Ohhh, it's coming... FINALLY after months of delays, the Combat Demo is nearly complete!
You'll be playing the new and improved #BattleGemPonies within a week!
Come bask in the pre-launch hype with us on this month's #gamedev Blog! ~
2021-05-31 21:04:38 +0000 UTC View Post
Here's a little something extra for ya'll! We put up all the songs we've been working on for the game up on Soundcloud so you can give it a listen and get hyped about the final version of this game where you'll get to hear it in context.
Listen to the Soundtrack Here!
Euleom & Bluco put their heart & souls into making these tracks, so give em some love if you happen to have a soundcloud account.
2021-05-25 23:34:35 +0000 UTC View Post
First big piece of news is that the Yotes Games team is planning to attend Everfree Northwest in a few months as vendors to promote the BGP Kickstarter that will be going on throughout that entire month! How cool is the timing on that?
A detailed plan and budget has been made, and hotel & flight has been paid for. No going back now! Counting on attendance being the usual 2700 that this con has held consistently for half a decade. And we're gonna introduce Battle Gem Ponies to every. single... one of them...
So with it all on the line again, this just raises the stakes even more for getting the demo together in time. The $3500 coming out of pocket to send 2 of us to this thing with a decent amount of merch to sell needs to be a worthwhile venture, so we're counting on making the most of it. Hopefully hosting a live panel to talk about the crazy past couple years of developing this game.
Our booth is going to feature:
We still got all the equipment from last time we did this (Magfest 2019) so that'll be a huge cost-saver for this trip. Plus, this'll be our first time on the West Coast and with a whole day to ourselves we can do a little exploring at the local nerd-havens around Seattle & Redmond. Here's a quick summary of all the trip costs:
There's a bit of overestimation wiggle room to work with in case new things come up, but really any leftover cash would go towards more shirts to sell since we'll be pushing those hardest at the booth.
Other than all that con stuff, it's crunch time over here as we're testing features one-by-one and fixing every game-breaking bug we come across to make that awesome first impression we keep delaying for. Current estimations point at the end of this month, giving us 2 more to work on the overworld mechanics needed by August.
Our 2nd programmer has been missing for a few months but is finally back and getting started with the overworld gameplay so we're confident in meeting these deadlines this time around. But only time will tell. Contingency plans are in place for if things aren't up to snuff and we know exactly which corners to cut to save on time since we can always update the build later on.
Looking forward to all the fun we can have showing this game to folks for the first time in ages.
2021-05-15 23:31:43 +0000 UTC View Post
This is it! The home stretch! We're basically in like, the Beta of our Pre-Alpha if that inception makes sense. The biggest mysteries and implementation challenges are behind us as far as the scope of this demo is concerned. All that's left is to fix an incredibly long list of minor & major bugs we've been taking note of this whole time and make sure 99% of this game works (and looks) exactly as intended.
Graphics. Pacing. Space-time Placing. All these things must be in near-perfect harmony before we put it out there to be enjoyed by the masses!
Check the Yotes Blog for details on our bug hunting adventures!
2021-05-03 19:12:17 +0000 UTC View Post
This past week we've welcomed a new member to the scrappy Yotes Games team!
ConfidentCow will be helping us with graphic design work to take some things off the overwhelming plate that is making this game look nicer.
He's an old friend who's been at this professionally for a few years now, ready to take on something new and exciting in his spare time. A pandemic side-hustle!
@Confident_Cow's gonna help us make trailers, YouTube content, promotional artwork, capture game footage, redesign interfaces, plan out interfaces we haven't made yet, and polish up the attack graphics starting in May once he's all set to pursue his streaming & game development dreams. So give him some love and wish him luck!
We've had multiple meetings & interviews to get acquainted with the project and he's catching on fast. Hopefully adding his help can speed up production by giving Yotes more time to focus on the game's design/writing/balance/maps/implementation rather than splitting all that with a constant stream of video content and unique Gifs.
He's already helped by making layout mockups of what our menus could look like when we get around to polishing those. Take a look.
Before:
After:
(Version 1)
(Version 2)
(Version 3)
Trying new stuff out and seeing what sticks is valuable for UI design, but it's also time consuming, so it's good to have a specialist on the case.
It's a work-in-progress, we've got feedback notes, but stuff like this can now be fussed over by somebody dedicated to getting it perfect, freeing the other devs up to focus on their specialties. We're excited to see how this turns out!
This whole thing reminded me of what it's been like watching the Battle HUD evolve over the years and how we wouldn't have such incredible looking T-Shirts if we didn't mix things up from time-to-time or take suggestions from fans like SkieS to maintain a diamond motif.
Just look at the difference:
2014
2015
2018
2020
This is gonna be a good change of flow.
The Combat Demo is still on its way this May. The first impression is everything. We've delayed and delayed so many times already, so we're not gonna rush out something broken now or it all meant nothing. This demo is going to be awesome...
And we greatly look forward to you playing it first.
After some heartbreak, debate, accounting, re-planning, and interviewing new potential team members, we have officially decided to delay Battle Gem Ponies one more time.
