Ponyland Logo

I made a logo for Ponyland.

Also made a square one for social media, if I ever get far enough to have some.

Like all things in this project, they're subject to change and improve.

I also updated the blog's theme a bit. Added a polka dot background and did some other minor CSS changes.

Gem Glitz update and one-year retrospect

I renamed Gemswap to Gem Glitz, sounds cuter. Also it'll probably not be in Stella's cottage in its final location. Too fancy. But it'll be in there for now.

Tada! Added in a user interface and made everything look much nicer. It's almost done. Dropping down new gems works, adding points works, mechanically speaking everything works.

I just need to add buttons for "Send score" and "Exit," add a twinkling gem hint if the user hasn't made a selection in a while, add some audio effects, and some sparkly particle effects when a match it made. Basically just make it more exciting to play. I'm also lazy and decided it'll be like the classic untimed Bejeweled and just have a game over when there's no more matches.

It's been one year and one day since I made my first post on this blog. That first post was just three drawings of fruit trees. Since then, so much has been done — a 3D pony that walks around, interactable objects like fruit trees that have their fruits fall and bounce, basically an entire mini-game, the manifestation of a quirky NPC and her cottage, the beginnings of a town called Merryville, a bit of a user interface, an item editor that reads and exports XML, particle effects, the start of an inventory system, and so on.

I'm pretty proud of what I've accomplished. It's been fun. I hope someday I can make a game that others can enjoy playing as much as I enjoy working on it.

Gemswap mini-game

I decided to work on a mini-game. It'll be a match-3, currently called Gemswap. I was trying to think of something that would fit in Stella's cottage, as it will be the first interior I do, but I was coming up blank. I decided match-3 games are decently fun.

A game within a game... but at least this game is much more do-able.

So far what I got working:

• Generates a random board
• The board generated does not have any matches right off the bat
• You can swap the gems around properly

What I'll need to work on:

• Removing matches and adding them to your score
• When a match is removed, the board is filled up again

I'm not sure if I want to do a game where the game is over when a timer runs out, or if I want to do one that ends when there is no more moves. 

After I determine that, I'd need to work on those specific tasks. And once that is complete, I can work on prettier gems, particle effects, a graphical interface, and other fancy stuff.

Item Editor

Haven't been working on any fun art or visual stuff lately. But I am learning how to use WPF to create an item editor.

It was pretty interesting setting this up. It doesn't look super great, but it gets the job done.

The next hard part for me will be to actually sync up the XML file generated by my item editor into Unity. Fingers crossed that it isn't too difficult.

What I want to accomplish:

• Get my items.xml working in Unity
• Get a working scene/game manager
• Create Stella Portabella's cottage interior
• Create one simple mini-game
• And lastly, once I complete all those tasks, maybe work on some networking. Dun dun dun

Trees!

Hehehe, trees!

Inspired by maples, downy birch, and silver birch.

Future tree types: oak, elm, magnolia, and dogwood

So many things.

I like to do things in spurts. So here's some things that have been done lately:

Animations and particle effects! Also notice that little location marker the pony walks to? It's a small thing that needs a bit more work, but... razzle-dazzle.

And transparency when going behind large objects. And some regular trees! And an iron fence. And Stella' cottage!

I figured transparency would be pretty important with a game with a perspective like this. Everything being flat, and with some objects being tall and big, it would be pretty annoying to have your character hidden behind these things. It'd also result in wider level-design, as without transparency you wouldn't be able to see anything behind large objects, so there'd be no use placing objects behind one another.

Some things I'd like to progress on:

•  Interiors, specifically Stella's, since she has story and character, which would make it more interesting to work on. However, with multiple scenes I would need to work on...
• Scene/game managers. Currently I just have this once messy scene that I test everything in. In order to make new scenes right now, I'd need to copy and paste the player and camera into each scene. I should probably make a script that spawns my character automatically in every scene where I want characters to spawn.
• The town of Merryville, where Stella lives. Town name's semi-undecided. Laying out a whole map of what the town looks like would be a good idea, to properly gauge size and playability. This game isn't going to be fast-paced, it's meant to be a chill, fun, pony-filled land. A Ponyland, you could say. But because the ponies move at a rather leisurely pace, I want to make sure the maps are condensed and interesting no matter where you are. I'd rather avoid vast, empty maps. 
• Inventory system would be a great first piece of interface work. But alas, with inventories come XML files and thinking about how things are going to communicate with servers and bleh. Maybe a cute saddlebag inventory icon could be enough to work on for now.

Stella Portabella's Cottage

Done for now. :)

Gotta put it in the game, but I want to design some modular iron fencing to go with it first.

Messing with particles, clovers, and characters.

