My Little Gauntlet

Development blog for a twin-stick hack'n'slash game with ponies

[ponygauntlet]

Oh hey you're alive! That's great. It's wonderful to see this come back to life.

Thanks, Anon! It feels like it's been a lifetime but I really wanted to do this. We gotta work on our projects! This blog is like 12 years old. Even if it's just a dozen levels, I'd like to actually release it. It's been great programming practice too.

[ponygauntlet]

Hi! I stumbled on your sprites today and made a tumblr account to talk to you about them. They are AMAZING!! I downloaded all the character sheets because I have been wanting to make a simple top down pony exploring game for my daughter. I'm extremely curious about the my little gauntlet project. It sounds like a dream, I'd love to play it someday. How is it coming along?

Hello! That's very nice of you to say. Please use the sprites! If you didn't see these, I made these Pixel Ponies as well. You're free to use any of them. There's lots of different manes and tails for some of the sets. Feel free to ask any questions if you're curious how to use them or need anything in particular. https://cloudyhorsegames.itch.io/pixel-ponies The game is going well! There will be a demo by the end of the month. Just showing off the gameplay, collectibles, etc and hopefully a bunch of levels.

If it can manage to get enough attention, I'll keep working on it. Otherwise, I'll move on to the next pony game first. There's never been a better time to make little pony games. What kind of game are you making for your daughter? Will it be mostly exploration?

[ponygauntlet]

I told myself I'd come back to this some day when I was better at programmming, art, sound effects, etc. My Little Gauntlet, my own personal little project from a lifetime ago. It's someday. The first Minimal Viable Product will be one player but the companion AI is good and will control anyone who isn't you. You can freely swap which one you control at the push of a button. Expect a cutesy hack and slash with "one player co-op" with lots of things to find in hand-crafted levels.

[ponygauntlet]

Let's Make Some Games

*blows off dust*

I'm baaaaack! Not that I ever left the fandom. <3 Just back to this site. Do people still use tumblr? Got to document this somewhere. https://cloudyhorsegames.itch.io/my-little-derpys-bubble-puzzle I made a puzzle game! I started some work on an actually My Little Gauntlet game but I'm takingn a detour to do an isometric pegasus racing game! We'll see how well that works as development continues! Expect an arcade-y isometric flying game using some of my old assets mixed with a little bit of my amateur art. Think Mario Kart with the item boxes and battle modes and whatnot but isometric. So a bit like RC Pro-AM on the NES, I suppose? I am in dire financial situations and trying to improve things. I'm going to start begging for money with a ko.fi or something. Let me make pony games! Pennies, nickels, maybe even a whole dollar. The more money I can make the less gig work i have to do (read: doordash) Meanwhile, go look at my Puzzle game! Please consider throwing a dollar or something.

[cutepencilcase]

[Commission] Happy Flights

Commission for ponygauntlet as a gift for Delta Sierra Commission Information: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YxtmxL8I81fiU0ievpizk3Bktv9eN1wj33regnJT1qk/edit?usp=sharing Posted using PostyBirb

[ponygauntlet]

Love this.

[ponygauntlet]

Sorry for the wonky formatting. I wanted it to not be blown up and fuzzy. I suppose tiny is fine. I wanted to finish this 16x16 pony spritesheet working concept I started in my last post. It’s free to use as any base for whatever. Old game mods come to mind.

[ponygauntlet]

We can go smaller! No, just kidding. I’m not going to remake my animation sheet again. Consider this a proof of concept that okay 16x16 pony sprites are do-able. As fine as I am with anthro art, I don’t care to see it in 2D game mods. You can’t tell me it’s not possible.

Ben Ben and Larry are 16x16 with a 2 frame walk step.  Not unlike NES games. Included is a 3 color ‘base’ to show more reasonable what they would look like in an NES mod if you just strip them down.

Twiggles is in a more SNES RPG style: still 16 pixels wide but 20 pixels tall to fit under a 24 pixel height restriction with room for taller sprites. 

This ‘art’ is free to use however you want. Credit is appreciated but not necessary. Play with them, modify them, stick them in things, etc. If you break anything though it’s not my fault.

