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BronyCon was AMAZING. Here is part 1 of my adventures in Baltimore. 

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #33 (BronyCon 2015)

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     Where do I even begin with this? My first convention was an incredible experience that I completely underestimated. Both for indie dev marketing reasons and personal ones. I tried to limit my BronyCon experience summary to just a handful of paragraphs and some carefully selected pictures you can find on my website.

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I don't think I've ever shared this here. This is the Pony Stats Screen. You can check on your customized party here.

[Wishdream]

I don't think I've ever shared this here. This is the Pony Stats Screen. You can check on your customized party here.

I've seen it in the demo and I thought it was pretty unique.

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     Ultra Forms in Battle Gem Ponies seems to need more attention on this blog. Kinda surprised I haven't clearly explained how it currently works on the site yet. I've stated before that it's a temporary effect that works a lot like mega evolution does in Pokemon.


     Basically, there are 18 (currently nameless) stones that can be given to your pony to hold. Each stone represents a pony class (Fire, Water, Surge, etc.) and when held by a pony with a primary class matching the stone, the pony can power up mid-battle and become a more ferocious version of itself.

     Each of the ponies above can use an ultra stone and transform. The only ponies that can't do that are the ones without a class (Neutral ponies) and the 18 different forms of the starter pony. Since it requires an item slot, any pony that only exists because of an item (the starter's alternate forms, for example) can't go ultra.



     Like Mega-Evolution, Ultra Pony stats will change and their classes may change too. For instance, Sweet-Bot's Esper secondary class is replaced with Surge in ultra form, making a Lock-On / Wonder Bolt combo very deadly, as well as give new power to moves like Scatter Bomb. In some situations a class change may end up being unwise, so the player always has to think carefully about when to execute an ultra transformation.



     Only one of your ponies can go ultra per battle since it overcharges your pony's gem. Multiple ponies in your party can have the potential to go ultra if their primary class matches the stone's. So if one gets knocked-out you can have a backup. While ultra, your pony can still switch out and when switched back in, it'll still be in its ultra form.


     Hopefully this adds more excitement to battles and opens opportunities to bring out the big guns and put the match in your favor. Balancing ultra stones with other battle items will be difficult, but should ultimately result in another layer of strategy. Players will have to choose what works better for their team, an ultra pony, multiple ultra candidates, or a powerful item that can prevent a malady. 

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Time to introduce some awesome new ponies! Remember those secret sprites I keep mentioning in DevLogs? These are the finished versions of those. Sure, they'd look better animated, but that won't be for another few months. Right now these guys mostly just exist in text form. I figure that having at least a primary sprite done for each pony will help out tons with seeing the final vision of the game and coming up with info to fill in the blanks on my BGP spreadsheets.

Get some info on the Rainbryte, Frubat, and Malduin ponies here.

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A lot more time was spent in spreadsheets this week. Trying to find out what makes each of the 60 ponies special and how they can all compete with each other in tier-free combat. I also fleshed out the items list for the game and got to pick out some finalized names and mechanics.

Doing all this stuff gets me in a warm and fuzzy gamedev mood. Check out what got done this week!

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     Time for even more pony introductions! Rounding off the naughty/nice balance of last week's post comes this week's cutie pies. Battle Gem Ponies is about mixing the cute with the awesome for spectacular effect. Hopefully the contrast of these guys with ponies like Xenoir and Malduin makes for a balanced cast so all types of people can find a few favorites. 

     All three of the ponies showcased today should be familiar to MLP fans, who can bring their love for those personalities to BGP and see what those types of characters would do in an RPG.

Get info on the new Shyshock, Joyance, and Furum ponies on the main blog.

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     In Battle Gem Ponies you capture the magical essence of a wild pony and keep it inside of something called a Command Gem. You use this Command Gem to transform your pony into whatever pony/stat/moveset combination you want. You have a pony trainer device that holds up to 3 of these Command Gems. The device takes the unique signature of the gem and transfers it to your pony, allowing you to swap through forms as if the device were a TV remote.

     To claim a wild pony's signature for your own pony you'll need to use that same device to scan, copy, then print the signature onto empty Command Gems called Capture Gems. Once a Capture Gem holds a pony's signature, it becomes a Command Gem.

     Capture Gems come in a number of different forms and using the right kind under the right circumstances makes the capture process much easier. Get a list of all the different ones over here.

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     Battle Gem Ponies now has levels that you can travel between. Full maps you can walk around! Judging by what's happened so far, I won't be making that Birthday deadline I wanted for tomorrow. The game is looking good, but the road ahead is still a long one. I cut of an extra 30 mins of sleep time just to get a little bit more work time before I eat breakfast and head to class.

Get some details on this busy week on the official dev blog.