Battle Gem Ponies DevLog (January: Foundation Framework)

     Itching to kickoff the new year with great progress on Battle Gem Ponies! Gotta admit, I'm sorta stumbling out the gate in this race here, but I'm getting a rhythm down now.

See what I'm talking about below the break.

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #171 (Cleaning Up & Keeping Up)

     Feels like every day now I'm discovering some new and better way of doing things. The project is crawling towards a point where all systems exist and are easy to tweak. So good news is I can both feel and see myself becoming a better game developer. Bad news: I'm already a week behind schedule. Again. That won't fly. Time to crunch up and catch up. 

Yotes Games Has a Patreon!

Support Battle Gem Ponies on Patreon!

     After tons of internal debating on whether I should do it or not, on a whim, I decided to create a Patreon today. To celebrate being over 150 weeks into development and on the verge of an Alpha build, I wanted to have some sort of morale boosting driving force to push me and the music team through the rest of development. I gotta imagine this is similar to how other devs feel when they launch a crowdfunding campaign. Only this one is entirely optional.

     It took all day to make and I think it turned out pretty nice. Colorful, detailed, yet concise, and with language conveying both lightheartedness and sincerity. Yes... I'm actually pretty proud of this. I just hope it's successful.

     If you could be so inclined, feel free to take a look around and consider becoming a patron to Yotes Games.


     Or just keep an eye out for one of these...

Become a Patron!

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #70 (PCT Game Jam Spring 2016)

     I made a Game Jam title this weekend about a mermaid with a monster mouth that eats smaller fish. And yes, the text in the logo is a mashup of Hungry Howie's, The Little Mermaid, and Viral Hunger. The theme was Murphy's Law: Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.

     I woke up that morning with the vision of some kind of game involving mermaids and Fish Feaster with Shantae style graphics. I managed to make that random dream fit with the theme by adding elements of escalating difficulty and humor.

Get some more #GameJam goodness below!

Bored to DEATH ( @PCTGameJam Fall 2015 )

The theme was "Uninteresting Jobs"

So I made a game about watching paint dry.

Play It Here!

     Bored to DEATH is a two-button game about goofing off while your boss isn't looking. It was made in Unity for my school's 12 Hour Game Jam where the theme was "Uninteresting Jobs". The iconic boring office job came to mind. I even replaced the computer with a wet painting you have to watch dry out just to drive the point home.

     You can use Left and Right mouse clicks to alternate between goofing off and working. If you work too much you will literally die of boredom and if your boss catches you dancing around, you'll be fired and die on the spot. A happiness meter displays how close you are to dying and you can see when your boss is approaching your cubicle. This is all done using crude animations and random art assets from across Google Images.

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #47 (Game Jam & RoShamBo Complete!)

The Game Jam theme was "Uninteresting Jobs"
So I made one about watching paint dry.

     The big game jam I was looking forward to all week finally happened! It was nice to put my energy into a cute little project since Battle Gem Ponies can get pretty overwhelming sometimes. The theme was "Uninteresting Jobs" so after a lot of doodles and pitching to myself I came up with a two button game about goofing off at work.

Get some details on that and other happenings below the break.

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #46 (Finishing RoShamBo)

     It's coming along now but still not done! My senior capstone demonstration got pushed back by a week so I need a build by next Monday instead of yesterday. A simplified overworld with battle encounters, game analytics, and online play. All feasible stuff. Polishing it all up for a real BGP demo release... I'm thinking it won't be done until Christmas. Everyone will be playing Fallout 4 anyway. Heck, I'd be surprised if anyone's taking time to read this when that game is out today.

Get more gamedev below.

12 Hour PCT Game Jam Results (Phantom Dungeons)

     I made a game called Phantom Dungeons for the 12 Hour PCT Game Jam 2015 competition. It was supposed to be a game where you select a hero, kill things with a boomerang that gets more awesome and explosive as you level up, collect gems to buy loot, and find secret shards hidden in destructible blocks that combine to unlock a character of your choice.

     I got as far as a basic game loop before running out of time. 12 hours was a lot shorter than I expected. I know to shoot for an even smaller scope next time though. Winners of the contest get Amazon gift cards of varying amounts and I'm not sure if I won a prize at all. Probably won't find out until the middle of finals week.

     I want to finish this game at some point and release it for a buck on Mobile and PC. I want this to be an experiment with game feel to practice for an action RPG I want to do down the line. The final version of Phantom Dungeons will be a lot prettier, have a lot more content, and feature either well thought out or randomly generated dungeons.

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #18 (Game Jam & Macbook Confirmed)

     Mentally preparing to do nothing but develop this game. Last week was eaten up by the game jam (more on that this Friday), more group projects, and spending time with my girlfriend before entering a 3 month crunch over summer break. As far as progress goes, I finally have the means to port Unicorn Training to iOS and confirm that Battle Gem Ponies will be on iOS from day one!

For information on what's coming and what was done, head on down below the break!

Next Project: Dragon Souls Prologue (Arcade Hack n' Slash)

Dusty old doc from before Unicorn Training...

    It's finally time to talk about this thing. This game I've been trying to make since I first learned C++ in high school. Back then it was called Dragon's Flux, but now... Dragon Souls. Trademarked. Actually, I'm just holding onto the trademark since it isn't set in stone unless I provide proof of use in commerce within the next 4 months. It was a really good name that describes the theme perfectly and before Yotes Games was even a thing I saved up to buy the name "Dragon Souls" as the name of my own video game series.

