What makes a game like Pokémon Scarlet or Violet so dang FUN despite all the cut corners?

Pokémon SV has me thinking about what order to put Game Direction priorities in... 🤔

(List & Thoughts below the break!)

Brainstorming New Patreon Plans, Rewards, & Goals

I'm brainstorming some new plans for making the Yotes Games Patreon a much bigger deal. My general idea is that I need to put more effort into my YouTube channel due to the level of engagement that gets out of people.

But I'd like to hear some feedback from you! It'd be super great to hear someone else's take on where I should take this crazy train next. Or hear exactly why you personally wouldn't donate to my Patreon but would to another. What rewards would you like to see? Should the project be more polished? I wanna know how to get strangers completely HYPED about this game!

Trying to emulate the success of ALBDifferent, Exiled, & YandereDev here, and a solid YouTube effort is the key ingredient I'm neglecting. Even just read an article today about how Fighting is Magic might not've exploded if that demonstration trailer didn't get shared left and right earning 900,000 views. Nerds like me read development blogs, but everybody watches videos. I outta make some videos.
Check out the huge list of ideas about how I'ma to do just that below the break! (regular gamedev posts coming back tomorrow)

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #156 (End of January...)

     Tiles, tiles, tiles galore! Wanna see some tiles? I'll show you some tiles anyway. Because that's what I spent most of this week staring at, touching up, reorganizing, and reconstructing. Right now this is the step I'm tackling to make sure I have all the pieces I need to build the BGP world that currently exists on 100 sheets of graph paper. The gamedev grind never seems to end, but my confidence in the project increases by the day!

Here is where we stand with Battle Gem Ponies at the end of the first month of 2018!

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #154 (Story Beats & Maps Aplenty)

     A whole week of wicked coughing and drawing maps on graph paper. It's been a drag-myself-through-the-mud kinda week but I finally got there. The maps are done, detailed, and ready to be tiled in-game soon as I line up all the placeholders.

     Also handled some story details and progression design. The game's design document has been updated with new overworld interactions, cutscenes, object placement, and more to make for a more fun/smooth/professional experience. I want people playing this game to be blown away by it's quality and looking at the overall vision now, I think this'll be a pretty great attempt.

BGP's Patreon Budget (Choosing a Bank & Shopping for Unity Assets)

First month on Patreon! Not too shabby.
Now I gotta buy gamedev stuff with it.

     Let's talk money. So Patreon charges patrons on the 1st of each month, then transfers the money to the creators on the 5th. That all went down this week, so now that it's in my hands, I can show how all this crowdfunding stuff works and explain exactly where the money's going.

Travel Moves Vs Ride Pokémon

     Since 10th grade I've wanted to make a Pokémon game where, instead of HMs, you simply needed to have a monster in your party with the physical capability to accomplish a task. Strong Pokémon can break and push boulders, winged ones can fly you around, and Water types can swim with you. Simple stuff that still compels you to diversify your team. The way things should be, right?

     But then Pokémon Sun & Moon does ya one better. Who says they need to be your Pokémon? Pokemon can be summoned and teleported right to you anyway, so why not just have ones like that appear at will and not affect your team composition at all? Much more fun and stress-free than worrying about party composition and sacrificing move slots. It's an elegant solution to a decades old problem that ended up being better than anything I've thought of or heard about before.

     Trouble is, I really should've thought of that sooner. Looking at my own game, the whole Travel Moves idea I've written pages about in my Game Design Document feels so needlessly complicated now. Like I should come up with some Key Items to handle overworld stuff instead. BGP can't just have players swap-in pony gems whenever they want, because that would break the balance of the game's adventure mode. So I'm currently considering the following:

Map of BGP's Pinto region (for reference).

     All ponies can do simple things like break/push boulders and cut trees. Only 10 of the 60 ponies are ridable and each will have different speeds and animations (useful for challenges I can design for Agility Road). A Sweet-Bot call service can act in place of Teleport/Fly/Dig and just be an overall simpler fast travel system to get to the nearest town or route checkpoint. And finally, a miniboat key item capsule someone gives you on Carmine Island can be used to explore the ocean at high speeds while the underwater segments can be limited to just the Sapphire Sanctum where Lumina alicorn's magic can be the excuse for undersea breathing.

