Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #12 (Follower Ponies, Wild Encounters, & PvP Menu Plans)

I have plans to redesign those 4 item buttons.

     A lot of back-end coding went down over spring break and I have a lot of features planned out in detail on paper. Now it's a matter of blitzing through development to have something ready for the game design competition at my school next month. I just pray school doesn't get in the way too much.

Get a big progress report below the break.

Google Play is changing up it's rating system so my games
will now have recommended ages attached to them.

   Completed:

• Pony Stat Icons
• Stat Visibility (In-Battle) Planned
• Wild Pony Encounters In Tall Grass
• Special Grass Animation Effects
• Fixed Wall Detection
• Animated Water Edge Tiles
• Overworld To Battle Transition
• Main Menu Planned
• VS Match Setup Sketches
• Overworld Test Map Planned
• Pre-Alpha V1 Content Planned
• Redirected Development Toward BYOC Build (PvP Mode)
• Design Plans For 4 Additional Pre-Alpha Ponies
• Scrapped: Training Academy

     Lessons Learned:

• I need to shift development toward getting something fun to play by next month.
• It's better to save the academy idea for the sequel where I'll have time to flesh it out into something really cool.
• Even without animations, it should be fun to play as the 6 ponies in the BYOC build.
• The game should come with 6 common ponies unlocked right away for those who want to dive into PvP.

       All I can think about right now is getting 6 playable ponies into the game and having the battle setup menu work properly. If I can start building up the combat from there, I'll be golden.
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   Downloads:

   That's over 10,000 downloads for the Unicorn Training Demo! It's so amazing how that many people gave my first real game a try. I'm creeping toward 1000 downloads of the paid version, but at least the demo shows me how many people were interested in my idea. I hope Battle Gem Ponies has a smaller demo-to-paid difference. This one seems to match up with what I've been told. About 10%

of the free users become paying customers.

    Featured:

     Exactly 100 ratings on Unicorn Training's Google Play version! And it has a pretty good average too. The demo has 184 reviews, so I may see it hit 200 soon. Reading this customer feedback is pretty crucial to understanding what made those people want to take the time to give me stars.

     All the complaints are solid and understandable, but what perks me up after reading those are the ones by people who really appreciate the Zelda X My Little Pony feel I was going for. It gives me hope that I'm headed in the right direction. All that's left is to make more solid games.
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Not mine, but it might be soon.

       I spent spring break mostly relaxing but couldn't shake off the urge to do gamedev because the need to finish this haunts me. I finally played the entirety of The Walking Dead game on PS3 which will surely affect me creatively. I also had lots of time to play Pokemon Stadium with my girlfriend and pick apart exactly what experiences I want to get across in Battle Gem Ponies.

     It's back to school time now and I'm expecting tons of homework to slow me down. I'll power through and try to deliver something for the BYOC party. If I win the game design contest, I might just be able to buy myself an OUYA and develop on that alongside the android version. It'll make the Playstation Network port that much easier to do and get me used to delivering a console-like experience.