#bronydev

Hello, Ludric Here!

We've hit production for our project! It's time to stop theory designing and to start actually building the thing! Here's what we can say about what's happening next.

In the coming months you will see some screenshots and videos from us as we produce another vertical portion of the game! Things are going to be hard this time around though due to a number of reasons. Mainly that we all are busy with a lot of other things in our personal lives. some of us have full time jobs and the rest of us are still students! I'm a graduating senior so most of my time will be spent doing my portfolio. This won't effect your experience though with the game play experience though. I say this so that you know whats going on in the background a little bit.

I can't tell you the specifics of what we're going to do in this new version of the game but I can say that from a development standpoint, we completely redid our system to match the feedback given to us from friends, family and all of you who are watching us! We're more confident now than we were before that we'll be delivering something that will build on the prototype we released.

We discussed numerous possibilities with the game as well as this team of friends - which has grown a lot sense Everfree! So during the development of this game there might be some surprises you may see from us along with those screenshots.

Tentatively, the release plan is to have something of a full fledged demo out by April. It's a very tall order considering that it's during the school year. But we have a few tricks up our sleeves to help us get there!

I ask that you keep your eyes on this website for more updates from me and the rest of the team.

Hello,

This is Ludric. A lot has happened within the past few days that concerns the development of Alicorn Princess Blast. Things have also been changing a bit around The Gaming Colts itself. I'll give you an update on what I can.

First and foremost, Pre production of the game is near complete with a few sections of design to be hammered out and some task tracking and production things to take care of before we are once again in full swing. The reason why we couldn't just continue producing the game is because we had to re-evaluate a lot of choices we made. The goal behind the original prototype was to create just that- a prototype! Because of that we made some pretty wonky choices in our programming (Geldshot still has nightmares sometimes due to 'hacks' he had to make to meet the deadline). This was evident in the prototype itself when we showed it.

So going back into pre production we had to scale our design to fit a game instead of just a level and a boss. I can't tell you much more than that though.

Better UI!

Not as in better looking, but better functioning. One of the pain problems that the prototype has was with it's menus and that was on the count of us using some extra plugins to get the functionality we wanted. In the months since our prototype released, Unity has upgraded their engine with reworked and easier UI scripting meaning we no longer have to rely on said plugin to get the functionality we want. This goes double for Everfree Arcade!

It's 10:00am PST, And the jam is officially over! All participants will begin submitting their entries by emailing them to the Gaming Colts email ([email protected]) with the subject line "CRYSTAL GAMES CHALLENGE: " and the title of your game!

Judging of the games will begin on monday and the results will be announced at Everfree Northwest!

We're glad you all had a great time and we hope to see you again next year.

We'd like to take a second and apologize for the lack of information this year once more. Things inside the gaming colts have been busy as we rapidly work to prepare a project that we want to show at Everfree Northwest! Next year we promise that we will be more specific about our start and end times as well as our submission guidelines and rules!

We received some requests from participants about the rules being set in stone so that there is an easy reference. Ludric had completely forgotten that this is a new site and not the old one (which had the rules posted on it somewhere). Without further ado, here are the rules of the Crystal Games challenge. The challenge, like most jams isn't about what you can do, it's about what you can't. You are free to use what ever you have at your disposal to complete your projects. There are a few things you have to adhere to though:

1. All Projects must have child friendly content

Please no adult content (dialogue, pictures, music etc.). Everfree Northwest is a child/ family friendly convention and we want to follow their rules as closely as possible so that we can continue this. If the game has adult content of any time it will be added to the games archive, but we will not show it at Everfree as to avoid trouble.

2.Any Pre-made Libraries, assets and media must be made available to all contestants.

This is to keep the field even between all participants. speaking of pre-made assets.

3. Give credit where credit is due!

Give credit to any artists or developers whose pre-made assets you use. If the assets you use are licensed, please make sure you credit the original creator and/or have consent to use the asset in question within your project.

With the challenge around the corner we should take some time to clear some things up. There have been rumors floating around that we haven't had the time to address due to the project we've been working on as a team. As such lets take the time now to get our facts straight!

When does the Crystal Games Challenge take place?

The challenge begins on the 13th with the announcement of the theme and continues all the way until the 15th. After the 15th Ludric and time along with some other "judges" will begin playing the games. After about a week or two we'll make our calls and like last year tall who the winners of each category are at the Everfree Panel!

Will it be streamed?

A number of News sites have reported that this challenge will be streamed. We're sorry to report that we won't be streaming anything from our end. But all of our participants are more than welcome to stream their efforts. We believe it brings more immersion to those watching~!

If it's a game jam then why are there judges?

This has been a question that we've been asked a bit as well. Traditionally, Game Jams don't really have "judges" per say but there are usually rating systems. The reason why we chose to have judges has to do with the available time slot we have at Everfree Northwest. It only allows us to show three games at the end (Like 2013) This year May be different, but we're unsure as of now.

Any more burning questions?