Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #153 (New Year, New Beginnings)

     Wow, 2018 is off to a great start already. Doing much better this January than the last with that whole Steam Greenlight fumble. Patreon keeps development afloat, I feel a million times wiser, the soundtrack is nearly complete, and the full game scope has never been clearer in my mind.

     The early part of this new year is just a matter of cranking it out already! Time to wrap up development on this 3-4 year project and launch it with a BANG!

Get this week in gamedev below the break.

I expected the Patreon earnings to go down
after the launch month, but here it is, still climbing!

   Completed:

• Attended Magfest 2018 (chat with some indies & took notes of their setups)
• Collected a Ton of Industry Contacts
• Received First Patreon Payment
• Purchased PlayMaker & Dialogue System for Unity
• Studied Tutorials on How to Use the New Software
• Finished Graphing Outdoor Locations
• Messaged All Patrons & PAyPal Donors for Reward Followups
• Researched & Decided Which Plugins To Buy First
• Crossed Some Plugins off the List (NGUI & I2 Localization may be unnecessary)
• Downloaded Some Useful Free Plugins (like iTween and various particle systems)
• Studied More Tutorials & Manuals
• Brainstormed How to Rewrite BGP's Code in a New, Organized Way
• Started Publishing More SlideDB Articles on Unicorn Training to Boost Popularity
• Promoted the BGP OST on Reddit
• Plans for releasing OST on YouTube/Bandcamp/Itunes/etc.
• Arranged BGP Music in a Soundtrack Sounding Order (listened repeatedly on travels)
• Researching Some Visualizers for Uploading OST to YouTube
• Survived a Horrid Case of Con Flu (two days stuck in bed)

     Lessons Learned:

• I have newfound understanding of why Pokemon games used blurry particle effects for most attacks in Gens 4 & 5. It's just a lot easier than making individual sprite animations for hundreds of moves!
• Hearing the entire soundtrack hypes me up like crazy. I can SEE the final game so clearly now! I'm just chasing towards it now to bring it into existence.

The current BGP OST

       The entire soundtrack is nearly complete. With just 3 songs/jingles to go, and a rough draft or two to revise, this music behind Battle Gem Ponies is ready to rock some socks off your feet!
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   Thanks, Patrons!

Today's MVPs

These guys are funding BGP's existence!

     I want to give a shoutout to all the kind people that helped me out last month! The launch of this crowdfunding effort was better than I could have hoped for and with it, I'll try to do even greater things. Big thanks to you all, I won't let you down!

    Featured:

     A couple new Let's Play videos popped up and were added to the Pre-Alpha Playlist on YouTube. Big heads up though, somebody went ahead and paid one of these guys on Yotes Games' behalf and I gotta say I don't really condone that. If anyone wants to use money to support the game, there are direct forms of donation now.

     As a dev, you should never have to pay off a YouTuber (no matter how big or small) to play your game. If it's something you think they (or their audience) would be genuinely interested in, send them a free download and a couple paragraphs about your project.

     For those without money to spare who still want to help, the best thing to do is to spread the word. Show off the demo and trailer to friends. Recommend the game to your favorite Let's Players in comments or messages. Write up stuff in forums, share things on reddit, retweet or repost @TonyYotes or just say "Battle Gem Ponies" out loud in random places.

     All of that is what helps put the game in front of more people, increasing it's chances of success.
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     The race is on! With new tools at my disposal it's a matter of how quickly I can rewrite all of BGP's code in this new "language" and pipeline. By the looks of the tutorials, this should be like taking 2 steps back to sling 5 steps forward. Then after that, adding anything new to the game will be a breeze! I can't wait to see all that is possible with PlayMaker, Dialogue System, and Super Text Mesh. Just hope this doesn't slow down development too much...