Stretching our personal budgets to the absolute limit and holding off until September while we build up the game in a more reasonable timeframe. We wanted a public demo out weeks ago and finally got to a state where we have all the features we want in, but we haven't had time to clean up the bugs and make sure it can make a good first impression.
We can't re-announce the game after a 3-4 year silence and have new players immediately run into game-breaking issues. After everything we've been through to get here, we're not gonna let things play out like that. We're here to blow minds.
We hope you can stay with us long enough to see this through. Some really exciting stuff is on the way for you guys.
Get some new deadlines/goals for the project below...
---------------------------------------------
Major milestones for your eyes only:
Combat Demo: May 4th
We're releasing the thing we wish was out by now. Our current playable battle system that's 50% complete.
Improved Combat Demo: June 2nd
Completely functional battle system, just in need of some prettier graphics and power balancing. Easy-peasy stuff we can add later.
Pinto Island Patreon Preview: July 14th
An explorable overworld zone for people to wander around on and test out the progression mechanics. Get a feel for how the real game is gonna feel, with all the unique features on full display. A Patreon exclusive early access demo as a thanks for making this all possible (and also a lowkey playtest to polish things up before the Crowdfunding Campaign).
Kickstarter: August 3rd
A humongous explosion and celebration kicking off the REAL meat of development on this game. The aim is to gather the budget to expand the team, get artwork done by professional pixel animators, and ensure we can keep a roof over our heads until the game releases.
Projected Release Date: February 2022
We'll spend the next 6 months building out the final game using all the pieces we made up to the Kickstarter and all the detailed plans we've made long before then. We'll be trying our best to meet this deadline, worst-case scenario it's pushed to next May due to unforeseen circumstances. But with the hardest parts behind us by the time we get the money and hit the gas, we really don't see any more delays happening.
Let's hope we can live up to all that. Wish us luck!
2021-04-10 06:20:13 +0000 UTC View Post
We're in the final bug fixing and polishing stage of development of the Battle Gem Ponies Combat Demo! This little PvE prototype shows off the basic mechanics of the game and gives players a taste of the gameplay we want to deliver.
Right now it's a matter of resolving a few game-breaking glitches and squeezing in as many attack animations as possible. And by the looks of things it shouldn't take longer than a week from now to finish. Beyond that there's a lot of videos we need to produce to help spread the word, so it's down to the wire in terms of the March work schedule. We just really need to get this done so we can focus on the Overworld half of the game in April to make the upcoming Kickstarter demo a real nice vertical slice.
All these delays come from us being a team of perfectionists wanting to make a good first impression after the years of murmuring about progress from the shadows.
But May is quickly approaching and we need to gather an audience immediately if we wanna stand a chance. We'll be uploading tons of videos in April to build hype and hopefully game the algorithm enough to get this game a decent following.
All our hopes and dreams depend on this Kickstarter going well, so we're going all in on this and getting the grand vision of this pony RPG across as clear as can be.
By the end of this month there will finally be a Combat Demo for everyone to play.
See you over on our YouTube Channel real soon!
- Tony Yotes on behalf of the Yotes Games Team
2021-03-18 21:59:07 +0000 UTC View Post
We're in the final stages of development for the Combat Demo! We're implementing as many attack & effect animations as possible to make a good first impression, and we're balancing the more complex gameplay mechanics we've finally got working.
More on the main blog: yotesgames.com
2021-02-28 21:59:17 +0000 UTC View Post
We're chipping away at it still, one feature at a time. Goal is to get the updated combat build in your hands next month. Now, it may not be done in time for the beginning of the month, but it should be fully functional & playable in March.
May 4th is an unshakable deadline for getting the Kickstarter up since running one in June or July is destined for failure, statistically speaking. So we're gunning for this window of opportunity like our lives are on the line.
Royal is dedicated to making this entire month #BGPMonth and he's trying to take as much time off work as possible to knock out some of the tougher code challenges on our plate. Unfortunately, his job is making him travel a lot lately with little to no warning so it's throwing off those plans a bit. Either way, he's been making a valiant effort, especially on the weekends.
Psy is currently working a dayjob gig for a week to get a few months of living expenses saved up to last til the summer. 9 hours there, and 4 hours of BGP. The past couple weeks have been about implementing the Malady system and all the little battle engine details that come with them (things like Poison do a lot more than just sap your HP a bit in this game).
I'm currently wrapping up a list of 2,000-ish YouTubers in spreadsheet form that I'll be using to track who to send game demos to and trying to group them into categories I can easily filter for. And it's turning out to be a much more time consuming task than expected. But every one of these names will lead to tons of eyes on BGP, and if just 2% of all those eyes decide to donate something, we're saved! So we gotta go for it and make a good first impression.
By the end of this big fuss we'll definitely have something to cheer about.
Wish us luck.
- Tony Yotes on behalf of the Yotes Games Team
2021-02-18 04:14:04 +0000 UTC View Post
Battle Gem Ponies is gearing up for making a HUGE commotion all year long! We have some cleanup to do, but afterwards we're off to the races polishing things up.
