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Wednesday, November 14, 2018

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #196 (Showcase Dreams)


     Can you picture it...? Yotes Games, out there among the other young hopefuls, trying to convince anybody walking by to give this little pony RPG a shot. By all means, it outta do as great as it did at Orlando Overdrive but with a much bigger crowd over the span of 3 days instead of 1.

    Serious planning has begun, so far it's only been preemptive measures and bookmarking things to come back to later. Now I'm getting down the fine details of everything I need to know, do, study, and purchase in order to make the most out of this Magfest trip.


Here's the base setup the convention will give us.
I can work with that.

Also fixed up this thing. Finally got the Japanese spelling right.
So, linguists rejoice!

   Completed: 
  • Notes on New BGP Mechanics
  • Detailed Plans for Development Tools
  • Magfest Booth & Trip Planning
  • Fixed Japanese Logo (better do it now before ordering prints of everything)
Magfest is always incredible...
Honored to finally attend as a showcasing indie.

     Lessons Learned:
  • Burnout's pretty real and possibly coming again. I can feel the stress piling up higher every day, so I try to balance it out as best I can with short breaks or time to just stare at the ceiling, notes nearby, and think about what I want BGP to be.
  • Another brain exercise I actually find soothing after a day at work is looking up boss battle analysis videos and thinking about how they could be improved or made more challenging. Then imagining some narrative bits to make them more memorable as characters a la Undertale. 
  • A lot of tricks I learn at work will come in handy for BGP's development when I get to the implementation part of things. So many of the minor things that were a headache before have some clever solutions and open source assets to help me out.
  • Even though I see what BGP could be later, there are TONS of people out there who've never even heard of it at all and will have their minds blown when I show them what the game currently is.
  • If I treat the Magfest demo like a big deal, it will be a big deal. So let's hype it up.
Couldn't for the life of me decide which color tablecloth to use for the Magfest booth.


       Just wanted to match the Yotes Games / BGP aesthetic, so I used the combo of Purple, Blue, and Black that stood out most. Something at a glance that stood out from the standard Navy blue or Pitch Black tables, but also looked playful and even kinda shiny. (I picked out some specific stuff online to get the BGP feel across.)

     So turned my little shopping list into an exact folder of bookmarks to click through soon as I'm ready to buy all that stuff (might wait till Cyber Monday, cuz this is gonna hurt my wallet pretty bad). Just hope it all arrives in time. It should all only take about a month.

     What I'm really dreading now is being able to squeeze all this stuff into as few bags as possible so I don't lose hundreds of dollars just in plane luggage costs. Then I have to worry about security measures since this is a 24 hour convention and I don't intend to have someone standing guard overnight. Reading up on several indie showbooth setup articles like this one helps with that though. Answered a lot of questions and set me on the right path.
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     Hoping to end up with something like this. I'll definitely practice setting this thing up at my place before I leave to make sure I'm not missing anything. 

     This is pretty exciting for me. Really glad I was talked into going. Heck, I'm honored to even be on the MIVS list. Not even waitlisted like at the last BronyCon, just straight up "You're game's a good fit here, come on by..."  It feels good, man.

     Budget for the entire trip (flights, equipment, hotel, food, and anything else) tops off at $3,000. Maximum. Not a cent more. I'm trying to get outta debt here, and setting me back 2 months of paychecks ain't doing me any favors. But it's worth it to get my name out there in a bigger way than ever before. 

     Because in 2020, I want to come back as a well-known developer. One who finally finished that Pony Battling game he spent years and years on. Showing off the completed version of the game and giving sage advice about how anyone else determined enough can do the same. 

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