WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en 00:00:00.240 --> 00:00:02.580 Hook: Grab attention from both followers 00:00:02.610 --> 00:00:07.220 and newcomers, perhaps even with a joke or thought provoking question. 00:00:07.250 --> 00:00:13.000 Does anybody have a joke or thought provoking question? 00:00:19.360 --> 00:00:21.540 Yeah, you got a joke? 00:00:21.570 --> 00:00:27.500 My ideas are as small as the budget for brilliant diamond and shiny Pearl. 00:00:27.530 --> 00:00:30.120 Dang, that's not a joke. 00:00:30.150 --> 00:00:32.520 It's just facts. 00:00:33.440 --> 00:00:35.820 All right, hook done. 00:00:35.850 --> 00:00:39.180 Now people are engaged. 00:00:39.210 --> 00:00:40.260 Pathetic. 00:00:40.290 --> 00:00:44.420 The surveys and spreadsheets are finally finished. 00:00:44.450 --> 00:00:48.760 Save for the 32 people who have to fill those out, 00:00:49.360 --> 00:00:50.380 you know who you are. 00:00:50.410 --> 00:00:53.620 (Come on now.) Including the second wave, 00:00:53.650 --> 00:00:58.540 all the missing info like shirt sizes, along with a reminder that our discord 00:00:58.570 --> 00:01:02.580 and Reddit hubs exist, leading lots of folks to come and join us. 00:01:02.600 --> 00:01:03.940 Over the past couple of months, 00:01:03.970 --> 00:01:08.100 we've personally met with accountants learning a bunch of valuable info on how 00:01:08.130 --> 00:01:11.340 this whole "running a software business thing" works. 00:01:11.360 --> 00:01:13.180 Getting a hold of them was pretty tricky, 00:01:13.210 --> 00:01:17.280 with quarterly taxes being due around the same time we were originally searching 00:01:17.310 --> 00:01:21.210 for them, so lots of the "bigger firms" were booked. 00:01:21.240 --> 00:01:25.660 But stacking up those free consultations and asking more and more of those burning 00:01:25.690 --> 00:01:30.660 questions has added a few useful wrinkles to our young Game Dev brains. 00:01:30.680 --> 00:01:32.340 Now we'll be getting into things like more 00:01:32.370 --> 00:01:35.850 structured and documented expense tracking, Dev time tracking, 00:01:35.880 --> 00:01:39.820 and generally keeping everything business related, nice and tidy. 00:01:39.850 --> 00:01:44.290 Also, we spent a lot of quality time with our extensive bug list. 00:01:44.320 --> 00:01:46.460 All focus on our core development for now, 00:01:46.490 --> 00:01:50.020 postponing our next big set of bug crushing until January. 00:01:50.040 --> 00:01:52.380 But of course, we'll be fixing any critical issues along 00:01:52.410 --> 00:01:56.100 the way, just like we did this month with the combat overhaul hotfix 00:01:56.130 --> 00:01:59.260 that resolved class matchups not working anymore. 00:01:59.290 --> 00:02:02.210 (That was a big oopsie.) Or the follow up hot 00:02:02.240 --> 00:02:06.900 fix to fix the issues from updating the previous hot fix and then the follow 00:02:06.920 --> 00:02:10.220 up hot fix after that because some of the changes got reverted and then 00:02:10.240 --> 00:02:13.680 the one after that because the wrong version number was there and then a hot 00:02:13.710 --> 00:02:16.700 fixed out to fix that and then a hot fix out to fix that! 00:02:16.730 --> 00:02:23.610 And it had this small time of just sort of spiraling into hotfix Tartarus. 00:02:23.640 --> 00:02:26.700 If I'm allowed to say that. Tartarus is a pony term. 00:02:26.730 --> 00:02:34.260 Yeah, okay, it's pronounced "Tartarus", hotfix Tartarus. 00:02:34.290 --> 00:02:36.860 That sounds weird. 00:02:36.890 --> 00:02:38.660 They'll figure it out. 00:02:38.690 --> 00:02:40.580 So that was interesting in itself, 00:02:40.610 --> 00:02:44.680 and that burned a lot of time and we learned a little bit of how we want 00:02:44.710 --> 00:02:48.820 to manage hot fixes in the future, and we hope to be better with that. 00:02:48.850 --> 00:02:51.460 A stable build is up now and anyone can play it. 00:02:51.490 --> 00:02:54.580 Any bugs you find in there has probably been written down. 00:02:54.610 --> 00:02:57.220 Feel free to tell us about whatever you find anyways. 