Kickstarter Drafts, Patreon makeovers, YouTuber contacts, battle engine redesigns, and more all get covered in this month's update!
So come take a gander at the latest #GameDev Log: www.yotesgames.com
2021-02-02 00:58:21 +0000 UTC View Post
This month's main priority has been an overhaul of the battle system on the code architecture side of things as we come up with better ways to implement something that lets us have fine-tuned customization over each of the 100 general effects/calculations and the 55 things we check for in order to trigger them. Plus double-checking the feasibility of the 360 different moves we have planned.
Basically, the way we have the battles programmed right now isn't flexible enough to account for many of the unique mechanics that can make this game's battles more interesting than people would expect from a little indie Pokémon wannabe project. Lots of synergies, strategy setups, and abstract variable manipulation that makes up this game's secret sauce that makes it feel special. Something we'd like to be available for playtesting once we go public with the game again for the first time since 2017.
In an effort to not post a bunch of technobabble here, I'll say it's been a difficult challenge and we've had some stressful nights over this one, even briefly considered scaling down bigtime with the combat system, but we're pulling through. Should have it all sorted out by the end of the month and we can focus on gameplay balance and polishing the animations for all the moves and effects in the 2 weeks after that.
But in short this does mean we are once again behind schedule, and have therefore decided to hold off on the public playable demo we originally had planned for February 3rd.
The Combat Demo, the YouTube Videos, the Grant Applications, the New Website, the Presskit, the YouTuber Outreach, and general hype and excitement of bringing the game out for the world to see...
That'll all be happening on March 3rd now. Giving us an extra month to make sure our first impression is a great one. It'll also insure the most difficult part of the game's development is behind us and no more major code restructure setbacks are necessary.
From March 2021 onward, every monthly update should be a very juicy one with tons of things you guys can actually see screenshots of!
Speaking from the bottom of our hearts, we wanna thank you (as in you specifically, dear Patron who's been incredibly patient with this growing development team). Your contributions have made 2020 survivable and is the main lifeline for our journey into 2021.
Excitement continues to build for what is to come, and we can't wait to get a highly polished rock-solid game in your hands to really show the game's potential.
***
Thank you for following its development all this time. Knowing people care makes us all feel a little less crazy for tending to these pixelated ponies every day.
2021-01-17 04:36:06 +0000 UTC View Post
This year sure has been one big heck... But looking back, I'm proud of what we've managed to build since January. This game is miles further along than I ever could've reached on my own trying to solo dev.
It's exciting to think about how much can be accomplished in the next 365 days with the full power of a development team and, if we succeed in May, thousands of dollars in crowdfunding support to hire a ton more helping hands and guarantee we finish the rest of development by year's end.
Here at Yotes Games, spirits are high as we march right into 2021 like we own the place. (And with your continued support, we actually might!)
Get some of the very last gamedev of 2020 over on the blog.
2021-01-02 00:21:14 +0000 UTC View Post
Download the Battle Gem Ponies Christmas Demo on Itch.io using your Patreon login to get a download key for Windows, Mac, and Android! The download page will only appear if you use the link above to get your key.
Now before you dive in, let's reel back expectations once more. This is a super buggy work in progress that we're still polishing up for February.
Many features are still unfinished so you're likely to run into rough looking animation, strange audio issues, moves that don't work as expected, buttons that were supposed to be hidden, and crazy-looking placeholder text.
We aim to release an update to this Patreon build on a bi-weekly basis next year, and begin releasing a public demo updated with new content every month starting February 2021.
The Patreon exclusive demos will include prototype mechanics (sometimes with debug controls) and half-implemented ideas being worked on for upcoming public releases way down the line. So consider this an early-access pass to the same game build the devs are using for testing.
Main additions this time around are the Pony Customization & Battle Setup Menus!
The complete version of this game is coming (eventually) to the App Store, Google Play, Amazon Apps, Itch.io, and other PC platforms. In May we'll be launching a crowdfunding campaign to raise enough money to ensure we finish development in a timely manner (by hiring a lot more help). We truly have our hearts set on finally being finished by the end of the coming year.
We thank you for understanding that this is a sneak peek at the tangled web we're currently attempting to turn into a quilted masterpiece. Now, as a Christmas gift straight from our hearts to yours, enjoy the newest playable build of Battle Gem Ponies!
- Tony Yotes, on behalf of the Yotes Games Team
2020-12-25 00:18:59 +0000 UTC View Post
You're looking at an all-new Yotes Games as of this month. A full-time indie team speeding ahead towards one milestone after the other!
Progress is super speedy compared to how it was before and every day we cross off multiple things on our big To-Do Lists.
Get a peek at what we've been cooking up for our new menus, pony sprites, and crazy crowdfunding plans for 2021 on the official Yotes Games Blog!
2020-12-02 01:28:54 +0000 UTC View Post
We're still polishing up the VS menu as of this week, and it seems like we'll be diving back into the battle scene to work on those features more starting this Friday.
