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Friday, October 28, 2016

Yotes Games, Hopes, and Dreams (Birthday 2016)


     This is actually the last time for another 7 years that my birthday falls on a Friday so I should try to make the most of it with what I've got. Unfortunately, one of the things I don't have ready is a new BGP demo... Distractions got the best of me.

     By this time next year I'll be at Beach City Con with some of my very best friends relaxing on the beach at the peak of BGP's launch popularity. (Well actually, it'd be one week after that and I'll be mid post-con depression.) 

     If the launch is as successful as I wish it can be, I'll be house hunting and getting ready to establish a new base of operations for Yotes Games! Thoughts of my next birthday are really keeping me alive. Finishing BGP and getting it in front of every brony on Earth is my final challenge. The one last insanely difficult thing to do before I can take a well deserved break and plan out where I'd like my indie career to go.

     Should I fail, things may take a serious turn. Either selling my soul and busting my back just as hard to make someone else rich, or risking it all on a Kickstarter push for BGP2 to fix whatever kept it from selling well. All I have to do is sell 25,000 copies to justify this career choice. But I know this game has more potential than that. Pokemon Uranium just proved that there's an audience for this stuff. Indie passion projects from real Pokemon fans that gets the little things right.

     Today I turn 23, and I promised myself that I'd become the Tony Yotes I envisioned by age 24. The same age Toby Fox and John Boyega hit their prime accomplishments. In one year's time I'll have a notable game to my name. Hopefully one that brings excitement and smiles to tens of thousands of people across the globe.

Tuesday, October 25, 2016

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #95 (Birthday Week)


     A new fire is lit under my butt as I realize the value of getting another demo out before Pokemon Sun & Moon launch. Let's Players will be eager for new Pokemon gameplay but have nothing to do in the couple weeks leading up to the 18th. Gotta put BGP in the hands of some bronies before then and maybe try to reach a few of the small-fry Pokemon channels to sort of get my foot in the door.

Check out this week's progress below.

Friday, October 21, 2016

BGP Development: Some Quick Spritework


     Just animating some moves at the moment. Then I'll be doing 3 new sets of pony animations. Getting sprites out of the way while I wait to see if Unity ever fixes these annoying editor bugs where the gameplay or scene windows randomly disappear only on Mac OSX. It makes debugging rather difficult and people have been complaining on the Unity forums for weeks, if not months now.

     So I'm grinding along making what progress I can.

Tuesday, October 18, 2016

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #94 (One Week. Can I Even?)


     One week til my birthday where I wanted to release demo 6 as a present to myself. Turns out, I can't. The next demo will most certainly be delayed until early November. This past week has just been stacked with distractions and I spent 3 full days working with my dad at work fixing hurricane damage. The labor left me sore and exhausted so I took a day off, then I had a brony meetup at UCF I've been planning for weeks, then the Pokemon Sun & Moon demo came out, and then I had to make some charts for my Dad to work with, and at the end of it all, I realize I haven't touched the game at all in like, 7 days.

     It's been a lackluster week as far as progress goes, but Yotes Games marches on...

Friday, October 14, 2016

Delaying Demo 6 (THIS KEEPS HAPPENING)


     Some quick news on how BGP is going. In short, it's not. This week has been full of setbacks and a string of bad luck going on outside of gamedev that's really been demotivating and distracting me. After some mental recoup, I'm ready to get back at it and get this game to Greenlight.

     One thing has to be scrapped though, and that's the hope of finishing Build 6 in time for Halloween. I'll be lucky to have it out the following weekend in November at this rate. I gotta step up my productivity soon though, because the one date I can't afford to miss is the January Greenlight launch. Preferably Monday, January 2nd. The perfect time to send my game out to press sites. Even more likely to get picked up now that quality Pokemon fan games are all the rage.

     In other scrapping news, Vinerva's Ultra form animations are not at all complete like I thought they were. I was mistaken and probably remembering my days working on this version of BGP where all the animations existed in my head. Drawing all the necessary sprites for that would delay the next demo even further, so they're being pushed off into Build 7.

     In order to keep things on time, I'll have to limit finished & functional Ultra forms to only Vinerva until after the Greenlight Demo. Then I can take as much time as needed animating the rest of them.

Tuesday, October 11, 2016

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #93 (Keep On It)


     It's mid-October now. Lots of distractions and waves of depression this week. But also some moments of fun. To fight for more of the fun stuff, I need to keep going and make this game incredible! Battle Gem Ponies! Let's Go!

Friday, October 7, 2016

Challenges Ahead for Demo 6


     Sorry I haven't been posting on Fridays for so long. Some of you may remember me saying I'd lay of these weekend posts when there's nothing to talk about, but the rest of you probably feel left in the dark. Thing is, BGP is currently at that boring stage of development where most of the weekly accomplishments are getting basic features to work, fixing bugs, improving organization, rewriting ideas, and trying to figure out how to toss numbers around to program new features at all.

     I thought I'd take a minute this week to talk about some of the upcoming obstacles I need to navigate in order to get BGP V6.0  out in time for Halloween weekend.

Tuesday, October 4, 2016

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #92 (Wrapping My Head Around This)


     Another week passed without much being crossed off the list. Making every menu screen work properly is turning out to be a week-long affair rather than the couple days I had in mind. It's like making a little game in itself with its own little systems. I'll remember that when planning for the future. That multiplayer setup menu is going to be a pain.

Check out this week in gamedev below.