00:02:57.250 --> 00:03:00.640 Just in case, a lot of the challenges that I've faced 00:03:00.640 --> 00:03:03.380 over the past couple of months have been in the overworld. 00:03:03.410 --> 00:03:05.860 For anyone who follows the daily nays 00:03:05.890 --> 00:03:09.920 updates, you will see that I've been doing a lot of updates to our overworld so 00:03:09.950 --> 00:03:15.100 at first I made an assumption that I would sort of just be able to go in there 00:03:15.130 --> 00:03:18.900 and link up current overworld to all the new stuff that we were using 00:03:18.930 --> 00:03:23.060 in battle, that things could be synced with all the player information. 00:03:23.090 --> 00:03:27.820 But from the last catastrophe that caused us to reset the game, 00:03:27.850 --> 00:03:31.740 not everything was rebuilt in the way that I was sort of anticipating. 00:03:31.760 --> 00:03:32.720 So once I got in there, 00:03:32.750 --> 00:03:36.740 I noticed there was a lot of missing pieces, and I ended up having to rebuild 00:03:36.770 --> 00:03:41.060 a lot of the functionality, like things like making buttons work or 00:03:41.090 --> 00:03:44.540 using items in the overworld for, like, three weeks. 00:03:44.570 --> 00:03:47.940 I spent a lot of time fixing up all those little things. 00:03:47.970 --> 00:03:52.460 It's not perfect, but all the menus are functionally working. 00:03:52.480 --> 00:03:55.820 So for us, that's a really good step in the right direction because we can 00:03:55.850 --> 00:03:59.460 always spend time polishing or making the user experience better. 00:03:59.490 --> 00:04:01.020 But while doing that, 00:04:01.050 --> 00:04:06.420 there were some other issues with an overworld that became more apparent. 00:04:06.450 --> 00:04:08.300 Movement was sort of a big one. 00:04:08.320 --> 00:04:11.980 The main character would walk through walls, or would just keep walking off 00:04:12.010 --> 00:04:16.700 into the infinite void if you were holding down a button when you change scenes. 00:04:16.720 --> 00:04:18.580 So I started finding these little issues 00:04:18.600 --> 00:04:21.500 here and there and started fixing them one at a time. 00:04:21.520 --> 00:04:23.180 A lot of them had to do with this little 00:04:23.210 --> 00:04:27.380 thing that we have called a probe, which sort of checks the next square we 00:04:27.410 --> 00:04:31.220 want to walk into, and if we're allowed to walk into it or not. 00:04:31.250 --> 00:04:37.020 So once I sort of tackled all those issues, the movements became a lot better, 00:04:37.040 --> 00:04:42.740 along with all of those other little like the actual updates to the gameplay. 00:04:42.770 --> 00:04:43.640 When we went in, 00:04:43.660 --> 00:04:47.980 we reviewed all of the configuration tools that we had previously built before. 00:04:48.000 --> 00:04:49.460 A lot of these tools used a lot 00:04:49.480 --> 00:04:53.180 of terminology that was catered toward more of a developer, 00:04:53.210 --> 00:04:56.860 and it made it a little more harder for our designers to get in and sort 00:04:56.890 --> 00:05:02.460 of build the level, our designers being well, Yotes, we reviewed all of those 00:05:02.480 --> 00:05:08.220 little widgets, and we determined that we wanted to change some of the naming to be 00:05:08.250 --> 00:05:12.700 more descriptive, or we wanted things to be color coded so that they worked right. 00:05:12.720 --> 00:05:14.380 And we even found some opportunities 00:05:14.410 --> 00:05:20.500 to use Gizmos, which is a feature in Unity that lets you sort of draw in the editor 00:05:20.530 --> 00:05:25.700 instead of in the game to do simple things like linking up a door to a spawn point. 00:05:25.720 --> 00:05:27.440 These quality of life changes will make 00:05:27.470 --> 00:05:32.380 the development process faster and just easier on the developers. 