Some villagers. Who are they? What do they do?

Here are some early drawings of the OC villager ponies.  (It does take place in the future, after all.)  I like confetti the best, Personally.  She's friends with pinkie pie and they will get into antics with her.  Except she can use magic too.  (Not that Pinkie Pie can't, but eh)

Still thinking about a belivable setting.

First, I want this game to take place in the near future.  Approximately 10 years or so.

There are several reasons for this.  This way, you can:

Inherit SAA
Help a strugling Ponyville economy
Make it easier to VA OC ponies.
But still meet the Mane 6  as they'll be about 45ish

In short, from a design standpoint, something has to happen to SAA in order to reduce it to nothing, or else tha game will be boring.  Nopony would enjoy a game where you're handed an extremely productive farm right from the get-go, furthermore, how would I explain that?  "Oh yeah,  AJ decided to pursue a fashion carer, here's the farm.  Go help Big Mac.'

That would be terrible and not in character at all.

From what I gather about AJ's character, she:

-Is very prideful and doesn't like to accept help
-Loves her family
-Is very proud of her farm

So, How do you seperate a character from something she loves dearly?

First, I knew you would have to fast forward 10 years or so- this will allow Applebloom to move away, and Granny Smith to pass away, leaving only Applejack & Big Mac to work Sweet Apple Acres.  This way, I have a bit of creative space-no matter how many seasons there are, SAA won't be affected in the long run, nor will AJ and Big Mac.

That was my dilemma.  My initial idea was if the farm were to burn down-  but that sounded very mary-sue, and unlikely to burn down a whole orchard, as ponies can control rain at will.  My second idea was to have Big mac break a leg, or his back, rendering him unable to work.  I did like this idea, as she loves her family, but that would not separate her from the farm, and while this would allow her to hire a new farmhand, he would be entering an already established, working farm.

And then I did some research.  I found a botanical disease, that affects apple trees, that can destroy an orchard in a single day, called Fireblight.

And the only way to get rid of it is to destroy every single affected apple tree down to the root.

At this point, Braeburn shows up with a couple of settler ponies, one of which is you.  (He received a letter from Big Mac)  Applejack can't simply say no to their offer to clear the land, so everypony pitches in to chop wood. They sell it off as firewood, and while not exactly super profitable, it's more than they would get by letting it rot.  After the land-clearing tutorial on tools, Big Mac convinces AJ to offer one of the young settler ponies a job- after a good bit of prodding.  Reluctantly, she bends to her brother's whim, and offer you a job on the farm, at first letting you stay in Granny smith's room, but after your first year they build you a small house.

In a nutshell.  If somepony stumbles past this blog, what do ya'll think?  I ought to go to ponychan and post it there.

Generic Design

As the notebook evolves, so will the design of this blog.  I have no intention of keeping it so ugly, but I also need to be focusing my efforts on working towards the game itself rather than making my site prettyful.

What I'm hoping to achieve with this blog, and what I'm doing.

First and foremost, I am nudemanonbike, the sole developer of this game, if you can call it that, at this point.  I've been working out what I want to do in it by writing everything down I'd like, from storyline, to characters, to game mechanics in a composition notebook.  I've got mostly everything panned out, and I've began playing with Game Maker to see if i can get it to work for this project.  I have a feeling it will be able to; While it won't be the prettiest, it will have the ability to deliver a rich, Harvest Moon experience to the player, which is all it needs to do.

I currently lack a lot of things in this project- everything is on paper, nothing is actually tangible.  However, I'm going to do as much as I possibly can before I ask for any help, seeing as this project is still very small in the grand scheme of things.  I imagine I'll be able to get about 60% of it done, which is still playable, before I need help.

Now, with this blog, I hope to achieve a open notebook- that is, I'll post in-depth bios of characters with a cleaned up sketch of them, and info on game mechanics with screenshots as they're implemented, in order to avoid getting anyone's hopes up.  I honestly expect no comments, but if I do receive any feedback, I'll take it to heart.