Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #40 (NPCs, LinkedIn, & Crowdfunding My Heroes)

A lot of catch-up gaming happened this week.
It's been a while since I just sat down and enjoyed playing a game.

     I admit to some serious slacking this week, but on the technical side, I was researching a lot of games I've been curious about. thanks to my friends I've now tried out Catherine, Metal Gear Rising, Alice: Madness Returns, Hyrule Warriors, Mario Kart 8, UnderTale, and InFamous 2. It's been refreshing honestly, and my creative batteries feel recharged.

You can still see some of this week's accomplishments below.

Confirmed Capture Gems

     In Battle Gem Ponies you capture the magical essence of a wild pony and keep it inside of something called a Command Gem. You use this Command Gem to transform your pony into whatever pony/stat/moveset combination you want. You have a pony trainer device that holds up to 3 of these Command Gems. The device takes the unique signature of the gem and transfers it to your pony, allowing you to swap through forms as if the device were a TV remote.

     To claim a wild pony's signature for your own pony you'll need to use that same device to scan, copy, then print the signature onto empty Command Gems called Capture Gems. Once a Capture Gem holds a pony's signature, it becomes a Command Gem.

     Capture Gems come in a number of different forms and using the right kind under the right circumstances makes the capture process much easier. Get a list of all the different ones below.

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #39 (NPC Templates, Personal Finance, & Project Planning)

WIP from making a background character template.

     Time to work on the overworld now! I've spent enough time in idea world for now, I think. Time to make an island I can walk around and do stuff on. First step is getting a bunch of sprites and tilesets ready. Next I'll be putting things into place and coding how they interact with each other. As always, the vision becomes more clear every week.

Check out this week in gamedev below the break.

BGP Roster Info #4 (Shyshock, Furum, & Joyance)

     Time for even more pony introductions! Rounding off the naughty/nice balance of last week's post comes this week's cutie pies. Battle Gem Ponies is about mixing the cute with the awesome for spectacular effect. Hopefully the contrast of these guys with ponies like Xenoir and Malduin makes for a balanced cast so all types of people can find a few favorites. 

     All three of the ponies showcased today should be familiar to MLP fans, who can bring their love for those personalities to BGP and see what those types of characters would do in an RPG.

Get info on the new Shyshock, Joyance, and Furum ponies below.

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #38 (Pony Abilities & Spreadsheets)

     A lot more time was spent in spreadsheets this week. Trying to find out what makes each of the 60 ponies special and how they can all compete with each other in tier-free combat. I also fleshed out the items list for the game and got to pick out some finalized names and mechanics.

Doing all this stuff gets me in a warm and fuzzy gamedev mood. Check out what got done this week!

BGP Roster Info #3 (Rainbryte, Malduin, & Frufang)

     Time to introduce some awesome new ponies! Remember those secret sprites I keep mentioning in DevLogs? These are the finished versions of those. Sure, they'd look better animated, but that won't be for another few months. Right now these guys mostly just exist in text form. I figure that having at least a primary sprite done for each pony will help out tons with seeing the final vision of the game and coming up with info to fill in the blanks on my BGP spreadsheets.

Get some info on the Rainbryte, Frubat, and Malduin ponies below.

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #37 (Names, Names, & Card Games)

     Spent lots of time in Word and Excel this week, getting a ton of design ideas straight. One of the biggest accomplishments this week was finally deciding on names for all the ponies. With the names finalized, I can finally start making spreadsheets to organize them by name, class, ability, moveset, and so on. The vision is becoming clearer each day.

Get a look at what's been done down below.

BGP Ultra Forms

     Ultra Forms in Battle Gem Ponies seems to need more attention on this blog. Kinda surprised I haven't clearly explained how it currently works on the site yet. I've stated before that it's a temporary effect that works a lot like mega evolution does in Pokemon. You can get some details on how it works below the break.

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #36 (RoShamBo & Top Secret Sprites)

     So things are settling down now as an idea has been chosen and pitched for my senior capstone class. I'm going with a simple Rock, Paper, Scissors RPG that will require me to make all the overworld assets needed for Battle Gem Ponies in order to get 2 things done at once.

Shifting into high gear this week in gamedev. Check out the details below.