Today I spent a lot of time tweaking the sounds I made yesterday, trying to get the inflection just right. The initial attack sounds were just too relaxed. Making your voice sound like a cartoon beaver is very easy, you just change the pitch. But making it sound exasperated and intense… well, that’s really on you, the talent.
Thus, much of the morning was spent getting into character and acting out the actions themselves. I’m sure if my wife were around I wouldn’t have been able to edit out all the background laughter from the track.
I’ve seen it numerous times as a software developer – the very late addition of a sound library right before launch.
Sure, everyone figured there would be a lot more sound tailoring throughout the process. But like QA, sounds often take a backseat to the latest slate of visual tasks and bugs. We often reason to ourselves, “hey, adding the right sounds will be maybe one afternoon’s work.” In the mean time, we just have the core set of sounds that very little thought and work was put into.
Since I have a little extra time, (unexpectedly) I’ve taken a more serious run at the sounds in Beaver Smash and am very glad I did. I’ve added unique attack sounds to almost every type of beaver and a new yelling sound most will make when blown away by bombs.
By the end of the day, I was satisfied with the general direction, but I can tell I’ll need to do more refining tomorrow.
New App Splash Screen
Like the icon, I’ve gone through several iterations of the splash screen, which appears when the game is loading up for the first time. But today, I finally figured out something I really like that both fits the brand and not-too-intrusively brings in the business logo.
New Beaver Smash Icon
Bri and I worked on this for a surprisingly long time. This is probably the 20th iteration. But now I’m finally at a point I really like it.
I wanted to accomplish a few things with the new version:
- Use an existing beaver and its style from the game
- Have some kind of action or danger represented, but without adding too much complexity
- Accomplish standing out and distinct from most of the color schemes I see in the iOS App Store currently
This icon does all three for me. I’ve even mocked it up against the featured list to see how it might or might not stand out:
Icon Compared with Featured App Icons of April 12th, 2015
Your milage may vary, but I for one am pretty pleased.
Today was mostly spent with the Mrs celebrating our anniversary. But in the evening I did manage to knock out a few bugs while working from my laptop in bed.
Level 9 Bumper for Impossible Mode
I hereby designate today as Chalkboard Day.
Whereas all the other days I’ve had a half dozen or more varied tasks, today I was building each and every chalkboard bumper for Impossible Mode. It has been long, tedious, and boring. But at least it’s done!
Snow in the Antarctica Level
Almost everything I’m doing programmatically now is in the Bug Fixing Department, as it should be. Any new features added at this stage present risk.
Yet I was able to get in a long desired feature with little coding risk: snow in the Antarctica levels. Sure, it’s only a broad particle effect that really had no gameplay bearing. But boy does it make the level cooler. (Uh… pun unintended)
For once, neither programming nor bureaucracy are the potential bottlenecks. This time it might be the icon.
I mentioned revamping this illustration is on my short list in a previous post, but I didn’t think it would be a big thing. Actually, now it’s looking like a several day kind of thing. Bri and I have been working through the week on it and hope to have it done by Monday.
If we do, that might just be the day we submit to Apple as almost everything else is ready to go. (Fingers crossed)
I’m sorry to say I have a family medical event I need to tend to for a couple days, so I’ll be out of action for a moment. But never fear, I’m setting up tomorrow’s post now so as not to break the continuum.
Today officially concludes one full month of blogging daily.
It all started at the end of GDC where I was inspired by one of the last sessions. I decided then and there to up my blogging output to every day. While it seemed crazy at the time, I’m extremely glad I got started doing it.
While I can’t say it has always been easy or that I haven’t backdated once or twice to catch up — I can say it has been much easier than I first thought it would be. There’s almost always something to share for the day and often I find I have to pair it down, if anything.
Let’s see if we can keep this going at least one more month…