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Tuesday, December 15, 2015

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #51 (Bug Squashin')

School's out and I'm free to code my head off. 
     I'm spending winter break with my Dad, older brothers, and nieces so instead of the usual 3 hour drive home to Mom and little bro, I got to fly to Florida and not shovel snow all December. Too bad I missed the flight and had to pay an extra $75 for another. The very same week my bookkeeping service needs to be renewed and school tuition is due.

     Basically, money is tighter than ever and I really wish Battle Gem Ponies was complete right now. Despite the setbacks and crippling debt my family has complete confidence in me. I promised them 45,000 copies sold before I move out and I'm going to live up to that!

Lots of Debugging and getting little details to work.
The backend stuff has been messy for too long.
Flavor text adds a lot to the battle feel.
   Completed:
  • Senior Fall Semester of College
  • Fixed CSV Spreadsheet Call Bug (Game Breaker)
  • Fixed Typos in Spreadsheets
  • Fixed Monodevelop Code Coloring Preferences
  • Wrote BGP Moves Blog Posts Ahead of Time
  • Shifted Work to Mac Again (No Choice This Time)
  • Visiting Florida Workstation for Winter Break
  • Run Button (Flee Battle)
  • Dynamic Wrapping Text Boxes
  • Fixed Pony Shadow Bug
  • Adjusted Flavor Text Language to Wrap Nicely
  • NPCs Face You When Talking
  • New World HUD Layout Sketches
     Lessons Learned:
  • Inspired by the writing/gameplay of Thomas was alone and the comic epicness of One Punch Man. Both of which I experienced for the first time this week.
  • Never be late for a plane. They don't mess around. When they say it leaves at 2pm, they mean you better be outside the plane doors no later than 1:35pm. Show up a couple hours early and occupy yourself, or end up paying $75 minimum like me to get another flight.
I am all about this guy right here.
       As much as I want to keep my work on my PC, it crashes way too often and I can't risk losing BGP in a corrupt hard drive. I had to move everything to Mac and try to download as many tools as I can on it to make it similar to my Windows setup. It's a big pain, but I don't have an extra $800 lying around for a new laptop or even desktop. In fact, after renewing my bookkeeping service and buying a plane ticket, I'm another $205 in the red. I won't be getting that LLC anytime soon after all...

     I'll probably just become an LLC after BGP is released instead of before. I'll have to look into keeping tax from eating everything I've got while I figure things out.
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   Downloads:


   GoDaddy Bookkeeping came up behind me and screamed this week, nearly bleeding me dry. It came sooner than expected, I can't believe it's been a year since then already. Now I'm set back 5 months. Maybe I'll be able to register as a company by August 25th, the anniversary of the website. Maybe I'll get tons of cash from my graduation and can deposit it all over the summer.

    Featured:

You can find me on LinkedIn
     Not really a feature, but I think it's interesting how a Zynga recruiter actually goes around looking at college seniors with skills in the field on LinkedIn. How many other recruiters are out there? Was it just me or are there tons of students from my school being looked at? Am I going to see a lot more of these notifications throughout 2016?

     Seeing this stuff made me suddenly believe way more on LinkedIn's mission statement. It really is a place for people to randomly connect with professionals and people my age need to start sprucing theirs up to get noticed. With the poor work ethic I've seen in peers over the years, I really do think only a few of us ever make it into the gaming industry.

My game didn't make it, but I never expected it to.
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Gotta put in actual ability descriptions next.
   My future is riding on this game doing good. Time to crank away at it and have something playable. I'm really hopeful about having something ready for Christmas or at least soon after it. I can't let myself return to school without a new solid build.

3 comments:

  1. My channel might not be big and I have no idea how many people I will reach but you can be darn sure I'll show case BGP on my channel with not only a full playthrough but I plan live streams, comparison video between all the versions and a bunch of other ideas I'm kicking around you have my full support Tony I belive in you

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  2. You could use Linux for computing on your PC. Also, are you using a version control system? If not, you should look into it. Things like git make things a lot easier.

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    Replies
    1. I've got version control going and learned about git at school. Never have to worry about losing more than a day's worth of work.

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