Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #21 (A Week Into Things...)

Got some tweaking to do before menus are ready.

     This is the good kind of tired. The game is all I focus on these days and the complex things are being implemented now so that they're over with when time comes to crunch for release. My biggest holdup this week was the Stats and Caps menus which took up multiple days when I expected to finish them within 12 hours. Aside from that, I'm making room for more Unicorn Training time as I get ready to port to iOS this upcoming weekend. Expect more details soon.

You can find out what happened and what's to come by checking just below the break.

Battle Scene Backgrounds (In BGP)

     Vibrant backgrounds are a pretty important part of the battle scenes in Battle Gem Ponies. It took a bit to get the feel just right, but this is how I pictured the Meadow Battles in my head. A Grassy plain with scattered flowers and weeds. I still have to add slow moving clouds to the sky in the back but I've been focusing on battle engine bugs lately.

     The backgrounds are made by simply making a 346x128 rectangle, splitting it in half, making the bottom a solid ground color, adding subtle gradients to the sky and ground, blurring the horizon line, tossing on foreground sprites (and other details), blurring out the sprites softly, then making the foreground and detail sprites halfway transparent. The result is a background that pops but is noticeably less attention grabbing than the sharp, solid-colored, animated sprites that are the ponies.

     I plan on using a similar design for all the backgrounds. A recolor of the ground and horizon mixed with new foreground elements and some subtle animated touch. I need backgrounds for the desert, different caves, indoors, in a forest, by a creek, atop a mountain, and many other places. Now that I have a system for it though, it's much less overwhelming than it sounds.

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #20 (School's Out! GameDev Time!)

     Ready to shift into MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE!! I'm all settled in at home and cracking down on my development task list. With the BronyCon panel fueling me, I have all the motivation in the world to get down to business. Every cent I've saved so far is about to be put to use as I get more supplies that allow me to launch Battle Gem Ponies on more and more platforms.

For details on the past week and what's to come, look no further than below the break.

Last Day Of Junior Year

     There's not much game development to report on today since I'm focused on finishing my last few tests then going home to start the biggest crunch ever. Progress is going to rocket on by starting next week so I hope you're looking forward to it. I want a playable PC version of Battle Gem Ponies out to the public by the first week of June.

When it's ready, you'll find it over on the Games Tab.

I dressed up the Games tab a bit.