Biggest To-Dos on our plate this November:
Going forward, the development task timeline has been reorganized into 2 week chunks where we focus on single aspects of the game as a team in order to knock out specific features at a faster rate instead of tackling tasks from 3 different angles and essentially meeting in the middle to connect our individual pieces.
Next internal deadline is December 2nd, so by then we're hoping to have a polished up turn-based battle flow to go along with these menus we're working so hard on.
2020-11-15 22:21:06 +0000 UTC View Post
We're entering November with an all-new team setup, changed plans (for the better), a miles long checklist of finished tasks, a new potential source of funding, and cute little pony sprites you have to come see!
Time to show off what a couple weeks of hardcore indie development will getcha in this spooky good October devlog!
2020-11-02 03:04:48 +0000 UTC View Post
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.)
***
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!
2020-10-20 01:20:46 +0000 UTC View Post
Wild leaps in progress and productivity as we're settling into the flow of being a team. All just in time for the biggest game dev session yet. Next month is going to feel like half a year's worth of work done in just a couple weeks compared to rate we've been going so far.
There's been all kinds of improvements in terms of art, menus, and code architecture. It's really shaping up beautifully and we're excited about what we'll be able to deliver in just a couple months.
Get the details on this month's gamedev adventures on the Yotes Blog!
Been a sorta quiet month so far as I'm diving into some repetitive placeholder animation tasks and file organization while once a week the programmers come together and bust out major progress on the next feature on our list.
We've got a few battle effects left to do and we're starting to animate the ones we do have implemented. There's also the VS Match screen still under construction as it's sub-menus come together and bugs are being sorted out as we go instead of all being pushed back to later and ignored until it's too late to fix foundational problems.
We've got promo pics for the Chroma ponies that'll be releasing every Saturday starting in October as we begin to take #ScreenshotSaturdays more seriously going forward.
Another addition this month has been the Battle Debug Log. It'll help us with tracking all the variables going on in the background during battle. This will be an overlay on top of the battle action we can toggle on/off on the special tester builds.
There's a lot of info crammed into just a couple pages there, but the idea is to help us balance the battle system out and debug calculation problems without having to play the game in-editor. We can play any build on any device and just screenshot this stuff during playtesting.
Next you'll see the Team Select Preset being worked on. The idea is to have a list of about 20 of these to pick from to make VS match setup a lot quicker when you want to use certain teams over and over again.
Also, finally added some color to the in-battle feedback text. We'll work on the font later. Probably go back to the Noto-Sans one we were using before.
***
In unrelated news, I just read the Undertale 5th Anniversary post today and it's made me feel some kinda way. Basically, the next game in the series Deltarune is in the works over the next 'who knows how long' and the creator is looking to make a list of people to maybe sorta reach out to someday.
I read that and knew I had to shoot my shot. Undertale is certainly a top contender for my favorite game of all time, I have mad respect for Toby Fox alongside the likes of the Video Game greats such as Iwata, Miyamoto, Daddy Sakurai, & Scott Cawthon. Guiding my decision making by being role models and painting a picture of what my career could look like if I stay determined and keep improving.
Basically using the BGP Greenlight Demo and Unicorn Training to pitch myself as a decent enough artist to make some minor Deltarune stuff (or at least get on Toby Fox's list of cool people to potentially contact). Just putting myself out there to see what happens, like that time I applied to be a Jr. Game Designer at Nintendo's Retro Studios. (Except I filed a full job application, made a custom resume, and submitted a game design doc for their challenge assignment to try and get my foot in that door.)
I'm not seeing this as a cross promotion opportunity or anything (my pie's not quite THAT high in the sky), but just seeing "Tony Yotes" in the credits alongside the likely 100 other artists signing up for this would be nice. Marking a piece of history outside of my own bubble. (Imagining myself pointing to some random NPC canon to the Deltarune universe and shouting at the screen "HEY! I made that one! :D")
But most importantly, it's kindof an icebreaker if I ever get to communicate with the dude directly. They say to never meet your heroes, but I just think under the right circumstances, we could be good friends with a lot to talk about and life goals compelling us to push each other forward.
Looking up to someone the same age as me and who seems to be that same special kind of weirdo that I am is like having a platonic crush or something. Like a "senpai notice me" situation. Let's see what comes of it years down the road.
2020-09-15 21:39:45 +0000 UTC View Post
Been quite the busy month over here at Yotes Games. A whole feast of features to show to you about this fine August of progress. Talkin' about overworld animations, palette swaps, engine setup fixes, team collaboration improvements, new menus, and new mechanics.
So let's get right to it, over on the main blog!
We're getting pretty good at this teamwork thing. Splitting up duties between 3 developers and focusing hard on implementing features.
For example...
Chroma Ponies
My entire past few weeks have been dedicated to adding in the fully animated sprites for the chroma variants of each pony. So now all the playable ones have alternate color palettes to choose from!
