Progress Report: Final Crunchdown [Part 5/5]

The 5 month crunch rush is over, aaaannnd... the game's still not done. We were thrown too many curveballs during the home stretch and failed to meet our goal of a May 23rd launch, and it's time to get things back in order before wrapping up development.

In short, we're 1 more meetup away from having a Beta build ready. But that meetup won't be until June 15th because the entire team has personal life stuff to deal with.

And even after a Beta is out there in backer's hands, the bugs and gameplay flaws found in it need to be addressed. So at least another 10 days of work there, plus a marketing campaign for the countdown to launch day so people actually know it's finally coming out.

We're basically a month behind schedule. (A sentence I'm extremely sick of saying...)

Details about what's going on with development are on the BGP Patreon!

Battle Gem Ponies (April DevLog): The World is on FIRE!!

We're mid-apocalypse as showtime approaches! I'm sure April 2020 has been rough for pretty much everyone. And the team here at Yotes Games is no exception. 

Spritework, cut budgets, major losses, and hard lessons finally learned. It's been pretty busy.

Get a full update on the new decade's most destructive month yet as it relates to Battle Gem Ponies and see how we plan to rise from the ashes, developers reborn!

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #194 (Speech Therapy)

Happy Halloween, Folks!

     Only thing scarier than the monsters out tonight is the possibility of Battle Gem Ponies getting delayed again. Amirite? Harharrr!

But really.

     You know how everybody hates the sound of their own voice in recordings? I've been tackling that uncomfortableness all week. The scripts may be written, but I swear saying all this stuff out loud is more difficult than I anticipated. So used to monologues with the voice in my head for decades, my poor mouth muscles can't keep up. 

     Tons of shoots and reshoots, capturing this narration while I adjust to pronouncing things clearly, using an audible voice, and not making any weird mouth noises. Ooohhh, it's a process alright. But at least they're coming along. Might be a week delay between each one until I get into the swing of things, but my YouTube channel is gonna be a lively place pretty soon. Keep an eye out.

Here's some gamedev words!

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #188 (Working Man By Day, Indie Dev By Night)

     Finally scored that gosh-dang job after months of chaos!

     The publisher hunt is over... The job hunt is over... The storm is finally settling and I can start making a game plan. Not a literal game design plan, but you know. An adjusted 5 year plan with branching paths and failsafes sort of thing.

     October is around the corner, and I can't stall any longer for these 50/50 chances in tech cities across the country making sweet sounding proposals but taking weeks at a time to get back to me. 

     I got a software engineering offer from a place within driving distance where I'll have a chance to learn, a chance to excel, the ability to satisfy all my financial objectives, the ability to start as soon as Monday morning, AND it allows me to still live close to my friends and family as well as the growing Orlando gamedev community!

     Excited for this next chapter in my journey, doing the common indie thing of kicking ass at a day job to earn enough money to live on, enough to kill debt, and enough to save for the long term. Burning midnight oil to bring a dream project to life, no matter how many months / years / decades / centuries it takes.

     So here's one last devlog where no progress on BGP is made, but lots of things to reflect on about these past 2 transformative months.

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #187 (When Will This Be Overrrr?)

     I swear, this isn't even a Battle Gem Ponies development blog anymore. It's me applying to every Unity Programming job on Earth and waiting weeks at a time for a response. Another week flew by and BGP gets covered in dust. But at least more promising opportunities are coming up lately. Just waiting for any one of them to throw me a decent concrete offer for a mid tp senior position and I'll probably jump on it.

The job search continues in this week in gamedev.

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #186 (Uncertain Future)

     It's a week of nervous pacing back and fourth. I truly have no idea what my life could be like come December and it's pretty darn scary. I could pick and choose, but there's also the very realistic chance of rejection to account for. 

     Job hunting sucks, but it looks like this is just how its gonna be all September. I'd like to get swept off my feet next week and have a 6 digit salary put in my lap to finally put a countdown clock on my stupid $50K+ of debts, but I gotta be emotionally prepared for worst possible scenarios too.

     I really hope I can just find a place to make cool games and apps. Many doors ahead... Which ones will open?

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #183 (Patron Palooza)

     I got an itchy twitch finger and put up the new Patreon ideas immediately. Still eager for feedback and willing to add any new ideas or mix things around, but I really felt like kicking off August with the new revamp and just having that ready to go as soon as my first couple YouTube videos go up.

    And new videos will be popping up twice a week at least for the next little while, just to build some momentum. It's all really exciting stuff and I can't wait to see how it grows. 

Now then... Onto to the devlog!

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #22 (Macbook is Here! Menus Are Up!)

     Progress is steady and the menus are functional (just for the demo). Now it's time to play with animations! A huge step toward making the battles feel alive. This week be be all about getting the moving ponies to look right. Then I'll be doing flashy move animations so the attacks are finally cool. That's when the game I see in my head can be seen by anyone else.

The Unecessary College Degree

     I've been having reoccurring daydreams lately. Daydreams about what I wished college was like. I'm basically venting my anger about why college degrees are worthless for some career choices, but are still required. When Google is the greatest learning tool on Earth, and it's available for free, why is college still mandatory? I can only speak for the gaming industry on this but I'm sure it applies in similar fields. People can easily and very effectively teach each other. Practice, internships, and apprenticeships are quite a bit more useful than standardized tests.

     I can see the day were the collaborative effort of teaching through the internet makes formal schooling for some fields obsolete and it can't get here soon enough. It's awful that degrees are this multi-thousand dollar piece of paper that serves as a required check-mark on resumes for jobs that should be performed by people with the most ability. Who cares where you learned to do a job as long you can do it right?

Letter to the Dean

     If nobody makes a move, nothing gets accomplished. I'm sick of the way my school handles its game development major, so I'm suggesting change to a high authority. I sent a letter to the school dean in hopes of making the curriculum suit game development more thoroughly. After I sent it, I posted it on LinkedIn to get the opinions of other students and Alumni. The responses I got were insightful and directed me to a more reasonable course of action. 

     I can't link the discussion because it's exclusive, but I can summarize that I now recognize where the line between school and self motivation is drawn. The filler classes exist so people can apply those skills if they switch careers or just know where to start when they finally come in handy. My slightly changed argument is to now put a stronger emphasis on marketing courses, portfolio building opportunities, and open electives in place of 5 particular classes that could be better spent for this particular major.

Read on to see what I sent to the dean.

Loving What You Do

   It’s depressing that most people go through life hating their jobs. Your job shouldn't be a grind to go through in order to live, it should be a project, an activity. Something that you would do for fun with money as a consequence.