Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #49 (Happy Thanksgiving / DoorBuster Day)

     Hello December. It's funny how a year ago I thought Battle Gem Ponies would be out by now. Release dates are one of the most nebulous things ever. Nobody ever really knows exactly how long a piece of art will take. Get a feel for what's going on so far below the break.

   Completed:

• Reorganized Dev Task List
• Replaced All RoShamBo Assets with Battle Gem Ponies
• Updated List of YouTubers to Send Free Copies of BGP To
• Discovered Limits of Working on Macbook (My Pipeline is Simply Better on PC)
• Macbook is Now Dedicated Backup Computer & Portable Option (PC Laptop must stay connected to 2nd monitor, basically making it a desktop from now on.)
• Decided Not to Pursue Patreon
• Decided to Code Without Playmaker
• Moved PayPal Donate Button Below Popular Posts
• Removed RSS Link (Was anyone even using that?)
• Coded Textboxes for Item Descriptions, Move Info, and Similar Screens
• Fixed Object & NPC Collision Detection
• Fixed Tile Map Layering Problems

     Lessons Learned:

• I'm going to animate ponies and moves last and simply use placeholders to focus on the code behind everything first. As each demo releases, I'll spend some time animating 6-10 ponies and moves at a time so it doesn't pile on at the end.
• Glad I got to Toys "R" Us in Times Square When I did. That magical place is vanishing this year.

In that historic Toys R Us about a couple weeks ago.
Hoped to see my IP there in some form eventually.

       This past week was a nice vacation with just a little time spent working on BGP. I had a great Thanksgiving, chose to hang with friends instead of shop on Black Friday, played with my girlfriends new puppy, finished InFamous 2, watched a ton of inspiring YouTube videos, and just got all pumped up to continue gamedev in general. Mental refreshment breaks like this make the endless crunch possible. Finishing up the game doesn't seem so impossible now.
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   Downloads:

25K total Unicorn Training Downloads! A sudden surge of Opera downloads are happening too.
Many app stores updated their look this week in prep for December.

    I went from $50 to $30 a month along with the $10 donation I still receive. Christmas is around the corner and I've made it clear that all I want is to buy this last thing to get my company going. After that, I just have to finish BGP and have something big to sell.

    Featured:

     Last week's post about starting a patreon generated some conversation over on My Little GameDev, a brony game developer forum. The consensus seems to be "Stick with PayPal Donate."
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   DevLog #50 is on its way. I'm hoping to have the game finished in time for DevLog #100. Maybe I should start a HypeLog after that and build up to release. The game has come really far since the initial PonyMon offhand suggestion I made to myself.


"What if they went all the way with this idea?"