Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #16 (Milestone Complete!)

     The BYOC is finally over! I can take my foot off the crunch time pedal. Long story short, I lost the contest and hosted it poorly, but finally got a playable version of BGP in people's hands and made some friends. My game needs a lot more love before I can go around flaunting it, but I'll worry more about that once I catch up on schoolwork in prep for finals week next month.

Get some elaboration below the break, including a link to the BYOC Build video on YouTube.

Status Report #60 (Dungeon Select, Brainstorming, & File System)

I'm accomplishing a crazy amount of stuff this weekend!

     My development checklist is getting shorter! This coming week might just be the last for development! Once I'm in final testing I can rest easy and prepare for launch! Since I don't even have to wait for Apple this time I can do it whenever I'm ready. Amazon and Samsung might take a week but there's really not much to stop me from releasing in early November. I can finally get feedback from people I don't see in person and see what the world thinks of my first game.

    Look at all my business stats after the page break!

PCT GameDevs: Sprite Making Tutorial & Custom Text Boxes

I explained the difference between pixel art styles and different approaches to making your own.

     Every week something is presented at the PCT GameDevs meetings and this week I showed everyone the basics of sprite making and how I made the text boxes work in Unicorn Training. It's nothing I haven't show on this blog before but it was my first time explaining these things to a live audience. It was actually pretty fun to put together and I got some extra practice with my new draw on paper then scan in Paint technique by tracing over an astroknight doodle.

     The meetings still have awkward points as attendance goes down and I occasionally stumble over words when trying to explain my thought process. Although the club is meant for students to teach each other, I'm not much of a teacher myself but more of an example. I've been working on stuff alone since high school so I'm used to the speed of thought and my complex web of information when doing anything. Putting it all into English on a moment's notice can be hard.

Change Current Classwork, Not the Whole Major

     At the PCT GameDevs meeting yesterday we went over Unity's free 2D features (instead of the $75 2D Toolkit plugin I use) then discussed changing the major to suit our needs. The day before this I briefly spoke with a classmate in the gym and he suggested not pitching a whole degree, but just sticking to fixing the current one. That got me thinking hard (mostly because I don't want to go to political war with the school) and I decided it would be best to just change what we do in our 4 given game design classes.

     This would be a much easier task to pull off than pitching a new major to the school and researching all the courses and financials. It will also put less workload on the two professors running the game courses. Two members and I plan to meet with both gaming instructors sometime in the coming week to discuss changes to classwork in game development courses.

Wildcat Comic-Con 2014

     Wildcat Comic-Con 2014 happened and it was just about as good as last years (minus one friend who couldn't attend this year). there were a lot of game design related events this year and many contacts were acquired for the school (points to PCT GameDevs). One game audio panel in particular made attending the event worthwhile.

     I dressed up in a Doctor Who outfit to be an accessory for my cosplay loving girlfriend Karissa (We did Derpy & Doctor Hooves) and we set out with a bunch of friends to enjoy a weekend of fun and relaxation to celebrate the end of our first quarterly exams. Silly me forgot to take any pictures in the heat of the moment so once again I have nothing to show I was there (Oops).

     To make up for that, check out a bunch of text below the break!

Changing The Gaming Major At Penn College

     Scary stuff is on the horizon as far as school goes for me. It looks like I'll be climbing a mountain very soon. The heart of it is: My school is missing aspects of game development that are extremely important. If you remember my drama with the deans that went nowhere last summer, you'll know that I was basically told I picked the wrong school. The Gaming & Simulation degree is IT programming focused, and does that really well.

     What it doesn't do is live up to the name that lured in so many students. We see the word game and the pictures of shooters and students holding Xbox controllers then assume this is the place where you can go to learn how to make video games. We pick Penn College because we can't afford to go to California or Full Sail. It's like saying only the wealthy deserve a chance to make video games. We see this degree as a flicker of hope that we can get that dream job at company X or start our own studios. The school does not currently have a program that achieves that, so some members of the PCT GameDevs have agreed to help me design one.

Status Report #57 (Fish Feaster's Retirement, Finished Enemy Scripts, & Unicorn Quest Brainstorm)

     This week was hectic! School is going nuts with the workload as we approach midterms and PCT GameDevs is really on the school's radar now. In-between all the madness I've been trying to get as much Unicorn Training work done as I can. I also managed to fix the problems I've been having with Unity Web Player builds of my games so people can play my stuff online. Hopefully things can calm down next week so I can get more game development done. But right now there's stuff to do!

     My school's Comic-Con started at 8:30 this morning so I'm very late with posting duty today! Expect a write-up like last year's sometime in the coming week. In the meantime, you can enjoy a status report!

