February Progress Report (Good Impressions)

Kicking things into overdrive! Get ready for a MEATY post this time around, cuz I wasn't kidding about progress speeding up this year.

We came into the month HAWT with a game jam to get a battle system up and running. Attacking, deciding turn order, calculating damage, lowering health, modifying stats, applying maladies, and determining a winner. We got it down pat.

We also updated the ways we handle tasks behind the scenes, how we communicate, how spreadsheets are organized, and made a buttery smooth cloud-based development pipeline where we don't step on each other's toes nearly as much as we used to.

And here's an example of me bringing in menu layout doodles to run by Royal before settling into work. (Excuse the wetness, I was having a bad morning, partly because of a hole in my pocket and losing some valuables, including my personal/BGP backup thumb drive, in the rain.)

Those ideas then quickly turn into in-engine mockups awaiting the code and polish that'll bring them to life! 

Main focus menu-wise is the new Team Select menu, which will probably be replacing the old pony customization menu. This fits in gem storage as well as access to BVs, Move Select, and Equipment management.

Players come here to pick out their teams for VS Matches right from the title screen. We can also use this menu for the Arenas in story mode, where you pick a pony loadout before facing down this game's equivalent to a Gym.

Also, I'm borrowing heavily from Pokemon Stadium with this Preset Team Select mechanic, allowing players to setup pre-registered pony pools with fully configured stats & moves in advance for quick access later.

Also laid out some interfaces to get to the team select screen. Trying to make up screens for setting up the test battle scene turned into just straight up making the VS Match mode functional since they'd basically be the same thing.

More details on that when its done.

Same goes for the battle scene itself, which we're having trouble with today in terms of getting all the pieces to scale at weird resolutions and seeing what placeholder sprites really need to go.

But the most fun story this week has to go to the buttons! Finally got around to making the merchandise we'll be bringing to Babscon on April 10th to sell at our Vendor booth. Tons of thought went into this and the aim is to make an impression with the best ponies to be the faces of the game for us.

There were a lot of options and variants to choose from, but after asking around and getting opinions from friends and coworkers I whittled the list down to the 19 best ponies, 1 of each class to best represent what this game has to offer in terms of lovable and cool pony designs. (See the header image for the final picks)

Next thing you know, badda-bing badda-boom a whole box shows up. The painful part was taking em out one-by-one, straighting out the pins on the back, and squeezing 11 of em into the slots of a bunch of containers I ordered off Amazon.

Ended up lookin' real nice too. Sorted em alphabetically and just spent all of my Valentine's night boxing up buttons to promote this passion project of mine. (What truer love exists than that for one's own hopes and dreams? None. I'm very single and very busy.)

Got 6 full containers with 1000 pony button  ready to go! All made with the templates I setup to quickly make a bunch of these in a uniform style. Outlined pony sprite with a drop shadow on top of symbols for the class it is and the background color of that class. Super vivid colors and a face with contrast you could see across a room.

I put outlines around the pony sprites using a new tool I discovered in Aesprite. Definitely gonna take advantage of this knowledge and outline things with this all the time.

And when it came to ordering the buttons themselves, wacky enough, it took em a few tries to get it right, despite basing my template on the pixel perfect one they gave out. 

They got straight up [erfectly cropped circles and the pure square versions from me. Sometimes it felt like they didn't even try. Almost caved in and ordered these after a particularly long night shift designing them, thinking that's just how buttons are. Too zoomed in, too zoomed out or even just cropped strangely. 

But then I thought about what this product means to me, how BGP deserves to make the best impression on everyone, and I got the energy to stay up late (or is it early if you don't go to bed til way after sunrise?) and messaged them back and fourth until all 20 pony buttons looked good. Eventually they got it right. All was well.

Went ahead and ordered a bunch of lanyards too. Something to put those buttons on or at least snazz up some convention attire.

It's all pretty darn expensive. Spent a couple thousand on everything so far. Plane tickets, hotels, merch inventory, tax forms, permits, all that jazz. And that's before we even get to the T-Shirts. The most expensive thing to sell several times over but also probably the one thing we're likely to run out of fast if other people end up loving the idea as much as I do.

Came up with this mood board to get the feeling of the type of shirt design I want. Something cool, universal, represents what this game is all about. Video Game Crystal Ponies Fighting each other.

And so then I got cracking on doodles, research, and mockups. Already had an artist in mind as well as some backups. Found the cheapest T-Shirt maker with the highest quality and ability to sell online as well as wholesale for cons.

Got the idea down, and now we just need an artist to make a version that actually looks good. So I chose Dawnfire. Famous for tons of artwork for conventions and overall aesthetic Queen who draws things exactly the way I wish I could. Can't put it into words, but its exactly what I'm looking for with this shirt in particular.

Hoping to make a good impression with this artist too since I'd love to be working with her on a regular basis for tons of ideas I'm cooking up.

Her commission rates are as follows. (Plus quite a tad extra for the design I'm doing and the fact that I'm selling something with her work on it)

It's aaaalll for building up the brand. To make sure people see anything about this game for the first time and be amazed at the quality and interested to see more. Basically the same feeling I vividly remember when I saw Pokemon for the first time. It was Stadium on the N64,  the bigger kids were playing. It was Gengar VS Wigglytuff on the Elite Four tower level. Gengar used Night Shade, my jaw probably dropped, and my life was never the same. I need to recreate that feeling for as many people as possible. Especially kids.

Printed out this new banner for the booth. Gonna hang the one with the Japanese spelling error on the back so anybody in the arcade looking over can still see some Battle Gem Ponies and hopefully get curious enough to walk over. Gotta keep as much attention as possible when we get there.

On that note I also ran the first ever Yotes Games facebook ad last week, just to see how that all works. Cashed in an offer for free $20 of ads, threw in an extra 15 to cross that thousand view guarantee rate and let it fly.

It was really interesting to see, and I hope to see numbers that big on a regular basis once things really get going.

And I'd say the most interesting part was finally firsthand experiencing what all this data-based marketing hoopla is all about. What it really comes down to is the ability to oh-so-easily pinpoint your exact target audience and get as specific as you want, so that the algorithm puts more focus into playing your ad for people who like most of (if not all of) the tags you list out. So I specified what a brony/gamer like myself would be and targeted the ad there.

So, lots of expenses this month... Should balance out. I'm throwing about a 4th of my monthly paychecks at BGP stuff now since its all cylinders on FIRE right now.

And I'm also aware that we are DEEP in the red right now, but Patreon is definitely helping with the new things popping up each month. It's gonna be worth it. Especially if Babscon goes well and some serious buzz starts up.

I'm handling all the bookkeeping, tax prep, and accounting stuff myself because of the scary $500+ bill for help is just too steep on top of everything else I'm doing.

But now with merch bought, permits prepared, taxes filed, accountants consulted, and bookkeeping complete... We can March into March with all eyes on development and polish.

Even made a checklist spreadsheet of all the stuff left to do. There's a lot, but we're checkin em off rapidly.

We're gonna keep at it until this gets done. Nothing is more important than being ready for Babscon right now.

Thanks for being on this hype train before it was cool, guys. Wanna make you proud, and leave you with a final game that makes the best possible impression.