Yotes

Anypony else looking forward to virtual conventions this year? (It's kinda all we've got these days)

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!

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.

Unfortunately, the Babscon Arcade Showcase won't be happening this year. But we're going to make the most of this and take some extra time to get an even more polished Battle Gem Ponies combat demo out to everyone over the convention season! Hope you can look forward to it with us! - Yotes Games Dev Team

Aaaand one month full of crunch later, we've got battles! Actual working in-game battles! You can swap forms, use moves, alter stats, drain meters, and everything! Some visual effects are still a bit rough but all that's coming in the polish stage. The most important bit right now is getting the logic behind everything working as intended. Now, some of the special side-effect calculations have yet to be implemented, but we've thought through all the dirty details and are confident about knocking them out over the next month. That way we'll be stepping into April with everything the demo will need plus an extra week of polish to spare! In terms of gameplay we've got fully functional turn-based combat. The math behind it all, the interface to make choices and display information, and the animations to go with it all. Just need to animate all 168 moves in the demo and add in a couple extra touches and we'll be set! Come see all the love and and long post-workday hours are going to. This past month was a straight up plentiful one in terms of results! For the full post, head on over to yotesgames.com!

Rapid progress continues. We've got menus up and running better than ever, some really polished placeholders, fleshed out design notes, charts and graphs for pony stats, hundreds of character animation files, and most of the math behind the revamped battle system! You'll need to get more info on the Yotes Games website this time, cuz this one's gonna be a doozy!

Battle Gem Ponies is shaping up nicely. The fun little details are being added in now and we're seeing how far we can run with the little things being implemented in this prototype. We've got villain concept art, working data, cutscene scripts, character animations, working menus like the Ponipedia, and calculations for the battle system all done over the holiday break! Come see the nitty-gritty details to kick of this new year of gamedev over on the 1st Ever 2020 DevLog Post!

Despite numerous distractions like travel, coma-inducing Thanksgiving meals, and an intense workout regiment to counteract it all, progress is still being made towards BGP's public prototype launch. There's a lot of little changes being made behind the scenes to turn this into a super smooth operation that can sidestep mistakes of the past and there's still a couple week's worth of problems to solve before we can touch the combat system itself. See the full Patreon Exclusive posts here! Or for now, come checkout a summary of the past month's progress on the Development Blog.

The initial hurdles of learning to work together and getting a foundation in place for the project are all behind us now. The Yotes Games team is hard at work every day and we're knocking out features one-by-one. Come get a big ol' month's worth summary of the game's progress on the Yotes Games Patreon Blog!

This past month has been the most productive by a mile. A nice new tradition I'm starting up is putting up 2 Patreon updates a month now. One at the beginning of the month and one at the end. These posts are getting super meaty and full of news now, so the separation gives some breathing room to the avalanche of content to talk about. This month's posts are about finally finding a programmer to help me exponentially speed up development. We got a lot done in just the past 30 days and now the prototype phase is at least 50% complete. See the full Patreon Exclusive posts here! Otherwise come back in a month for some big news. Because now that we have momentum going, a new demo you can play will be here before you know it. Or for now, come checkout a quick summary of October's progress on the Yotes Blog.

I'm still crying about it...

Long story short, the 600+ variables required to make Battle Gem Ponies work have been put into a new usable form that'll make what's coming next possible. With all the ingredients finally here it's time to whip up a fresh and playable version of the game! See the full Patreon Exclusive post here! Otherwise come get a glimpse of the game's upcoming development tasks on the Yotes Blog.

Still chipping away at this project one day at a time. Real life hurdles still slowing me down and demotivating me, but even just looking at the roster of pony sprites on my phone throughout the day inspires me to keep pushing forward to make this thing real. Another devlog went up and I want the world to know about it. See the full Patreon Exclusive post here! Otherwise come get a brief summary of the game's progress on the Yotes Games Blog.

Starting development on things I can actually show off with visuals! Tilemaps recovered from oblivion, and steps towards an explorable overworld, this time made with a lot more common sense and cleanliness. Catch details on all that and more in this month's DevLog for the prototype of Battle Gem Ponies! (Get on the Patreon Hype Train for Exclusive Posts about the making, and remaking, of the game!)