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 track...
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
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 i...
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 ...
2021-04-17 23:17:04 +0000 UTC View Post
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 t...
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 ...
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...
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: 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 ...
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 e...
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...
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 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:
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...
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...
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 bac...
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 2020-08-31 00:00:44 +0000 UTC
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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!
2020-08-22 06:11:22 +0000 UTC
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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 com...
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.)
2020-07-18 01:54:01 +0000 UTC
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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 th...
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 expe...
2020-05-21 00:27:17 +0000 UTC View Post
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...
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, 2020-05-01 13:55:09 +0000 UTC
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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, t...
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