Working Obstacles in Unicorn Training

     I got the basic travel stuff down finally. Dungeons are navigable and feel great! Just throw in some enemies, treasures, and a boss then they'll be complete. I made things like pits you can only cross by teleporting, electrical gates that turn on/off in alternating patterns, switches that open gates, and booby traps that spawn baddies when you touch them. Next on the agenda is testing every door to make sure they lead to where they're supposed to. It'll also give me a chance to experience the world from a player perspective instead of a zoomed out tile map view.

Unicorn Training Overworld Collision Complete!

     The overworld maps are done (except for enemy placement) and look fantastic! It feels fantastic too now that all the doors are working. The longest stretch is completely behind me now and I just have to worry about making the remaining enemies before it's a smooth jog to the finish.

    The game feels more real than ever now that I can go scene to scene and the world layout makes sense. I feel like I'm 3 weeks away from finishing development. I might even be done within the first week of school with only playtesting and review requests to worry about.

Studying Accounting (For An Indie Studio)

     Even if I'm paying someone to do it for me I should have a strong grasp on financial accounting. I plan on running a business one day and knowledge of the "boring stuff" and "hard parts" are necessary for ultimate survival and happiness. If I want to exclude shifty business partners and investors solely looking for profits I need to handle all the business stuff for Yotes Games. By the looks of things (and I'm talking vague estimates here) I'll need to prepare to move to Florida and work with 2 other developers (an art dev and an audio dev) and save a total of $234,000 to get started. That's $100K to satisfy my school debts and $134K to sustain one year of business.

    It's an absurd goal but I'm dumb/naive enough to chase it. In terms of accounting studies though I'm reading my school textbook which came in early during downtime throughout the day. Usually when I'm eating, first waking up, or waiting for my computer to turn on. If I get a head-start on class it'll come as a useful review when I hear the teacher go over it. I want to be as good at this stuff as possible so I need to know this book by heart. Even though it focuses mainly on a corporations perspective rather than an LLC's.

Trademark Annoyances & Scams

    Ever since registering the trademarks for Yotes Games and it's logo I've been getting a crazy amount of letters asking me to spend $300 - $3000 on their trademark registration services. Those services do nothing to further protect me and I really just dump them in the trash. I know that using a TM in commerce alone is enough to hold up a good case in court and registering the mark beforehand with USPTO makes your argument an open/close case.

     These companies are trying to scare people into thinking without their specific international coverage or inclusion in their databases, you could lose the rights to your words & logos! I seriously get a letter a week from a different company trying to use scary language, tiny text, and government looking symbols. Future game devs beware. Legal stuff isn't as walled-off and scary as some would like you to think.

    I just figured this is something worth sharing that I haven't put as a Lesson Learned in a Status Report yet.