Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #192 (Missed the Train, So Up the Standard)

     Tiny bits of progress get done week-by-week and right now I'm one step closer to getting those YouTube videos ready to fill in the gaps. With scripts written, it's a matter of recording all of them and splicing a few videos together.nI can hope it takes a weekend, but I'll just take this one day at a time. You know how I am with deadlines.

Get this week's GameDev news and introspection below!

   Completed: 

• Updated About Me Page (explaining more about this site)
• Written Ideas for BGP & Future Additions
• Finally Finished Writing YouTube Scripts
• Organized the Design Document a Bit
• Changed the Budget Document Based Around My New Job
• Looked Up Other Indie Projects to Fire Myself Up to Join Them
• Researched Nintendo's Classic Design Documents
• Double-Checked If BGP has Undertale/Nintendo Levels of Quality and Personality in Its DNA (since I'm basically starting from scratch, might as well make sure all the little things are done right)

Dumb Little Tidbit:
Using this image as my 2nd monitor's wallpaper actually motivates me throughout the day.
Just seeing these little guys and imagining them in motion gets me pumped to bring them to life so others can see them too.

     Lessons Learned:

• Listened to a 7-Hour Analysis of Pokemon over the week to get the creative juices flowing.
• Discovered this neat indie game called Coromon, further proving I'm not the only dev dying to make a super-polished pixel art Poke-Clone game like this.
• Fantasizing about the distant future, and running an actual games studio in my 30s & 40s doesn't sound like such a bad career at all. 
• Solo dev has its perks, but I'm sure I'll get to a point where I just wanna trust the day-to-day stuff to a passionate, talented team and just be a Miyamoto type guiding hand. The ultimate dream job. An Idea Guy. The game studio's wise old man. Can only imagine that being more and more possible with smaller teams as engines like Unity keep making it easier and easier to craft awesome looking stuff on a small budget.

     Maybe I should be worried whenever it looks like someone's gonna beat me to the punch and pull off a truly excellent mobile Pokemon-inspired game, but the more I think about Battle Gem Ponies, how far I've come, and what the vision for it in my head is now... There's no point in rushing because the zeitgeist is long gone. Right now I'm making it because I know it's going to be a game to stand the test of time.

     The world, the mechanics, the characters, they're all going to have a unique flair to them and go far beyond just offbrand reskins. My aim to to make a game that can make people laugh, shout, think, wonder, and maybe (if I'm REAL good) cry. And inspiring kids like my younger self to follow their dreams with relentless determination would be a nice bonus too.

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     There's no denying that I'm pretty darn burnt out, but I'm carrying on anyway. I'm slowly getting more and more used to the work schedule and little tricks to hype myself up. Hourly stretching, healthier foods (admittedly, this one needs more consistency), 30 minute runs every other weekday, short mental breaks to dream about things to implement in BGP, minimizing social media scrolling, and forcing myself, (no matter how tired) to spend my last waking hour before bed working on BGP.

     I caught myself slacking multiple times these past couple weeks coming home and just wanting to eat warm food and melt into my bed watching YouTube til losing consciousness. It's called a daily grind for a reason, but unless I want to be under that kind of stress for the next 50 years, I gotta put the extra effort in to get Yotes Games on the map.