00:05:32.410 --> 00:05:36.060 We've recently adjusted the games music tracks to be a bit more, 00:05:36.090 --> 00:05:39.780 even at a more civilized volume for your listening pleasure. 00:05:39.800 --> 00:05:40.540 Additionally, 00:05:40.560 --> 00:05:44.180 we've expanded the soundtrack scope, thanks to app size restrictions lifting. 00:05:44.210 --> 00:05:49.620 Since BGP was first started long ago, every megabyte on your phone had to count, 00:05:49.650 --> 00:05:53.580 but nowadays you can basically run a PlayStation 3 game on those things. 00:05:53.600 --> 00:05:56.060 Now we can add in more songs. 00:05:56.080 --> 00:05:57.660 We've been starting up conversations 00:05:57.690 --> 00:06:02.260 with the teams and musicians about what the expanded soundtrack should sound like 00:06:02.280 --> 00:06:04.700 as well as remind them of what they've done in the past. 00:06:04.720 --> 00:06:06.660 So far, since it really has been a while 00:06:06.690 --> 00:06:10.380 since they first made the songs, we're using general reaction. 00:06:10.410 --> 00:06:13.820 I call it Artist Dissatisfaction Syndrome. 00:06:13.850 --> 00:06:16.060 (Just coined that.) They hear their own work 00:06:16.090 --> 00:06:21.080 from years and years ago and want to redo them with their new skills and tools or 00:06:21.100 --> 00:06:23.820 they'll just go "yeah, that's an undeniable bop". 00:06:23.840 --> 00:06:24.900 Over. On the YouTube side, 00:06:24.920 --> 00:06:29.460 we recently uploaded a video called Making Our Own RPG Combat Formula. 00:06:29.480 --> 00:06:31.300 The initial idea of the video was 00:06:31.320 --> 00:06:35.180 concepted for a while, but from start to finish, it took about a month to make. 00:06:35.200 --> 00:06:36.860 We first started with writing the script, 00:06:36.890 --> 00:06:40.580 which took quite a bit of time considering the complexity of the topic. 00:06:40.600 --> 00:06:43.220 After that side, did the voice recording 00:06:43.250 --> 00:06:46.700 with Yotes and I being the directors, so to speak. 00:06:46.730 --> 00:06:49.540 I know when I was recording my lines 00:06:49.570 --> 00:06:53.940 there were many times where we had to go back and rerecord it because I sounded 00:06:53.970 --> 00:06:59.660 like a teacher or I sounded like I was tired and we had to come up with these 00:06:59.690 --> 00:07:03.260 little tactics to try to get me in a more casual mood. 00:07:03.290 --> 00:07:06.860 And eventually it is what you see today. 00:07:06.890 --> 00:07:09.300 I still see areas where I can prove, 00:07:09.330 --> 00:07:12.540 but it is way better than the first takes of it. 00:07:12.570 --> 00:07:15.900 I kind of wish we recorded those takes so we could show people, 00:07:15.920 --> 00:07:20.100 but when recording these lines, I actually use something called FL Studio. 00:07:20.130 --> 00:07:24.220 It's somewhat of a common program, but on a Mac, it sucks. 00:07:24.250 --> 00:07:26.700 I would not use FL Studio. On a Mac. 00:07:26.730 --> 00:07:29.740 It absorbs one whole screen and you can't 00:07:29.770 --> 00:07:33.180 move it around and all the UI is like all squished. 00:07:33.210 --> 00:07:35.420 I don't like it. Use Audacity. 00:07:35.440 --> 00:07:36.700 Do you want to record audio? 00:07:36.730 --> 00:07:37.980 Use Audacity. 00:07:38.010 --> 00:07:39.820 Once the voice recordings were done, 00:07:39.850 --> 00:07:42.340 it took about another two weeks to edit the video. 00:07:42.360 --> 00:07:44.760 It was tricky making the video because I 00:07:44.790 --> 00:07:49.380 needed to make visuals to reinforce the audio to a user who doesn't know 00:07:49.410 --> 00:07:52.820 anything about the topic can fully understand it. 00:07:52.850 --> 00:07:54.700 Also, while editing the video, 00:07:54.730 --> 00:08:00.260 we had to rewrite and rerecord several parts, so the video flowed very smoothly. 