ponies can get pretty overwhelming sometimes. The theme was "Uninteresting Jobs" so after a lot of doodles and pitching to myself I came up with a two button game about goofing off at work.

Get some details on that and other happenings below the break.

I did none of the artwork for my game jam submission to save time.
The competition is more about the programming and design.
Making your own art gets you extra credit though.

Simply importing entire sprite sheets like this instead of
one-by-one makes the process 12 times faster.

   Completed:

• PCT Game Jam Fall 2015 (Game Title: Bored to DEATH)
• Fixed Game Jam Submission for Yotes Games
• Tested Game Analytics Code
• Built RoShamBo to iOS (for testing)
• RoShamBo Capstone Project Submitted
• Learned New Little Unity Tricks
• Imported Template NPC Sprites
• More Efficient Overworld Sprite Sheet Organization (faster loading and animating)

     Lessons Learned:

• I learned more about the Crowdfunding Payment Process from the Mane6 blog.
• Further inspired by surrounding myself with people who pursue their creative dreams by making webcomics like TheVapors for example.
• Unity's Multiplayer Service is free right now while it's in preview, but once it's done (likely WAY before BGP launches) it will cost a certain amount per 100 users. I either need to think up a cheaper way to get online matchmaking to work or save online play for the sequel. It'd be a shame to scrap the feature since ranked online fights is the best way to form a metagame. 
• I came up with a lot of things in preparation for the game jam. It's nice to know that I'll never really run out of ideas.

     I made a simple, silly game about goofing off at work. It came after tons of idea drafts and a complex action game prototype I gave up on halfway through the competition. You'll hear more about the game jam project and hopefully even play a browser version of it on Friday.

Had some fun learning how to track player activity using Game Analytics.

     I can start playing with analytics data if I want, but I'll save that for beta testing. It's nice finally having it figured out though. Trying to get online battles working was a mess though. I'll need a much longer experimentation period than a couple weeks for that. I understand how it works better than ever now though. I should really focus on getting local multiplayer to work first though and make sure to keep it network-friendly.

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   Downloads:

   I've been hearing stories about indies scraping by on royalties from their catalogue of games as their portfolio continues to grow. It'd be fun to get to that point. Having a library of awesome Yotes Games to smile on and play from time to time...

    Featured:

     Getting more and more likes on Facebook. You can also hear me ask a question exactly 50 minutes into this Shattered Kingdom panel video.
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     It's really sad that my game jam submission broke just minutes before the deadline. I;ll finish it anyway just so it wasn't a complete waste. More portfolio work is always good.