The chroma selection process was certainly more art than science. throwing out a bunch of random combos at the wall to see what sticks. (As in random hue shifts, trying black and white, and color shifting specific parts for each pony until coming across a color that grabs the eye.)
Had to be sure the new colors were different enough from the original to be worth the price of the super rare Chroma Scales you'll need to collect to unlock each of them. So after picking a color out (and changing my mind several times for a certain few) I mess with the colors on that variant some more until I figure out where the appeal lies then go with that.
We'd be happy to show em all off right now (all 60 ponies have this), but then there'd be no exciting reveals for later, so you'll just have to wait-n'-see...
VS Match Teams
Psy has been revamping the Team Select Menu so it works more intuitively for setting up battle. Getting functionality on that screen bit by bit. All the while drafting up screens for the other aspects of battle setup that need to be completed by the end of September.
This neat pop up will let you choose which Ponatina form to select (you can only bring one of em into battle). I drafted this up just now, tonight at the weekly meetup, when we noticed that we needed a convenient way to change Ponatina forms without having to create all-new assets.
Battle Effects
And on the Battle Effects front, we've got the basic functionality down for simple stat changes and whatnot, but Royal is still working on the animations that go with each of the 180 moves in the upcoming demo. (Purple marked ones are for the upcoming demo. "X" for Done, "-" for Work in Progress)
Coding the systems that will handle the more complicated formula-based attacks is still underway with a lot of COVID-related dayjob overtime interfering with dev time, but it's moving along decent leaps at least one night a week when we've got everyone together under one roof to hash out ideas and examples.
We've also updated the pony sheet with nicknames for the Chroma color schemes. Gonna put these in-game in a rather entertaining way when we get around to that surprise.
More to Come
Aiming for an End of October VS Match demo at the current pace we're going. The guys are planning to spend multiple weeks of vacation all at once when October comes around so these one-night-a-week game jam sessions can become a three weeks straight sorta deal and that's when we'll really knock stuff out. Looking forward to that.
Excited to show you more stuff soon!
- Tony Yotes, on behalf of the Yotes Games team
2020-08-22 06:11:22 +0000 UTC View Post
Nice to have a crunchy month to work on this day after day. Things are really starting to shape up around here. Visions of running a full-fledged indie studio get clearer all the time now that I'm enjoying a taste.
This month's major milestones include training a new programmer, adding a menu to the playable build, putting over a hundred working moves into the game, and creating a huge cast of human characters to meet in the overworld.
If you're curious about this past month's comradery and happenings in #GameDev, take a peek on the Yotes Games Blog!
2020-08-01 23:33:04 +0000 UTC View Post
Big month so far. Getting a new programmer up to speed, hosted the first in-person meeting since January to get the team acquainted and unravel the backend workings of the game. We'll be meeting like this every Friday and having Discord checkups each Wednesday to keep things moving forward.
It's been like getting a peek at what running a legit indie studio would feel like. (If only I wasn't the only full-timer on this... A Yotes can dream.)
Aside from that awesomeness, tons of work got done on NPCs. Drawing sprites for each and every type of person in the game along with some variants to spice things up, reusing pieces and swapping colors to make the population as pixel-art efficient and visually vibrant as possible.
Having lots of fun mixing and matching for these things, the only characters left to make are the unique looking major characters (the bosses of each area). Every encounter planned for the story from gangsters to ravers to catgirls. Getting base designs done so we can finally see what the human side of BGP's Pinto region looks like.
Once all those are done, I'll get started on those Patron-based characters for all you early birds that earned the Canon Character Tier through accumulated donations over time. (More on that next month)
***
For a somewhat interesting breakdown, here's how a few of these got made using sprites from other games as a reference/mood board to match the idea in my head then shaping up the sprites using my NPC templates as a base so it'll be easy to fully animate them later.
Like here is the idea for the To Be Named mysterious silent rival character. Was originally going for a blank faced, closed-eyes Frisk kind of kid but the sprite just looked off to me and it didn't gel with the cool stuff he does in the cutscenes I had in mind so I looked around for some spiky haired tough-looking inspiration and settled on this more Vegeta widow's peak & spiky hair bun flavor.
And I really like how this coal miner/construction guy turned out. The dark color theme will match the environment well.
The lady you'll be talking to when signing up for stadium matches and official things like that. Palette swaps come easy with uniformed characters.
And then there's the party animals and mishmashes of other character sprites to fill in the maps and scenes requiring an archetype like the ravers for the party scene where you'll meet the Maven of Neon City.
I think you get the picture. Doing this for each NPC type occupied this week's progress as far as the art department goes, meanwhile the stats menu is being coded and a few bugs are being squashed with the battle system (looks like we have to redo the move animation system again).
75% complete up in here! (with this one screen at least, but it'll ramp up fast now that the new guy is into it. The ropes have been seen.)
Exciting things are comin' ya'll. Please bear with us through the hiccups, and we'll be getting that next big update out as soon as it's playable.
- This has been Tony Yotes on behalf of the Yotes Games Team
If you're curious about the header, that's us playing with the super saiyan style arua Ultra form ponies should have. We're thinkin' the top leftmost Vinerva has the look we're going for.