00:08:00.290 --> 00:08:04.980 I also held a stream about how the video was made, so if you want more information 00:08:05.010 --> 00:08:10.220 and the details on the entire video editing process, you can check the VOD 00:08:10.250 --> 00:08:16.500 over at my personal streaming channel over at Twitch TV/confidentcow if there's 00:08:16.530 --> 00:08:19.260 interest, I might do more streams on video editing. 00:08:19.280 --> 00:08:22.300 After making this video, we're starting to get the hang of the workflow. 00:08:22.320 --> 00:08:24.900 In the future, we plan on turning out videos more quickly. 00:08:24.920 --> 00:08:28.580 There's already tons of ideas and video series types in the works. 00:08:28.600 --> 00:08:32.700 Now I know it's a darn shame, but we've had to cancel convention plans. 00:08:32.730 --> 00:08:34.720 Last minute we were intending to make 00:08:34.750 --> 00:08:38.740 an appearance at Magfest in January and even Babscon next April. 00:08:38.770 --> 00:08:42.580 We've decided that the budget would be better spent on the game's development 00:08:42.610 --> 00:08:45.380 for now and help buffer us from going over budget. 00:08:45.400 --> 00:08:48.100 There's still an entire art team we need to get together. 00:08:48.120 --> 00:08:50.900 After all, all those pony sparks aren't going to animate themselves. 00:08:50.930 --> 00:08:55.540 I'd rather not do it all alone, and that humble game fund has been ghostly 00:08:55.560 --> 00:08:58.300 silent, so we can't really rely on that working out. 00:08:58.320 --> 00:09:00.180 But instead of dwelling on that, 00:09:00.200 --> 00:09:04.300 just know we're considering a visit to Everfree Northwest again in late 00:09:04.320 --> 00:09:07.780 August, hopefully overlapping nicely with our projected release date. 00:09:07.800 --> 00:09:09.740 It gave a big boost to our Kickstarter. 00:09:09.770 --> 00:09:13.040 So imagine what they could do a completed game, but either way, 00:09:13.060 --> 00:09:16.860 there's lots of development to do between now and ten months from now. 00:09:16.890 --> 00:09:20.040 So for the rest of the year, the main goals are to knock out all 00:09:20.060 --> 00:09:24.260 the core features that would prevent us from creating the game. 00:09:24.290 --> 00:09:27.660 When we get to that point, we should theoretically be able to make 00:09:27.690 --> 00:09:32.500 the game in a very unwanted state, but it would be done. 00:09:32.530 --> 00:09:37.300 And so from that point, we just all have to focus on Polish or 00:09:37.320 --> 00:09:40.540 balancing or just user experience in general. 00:09:40.560 --> 00:09:42.020 So by the end of the year, 00:09:42.050 --> 00:09:46.740 if I complete all those features, which is the goal, then Y Ou will be able 00:09:46.770 --> 00:09:53.700 to build the game, then for 2021, I will spend as much time as possible 00:09:53.730 --> 00:09:58.940 fixing all the battle bugs that are being reported fixing overworld bugs, 00:09:58.970 --> 00:10:03.140 adding little small updates to the overworld that just 00:10:03.170 --> 00:10:06.140 make the experience overall better to play. 00:10:06.170 --> 00:10:08.300 And I intend to get all the accounting, 00:10:08.320 --> 00:10:11.260 planning and organization tasks out of the way. 00:10:11.290 --> 00:10:13.880 So January forward can be focused 00:10:13.910 --> 00:10:19.300 on implementation, art, story revisions, gameplay balance, and map. 00:10:19.320 --> 00:10:23.060 Making. My goal for 2021 is to get more videos out 00:10:23.080 --> 00:10:26.420 there and get into the flow of Biweekly turnarounds on them. 00:10:26.440 --> 00:10:30.740 I will also be working on more UI elements for BGP DX in the future. 00:10:30.760 --> 00:10:34.140 If you have any questions, feel free to comment below or join our community. 00:10:34.170 --> 00:10:36.300 On Discord/Reddit 00:10:36.320 --> 00:10:40.580 Thanks for stopping by and following the development of Battle Gem Ponies. 00:10:40.610 --> 00:10:42.600 Bye now. Bye.