Alright, so I know I said the shader wasn't made (I'm currently borrowing one my friend made) and I didn't want to show the pony yet, but I made my first particle effect - some falling leaves when you knock on a tree! Seriously, the tree shakes look better in game than in these GIFs.

Check out that clover. :) There's pink clovers, white clovers, three-leafed clovers, and four-leafed clovers.

Some work needs to be done to the particle effect - mainly I need to figure out how to apply them to each individual tree in a nice matter. Right now it's just on this tree, and messes up otherwise.

Here's an upcoming work-in-progress house for a special character, Stella Portabella. She's a bewitchingly sweet pony who is always happy to help those in need:

And while you're here, it might be interesting to see some of the old pony concepts:

My very original plan was to have sprites for walking forwards, sideways, and diagonally. Then I realized that would be a lot of work, coding and art-wise... So I decided that three-quarters view looks the best and I'll just use that for all movements. 

I tried to make a pony that's sweet and chubby, but doesn't stray too far from a real pony. Turns out that's a bit hard to do. Cute things don't usually have long, big noses.

I was heavily inspired by Nicole Gauss's original character designs for My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. Her art is whimsical. 

The next things I feel like working on are finishing up Stella Portabella's cottage, and maybe adding some pathways and more trees. After that, I think I should get an inventory interface up and running - one where you can see item icons and descriptions, and items can be dropped from the inventory.

Updated fruit drops and a mouse cursor.

Lookie here!

Do you see it? The fruits now bounce! I think it's so fun.

The tree also jiggles when you hit it. It's better in the game than in the GIF.

Also see the fancy new mouse cursor? Yes, it turns golden when you can interact with something, and is otherwise purple. The mouse draws a bit of inspiration from "My Little Pony: Friendship Gardens," which was a game I spent much of my childhood playing.

The 3D model is hidden in this GIF, it isn't ready to show just yet.

I'm also in the process of adding clover patches. :-)

To do list:

• Work on the inventory.
  I actually made a bit of progress with this. The inventory has a certain amount of slots, and now it doesn't let you pick up more items than your inventory can hold. And items don't get destroyed even if you don't have the space, hahahaha. Yeah, that was a thing...
• Work on adding the walk animation.
  I do have a walk animation, I just need to put it in and make it work. That'd be very nice to see. Animation is life. But I'd need to fix some things about the pony model, namely the eyes and adding some blink controllers. 
• Shader, seriously.
  Seriously, shader. But that's very hard to me, so I'm scared of it.
• More art. If all else fails, art is my backup. I'm thinking of adding more trees - birch, oak, maple. And also some pathways, like dirt and cobblestone.

Ponies! A small text update

No pictures in this one!

It's been a while. That's not to say that things haven't been worked on. They have, a bit, when I have the time. You know how it is, life and stuff.

Something came up while I was drawing the sprites for the pony's walk. It dawned on me just how much work drawing every... single... frame of the 24 frames for the walk cycle would take. And then I'd have to draw every... single frame for all the possible clothes and hair and everything! And then if I want to add more than a walk cycle animation? Omg! Can you imagine how much time it would take to do all that?

So then I decided to model a 3D pony. Yeah, I have one. It's in the game. I'm not going to show it just yet. I'm too tired to take screenshots.

Most of the stuff I've been doing, besides modeling a 3D pony and animating a walk cycle for it, is fixing everything that broke after making the pony 3D while keeping the environment 2D.

Much of the movement broke and sorting the sprites also broke, because 3D models don't have sprites to sort!

Much of it is fixed now, and I even got a chance to look back at some pretty incomprehensible movement/interaction player code and make it much nicer and cleaner.

And the issue I mentioned last time with the "walking via dragging the mouse and dragging on a selectable object selects the object and stops your movement" issue has been fixed!

As more "easy" things get out of the way, the harder things need to be done. And those usually take more time and dedication.

I'm not sure what to work on next, here's a huge list of things on my mind from easiest to hardest:

• Creating a pretty user interface.
  Honestly, though, there wouldn't be much in it because the only button I really have functioning is an inventory button. I might hold off on this until I get more functionality in the game, to make sure I know what the grand picture will be.
• Creating cottage interiors and more art in general.
  Not very hard, but takes creativity. Which doesn't come super easy. Drawing a lot of props like stoves, chairs, tables, isn't super fun to be honest.
• Adding more things to do.
  Crafting things? "Wearing" things? You know, rudimentary systems that aren't pretty, but have a little function.
• Making a nice shader for the pony.
  Oh dear, I'm not very good at this. I might get some help with this, since writing shaders seems more like magic than programming to be right now. The shader I'm currently using isn't mine, but it looks nice enough for now. I'm hoping to create a shader that almost mimics the art style of the environment, but who knows!

Whew. I enjoy working on this project. :)