     Sadly, like Unicorn Quest, I'm not able to make this huge RPG adventure just yet. Especially with school in the way. Instead I'll be pseudo-introducing the game's protagonist and world rules. I say "pseudo" because unlike with Unicorn Training it's going to be very unrelated to the actual game series in terms of gameplay. This is a fast-paced action title with one mode and one rule: Survive.

Unity Maze Generator (For Programming Class)

      My programming 3 class was tasked with making a random maze generator over the weekend for our first exam grade. Needless to say it ate a lot of my free time. When people talk about programming 3 they always mention the dreaded maze assignment so it's my class' turn to suffer. Next semester we take on the assembly classes seniors are complaining about.

     The teacher wants to be able to pick the width, height, and frequency of wall blocks. He even says it doesn't have to be solvable. It definitely doesn't search for the fastest path either. Just a start, end, border, walls, and a final path. As to not let my hours of headache go to waste I figured I could share a bit of how I did it below the break.

Web Versions of My Unity Games

     I made a couple of my games playable on the web as html games. My teacher wanted to play my Phoenix Wright game and told me that the exe file I linked on my Games tab wasn't working. She suggesting making a web version so I made a new build in Unity and tried it out. I also did Feed The Plant that way like I intended a while back. I ran into problems with making it playable on the site before so I made a ZIP file this time so people can download and run it that way. The only downside to running these on the web is the little Unity icon in the corner that slides in when the game starts. It's not too annoying, but something to keep in mind.

     You can try them out yourself here: Feed The Plant and Phoenix Wright

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!

Status Report #37

     School is finally over. I can hardly believe it. Just two more years and I'll have a lot of time to make whatever games I want and live in a place where I make the rules. I'm getting a taste of freedom now by having the first ever summer where I focus solely on making a game. No part-time jobs this year. I will be focusing purely on creating Unicorn Quest!

The End of Spring 2014 Semester status report is after the jump.

A Disappointing End To An Interesting Project (PWAA)

The game is done and you can play it here.

     Today marks the due date for the Phoenix Wright project that acts as my forensics class final. From the beginning I knew the entire development would be a crunch, but I really felt that it was a necessary step towards making me a better game developer. It's finally done and the end result of the 3 weeks I spent on this is entirely disappointing to say the least.

    It's more like a virtual storybook than the decently polished adventure game I had in mind. Weak characterization, very little player choice, the illusion of branching, choppy transitions, and general low graphical quality plagued this project, but I'm still glad I made it.

Status Report #36

     Finals week starts Monday and then I'm free to work on Unicorn Quest all summer. Right now my hands are full with submitting my Phoenix Wright game and my college project. Check out this week's report.

Cutting Corners: PWAA Forensics Project

     To get this thing done in time I made some very noticeable quality downgrades. The most glaring of them being the lack of smooth transitions, the static text, uneven lines of text, sprites that don't fade in/out, some missing sound effects, very flat/cheesy dialogue, and plenty of plot holes. What is intact is the information I'll be graded on and some interaction beyond just pressing the spacebar.

     If I had more time I could make it feel more like a proper Phoenix Wright imitation but I'm really swamped between this, other finals, and my urge to finish this and get back to Unicorn Quest. Some time when I get my grade back for it I'll find a website where I can distribute a ZIP file containing the whole Unity file so someone else can pick up where I left off or rework what I did into something much cooler.

Again, I'm glad this exists. I learned a bit from making it. But I'd really rather be working on something I find a lot more fun.

Crunch Week: Phoenix Wright Project

      I can say it now even though I felt it coming in the beginning... Never start a game project with only 3 weeks to do it when you could have just made a PowerPoint presentation. At least that's what my tired body keeps saying. My creative heart just wants this game to exist so somebody else will be inspired to make an even better one.

      It's due at 11pm on Sunday and I've got all the hard parts out of the way. With just a couple late nights I should have it done and off my chest. It's a bit more stressful than expected but that's mostly because the senior capstone got me so excited for the project I want to do after Unicorn Quest. There's also the nagging part of my brain that want to get back to Unicorn Quest and make it as awesome as it can be, but I'll have all summer to enjoy making my first dream project.

     Onward and steady. Time to get this thing done so I can prepare for finals with noticeably less weight on my back. I really hope this thing does it's job and makes other Gaming & Simulation students want to approach class projects creatively rather than miserably. And I hope I learn to plan these things out farther in advance.

Phoenix Wright.exe Screen Size

     One of the big things to worry about in my forensics game is the resolution. What's the point of making the game if the whole thing breaks when screen size is adjusted. What if the teacher shows it in class and makes it full screen? What resolution works best on PCs in general? What about scaling a forced size like I do for my mobile games? Keep in mind the pixelated art style and how bad it looks stretched out.

     The Unity maximized preview didn't stretch properly (squashed with things cut-off on the sides) so I was worried the final game would look that warped. Luckily the built executable didn't do that and looked how I wanted it to. I settled on making it 1024x768 (iPad resolution) and set the scale to Fit Visible so it stretches horizontally and vertically evenly. The result looks pretty good now and that's one problem down.