STATUS
Unemployment checks are coming in, so that's a relief on bill payments, even extended the deadline a bit so we have until January 1st to make a living wage off of BGP before being financially doomed and I'll have to rethink careers until getting out of this debt mess.
So the steaks are high and I better cook em well!
It's quite the To-Do List, but it must all be done.
To get organized Royal suggested moving all our tasks to a Task Manager system he's using at work. It's called Clickup and its pretty nice and clean. Interesting to see literally everything we have to still do to complete the game, but its also cool seeing a handful of tasks get checked off in here, making the mountain smaller.
A lot of the tasks this month revolved around animations and particle effects. It's fun getting all those sorted out and it'll be killer seeing them triggered in gameplay.
And this past week I've been setting up how making Chroma ponies will work. These are the special color variations for each pony and I gotta settle on the one best Alt color for each. For the ones that are particularly hard to choose between I'll be running polls for Patron opinions (so keep an eye out for those).
Here's the first one done, and actually working in-game now. Furum!
I've had this next batch in my backpocket for a while now. Settled on one for Poni-Bot kinda based on the Steelers or maybe an electrical hazard (I know people obsessed with that football team so it just stuck out to me). But choosing between the couple black Vinervas might be more difficult.
Then ya got these guys:
Mauss!
I call em Autumn, Graveyard, & Purple Flurp. Can't choose a favorite yet.
As for Orscina...
This reminded me on how I settled on Orscina's look in the first place. None of these look right to me, but the one that looks the least not-right is the Purple 1st.
Here comes Simber
The 3rd one is the first Chroma I ever came up with back when I was coming up with the original Simber sprite for the concept of the game. Might just stick with that if the others don't grow on me.
Ponatina's next! And kinda hard since I have to stick to plain colors for it to work and not look like her other forms. Gonna need to think on this one...
Verrow's gonna look cool no matter which of these I go with.
Mothlass! (I think I gotta go with the rosy maple moth look, for honor's sake. But I like the cool palette of the first one too. It's a nice contrast.)
Rainbryte is gonna be wild, with the most varied pallet in the game and a ton of animated pieces that come and go. Or come and glow.
The Fyre-Fly reference is cool, but I'm thinking the blacked out one makes for a nice contrast with the bright rainbows of the original. Plus it'd look pretty cool if the player had a black & white Chroma Rainbryte like that for the racing minigame I have in mind.
Doing Petrifus is gonna be a challenge since it's just so flippin' cool that any of these could work. (Feelin partial to the top one currently, but preference switches daily)
Shyshock kinda had me stuck on a brain fart. Kinda thinkin only one Chroma option even looks good.
Xenoir's a tough one, kinda wanna keep it dark. Maybe play up the devil angel with the red version.
And my scrappy baby, Thestra! It's a tie between the middle two. Grayscale and Choco Mountain.
But for now I think I'll let these ideas sit for a bit, come back when its time to really implement them, and see what look truly sticks. There's more urgent tasks to check off currently so I can't spend a whole month fiddling with aesthetics, but I'll get back to it eventually.
(Let me know whatchu think in the comments tho, color combos you'd like to see, which one looks best, etc.)
*********
INTO THE FUTURE
The team is still split due to COVID stuff affecting dayjobs hardcore for about 2 months straight now, but things seem to be smoothing out.
At some point this week (probably wednesday) we'll have a big catchup meeting and get code-focused features up and rollin' again.
And it's really no surprise, but there is now 100% confirmation that all cons are cancelled this year. Indy Pop and Everfree Northwest included. I can keep my submissions and shoot to tour the completed game next year, but for now any big breakouts need to be done online. So going through my list of over a thousand Let's Players and messaging them one by one to play the game is the keystone marketing task above everything else planned for demo release hype.
We're trucking along and gonna get this done ya'll! Too much is at stake to fail! Countdown to January 1st stops for nobody.
2020-06-16 01:39:07 +0000 UTC View Post
Download the Battle Gem Ponies Combat Demo on Itch.io using your Patreon login to get a download key for Windows and/or Android. The download page will only appear for ya if you use the link to get your key.
Now before you dive in, let's reel back expectations a bit. This version is still leagues behind the 2017 demo feature-wise, but the back end stuff is more solid than ever. We're set for a rapid series of updates over the coming months, so this is just the barebones starting point.
From now on, you'll see the game grow as we the devs do. Every two weeks we plan to update this Patreon exclusive build with whatever we've got so far as a stable (enough) build to play.
Now this first one is absolutely filled with known issues like missing animations, unbalanced attacks, unpolished sequences, but bugs should be minimal, especially compared to the old. So if any game-breaking terror takes place we'd love to get a breakdown of how you found it (preferably with a screenshot too) on either the Bugs Unearthed forum on Itch or in our new Discord Server for Battle Gem Ponies. Same goes for if the download links give you patrons any trouble. I'll make sure we figure out how to get you in on this so you can be a part of the fun going forward.
