Freshly Squeezed Progress Report: Starting to Finish?

Last time, I reported that I was working on adding and updating make-up options for my second Freshly Squeezed Entertainment project called Clown Alley Creator, a creativity tool about creating your own fun clowns.

I finished creating make-up options (for now) and started working on some polish and finishing touches.

Sprint 2024-16: More make-up!

Completed:

• Create make-up options
• Use better layer icons for make-up
• Show labels for primary and secondary colors

The nature of this project is that I can always keep adding more. More noses, more colors, more hairstyles, more make-up. It can be challenging to know when to stop and move on.

And there are so many different kinds of clown make-up options that I could provide, but three pages of options seems to provide enough variety for the player to mix and match for now.

As you can see, I also updated the layer icon previews so that they are slightly bigger and also show the primary color for that layer.

And after having the ability to pick primary and secondary colors for each option for over a month, I finally added labels to let you know what they are:

I fixed a few issues. The left navigation arrow was fine on non-layered menus, but it was obscured on the layered make-up menu, so I adjusted the placement of everything to make it all fit well.

And I also discovered that I wasn’t resetting the creation mode’s menu to the first menu correctly when you exit and come back, which potentially could result in seeing no options on the menu screen. Luckily it was an easy fix.

At this point, all of the major work is pretty much done. Most of the remaining work is either polishing, porting, and publishing.

The challenge is identifying what specifically needs to be done. Some of what I planned upfront is easy, such as creating an Android port. But some things can’t be figured out until you have a game to playtest and experience. Only then can I see what isn’t working quite right or what could be improved. But as I said, most of the major work is done, and I’ve already uncovered a short list of tasks.

But I’m in the home stretch, and I can’t wait for you to play this game!

Thanks for reading, and stay curious!

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