Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #42 (Donations & Swapping Hats)

     Sprite season is over and it's time to make some more tangible progress. I'm planning to wake up earlier and work faster to get closer to the next public build. Time to put on my coding hat and get my capstone project wrapped up. Once I do I can fix up the BGP battle calculations and release another demo by my birthday, October 28th.

Time is ticking away! Let's go!

Trying to get all my homework out the way.
My capstone assignment is a Rock Paper Scissors RPG.

   Completed:

• 20+ NPC Sprites (Not Animated / Excluding Multiple Story Characters)
• Created an Instagram Account
• Added Instagram Button to Website
• Entered Taco Bell's Indie Game Garage Contest
• Created Sprite & Sound Assets for Kinect School Project
• Revamped rock, Paper, Scissors Battle System for RoShamBo

     Lessons Learned:

• Got to study how category based tournaments go by reading up on the Pikachu Cup.
• I should try putting ads on my YouTube trailers if I can. Even if it's miniscule cash, every bit counts these days.

       Taking a shot in the dark, I submitted my Battle Gem Ponies Demo to the Indie Game Garage contest. They're collecting indie games in development to celebrate the #indiedev culture and luckily I happen to be one of those. Best case scenario, I get $500 of Taco Bell food and a nice chat with gamedev experts. Worst case, nothing happens and I'm ignored. No reason not to enter really.

     I received my first random donation ever last week. Someone likes me enough to send an extra $10 my way every month! Is this what it feels like to be on Patreon? Because it does wonders to boost my self-esteem! This boost should get me to my LLC goal at least a month early if it keeps up.

     My head is still spinning because I never thought this would happen. It's like getting a 25% pay raise out of the blue. All I can say is thank you, Craig. The moment I got that email made the trouble of writing every post (and reposting it everywhere I can) worth it.

     If you scroll down far enough you'll see how he did it. There's a tiny PayPal donation button below the search bar on the right. A friend suggested putting one there years ago, so I did, but thought nothing would com of it since people would support me by buying my games.

     I'd love to make a Patreon but I have no extras to offer and make it worthwhile. Everybody who visits this site has testing access, I only make one game at a time so I can't do side projects or commissions, and I plan to charge money for the games I spend over a year on. All I can do as far as allowing others to help me is put out a tip jar and point to my app store pages.

     So seriously, thanks Craig. It means the world to me that you care so much. You definitely made my week.
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   Downloads:

   Even if sales didn't change having that donation going is like increasing monthly downloads by 14. I'm glad to see Unicorn Training's demo approach the 20K mark and know people are still giving my older stuff a try.

    Featured:

     I came across this on Twitter randomly and I got all the feels. Morale skyrockets when I'm reminded that there are tons of people out there who'd love to play this thing when it's done. Check out the original post on Twitter.
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     I'm shifting focus to coding and feature implementation for a bit. There's still a few NPC sprites to do, but I'd feel better making them if I new I could drop them on a map and see them in action. I need to make more tangible progress to meet criteria for my class' midterm. I'll begin working on overworld stuff this week and finish off animating and designing the remaining sprites afterward.

     I still need to fix the broken battle system too before the next demo releases too. Well then, it's back to work for me!