Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #133 (About That New Battle System)

     Still hard at work getting a stable, polished BronyCon build ready. I wanna put on a good show, and that's gonna require a couple more late nights of work and a lot of afternoons spent testing. But it'll all be worth it if we can get that crowd to cheer...

Take a look at this week in gamedev below!

   Completed:

• Demo 6.9-ish
• Malady & Weather Damage System
• New Battle Phase Control System
• Reordered Battle Calculations
• Updated In-Game Text
• Reorganized Music Collab Pipeline

     Lessons Learned:

• I needed to step up and better manage how BGP's musicians go about submitting drafts and communicating with each other and myself. So I made an organized folder structure and multiple documents in Google Docs to make things easy for us to get those tracks done.
• Also letting the musicians see the full Game Design Document for BGP seemed to improve morale. The game feels more real once you see everything that's been planned out or at least thought of and saved for a sequel. It's important for a team to see the big picture.

     So there's a working version of the game built that's panel ready, but now I'm implementing the improved battle system and trying to get this one finished in time for the panel. I want to be able to show off fancy moves like Burrow, and have Status effects that aren't just hardcoded into certain key commands.

     Once this improved combat version is built, saved, and stable I want to try to implement the ponipedia feature. Even though that one's just a polish touch, it'd add a lot of character to the panel. Having little pony bios appear on screen with flashy effects will go a long way to making the game feel alive. Even more important than having a hardcoded cutscene in there. And it's a safer time risk than trying to implement the cutscene system that only exists on paper right now.

     Cutscenes, tile maps, and travel moves can wait until the alpha build. Right now, I just need the best version of Pinto Island ever and I need to go over it with a fine toothed comb for at least a few days.
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   Downloads:

     Steady trickle as always. Hope there's a spike in interest after the panel. I want at least 500 people playing Demo 7.0 by the end of BronyCon weekend.

    Featured:

     A BGP image was featured on the gamedev art sharing site, Cartrdge.
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     Time to get back to it. Hope to see some of you readers at BronyCon!

(seriously, come say hi! we should hang out)