Will Battle Gem Ponies Have Day/Night Cycles?

       I'm still trying to think of ways to justify having a day/night cycle in Battle Gem Ponies. There just aren't enough nocturnal ponies to make it interesting in that regard, so I need to come up with something else. My current idea is to sometimes have different trainers roaming at night, but even that doesn't make much sense lore wise.

     The only solid thing I can think of is some puzzle segments dedicated to the day and night alicorns. And as for how time passes, it would have to be Ocarina of Time style, where it's there but not emphasized like in Majora's Mask. Maybe I can have ghost and bat ponies roaming at night in addition to whoever's normally out there.  Things are just up in the air right now, but I am trying to make it work.

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #35 (Capstone Chaos)

     Time to focus on the overworld for a bit. I still plan to add the necessary updates to the battle system, but I'll need to get a decent start on the overworld portion of the game to satisfy my school requirements. After testing out my schedule last week I found that there's plenty of time for me to develop the game during the week. I can squeeze in a solid 4 hours a day and all of Sunday.

Revised Senior Capstone Plans

     I won't be able to continue working on Battle Gem Ponies as my Senior Capstone project. At least, not in a straightforward way. All non-design document development up to this point has been for the battle system that was shown at my BronyCon panel a couple weeks ago. The capstone is a school supervised project that needs to be a significantly unique product. I can't just take my battle system and add more depth to it. It needs to be distinct from the thing I've been showing everyone.

     When I met with the professor in charge of this project on Tuesday, I couldn't even start my pitch before hearing a definite "No" (talk about a shutdown).  We aren't allowed to start working on anything pertaining to our chosen project until our formal project plan has been approved by the professor. Since I already started BGP, I can't continue to develop it in-class.

     If I did continue my summer's work as school work, higher-ups would question how I accomplished so much in such a short amount of time, or look into my digital past more to discover I actually started making this RPG way back in December. That's academic dishonesty and an unfair advantage against my graduating class for this piece of portfolio work.

     To do this right I need to piece this off into it's own thing for this semester. That means I'll have to work on the overworld separately then combine it with the combat later.


      I can continue developing the battle system for a different class focused on researching an advanced development skill (i.e. online play, analytics, achievements, etc.). By balancing things this way, I can stay on track with my task list while passing these major classes that I need to graduate on time.

     My capstone will be a short overworld-based adventure where I can test out all the mechanics I'll need for BGP. Day/Night cycles, pathfinding, collision maps, and so on. Basically just make a BGP demo without battles, then add battles and release it as a pre-alpha adventure demo.

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #34 (Final Year of School)

The V2 build exists on my iPod now. Looks nice lined up with the others.

     I'm back at school now and my very first class was Gaming & Simulation Capstone. I'll be talking with my professor later to see if I can work on BGP as my capstone. If not, I'll have to make up an unrelated game with pieces I can place back into the BGP game when the class comes to an end.

     Go get a full game development status report below!

Yotes Games @BronyCon2015

     Where do I even begin with this? My first convention was an incredible experience that I completely underestimated. Both for indie dev marketing reasons and personal ones. I tried to limit my BronyCon experience summary to just a handful of paragraphs and some carefully selected pictures you can find below the break.

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #33 (BronyCon 2015)

     Battle Gem Ponies is officially a topical thing for bronies! Sorry about posting a devlog almost a day late. Still playing catch-up on the internet after having what was possibly the greatest weekend of my life so far. There is SO much BronyCon stuff to talk about, you'll have to catch some details of my first convention adventure after the page break.

Battle Gem Ponies Pre-Alpha V2 Videos

     Battle Gem Ponies finally has a new presence on YouTube. For the longest time only the BYOC demo existed in video form. Now you can see what the game looks like as of last week. Check out the selection of new gameplay footage below.

Sizzle Reel Trailer

Gameplay Video

Detailed First Thoughts Video

Guess I'll be seeing a lot of you this Sunday.
Can't wait to hear your thoughts on the project in person.

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #32 (Pre-Alpha V2 Release)

     Battle Gem Ponies is finally in a playable form. There's animations, randomly assigned teams, and a win/lose condition. I even made a gameplay video to show it off. You can download the PC Demo and look below the break for more news on the project's development.