This Past Week Was Mostly Idea Time

     The amount of things that actually got done this week is disappointing, but as far as ideas go I had a lot of boredom time to flesh out the concept for the game I'm making after Unicorn Quest. Ideas that made me switch from "This could be really fun to make." to "My career depends on me making this."which makes me much more excited about the next two years of school where I'll be getting my act together.

      I don't want to put the game in any spotlight until a while after Unicorn Quest is on Google Play. It's just a matter of giving my current passion project the attention it deserves. I'm just bringing it up here because that's where my development time went over the weekend. I was typing furiously into Microsoft Word to squeeze all my ideas out as if my brain was a dripping sponge.

     I find keeping things in my head distracting so when I get in one of those "Oh! How about _ does _. What if I make _ do _ instead? Wouldn't it be cool to take _ and mix it with _ but  have it _?!" moods I just open up Word, dump my ideas into the organized GDD and get back to the task at hand.

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, The Fire Turnabout

     I finally got started with making the game component of the project. The written version was turned in and my teacher is reviewing it to make sure the information needed is there. With a little tweaking I'll just have to put them into the game in the form of a character driven story.

     I'm focusing on a few main game components to keep this as basic as possible. Once again, this is not a fan project so much as an interesting homework assignment I can't spend too much time on. If it were up to me I wouldn't even be doing this without the world's most amazing and thought out story up my sleeve.

See how I'm starting work on the project below.

Adventures in Equica: Draining the Spell Bar

     I made it so the magic meter regenerates slowly and using a spell takes a certain mount of magic. When all the magic is gone you'll have to dodge enemy attacks until you recharge enough. Balancing this feature will come later but at least the variables are there for me to mess with now.

Adventures in Equica: The 2nd Milestone Due Date

     I need to have a mildly impressive gameplay video of Unicorn Quest by May 10 (the last day of school). Reasons being I want a nice place to start working all summer and I want to get my game in the public eye. Often the hardest part about selling a game is getting people to know it exists. The success of Unicorn Quest could skyrocket if I can get it in front of the target audience of people who like ponies and video games.

     Two extremely popular blogs have captivated and gathered exactly that audience and I want to show my game there. Unicorn Quest was featured on Equestria Gaming and mentioned twice in Equestria Daily's Nightly-Roundup posts which brought a lot of people here. I want to do that again, but this time with a gameplay video where spells work and there's a basic enemy to shoot them at.

     I essentially have 3 weeks to make a Phoenix Wright sub-game, add an enemy to Unicorn Quest, finish all the spells, and do all the finals week related schoolwork...  Yeah, that's a stupid amount of too much.

     I may just focus on getting all the spells to work and make a video featuring an enemy later. I just want to have something to show off when the page views of those two blogs peak. The Friendship is Magic Season 4 finale is May 10 and I want Adventures in Equica out there when thousands of excited people are looking for the finale online and talking about it afterwards.

     Getting attention at the start of summer will be a perfect way to launch myself into crazy rapid and focused development. Having extra eyes on me really keeps me motivated to continue working as hard as I do. You reading this right now is what helps me sleep at night. It makes what I do matter. It's a great feeling when you accomplish a goal, make a new one, and somebody cares.

Thank you. So very much.