October Progress Report (Grid Movement, Animations, & Teamwork)

Earlier this month I said I'd talk more about the new workflow for Battle Gem Ponies now that there's 2 people on it on all hours but 9 to 5. Having a programmer help me tagteam this is such a godsend and we are straight zooming through the to-do list at record pace. We might even have a release window in mind, but more on that at the end of this post...

Anyways, I thought I outta post some examples of our back & fourth chatter over discord to show how we communicate outside of our weekly dev meetings at my apartment or our quick back & fourths at work when the bosses aren't looking,

It's sort of magical how some problem comes up that would normally sidetrack my day and throw off the whole schedule, then I just have to explain my intention and the problem gets resolved overnight while I stay focused on what I was doing. Then TWO things get checked off the list and it feels amazing!

Brandon really knows his craft so all he needs is for me to occasionally point to a direction and he'll just go after it like an eager retriever.  It's all very reassuring.

And there's a sense of productive competition between us where we show up to the weekly meetings with some surprises or impressive work to be pushed to the shared cloud build and it inspires the other to kick things up a notch for the next meeting.  

Features are coming along all at once and the game is really seeming more and more feasible this way. Like a 5 year project can actually be done within one year when the work is divided up and a detailed plan is already laid out. 

You can save, copy, and delete files now.  All the game's variables are in place and ready to be manipulated to suit our needs and form something fun with. We're finally ready to roll!

So enough gushing about that here's some cool stuff we're making right now. Brandon's messed with the TextBox system lately and is getting the hang of making the Zelda-style dialogue flow. And sent me this teaser:

(before you get excited, no, ponies don't talk. that'd be just silly)

Meanwhile I've been reorganizing the project files so that they're easier to manage in his code. But I was truly getting sick of the snails pace I had to move in to get thousands of files renamed in similar ways. So I had to check google because SURELY someone somewhere has had a similar issue and came up with a solution. And they did. 

There's a program called Advanced Renamer that lets you perform a bunch of file renaming tricks in any order you want to get beautiful results. The changes were like night and day and we both appreciate the new naming conventions for it all. 

We can now take a bunch of messily named files across multiple folders...

Drag & drop em into this list here, pick a few rules like "Swap these two" or "Put this string of letters here" and hit 'Start Batch' then poof! Hundreds of renamed files in a matter of seconds instead of hours.

Then I just repeated the steps for everything else. Sound effects, animations, sprites, all kinds of things that were pretty messy or hastily done back in 2016 or so. New and improved for smoother flow.

Before:

After:

It's so much easier on a dev's eyes this way...

Naming conventions really have a bigger impact than you'd think starting out. But speaking of conventions...

Really seems like brony-focused cons are shutting down left & right. 2020 might very well be my absolute last chance to run a BGP booth at one of these things. So I looked into it, calculated the costs, and concluded that I should go for it. 

Each of these cons will cost about $3,000 straight out of my pocket, so I need to be prepared to risk taking a $10K loss for the sake of trying to promote BGP straight to the target demographic while also gaining some firsthand salesman experience by pushing merchandise in a vendor hall next to super talented artists selling much nicer looking stuff.

Here's the cost breakdowns of the 3 cons I'm considering for 2020:

(prices rounded up to the worst case scenarios)

(Possible additional expenses pending and could be taken from my personal budget's food expenses if its under a few hundred.)

Assuming my YouTube plans go well, a boost in Patreon numbers could make those numbers less scary (Or at least cover taxes & tips). I'll be putting student loan debt on hold while throwing everything I've got at this convention tour. Then after launch I'll set my sights on bigger expos like PAX.

(running one of these in the heart of brony territory would probably do wonders for the brand)

If I were to do more cons or expos, funding would have to come from managing to sell out on merch and pre-orders or Patreon boosts from attending these ones. 

I've already sent in my requests to run vendor booths and panels at each of the ones I could, and now we play the waiting game...

But if you were curious about what those panels entail, here's some blurbs about what they're about.

Who's that Ponymon?

Game Development Q&A &  Let's Play: Battle Gem Ponies! 

Who's that Ponymon is definitely the newest and most ambitious panel from me, but I can see that being whipped up quickly then reused at tons of conventions as a fun & interactive panel. I also had an idea for a brony gameshow that was gonna be brought to the last bronycon, but I don't think that one can be done in time for this, so I'll just store it for later should another opportunity arise. 

Also, just thought I'd mention how very aware I am of the popularity of the new Ponyta. 

(And the neigh-sayers. See? Even the big boys at their best get picked on.)

An overwhelmingly positive reception overall though. Guess there are folks out there craving "ponymon" -esque designs... If only someone were to make something catered to that large, overlapping MLP/Pokemon fanbase.  

But besides all that one final thing coming along this month is the revival of Yotes Games on social media. Got DeviantArt, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram content coming on a more regular basis. And I even finally posted those Magfest pics and videos from January. (remember when I did a whole detailed writeup on my first expo booth?) 

Feels like a shame that I'm missing out on having BGP floating around as a word of mouth deal during all these final goodbyes and swelling of emotions around the MLP finale, but there will always be a time to shine later. Still need to focus on getting something polished and playable out there first.

Exciting things are coming ya'll. And I can't wait to share more with you. Now to make up with this post being much wordier than usual I think I could share a bit of valuable info with you. People are always asking this question to developers and I vowed to never answer it with more than a "when its ready"...

But I think you Patrons deserve the inside scoop about the release date of Battle Gem Ponies...

By our estimates, there is approximately 25 weeks of development left (and that's giving a generous amount of extra time). Beyond that there could be added time for rebalancing, playtesting, and timing release for a marketing boost, but for the most part, it looks like this could genuinely wrap up next Summer. Perhaps in time for E3 season?

We'll see. But for now, take comfort in knowing this game is actually coming out now and you WILL be playing the finished version some time next year.