You'll find this list of known Bugs and missing features on our Community Discord as well, all marked and have clear plans for resolving by the next update.
***
We've busted our humps the past week to get a basic fully playable battle system out without having to delay the demo for the 800th time. But as this is being typed up, the game's programmer Royal has been scheduled for another round of intense overtime at the job actually paying his bills at the moment and will be unavailable for the next two weeks. So I'll take advantage of that time period by getting more hefty behind the scenes tasks (such as setting up all 360 fully animated moves for implementation) out the way so once he gets back we'll have a lot more to show.
We're planning to update the game dramatically for a big public reveal on June 15th, but with the crazy curve-balls Corona keeps throwing at us, firm dates like that are just a fantasy. So we'll play it by ear.
Thank you for the crazy amount of patience it takes to keep following a game project like this. Game development is such an intimidating challenge sometimes, but its the milestones like this that makes it feel worthwhile. We're building something great here and are so very excited to finally start sharing what it looks like with you.
- Tony Yotes, on behalf of the Yotes Games Team
Doing my very own EDM fueled crunch night after night over here to get things ready for initial launch JUST 3 DAYS FROM NOW!
As an example, all yesterday (9am to 3am) was spent making sprites for ALL 360 moves so that we finally have organized placeholders to work with. Now I'm spending today importing them all so that we can finally start animating them (But won't have em in time for the 20th).
Nice finally having such a daunting task all complete. Makes things much less paralyzingly scary.
So many pieces! Can't believe how much can get done in a single day with intense focus. (Hope we can keep up this pace, cuz time's ticking.)
Also got some placeholder weather effects in. Dynamic stuff that looks neat on every battlefield. First lets see Sunshine.
Nice and glowy. Gonna add some subtle dust particles or something to fill the air but this one's near complete. A much harder one to pull off is gonna be Rain.
The top is a dynamic rain and wind system with rain drops that splash against solid objects. A more realistic looking rain system. The bottom GIF shows the pixel rain version based on a different prebought asset in Unity. I want to combine elements of both to find the nicest look and feel, but for now sticking with pixel rain and moving forward. Next up is Sandstorm.
Just gotta replace some sprites and this would look pretty neat. I wonder how mobile will handle all these particle effects going on in just the background.
Then Snow and Oblivion effects are pretty self-explanatory.
It's just super nice having a bunch of scary stuff in the past. Even the CSVs have recieved lots of love, finally filling in information like all the moves each pony learns and at what levels. Then all the battle stats and functions are finally planned out to the tiniest detail so Royal can begin coding the more complex battle mechanics.
Attacking development from both sides, Royal making the Battle Loop player friendly while I'm cranking out the last of the tedious tasks so that we can kick off June with super-interesting rapid development. Where each DevLog update can come with a new playable demo with improvements people can actually appreciate from the outside looking in.
Up til now the game has really been all behind the scenes setup and stuff that's not all too interesting to folks that aren't into knowing exactly how games are made. But now we're finally getting into the fun stuff. Looking over the state of the project as of right now makes me really proud and I can't wait to watch this grow, starting with you guys playtesting the heck out it!
And I'm super excited to get to the game balancing part of development. Going over the spreadsheets now I can already see changes I want to make. And other sections are just fun opportunities to inject some personality that the ponies really need. Like check out the Ponipedia entries here.
It's all coming together. As I mentioned in the last major update, I'm in dire financial straits due to being not really, but kinda actually basically fired. So I have 6 months to start generating at least $1100 a month or else I'll be in financial ruin and need to consider moving back with parents and job hunting, basically 2018 all over again.
I bust out the old credit cards I had finally gotten cleared and hid away half a year ago. They'll help cover living expenses starting June 1st and they'll last me up to November if I'm real frugal about it (Royal is still fully employed and doing fine as far as risk goes, this little gamedev venture is all on me).
Did a bunch of spreadsheets and accounting to be certain about this. And I've decided to go for it. I'm betting my life Battle Gem Ponies here and now. I either make this a thing, or put my indie dev dreams on hold indefinitely while I clean up the mess I'm about to get into.
The whole world's on fire and like a phoenix I think it's about time to be reborn. Take advantage of this opportunity to go all-in on a risky dream. Just this one last time. Third time's the charm, new decade/new beginnings, plus I'm not getting any younger with 30 approaching, and all that.
With this kind of fire under my butt and all the time in each day to make it happen, I'm feeling confident about finally breaking out of development hell and releasing my dream game by year's end.
With that said, do forgive me for pushing this merch store in like, every post going forward, because it really is going to be a big help in addition to Patreon. You guys have kept me going for years and now more than ever each month's payout is a huge sigh of relief and clears some big scary bill looming over the company.
Hopefully as the official biggest BGP fans on Earth, you guys will find something here that suits your fancy. The shirts in particular have been selling really well after the BABSConline event last weekend. I've seen a few friends and family members rockin the gear and it makes me warm and fuzzy seeing these pony characters I put my heart and soul into on real things in our physical world. Hard to explain the feeling, but I love it.
