May 2023 Progress Report (New Hardware & Horizons 😎💻)

New Laptop:

Psyaryu found an absolute STEAL of a deal on a nice laptop and got it for me as a surprise gift. A massive productivity upgrade over the $600 Pawn Shop PC I got in 2018 that's been hanging on for dear life.

Things like opening Unity that used to be a 20 minute commitment now take about 80 seconds instead. Videos can be edited in Davinci Resolve without stuttering, lagging, or previewing at 2 frames per second. 

Getting this new station setup was a great opportunity to clear out some digital clutter over a weekend and update some really old software to a more modern standard. Windows 11 took some getting used to, but now we're cooking with FIRE! 

Excited to put this machine through its paces when time comes to configure things in BGP's Map Editor. Each and every click was painfully slow and deciding to click the Run Game button was an absolute lock-down commitment. From what's been tested on it so far, all those stacked up micro-inconveniences are now a thing of the past.

Also, for the first time since college, work is portable! I can bring BGP with me anywhere and get some tasks done while traveling or at meetups away from the workdesk.

Conventions:

Plans are underway for convention season! Shamefully, the deadline for EFNW 2023 was missed so we won't be vending there. (Notifications for all targeted conventions have now been amplified dramatically so this mistake doesn't happen again.) Also shamefully, we've been rejected from the new Mare Fair convention starting up in our hometown (literally 20 mins from the house we have Saturday meetups at.) but there's still hope we can either get a special game room spot or attend as regular guests to scope things out for next year (cheapest con yet since we don't need to buy plane tickets or a hotel room, saving about $2,000 right there).

The current confirmed lineup is TrotCon in July (with new ponies to show off to a new crowd), Everfree Northwest in August (as attendees just networking, not vendors this time), and Ciderfest in November (with a freshly launched free mobile app store build).

So lookout for these Goobers if you're attending any of those. (Psyaryu on the Left, Yotes on the Right)

Media Kit:

Updates have been made to the Media Kit so people can mess around with Thumbnails, fanworks, & such using the new elemental icons, 3D Ponatina Renders by DJTHED, and expressive chibi artworks by SugarMorning. (Many of which are now in Emoji & Sticker form on the BGP Community Discord)

Big fan of this emote in particular:

Looking forward to having a full suite of colorful & expressive pony graphics like these.

Aseprite Setups:

Getting the pony puppets all in position for the animation process. Making sure each piece is layered properly, grouped in easy-to-find ways, and connect together the way each pony's concept sprite intended.

Along the way a few designs are being tweaked for silhouette clarity and the Ponatina forms in particular are being given a more uniform body shape template.

These sprites should be fully animated and in the game by the time you're reading the next Progress Report. (Or Ponatina here will be really sad.)

UI Particles:

I'll admit, when Psyaryu discovered how to pull this off a couple nights ago, I'm sure my neighbors could hear the 2am "WOO! LET'S GO BAY-BEEEE!!" cheering going on.

This feature has been missing from the project since starting over in 2018! Unity uses a whole new thing to render the menus and interface stuff and we haven't been able to make particle effects appear over the HUD without tons of jank until now. It's especially nice for things like animating the Health and EXP bars. The Team Select background and Pause Menus too (I personally really missed it and was considering just releasing without it if we had to).

It took forever, but now it just works and the bits can travel between layers and everything. We can finally use this last element to elevate our menus, especially the Level Up sequence, into visually gorgeous territory... But that'll have to wait until the polish phase.

Renames:

There's going to be some name changes to things once we get around to game architecture again. Small stuff with big implications. Like calling Earth class Geo. Or switching from User & Target to Self & Foe. Getting a consistent language going at this stage will help keep us from forgetting how things are meant to work, making debugging easier. And aesthetic changes like going from Magic to Fairy class gives us more options to do interesting things with the lore. 

But every small change comes with a laundry list of things to check on for bugs, so it's best to do these types of things in batches after reaching and cementing an otherwise stable build.

Custom Window:

Psyaryu's experiments are beginning to pay off. We're trying to find a way to make our own special Unity Editor Windows to configure things like Move Animations, Cutscenes, and NPEs with instead of the cluttered Inspector interface we're dealing with now.

We imagine being able to see the end results in realtime on a little preview screen without having to run the game and click through a bunch of setup and loading screens. Because animating 360+ moves would be a much smoother experience if we didn't have to setup the test scene and run a custom battle every time we wanted to see the current draft in action.

And making cutscenes quick, easy, and precise will be an enormous time-saver. We've heard gamedev stories about the nightmare of getting cutscenes to look right up to the last minute.

Yotes Text System Complete:

We've cleaned up all the assets that broke after converting all the text in the game to our own custom type so we can have more precise control over how everything looks.

In the end this'll give us the ability to make some super expressive animated text in battle, across menus, and in the overworld. We look forward to showing that off in this Summer's demo.

