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Tuesday, February 2, 2016

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #58 (Opportunity to Take a Break?)


     This week I'm talking myself into making a quick project in the middle of BGP's development. Progress is fine, but a new idea has been eating away at me and tons of exposure opportunities are in sight that may end up helping all my future games if I take action. The main problem is figuring out how long it'd take, and I think if I do it game jam style, it could be worth a shot.

Get more details below the break.

Hypes and Critical-Hits are working just fine.
   Completed:
  • Multiple Battle Effect Text Lines
  • Critical-Hits & Multi-Crits
  • Hype Slash Effect
  • Hype Moment Coded
  • Lots of Unicorn Quest Ideas
  • Simplified Quick Game Project Ideas
  • Refined List of General Tasks After 5 Month BGP DevList
     Lessons Learned:
  • Looked Even Deeper into Undertale and it's community to understand the game's development, creator, depth, and impact. It's been a wild ride, but certainly an important one for me. Now I better understand what it takes to be the kind of creator I've dreamt of becoming.
  • We came up with some pony cries this week using LabChirp which will allow us to put them in the game much sooner than expected. Since it's so easy and the files are so small, we can fit in unique cries for every pony and their ultra forms.
       I have an idea for a small scale Political RPG but I can't settle on the right time to do it. I could make it after BGP, or when I finish my current 5 month task list and take a break. I'm wondering if it'll harm or help Battle Gem Ponies. Doing it now could get me some press attention during the Bernie Sanders hype, but then I'm either crunching to avoid delaying BGP or releasing it too late and minimizing the press boost.

     If I start immediately after BGP Demo 4 some of the assets could be reused for BGP and I could even enter it into my school's game competition and earn some much needed extra money since I'm basically living off the $30 a month from my game sales at this point. It'd also be nice to have a game available on Steam before BGP so I have a better idea of how it all works. If the scope is still too big I could always flesh out the idea later and make it into something bigger as a sequel.

     Tonight I'll crunch out a design document for this thing just to calculate exactly how long it'd really take to make the minimum viable product. Afterwards, I'll decide if it's worth starting.
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   Downloads:


   Nice even numbers here. Even some upticks on counts that have been frozen for months. Growing up bit by bit. I wonder how the numbers would change if I released a high quality free game?
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    Time to keep pushing along. I kind of want to release a tiny game idea I had relating to the election season, but I don't know how long it would take. My best guess is 5 months max, but if I crunch, maybe it'll be done within 2? I can't possibly be done in time for primaries, but if people are still charged up on Bernie Sanders around November, I could have something then. It'd also serve to boost my reputation in the eyes of games press and get them to catch wind of Battle Gem Ponies...

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