     Going with these plans instead of the Travel Moves idea gives BGP the overworld convenience of the latest Pokémon games and will make for an overall more fun experience as player's won't have to worry so much about who's on their team just to progress through the game and find hidden items.

     How do you feel about this change of direction? What other aspects of Sun & Moon would you like to see BGP learn from? Let me know in the comments and I'll respond as soon as I read them.

BGP Inspiration (Concept Art Gallery)

     I'm still not done drawing maps just yet so I thought I'd share some concept pictures pulled from Google Images that using as inspiration for the upcoming zones. These are the same images the BGP musicians will have as mental placeholders as actual in-game screenshots are under construction.

Check out the gallery below the break.

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #37 (Names, Names, & Card Games)

     Spent lots of time in Word and Excel this week, getting a ton of design ideas straight. One of the biggest accomplishments this week was finally deciding on names for all the ponies. With the names finalized, I can finally start making spreadsheets to organize them by name, class, ability, moveset, and so on. The vision is becoming clearer each day.

Get a look at what's been done down below.

Will Battle Gem Ponies Have Day/Night Cycles?

       I'm still trying to think of ways to justify having a day/night cycle in Battle Gem Ponies. There just aren't enough nocturnal ponies to make it interesting in that regard, so I need to come up with something else. My current idea is to sometimes have different trainers roaming at night, but even that doesn't make much sense lore wise.

     The only solid thing I can think of is some puzzle segments dedicated to the day and night alicorns. And as for how time passes, it would have to be Ocarina of Time style, where it's there but not emphasized like in Majora's Mask. Maybe I can have ghost and bat ponies roaming at night in addition to whoever's normally out there.  Things are just up in the air right now, but I am trying to make it work.

BGP Roster Info #2 (Vinerva, Orscina, & Thestra)

Check out this wild crew.

     Time to talk about super-powered ponies again! These guys make up the rest of the playable cast for the upcoming demo. They have more weird and extreme designs as I experiment just how far I can take the look of a pony and still call it one. My goal was to see if seaponies, dragon fillies, and bigger horses still fit in with the rest of the cast. 

     For the most part they do, but there may be some tweaking left to do. The big one in the middle looks more overpowered than it really is, so maybe I have to tone it down a notch. What do you think of it? Get some more info on Orscina, Vinerva, and Thestra then leave a comment below.

BGP Battle Readability

     I want all the important decision making factors to be visible in battle. If you're poisoned, your pony should have bubbles by it's head and a toxic icon near the health bar. If it's raining and that boosts Aqua moves, the downpour should always be visible. If the opponent laid a trap, the trap needs to be seen by your pony's feet. If you have an attacked charged up, your pony should be flashing or emitting particles.

     All these things are important pieces of info that should be visible while the player selects his or her next attack. I just feel like it would really immerse you in battle and make what's going on above the buttons that much more interesting to watch. A big problem I have with turn based RPGs is getting bored after long periods. This is one of the ways I can minimize the chances of players feeling that.

Oatmeal Mode: Post-Game Challenge

     I know that there are hardcore thrill seekers out there who want a serious challenge or NewGame+ content that's harder rather than easier. To satisfy that itch Battle Gem Ponies will have a built-in Nuzlocke challenge feature dubbed Oatmeal Mode. A challenge that will reduce you to mush. This is basically a permadeath mode where knocked-out ponies stay down and it's harder to add ponies to your team.

Find out what Oatmeal Mode is all about below.

BGP Achievement Plans

     A minor thing I'm keeping on my mind is what I plan to do for achievements. Having achievements increases visibility and the lifespan of the game by putting it in a database of optimized compatible products and giving players challenges to take on. Achievements are available in some form on every platform I plan to be on so it'll be good for me to plan ahead and make them universally compatible and evenly divisible by the various reward scores.

     Unlike with my other game DragCore's Achievements I plan on having things that increase replay value and really challenge players to hunt each one down. If you're already being rewarded for doing things like quests, there's no point in tacking on an achievement too. Achievements are meta by nature so they should embrace meta gameplay.

     Chances are you'll be getting high level achievements for doing things like winning stadium matches with bizarre teams, triggering hidden events in the overworld, completing the super hard NewGame+, catching a legendary with the weakest capture gem money can buy, or interacting with secret field objects. I want to make achievements people want to brag about. That's what they're for.

