March 2023 Progress Report (Ponies Under Construction 👷)

So far, 2023 has been all about sprucing things up, planning for the future, and setting us up to knock out enormous month-long tasks back-to-back. Immediately following our Magfest showcase, we implemented some changes to fix some fun-killing flaws and unclear interfaces.

Touch Screen Joystick movement and size have been adjusted based on player feedback in January, a general settings page has been implemented to let folks customize what's skippable or what types of numbers to display, and we've even touched up some menus missing vital information like the Move Swap Screen's new "Best At" indicator letting you know which types of HIT moves your pony specializes in (Contact or Energy attacks).

There's some simple aesthetic improvements too, especially with the Go Ultra button in battle. You'll see this and other little additions too numerous to name here when the next milestone demo drops sometime in April.

But what's probably the most interesting thing going on this month is the drawing of all 95 ponies in the game! By drawing each of a pony's individual pieces in different poses, animating them becomes as simple as snapping Legos together and taking a picture. So getting this step outta the way for each pony is gonna put us in a good spot for releasing them alongside upcoming demos to keep the hype flowing throughout 2023.

So, all-in-all, what've we been up to lately?

• Patching the Post-Magfest Build (Version 0.5.6 now available as of mid-February!) 🎮
• Polishing various game interfaces 📱
• Mid-battle character chatter 💬
• A functioning Settings Menu ⚙️
• Resubmitting BGP for the Black Game Developers Fund (who knows, might win it this time) 💰
• Testing the effectiveness of YouTube Ad Campaigns 📈
• Planning conventions to attend in 2023 (TrotCon, Mare Fair, and Everfree up for Consideration) 🎈
• Upgrading remote setups with High Speed Fiber Internet 🖥️
• Figuring out how AI tools can aid in development (mostly localization) 🤖
• Creating a new Animated Text system to let us polish that stuff exactly how we want ⌨️
• Editing the YouTube videos that should've been released months ago 😅
• Drawing Sprite Pieces for every pony in the game so we can hopefully have them ALL implemented (as in fully animated) in battle by the end of the month! 🐎

If we manage to keep knocking out 3 ponies a day out of the 33 remaining, we're all set to get them all done and in the game before April. There's a big 4-Day crunch session planned 2 weeks from now to go in and animate all the ponies we made pieces for.

We're looking forward to having these 2 HUGE To-Dos off our list by month's end, and step into April with a new demo and the next big prototype finishing tasks in our sights. All for the sake of inching towards the most exciting task of all... Spending all of May actually building all the maps of the world!

- Thanks for following the development of Battle Gem Ponies!