Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #1 (Scope Setting)

     I have an upcoming Mobile Game Design course for my Junior year at the Pennsylvania College of Technology and the project I'll be working on is this Pokemon style game featuring ponies. The Ponymon Dawn/Dusk ROM hacks inspired me to tackle turn-based combat, multiplayer networking, and fixing everything that bugs me about the main Pokemon games (mainly the grinding and brainless AI). There are only mock-up images right now but I'll be putting out calls for pre-alpha testers once something actually exists in Unity.

     Development is off to a good start and things are becoming clear as the design document gets filled in. Of course I took a couple days off for Christmas with family, but got right back into development and I'm about 50% done with the game design document now.  I should be nearly finished with it by next week so I can start drafting ideas for ponies and tweaking the document for game balance. Things like items, moves, and abilities will be planned out once I have a set number of pony designs and I know their strengths and weaknesses.

Get a bunch of sales data from my other games and a list of progress for Battle Gem Ponies below.

Next Game: Battle Gem Ponies (Competitive Turn-Based RPG Adventure)

     It's finally time to start this... I've been wanting to make this game for so many years and now I'm free to give it my all! Battle Gem Ponies is the name of the game and it's about making little super-powered horses with gemstones on their chests fight each other for sport. I plan on releasing it before I graduate college in Spring 2016 and having it available on Mobile and PC platforms for $4.99.

     This is the dream game I've wanted to make for years. The success of this game will determine if I'm cut-out for a career in indie game development so I'll be putting everything I've got into making it the most awesome game it can be.

Get a full description of the game and a bunch of details below.

Dragon Souls Prologue Status Report #5 (What Comes Next?)

     With the action prototype project out of the way I was able to get my thoughts down in written form this week and start seriously dreaming up my next game. It feels great. A huge weight has been lifted as I'm finally set free. I can do the thing I want most now and start living the dream of making a truly awesome game. That game will be revealed in the next post and I'm excited to finally pull back the curtain covering what I spend all day, everyday, thinking about.

     Check below the break for a week's worth of sales, paycheck news, leftovers from my high school Pokemon project, and hints of what post-Christmas surprise I'll announce on Friday.

Dragon Souls Prologue [CANCELLED]

     I know this must come as a shocker for those following my gamedev adventures, I mean, really the decision came out of nowhere Tuesday night. I finished up the HUD and stared at it. I pulled up the icon and stared at that too. I finally gave into the voice that kept saying "This isn't going well." and imagined how much happier I'd be if I could just start my dream project that I've put off for 5+ years. Something I could spend a year or more on rather than rushing it out before school starts again.

I am cancelling the production of Dragon Souls Prologue indefinitely.

     You can catch a full breakdown of lessons learned and what I was thinking below the break. Just know that I'm working on something much better now. The thing I've wanted to do since I fist learned programming. A game that does everything I wish Pokemon would do.

Dragon Souls Prologue Status Report #4 (Convention Ready)

     I officially predict that I will not make the game in time for the Christmas close-off. I'm now aiming for January 9th - 11th. A lot of things were occupying my time last week. Between finals I was in a frenzy to get all the facts together and plan my trip to my first ever convention, which is also the first time I'll be presenting my games to a huge crowd. Sure I'll have the experience from my school's BYOC party in April, but BronyCon will be a totally different beast.

     One of the big things I did this week was make a DeviantArt account in order to be more social with my target audience (people who like ponies and RPGs as much as me). Check out a link to that along with some sales data below.

Dragon Souls Paused For Finals Week (Huge Leaps In Progress From Now On)

     I've mostly been doing non-Dragon Souls stuff this week but since school is officially out for Christmas I have a whole month to focus on gamedev. Most of this week's progress has been me speaking with folks on social media and reading/watching as much stuff as I can about presenting at conventions (BronyCon in particular).

    My biggest  accomplishment for Dragon Souls was getting all the enemy sprites in and animating them all. Everything is looking good so far and it's time to start coding how everything behaves. I'm glad the scope is really small this time around because I still want to start my RPG project more than anything. My wish will be granted the very first day of class in January and I couldn't be any more excited.

     On a side note, I have a DeviantArt account so I can finally leave comments there and tell people how awesome they are. You can also find some of my high school bored-in-class drawings that got me where I am today.

Now it's time to get to work! I want a playable game by next Friday!

Dragon Souls Prologue Status Report #3 (Approaching Prototype)

     It's finals week so the stress to finish the semester strong is on. Last thing I need now is to repeat any courses. I'm getting ever more excited to start my next RPG in January, but Dragon Souls needs to exist first. Not only is it going to lock-down the trademark I paid so much for, but it's grid system will be used in my next game's overworld. It's also supposed to show how I have plans for future games that don't all involve multicolored equines. This game just needs to be out.

     By the looks of things I won't be making the December 22nd deadline, but who knows. Maybe  I'll be really productive over winter break.

Get some sales data, convention plans, and other news below.
(Spoilers: I'm moving to Florida in July!)

Experimenting With Dragon Souls Prologue

     I learned a lot about how 2D Toolkit's TileMaps work. I now know how to set the origin points to place character feet on the center of a tile, make it so no tile's coordinates are below zero, have objects with a lower Y value layer over things with a higher Y, and efficiently snap objects to the tile they need to be on. The objects are supposed to slide smoothly when moving and pause at the center of an adjacent tile if they stop.

Dragon Souls Prologue Status Report #2 (Setting Up)

     Development is underway! I am seeing the pieces come together as I try new techniques I want to perfect in future games. Things like smaller/sharper sprites, smooth controls, and clean general organization.

Check out some sales data below!