Polishing Battle Gem Ponies

  

     This week I'm talking about the icing on the cake. The stuff that doesn't need to be there, but its precise makes a good game great. I'm sure new bits to add to my list of flourishes will pop up during development, but these are the things I can think of now that make my game pop when I play in my head.

     Most of these details are small and not very exciting on paper, but one is an interesting concept that really stands out to me. In the actual game it would be a nameless effect, but in the design document I'm calling it a Hype Moment.

BGP: Story Outline & Multiplayer

     This will be my first game with a deep story. Actual events happen and it's my job to make players care about the characters involved. I abandoned the open world approach I started with in order to take the player on a journey where excitement and mystery is around every turn. The player will be so into what's happening that they won't notice the hours go by as they try to just get to the next city.

    Something even deeper than the story is the player-to-player interaction. I need to establish a thriving online community that keeps players entertained for years to come. I need to make multiplayer so fun and complex that new things can be discovered by an individual every single day. It'll be players talking excitedly about those hype moments during competitive play that really spreads word-of-mouth and keeps the game interesting in the long-term.

     Get a breakdown of the multiplayer modes and general game progression below.

Ideas For Building Characters (Mobile RPG)

     I spent a lot of time looking at a bunch of Pokemon theories (non-creepypasta ones) that explained a lot of logic games in the game's world. things like how the world came into existence, how one monster can become another through generations of breeding/mutation, and why there is a limit to how many moves can be used. It's a way to get me thinking about how to make my own world full of characters that don't feel like generic stand-ins.

    You can see a few standout videos I saw on Gnoggin's YouTube channel and catch what I took away from the experience as a gamedev below the break.

New (Fleshed Out) Unicorn Quest Ideas

     A bunch of ideas for Unicorn Quest came to me last night as I was trying to fall asleep and I couldn't help but keep waking up to make note of them all. These all happen to be either little details I said "I'll figure out later" or mistakes I'm noticing with Unicorn Training's design. Having all these details down has me more pumped than ever to just start that project already!

     I really want to prove what current me is capable of rather than me from a year ago. Sadly I won't be touching it until I start my senior capstone class so it's pretty far off. I have other fun projects to occupy me until then though, so I can wait. Catch all the new brain blasts below the break!

PCT GameDevs Will Meet Thursdays at 3:30!!

     Planning for the first club meeting I've ever organized is set. We'll be going over introductions and asking what people want to learn about first before getting into a regular rhythm in the weeks after. I know I want to cover topics that come up in conversation all the time like making a game quickly in Unity, sprite making, publishing on appstores, 3D rigging & animation, interacting with industry professionals, starting a development blog, and tracking download statistics.

Making The Remaining Unicorn Training Enemies

     The game's development is coming to a close now and the first day of school is approaching so it's time to get the last really big task complete. Finishing the rest of the game's enemies and bosses. Spriting and coding them all may take over a week, but when that's done the game is basically in complete alpha shifting toward beta as I add in finishing touches and balance stuff.

    I plan on saving the more exotic and tricky designs  from the original document for the next game. I feel like I can make better use of them in a grid-based realtime combat system. These simple guys I sketched will get the job done and flesh out the game enough to entertain for a couple hours. They behave differently and will keep battles from feeling like a shooting gallery.

Unicorn Training Text Is Set In Stone

     I'm going with a Link to The Past style "cut to the chase" story with this game. Being this far downsized and different from the bigger game to come, I simply have enough text to get the story rolling and let the player's imagination combined with NPC blabber fill up the rest of the world and motivations.

     A lot of the text is urging Clover to explore the forest and complete dungeons to learn spells. Those are the things players will be driven to do anyway so the dramatics are kept short and sweet. So sweet that players interested in the characters will have something to think about as the adventure unfolds. Even if someone skips through all the dialogue the goals are obvious enough that there shouldn't be any "What am I supposed to do?" moments. Especially since nothing is blocked off in this small scale open world.

     I will consider this story a success if I get people demanding Clover's next adventure and more information about her mysterious mentor. And just what is this threat he has you preparing for? Why did he leave without you so suddenly? The player will want Unicorn quest to happen as much as I do.