Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #88 (Drawn Plans)

     Drawing out each map in detail was taking too long and I want a demo out before the end of October, so I took a temporary shortcut and drew rough outlines of what I wanted in each level (outdoors only) just to have a basic idea of what I want for later. I'll do the maps in detail after I release build 7. I'll only need up to the Peridot Woods for build 8 anyway since that's what I'll be using for the Greenlight demo launch.

Find the rest of these map drawings on the Yotes Games Facebook page.

There's been massive amounts of DMCA takedowns going on lately.
Nintendo's legal department is cracking down to protect their IP.

   Completed:

• Inspiration/Concept Art Gallery
• Detailed Map Drawings (From Honeydew Town to Route Sphene)
• Simple Map Drawings (entire region, outdoors/important interiors only)
• Studied Various 16-Bit Overworld Pixel Art Styles
• Edited Items List
• Changed Release Plans

     Lessons Learned:

• I need to communicate my ideas better and use things like a concept art gallery to make my visions more tangible and useful for the musicians who had to go by just text until this week. It's frustrating to them and leads to multiple revisions of the same songs.
• Staying on one task for longer than a few days gets me in a boredom funk. I even literally fall asleep at my desk sometimes when I'm zoning out. To keep that from happening I'm going to jump around on my task list since there's always something I could be working on. Divide up the work, be more productive. Simple. Let's see how this works out.

     Speaking of dividing the work, I settled on releasing the Greenlight demo in pieces. In January you'll have Slot 1 used for exploring up to the end of Peridot Woods, then in March I'll add a flash forward to the Dank Cave area in Slot 2, and finally in April I'll add another flash forward to a fight against Paragon at their hideout in Slot 3. That April version is the one I'll be pushing onto as many YouTubers as possible to let them know this game exists and it's coming  Summer 2017.

     It'll all serve to keep folks entertained and keep the game in their minds over time, building hype for the final release and giving me a peek at the kind of numbers I can turn out and keep engaged. It'll also stretch out the deadline and give me more time to get each area of the game done and polished to a level worthy of critical eyes.
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   Downloads:

     Pokemon Uranium got 1.5 Million downloads in a few weeks. Legends of Equestria had 400 Thousand unique users over the years. These numbers make me salivate at the possibilities. Even if I match Unicorn Training's poor customer conversion rate of 3%, I'd be set to get an apartment for myself and work on the next game.

    Featured:

At least 10,000 people know this game exists by now. That's a good start, right?

     More BGP videos have been popping up! This is good. Hope it keeps up.
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     This week I'm going to crack down on pony designs and finally get a first draft of every single one! Sketching things out like this is really helping this game feel like a real thing to me. I'm dying to see people's reactions to the Steam Greenlight release!