October Progress Report (Colossal Crunch)

Today marks the end of the two-week colossal crunchtime of three of us here at Yotes Games working around the clock on BGP! And great googly moogly did we get a LOT done. 

A more detailed post is coming at the end of the month, but in short we've put in countless menus and bits of polish to make a silky smooth experience. We've finally connected the VS Match setup screens to the actual gameplay and even got some fancy animations going up in there! 

We've got spreadsheets reorganized (again) to accommodate the new dialogue system and also support future localization to any new languages we want (as soon as we get in touch with translators). 

 Menu functionality ate up a lot more time than expected, but making it a bug-free experience really sharpened our workflow skills and it feels like we can get things operational at a really fast pace now.

And the combat itself feels more fleshed out at the end of each day. It's finally starting to look like the game I've seen in my head all these years, and it is gorgeous.

Lots of spritework got done too, most notably the ones you'll be seeing in the menus like these tiny ponies and outlined profile pics.

Ponatina mini sprites for all forms (+Joyance):

The biggest discovery this month was just how well we work together when game development is the only concern in the world. It was beautiful in ways I can't accurately describe. Living the dream to the fullest extent. Every day felt like a major accomplishment and step toward a bright future we could all see.

Typical days consisted of Psy arriving at my apartment complex at 9am and working in the poolside visitor center on his laptop. I wake up before noon, exercise, then invite Psy over while I eat brunch (he prefers a quick, drinkable breakfast until dinner time), we watch gamedev videos on YouTube while I eat and we chat about the future of Yotes Games, then we work all day til around 7pm when Royal would announce he's eager to join the fun as soon as he gets home from work, I cook up a feast for the 3 of us, Royal arrives (desktop tower in hand) and sets up his battle station on the table we placed behind my living room couch for just this purpose, we chow down over more videos and dev talk, then work our butts off til anywhere between 1am and 3:30am. Then everybody heads home with a sense of satisfaction and gets ready to do it all again the next day.

It's super crunchy, and this kind of schedule would be GRUELING anywhere else. But it's fun here, making a game and dreaming stuff up. It's fun to do this. It feels like it'll all pay for itself in no time if we just keep it up!

In fact, this crunch was so powerful Psy dropped a news bomb just a couple days ago. Psyaryu is quitting his six-figure income job to work on Battle Gem Ponies. Of all things. He believes in the vision I've laid out for Yotes Games that much. Says he's got enough going on with savings twice the size of mine, roomates handing over a thousand bucks each month, and the ability to hop back on into the field with an even higher salary whenever he wants. So according to him not taking the opportunity to hop into ground floor of this indie upstart with so much potential is the real risk he can't afford to pass up. 

These words shook me. Unprompted. Unplanned. Came outta nowhere, but apparently he's been thinking about it for weeks.

He's turning in his two-week notice today and is diving in with me come November. He says that compared to the 70+ hour workweeks he puts in at Universal as a lead programmer, this has been a stress-free cakewalk. Better crew, better long-term vision (in terms of how we're trying to set an example for the gaming industry), and the ability for him to focus on his actual passion of figuring out gameplay programming instead of cleaning up others' mistakes and attending countless boring meetings.

This is the most incredible outcome of the month. Finding out it's not just a temporary boost before going back to a once-per week power push, but that this is going to become the norm soon! (Albeit with a less crunchy and reasonable 3pm to midnight schedule going forward.)

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Once the demo's out it'll be all hands on deck for the marketing push. I'll need to get videos lined up for a weekly release schedule, send a link to the demo to every YouTuber who looks like they'd be into a Pony/Pokemon RPG, and I'll need to have all our social media branches firing off quality content on a frequent basis. 

Finally time to come out of the shadows!

We're looking forward to doing spotlight videos on each pony as they get implemented. With the 15 out of 90 in-game now we have our hands full getting the game feel down, but it'll be smooth sailing once we get the core balance correct (some things are just waaayy too powerful right now) and settle on the math behind each pony's gimmicks.

Looking forward to Halloween announcements! (Mainly having a clearer estimation on when the demo update is finally coming.) 

See you then, guys!