Hopefully you do too: https://merch.yotesgames.com/
Now, back to development! New demo outta be up by Wednesday night! At the bare minimum a playable battle randomizer with basic attacks working, followed by a huge update on June 1st that we're gonna try to blow up.
We could just delay the demo again, but I feel like I've done that way too much to you guys over the years and its time to do or die. So you'll finally be playing the same build as we are.
Going forward Patrons get first dibs on the dev builds we play as we update them every couple weeks, and the public will have access to the monthly updated "stable builds" that way we can all see this project grow together. And you can provide feedback the whole way through to help us make things even better!
Exciting times to be in the know about BGP. Thanks for sticking with us through all this.
See you Wednesday.
2020-05-17 21:14:11 +0000 UTC View Post
Doing a soft launch of a merch store this weekend, opens for real on the 20th but if you really want some official BGP stuff ASAP you can order some RIGHT NOW!
2020-05-08 01:58:08 +0000 UTC View Post
We're mid-apocalypse as showtime approaches! I'm sure April 2020 has been rough for pretty much everyone. And the team here at Yotes Games is no exception.
Spritework, cut budgets, major losses, and hard lessons finally learned. It's been pretty busy.
Get a full update on the new decade's most destructive month yet as it relates to Battle Gem Ponies and see how we plan to rise from the ashes, developers reborn!
The T-Shirt design is complete! I commissioned the services of renowned brony & pokemon fandom artist Dawnfire (who I've been a fan of for years) to get a cool-lookin shirt made to sell at conventions. Conventions that I won't be attending anytime soon... But the internet exists! So I can still send em out into the world!
The header image there tells the story of how it went from my messy doodles, to mockups, then to an actual talented artist, who did back and forth revisions with me until it was just right, then BAM! The most beautiful Graphic Tee I've ever laid eyes on.
Everyone will be able to nab one of their very own once the Yotes Games merch website opens sometime next month (to go alongside the new demo launch).
I decided to go with spreadshirt because after comparing many different shirt printing sites, I liked the color fidelity and huge print size they had, as well as the ability to order in bulk and even potentially host my shirts on their platform instead of my own for complete automation (but at a significant price hike and margin cut, so I'd rather sell directly).
And there was a whole lot of research and asking around to figure out the optimal shirt style for the women's variant of the shirt. I learned more about women's clothing than I ever knew after this past week. Everything from the importance of materials, sleeve varieties and their effects on different body types, to bust adaptability, temperature control, graphic placement, and collar circumference. It was a whole thing.
Needing to strictly limit the variety for cost's sake meant only one.
Other than that and a whole photoshoot for the rest of the merch, I've been clocking in a bunch of overtime for job deadlines, but as of this week, all that's behind me. Smoother sailing just in time to welcome back the BGP programmer Royal who's been stuck working in Japan this past month and a half.
We had a big long reunion meeting over discord to get up to speed and reevaluate things. We'll still be able to have a super polished Battle demo by May 20th despite the COVID Setbacks.
And thanks to the government Stimulus, I even got back the thousand bucks wasted on non-refundable convention travel reservations. I still have the boxes of physical merch I already ordered for BABScon, but at least they're not perishable or anything. I can tuck them away until conventions become a thing again.
Took a while to find a place to store inventory and ship from. Specifically in a way that lets me have certain items grouped together just the way I want (i.e. the buttons, which come in packs of 50 for each kind). For curious folk interested in creating their own Shopify store, that shipping resource is called ShipHero. Storage is free if you get the items rotated out within 60 days.
At this stage, gamedev is gonna get super risky, especially if I'm considering getting help with the art, a $34,000 investment that would be the most expensive thing I've ever purchased in my entire life. To be sure I really want to commit to that I have to test a few theories.
I want to see if I can do at least one pony a day. To test this, I made an idle animation for one of the most complex ponies using this new tool Aesprite that's become the indie standard over the last few years. (About time I stopped trying to animate sprites in Gimp, this is way faster and easier.)
Made this over the span of 4 hours while watching tutorials, figuring out how Aesprite works, and (just between us) doing my remote software troubleshooting day job in the background. #QuarantinePerks
So I'm really glad its a weekend and I can put this theory to the test. If I can dish out ponies lightning fast, then that just proves that a full-time indie lifestyle would be enough to get the job done and save me the trouble of either crowdfunding over $34K or if that fails (I shudder just thinking about it) taking out a loan to get Battle Gem Ponies out the door.
A $25K minimum funding goal sounds much more achievable. Giving us up to 6 months to finish this game up with uninterrupted focus. Now let's see if we can get a polished vertical slice of the story out by July...
- Tony Yotes
2020-04-17 21:17:27 +0000 UTC View Post
Some crazy new decade we're having, huh? Should come as no surprise now that delays and scrapped plans are happening left and right, even here at little ol' Yotes Games, thanks to ya homeboy COVID-19.
Get some details on how we're handling the situation on the main blog.
2020-04-01 03:52:08 +0000 UTC View Post