Item Sprites:

Pretty much every Item & Equip in the game has a little graphic now, so you can see things besides a big question mark in-game now. Some nice warm-up pixel work that was done before diving into each of the ponies.

New Matchup Chart:

After some feedback and flip-flopping we've decided to make the Matchup Chart a little different (again). This time cycling through icons one at a time instead of flashing entire pages (resulting in lots of blank spots for seconds at a time.

Diving WIP:

We finally wrapped up the functionality portion of the remaining major overworld Travel Moves. That's Dive and Whirlpool. You can now dive underwater at designated spots to explore the seafloor and enter special areas like the post-game dungeon mentioned in the Kickstarter.

Of course there's lots of polish to be done, especially in regards to the wonky text after the big overhaul, but that stuff will come after the big ticket items are finished. We're dead focused on Pony Animations and the Cutscene System right now.

Tears of the Kingdom Hype:

This is a historic event for gamers, c'mon. You already know.

Even original programmer Royal Pizza reached out for the first time since moving across the country to express excitement about the Zelda hype (inspiring him to take up gamedev again while waiting for the release).

Current master programmer Psyaryu has already told me to expect a minimum loss of 200 hours of productivity from him starting next Thursday night. Can't say I blame 'em either. I expect to spend 4 days straight exploring Hyrule again myself (and jotting down game design & idea notes like I did with Pokémon and Metroid). 

A lot of the small details, lore, mysteries, and secrets you'll find in BGP have roots in my own Zelda nostalgia. Something is truly magical about these games where there's new depth & details to notice even decades later. It's what makes them works of art to me.

Potential Delays & Stepfather's Passing:

A few months ago my stepdad was hospitalized after having a stroke. He was then comatose for a few weeks before peacefully passing on. 

At some point in the near future I'll need to take a roadtrip with my Mom to see family up north and scatter her husband's ashes at his favorite beach like he wanted. Not sure how long it'll take but we'll be taking that time off into consideration for meeting BGP development goals for Spring. We've had some time to grieve and carry on now, so I feel fine bringing it up and letting people know how this affects me.

I grew up with my biological Dad and Stepmom, but Mom was always a few hours of driving away. Since I started going to GameDev school she's been taken care of by Melvin here. We'd bond over tech career and business stuff  and he got me every nice watch I own as a holiday season gift. Been wearing them everywhere these past few years...

I really wanted to show him the end result of the past several years of work. At first it took some convincing, but he came around to believing in me and this entrepreneurial venture of mine after seeing the demand for it on Kickstarter and how far back the Patreon support goes. He was proud of me. It's another reason fulfilling all the development promises means so much to me and how I can't thank you backers often enough for the money, belief in the vision, kind words, and sheer patience.

Plans were made to drive across the state and spend Mother's Day weekend together with Mom (yes, even if that means I gotta hold off on Zelda) but something came up on her end and things are being postponed until she's good and ready. And now with the new laptop, even if I end up out of town for a week or so, I can still get some things done development-wise in the downtime.

The pressure is real to get this whole thing finished. Personal problems or not, the deadline is set-in-stone and missing it means devastating financial consequences. It needs to be out by February. Or else...

On top of all my stuff, Psyaryu's been dealing with roommate switcheroos in his household (helping multiple people move back-to-back has been a time sink these past couple weeks). And he's gotta put in some overtime on the Hearthstone team to make up for the vacation time he's spending on conventions later this year, plus the unexpected week-long PAX East trip he took earlier to help another friend of ours run a booth because he's just kind and helpful like that (Psy is truly the MVP of any friend group he's in).

So altogether the upcoming funeral roadtrip, swapping hardware, helping folks move, and Zelda are all looking like setback fuel right now, but we won't let that stop us. BGP will be out on time. Free version by Halloween, and full release will be under final review just after New Year's.

Once the giant artwork and configuration tasks are all done, it's smooth sailing and only cutting polish stuff that can wait til the DX edition. (And possibly saving Portrait Mode for a Free Mobile Update down the road.)

Fan Art:

On the budding fandom side of things, a number of fan projects are underway and it's really heart-warming for the team to see people this excited for what we're building here.

There's two Friday Night Funkin' mods coming along nicely, a BGP card game is out there in playable form, and new artworks and commissions are appearing almost weekly. And we just love love LOVE to see it!

If you have any doodles you're holding onto, a Battle Gem Pony Character idea, box art concepts, an AI prompt that turned out surprisingly well, or even just commissioning an artist you're close to, we love seeing new BGP stuff pop up all over social media when we check on Mondays. Let's Plays, fan games, remixes, artwork, everything. It's all awesome and every bit helps spread the word and tilts BGP a little bit closer toward success.

Thank you for inspiring us, and thank you for following the development of Battle Gem Ponies.