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.