[ponygauntlet]

Yet another update. All the manes and tails created are compatible with the smaller mare bodies. I guess we could call this version 3.0 of the sprites. There’s a few quirks here and there (eye shines in the wrong place) but most aren’t present in the final resource. Characters and the all assets used to make them (and a bit more, like the stallion base and Mr. Bones) available here: https://imgur.com/a/9g05Z If you want to use them for anything go ahead. I’m going to try to get more focused on My Little Gauntlet in May. This month I’m focusing on some writing stuff.

[ponygauntlet]

Cuter than I imagined. Thank you for taking the commission, GoatTrain!

[ponygauntlet]

Yeah, they’re cuter in the small mare form. Definitely keeping this. Definitely making finishing the game a new year’s resolution too. I’m feeling really good about this now. And keeping the scope of the game in check and within my abilities. Also finally realized “My Little Gauntlet” is a perfectly good title.

[ponygauntlet]

Mr. Bones

[ponygauntlet]

After a discussion with ‘the general, the proposed stallion sprite was deemed not tall enough compared to the mare. I shrunk the mare down as a joke to myself and realized not only did it still work, it looked cuter and gave another pixel of room for manes on top of fixing the height difference. So now I’m tweaking all my sprite assets to use the new mare base... I finished making the new base and I finished Applejack. 

[ponygauntlet]

Cardinal standing directions done for gauntlet game group. It's nice seeing old familiar faces.

Golden Bolt is finished. Third picture is original Urimas Sprite base for comparison. It was just too big and detailed for a casual mspainter like me to use adequately. I like the new base I made. They're deformed in a cute way.

[ponygauntlet]

https://imgur.com/a/1mazL Mane Six, Roseluck, Carrot Top, and Lily are complete. Hair, eye, hat, freckle assets are also listed separately. You are free to use, modify, share and edit these however you like including commercial use. Credit is appreciated but not necessary. 32x32 sprites sheets of the ponies was something I felt we were lacking. Included is a walking cycle, a flying cycle, bipedal standing, right ‘punch’, left ‘punch’, a bucking animation, a closed eye concentration walk (for magic casting), a two-handed overhand swing, a gallop, and a passed out frame. All in eight directions. 

[ponygauntlet]

Making Pinkie Pie was kind of a pink nightmare. Those curls don’t work in 3D and while my favorite little girls’ commercial made in Flash doesn’t care, I kind of do. As a result, she kind of looks more like the old 2 inch Pinkie Pie molded figures from certain directions and I kind of dig that. I suppose Rarity is next then the impossibly large Fluttershy hair. The only other pony I want to make from the show is Derpy. But she would just be a modified Dash. Really, I should make the stallion and foal soon after so I have a more complete base sprite.

It probably comes off as like a waste of time to make sprites of the mane six when my game is going to have four original characters, but I consider it ‘practice’ and it’s kind of like art. And it’s a project in of itself. The whole Gauntlet project is to be as openly reusable by anyone as possible  (as if anyone would find value in something I made) and I feel part of that is having good assets for others to use. A free base is only as useful as how useable it is. If a person has to make everything themselves what’s the point?

[ponygauntlet]

Created a Twilight, Rainbow and Applejack like mane&tail to use with my pony base. Pictured here they have show accurate colors. All are CC0/completely free to use/edit/steal pony sprite resources by me and are still here: http://imgur.com/a/1mazL The colors in the resources have been changed to distance them a little bit but are easily 'fixed’ (I use MS Paint to do so). Also pictured is the current filly and stallion comparison concept. Fluttershy, Rarity and Pinkie Pie are next... and should prove difficult. 

[ponygauntlet]

Well, there’s Lily. I’m absolutely in love with the flower in her hair. I added a temporary dash sprite (full rainbow and plain) of just the standing in eight directions to the imgur dump here: http://imgur.com/a/1mazL. That takes about half the time in making a hair model. The other half is copy pasting and tweaking for the rest of the frames of animation. I think also I distract myself too much with the Internet. I suppose I’ll finish up the mane six and daapi then start on game specific sprites.