Battle Gem Ponies @MAGFest 2019! (The 1st 4-Day Con Booth)

     This past Magfest certainly was an adventure! Supplies were gathered, 2 friends volunteered to help, and we ran the biggest Battle Gem Ponies booth yet. And for 4 days straight! I thought some folks out there would like to see what that adventure was like so catch a write-up on this indie dev experience below... 

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #173 (Let's Go Ponatina!)

     Not much was done in terms of progress this week since I took about 5 days off to basically see all my friends one last time at the local convention MegaCon before swearing to lock myself away until BGP's completion. 

     In place of that there is tons of Pokemon news. A fan game was released and a bunch of new spinoffs were announced so there's lots of interesting things to reflect on and talk about below the break.

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #161 (Wednesday Milestones)

     Release feels so close. It's like the pieces are all in my lap and I just have to follow the instructions to put them together. The final version of Battle Gem Ponies is so clear in my head now that I'm fanboying over it sometimes.

     In the last 7 days I charted out exactly how all 360 battle moves will look, I recreated every menu, rebalanced the battle system, came up with catchier names for things, sorted out details for a DLC & multiplatform launch plan, and closely studied just about everything that makes the games that inspired this one so great.

     To keep track of things I made a week-by-week breakdown of the rest of BGP's development. Counting down what's left to do to get the game to a launchable state. If you wanna find out what the Yotes Games Wednesday Milestones are, look at the list below!

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #152 (BGP Awareness Month)

     Most of this week was spent arranging placeholders and detailing/editing maps on graph paper. I wanted all the planning and placeholder stuff done by New Year's Day, and it got done. I also wanted to dip my foot into every webpage that could be used to promote BGP in the coming new year, so that got done too. I've started being more active on Reddit and various forums, since I feel that'll play a great part in organically getting the word out about BGP in 2018.

     Next step is to get to work programming the last few features and have this game ready for an Alpha state by February! The crunch is on! Time is not on my side, and there's a pony RPG waiting to be born!

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #146 (Impressionable Ponies)

Some of the bigger battle sprites.
(the Ultra forms are a lot less pony-like)

     The Ponatina post last week made a lot of impressions and it's refreshing to see so many pony fans excited for this game. It's lit a fire under the Yotes Games balloon and now we're soaring straight to our destination!

     Every pony has a second draft design and is now in the final nebulous zone of "what color combination looks best" or "maybe this should be the Ultra form and the base form should be toned down a little". It annoys me as a developer because it's taking so long, but this is arguably the most important part.

     These ponies are what players will attach themselves to. If they look awesome enough, and have enough personality, it'll spawn fan art, discussion, attention, and thus sales. All very important if I want Yotes Games to be a viable career choice.

Get the rest of this week in gamedev below.

Should I Make a Patreon?

     Looking at Ambient Prologue's Patreon and Path of Light's Greenlight got me thinking about setting up a tip jar for people to help me along too. Patreon allows people who are really excited and supportive to donate money to creators they like. This could make saving for things like an LLC certification much easier for me.

     There's also alternatives like IndieGoGo, GoFundMe, and the current Paypal donation button sitting atop the right side of my website. With Patreon there's a looming obligation to keep paying while with other services it feels like just a one time thing.

     If I go through with it, my tip jar push will go up the same day Pre-alpha V3 of Battle Gem Ponies does. Read on to see current thoughts and perk ideas for all this.

Yotes Games @BronyCon2015

     Where do I even begin with this? My first convention was an incredible experience that I completely underestimated. Both for indie dev marketing reasons and personal ones. I tried to limit my BronyCon experience summary to just a handful of paragraphs and some carefully selected pictures you can find below the break.

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #33 (BronyCon 2015)

     Battle Gem Ponies is officially a topical thing for bronies! Sorry about posting a devlog almost a day late. Still playing catch-up on the internet after having what was possibly the greatest weekend of my life so far. There is SO much BronyCon stuff to talk about, you'll have to catch some details of my first convention adventure after the page break.

Battle Gem Ponies Pre-Alpha V2 Videos

     Battle Gem Ponies finally has a new presence on YouTube. For the longest time only the BYOC demo existed in video form. Now you can see what the game looks like as of last week. Check out the selection of new gameplay footage below.

Sizzle Reel Trailer

Gameplay Video

Detailed First Thoughts Video

Guess I'll be seeing a lot of you this Sunday.
Can't wait to hear your thoughts on the project in person.

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #29 (Attack Sprites Galore, Looking to the Future)

     I'm all hyped up on my potential future this week. It's up to me to make Yotes Games mean something to a lot of people. I can't wait to do just that. Lots of spriting was done this week. Once I get them all to move properly, I can put out a demo for everyone to try.

     Hopefully DevLog #30 will be the last before a public demo release. Almost done here.

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #5 (Unity Project & Menu Planning)

It took a while to get the overworld shape just right.
I'm sure I'll tweak it another million times.

     I've been making lists, reorganizing them twice, and drafting up sprites that look pretty nice. Battle Gem Ponies may be coming to BronyCon! I finally signed up to present my game at a convention full of 10,000 strangers who fit right into my target demographic.

     I'm 5 weeks into this project now and it's time t take a break from planning and just build something. A small playable piece of the game to sort of taste-test and prove the concept. I'll start with the simplest of battle scenes and go back to planning from there.

Want some sales data, completed tasks, and future plans? Get all of those below!

Dragon Souls Prologue Status Report #4 (Convention Ready)

     I officially predict that I will not make the game in time for the Christmas close-off. I'm now aiming for January 9th - 11th. A lot of things were occupying my time last week. Between finals I was in a frenzy to get all the facts together and plan my trip to my first ever convention, which is also the first time I'll be presenting my games to a huge crowd. Sure I'll have the experience from my school's BYOC party in April, but BronyCon will be a totally different beast.

     One of the big things I did this week was make a DeviantArt account in order to be more social with my target audience (people who like ponies and RPGs as much as me). Check out a link to that along with some sales data below.

Dragon Souls Prologue Status Report #3 (Approaching Prototype)

     It's finals week so the stress to finish the semester strong is on. Last thing I need now is to repeat any courses. I'm getting ever more excited to start my next RPG in January, but Dragon Souls needs to exist first. Not only is it going to lock-down the trademark I paid so much for, but it's grid system will be used in my next game's overworld. It's also supposed to show how I have plans for future games that don't all involve multicolored equines. This game just needs to be out.

     By the looks of things I won't be making the December 22nd deadline, but who knows. Maybe  I'll be really productive over winter break.

Get some sales data, convention plans, and other news below.
(Spoilers: I'm moving to Florida in July!)

Press Kit Trouble (It'll Have to Wait)

     I took a look at Pixel Prospector's list of indie dev press kits and starting thinking of ways to organize my game stuff in a professional way as practice for when I try to get big-time game journalists' attention. I thought that using the presskit() program would be as easy to use as Blogger has been for running this website, but it turns out to be more complicated than that and may even cost some money to run over the years. It's basically not something to be handled in the middle of a school week and I'll have to put it off until I have time to look into making a great game press kit.

     Making something nearly as nice as Shovel Knight's on a budget of zero is harder than I thought it would be.