Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #7 (Bug Fixes & Recognition)

     This week has been a pretty busy one. There were spotlight features, convention updates, contests entries, bug fixes, revised designs, renamed mechanics, new sales data, and more blog comments than ever! It's gamedev to the max here at Yotes Games and I'm only just getting started.

     Things are finally in place and I can really start getting into adding features to Battle Gem Ponies. I have the action camera up and running, menus planned out, and a basic idea of how battle calculations will be made. It's just a matter of building up the game one layer at a time.

Check out what layers got in just this week below the break.

App Annie's new charts show weekly data for entire platforms.

   Completed:

• Fixed Camera Resolution Glitches
• Fixed Battle Camera Bug
• Added Camera Movement System (Auto-Idle Patterns)
• Mobile Class Design Document
• Asked Important BronyCon AMA Questions
• EQD Nightly Roundup Feature
• IGN Community Spotlight Feature
• Considering ESA E3 College Dev Competition
• Finalized Names For Mechanics (Ace & Malady Instead Of STAB & Status Effect)

     Lessons Learned:

• More people appreciate my blogs than I realized. I'm not just talking to myself over here.
• According to teachers I'm a philosophical thinker and according to peers I'm incredibly driven. I've never put much thought into how others perceived me until I started noticing all the compliments this week. Self-Esteem +2.

BronyCon hosted an AMA on reddit and answered
my burning question about panelist discounts.

I also got my Baltimare Arcade question answered!

     A big hurdle I got over just yesterday was the name problem I had with certain gameplay pieces. While Pokemon has STAB moves and Status Effects, Battle Gem Ponies will have Ace moves and Maladies. This mostly came from how Pokemon's mechanic names don't make sense on a base level, likely because they were translated from Japanese.

     The word Ace describes proficiency in a particular field, in this case, a Fire class pony being really good at using Fire class moves. Malady means an impairment affecting an organism or a desperate condition. Using these terms to describe combat also helps with differentiating my product.

     For shorthand use I can use things like A and AA to represent an Ace or Double Ace move when a pony uses something that matches one or both of its classes. I can also classify Maladies into either the Malady or Sub-Malady category to separate conditions like Poison from Confusion. You'll learn more about the Maladies on my next post here.

     App Annie has been tracking stats on my game sales for a while now and they had a major update last week. In addition to the new email style and info, they provided a way for me to view all my app and platform data at once. Take a look below for the new charts.
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   Downloads:

Let's see if I can get 10,000 bronies to download my next game on launch week.

Lots of app info all on one page. It'll get less convenience as
I add apps so I might stop posting these charts in the future.

   I saw a lot of scary zeroes this week, basically signaling the end of Unicorn Training sales. It capped off at over $500. Not bad for a first game. I may be able to squeeze out another $500 once I put it on iOS, but sadly I need over $1000 to get it on iOS in the first place. I guess it can go toward making the money spent on a Mac back.

    Featured:

     I was selected as the featured community blog on MyIGN for week #230! Turns out reposting my stuff over there is appreciated by more folks than I realized. I shot up to 60 followers on MyIGN which means there's a lot more eyeballs on my progress here. Each new person to discover me is a potential flag waver who could spread the word and help my project take off. That's also more people to get feedback from which leads to better games in the end.

     It's weird how just at the start of the week I was wondering just how many people cared and considered quieting down until I had substantial things to show. Game development is a long process after all and sometimes the things that get done in a week are all behind the scenes stuff.

     I was put on EQD again! Now that I have something interesting to show newcomers, there might be more eyes on Battle Gem Ponies' development. That post hasn't gotten as many comments as I had hoped though. This is what made me think the game still isn't tangible enough to wave around.

    The mostly barren comments section on my own might be the fault of my blog's comment system forcing moderation even though I have it turned off. If that's the case, I'll keep looking into ways that make posting feedback easy. I know I'm getting around 200 visitors a day, I just want to hear what you all have to say.

     A few regulars have given me their two cents and it's those voices that I'm going by in terms of addressing feedback. BGP is going to be a community driven series so I need to figure out what gets people talking about it. I also need to hear what's good and what's bad before the game is already out with a glaring design issue I overlooked.
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     It feels great getting a lot of homework out of the way and squashing those camera bugs once and for all. I can really blitz through development this week and get to a point where the ponies fight each other on a basic level!