Status Report #56 (Enemies, PCT GameDevs, & Surviving the Common Cold)

     Bidding farewell to Fish Feaster, my very first game. I don't think I ever learned so much about game development at once. I made mistake after mistake and put all the skills I got from my pet projects to work. I went from a dropped Dragon Ball Z RPG, to a joke pony app, to an unfinished DragCore prototype (which was lost in my first Macbook breakdown). I made a bunch of posts a while back chronicling the Making of Fish Feaster along with a bunch of other related things.

    The more I think about it, the more the game means to me. Every project means a lot to me. Each one taught me so many new things and are helping me grow into the developer I still dream of being. As for anyone following me from the beginning, I hope you can remember these milestones along with me into the future.

First PCT GameDevs Meeting

     Our first club meeting was today and it went really well. Plenty of people came (others were held up with a tutoring event) and I finally got an idea of what running a club is like. When you're presenting stuff up there it really helps to have a bulleted agenda to go by and keep things focused. This first meeting was really an introductory one where I asked what people wanted to learn and showed the topics I planned to cover in the coming weeks.

Status Report #55 (World Map, Masters Degree Offer, & Delayed Club)

     Lot's of good feels this week as Unicorn Training continues to take shape. I've shown it to some new people now and confidence is through the roof with how excited people are when they see things in action. It might not be perfect to me but it's still impressive among my school's students based on what teachers prepared us to do (not much).

     I also had a lot of school related thoughts this week. Some things about going to Full Sail in an alternate universe and getting a full-ride offer for Bloomsburg on Thursday. You can get all the details below the break for this week's status report!

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.

Status Report #54 (GameDev Club Approved & Animated Bad Guys)

     Finally did it. I got the signatures and had the PCT GameDevs club approved by the Gamer's Guild. I also found a room that should fit us all and picked the perfect time and weekly date where the school shuts classes down so clubs can run for an hour.

     PowerPoint presentation templates are ready and I'm waiting on confirmation for my room reservations for the year. Next I have advertising and email reminders to worry about. I never thought I'd be the one making this happen. I kind of just did it on a whim last Wednesday and never looked back. Check out this week's downloads and accomplishments below!

PCT GameDevs Committee Constitution

     I wrote a description for the GameDev club I'm starting so I have something to show people who will help me get this thing off the ground. Nothing too fancy, just a description of what this club is going for. If I need a more detailed official document I have the template for a student organization's constitution so I can easily write up the rest. See what I have written below the break!

PCT GameDevs Is On It's Way

     All I need to start the game developer's committee at my school is at least 10 signatures and a solid description of what we plan to accomplish. Now the club is basically certain to happen because both of those objectives are met and the number of people interested is higher than I expected. We're currently settled on the name PCT GameDevs (PCT is the Pennsylvania College of Technology) and it is sure to be a very popular school club. I collected 28 signatures yesterday and there are still a bunch of game classes I haven't asked yet. I'll need to find a room big enough to hold 30-40 people! This is great to see!

    A group of Japanese game development students visited my college yesterday and I watched them play all the games we made freshman year. It was nostalgic and interesting to see an international take on our novice works. Watching the visitors learn our games through play was particularly interesting. During this event I got the chance to speak with a few Gaming majors I hadn't gotten to know before and I'm more pumped than ever to experience that tenfold when this club starts up!

I prepared some new logos and printed a constitution to deliver on Friday.

New Approach To Starting A Game Development Club

     After asking around all week, trying to meet with the Student Organizations head, and attending game-related clubs around school I've decided to approach it differently. I got the official paperwork and was going around getting signatures from the right people, answering questions, hyping up students, designing text logos, making a Facebook page, and writing a constitution when I found out that the biggest gaming club on campus was capable of supporting my idea as a committee.

    I originally thought that being a small part of a bigger club would put me into a tiny time slot in a given room but actually I would be allowed to choose a room and meeting time independent of the parent club if I was able to show enough interest. All I really need is a big room, a projector, and permission to post flyers around campus and piggybacking off my school's Gamer's Guild (the biggest tabletop/video gaming club) allows me to do just that without all the fundraising and paperwork Student Organizations is demanding.

     All I have to do is get as many signatures of interested students as possible and I can run my own legitimate club meetings. This week I'll be popping into gaming classes asking for names and emails so I can hand them to the Gamer's Guild president and have an email list to get the word out.

Starting A Game Developers Club At School

     When I first came to PCT I expected there to be other Gaming & Simulation students to learn from. I thought there would be wise upperclassmen to show me the way and rival classmates pushing me to my limits or even collaborating with me. I wanted to know where to start, what options are feasible, and I really wanted to see what other people’s pet projects looked like. Sadly, few other students seemed to be taking the major as seriously as I did. The ones that do wish we could all meet together and develop our skills. If someone doesn't act, it’ll never get done. So I'm starting an official school club.