Patreon Payments Went Through! (Battle Gem Ponies Leveled Up!)

     The first month's Patreon payments are coming in! Thanks to you guys, I'll be all set to begin using new tools to improve Battle Gem Ponies right at the start of this new year! 

     So first and foremost, thank you. You all are helping this indie developer's dream come true.

     Income is currently at about $200 a month so I'll be budgeting around that number for now. I can keep track of everything and divide things up based on the goals I listed on the Patreon page. With any luck, soon I'll reach the 2nd Patreon goal, purchase the remaining tools I need, and split the remaining earnings evenly between the BGP musicians as motivation & thanks for sticking with this project that's gone on for way too long.

     If I somehow end up getting to goal #3, I'll have two happily paid musicians AND a budget to work with for marketing the game. I could afford artist commissions, social media promotions, Adsense spots on YouTube & blogs, or I can even offer somebody a decent amount to help out with the hundreds of sprites I still have to make!

Speaking of stuff I still have to make, I've set my sights on some new toys from the Unity Asset store that would certainly be helpful...

     For examples of what I mean, I'm talking about the plugins I've gotten from the asset store over the years that have helped my games take less time (and less fuss) to make. Things like the 2D Toolkit to make working with sprites a simple drag n' drop experience. Or the Rewired plugin that handles controller support for me. Or even TextMesh Pro which allows me to make all kinds of fancy text effects for my cutstom-made RPG textbox system.

     Tools like Playmaker and pre-made Online Server code have caught my eye before, but I didn't have the budget for them until now. If I'm getting at least a hundred a month I can finally take a look around the store, buy some assets of things I would've had to spend days/weeks coding myself, and cross them off my development task list!

     Here's a list of specific tools I intend to buy in order to make development much easier and make the final product much nicer. (And in the order I want to purchase them in.)

Unity Tools Shopping List:

1. PlayMaker ($65) - Simplify the overall coding process. The battle system is buggy because my code is kind of a mess. Despite my best efforts and rewrites, debugging still consumes way too much of my time and reading through my code to find what I want is way harder than it needs to be. (This is the same tool used by indie pros like Playdead!)
2. Dialogue System ($65) - A system that handles branching dialogue, event triggers, and cutscenes for me. Something I was about to spend at least a week coding myself, but way more versatile. It handles localization, passive npc dialogue, and save/load functions too.
3. EasySave ($30) - More efficiently stores data and cloud saves to different platforms, a highly requested feature (and since it can save to a generic web database, I could look into carrying over player files across  multiple platforms via logins). It can even write the data into a spreadsheet I could use for analytics or bug fix updates to save corrupt files. There's even encryption included so hackers can't mess around with it and cheat, which makes it a little harder to pirate the game too.
4. Super Text Mesh ($65) - Incredibly expressive text. Like, beyond Paper Mario and Undertale levels of customization can be done with this. It'll certainly spice up text effects in battle, but also make dialogue more engaging if I use it properly. It'll definitely make the overworld parts of my game stand out from the competition.
5. 2D RPG Effects ($22) - This one's a bunch of sprite effects I could use for moves in battle (with a little editing to match my style) and it'll save a ton of time in figuring out how to make some attacks look good. There's a bunch of others like it too for about the same price, and with some digging I bet I can find enough to make animating 360 moves super feasible.
6. Ultimate Mobile ($50) - This is best kit for the publishing and finalization part of development. Game Center and Google Play integration as well as analytics stuff and just about every basic function app stores want your game to be able to handle. If I get this, I skip some beta stage headaches.

Total: $297, if Patreon income stays steady, I could have all this in the game by February 5th!

Alternatives: 

1. I2 Localization ($45) - If the Dialogue System language swapping features aren't as robust as I need them to be, this will get the job done. This one can dynamically update people's games based on a spreadsheet of in-game text I'll have access to, so if they're online, I can push fixed typos super quick. It also supports Google Translate (who knows if it'll be any good though) so my game can be in any language right from launch. And I know a lot of Spanish and Russian Unicorn Training players who would love that. 
2. RateBox ($13) - I'm sure I can figure this out on my own (I have a link to the app rate page in my Feed the Plant game) but if this can let users submit a star rating without leaving the app, it's a must. This makes it easy to control that all-so-important pop-up of "Please Review this Game" that leads to getting higher placement in the app stores.
3. Loading Animations ($5) - If I can't get the game loading to be super quick, I can invest in this and hopefully have a pretty distraction on screen that won't be frozen by the loading process like the animations I've tried putting in myself.
4. Pixel Weather FX ($10) - To save me the couple days I would've spent trying to create these effects from scratch.
5. Shader Weaver ($100) - Doubt I'll get to it for this game, but I'd like to buy this when I make BGP2. It's the fancy effects used on Hearthstone cards that I could put over the backgrounds in battle to make it much more visually interesting. Right now I just stamp environment tiles and blur it all out.
6. 2D Toolkit ($75) - Although I am currently using it, I originally downloaded this plugin on a different Unity account, so if I ever had an extra $75 to spare, I'd like to purchase this to have it forever linked with my professional Unity account and be able to create new projects with it and keep up with any substantial updates I might be missing out on. 
7. Particle Effects ($55) - And then theres miscellaneous particle effects packages for $2 to $10 each that will make move animations and various fanfare look better. I'll just list em all at once: Epic Victory Effects, 2D Magic Attack Effects, Cartoon Effects Kit, Toon Effects Vol 1, Hits & Slashes Vol 2, and Stylized FX Pack. 

Total: $303, so I could possibly have that much by March 5th if I avoid spending allowance (not driving anywhere and only eating at home) and ask family members for a bit extra here and there. I'm sure I could at least afford the first few with money from Unicorn Training between now and mid-February.

     I'm gonna hold onto hope that the Yotes Games Patreon will blow up after the playable alpha is released and the game starts to get noticed by YouTubers. The sooner I get all these tools, the sooner BGP goes from amateur to astonishing.

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(Oh, and Happy New Year by the way everybody. I have a feeling this is gonna be one of the best!)