Author: Gianfranco Berardi

Last time, I reported that I was working on creating an Android build for testers for my second Freshly Squeezed Entertainment project called Clown Alley Creator, a creativity tool about creating your own fun clowns.

Sprints 2024-21: Android port for play testing

Completed:

• Create Android port

At the end of the previous week, I had created an Android port that functioned but that was missing audio. Mostly.

As I suspected, I forgot to update my Android build scripts to deal with some subdirectories I made for Music and Sounds, so once I addressed it, I had sound effects.

But I still had no music. Weird.

My initial investigations told me that my code definitely thinks that the music is playing. It wasn’t a volume issue.

But eventually I looked at the logs and found a line that said that there was, in fact, a problem loading the music file. “Unrecognized audio format” was not the error I was expecting, though.

Most of my sound effects are .wav files, and my music file is also a .wav file. What gives?

Well, it turned out that libSDL2_mixer has a configuration flag that you can use to specify that you want to support .wav music files. My custom-built version does not have it. Oddly, .wav sound effects are supported just fine out of the box.

Do I want it? No, the point of limiting support to .ogg files primarily is that I want as slim a library bundled with my app as possible.

And speaking of slimming things down, that .wav music file? It was 9+ MB! THAT’S HUGE!

So I created a .ogg file instead, which doesn’t even take up 1MB, and music works in my Android build just fine.

I also made sure to use the latest libSDL2 and related libraries, which required a few minor updates in code.

At this point, I want to test things out on my end before releasing it to testers, but I expect to have a build ready for them this week. I’m looking forward to the feedback.

Thanks for reading, and stay curious!

—

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In my previous report, I worked on adding consistency to the visuals as well as providing more options for eyes for my second Freshly Squeezed Entertainment project called Clown Alley Creator, a creativity tool about creating your own fun clowns.

There’s still a lot of polishing to do, but I wanted to focus on getting an Android port ready for playtesters.

Sprints 2024-20: Android port for play testing

Completed:

• Create eye options
• Create Android/iOS/Windows icons

I added some more eye options, thanks to some code I added to take advantage of SDL2’s ability to render sprites flipped, something my code has never had a need to do before. Instead of having left and right eyes that are identical, they are now mirrored, which means I can show eyes that are slanted or that have eyelashes streaked in one direction.

As I head into the final week of March, I’m focused on getting the game ready for playtesters, and the easiest way is to make sure that the Android port functions.

Which means it was time to work on an app icon. I came up with a few options, and I asked a few people for feedback.

And I ultimately went with this one:

My wife says that the colors are inadvertently creepy, and I am very much trying to avoid the ability to make creepy clowns. So what this told me was that I needed to add a wider variety of colors.

Building the Android version worked just fine, thanks to me creating automated build scripts for previous projects. I found, however, that there was no music and almost no sound effects, which probably means that I forgot to include them in the final Android build and it should be an easy fix for this week.

I expect to have the first Android build available for testers in the coming week.

Thanks for reading, and stay curious!

—

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Last time, I reported that I was continuing the work of finishing my second Freshly Squeezed Entertainment project called Clown Alley Creator, a creativity tool about creating your own fun clowns.

Some efforts of polish are relatively easy, but others take a bit more work.

Sprints 2024-19: Polishing/Finishing

Completed:

• Options Screen mute buttons should match in-game buttons
• When no clowns exist in gallery, show text and arrow pointing to New button so player is guided towards what to do

I’m definitely in the final phases of this project, as I am either addressing things I’ve already identified or I am playing the game to discover what to address next.

Long ago I created a simple options menu accessible from the main menu. It allowed the player to toggle music and sound effects audio using buttons that had text that said what they were.

In the game itself, however, I created a modal menu with different buttons based on icons. It would be nice if those buttons matched in the options menu.

Now they do:

Now you might notice that this screen does not have a background image. It is one of those “I’ll get around to it later” kinds of things that I soon need to address because, well, it’s later.

I wanted to give new players some guidance. Upon starting a game, you will enter the gallery. When there are clowns already created, you’ll see them all here. However, when starting a brand new game, you’ll find that the gallery of clowns will be empty. The first thing to do is create a clown, which might not be obvious to know to do nor how to get started doing so.

So I made a very obvious animated arrow pointing at the New Clown button:

Maybe I can try to make it more circus-y, but it works for now.

Meanwhile, I realized that I still need to create more options to customize your clowns, so I created a few variations on eyes that include eyelashes.

One thing I realized, though, is that I need to add some code to handle rendering eyes so that the left eye and the right eye are mirrors of each other. Right now, I just render the same sprite on the left and right, which works when the eye sprite is identical on both sides.

But if I want to have flared eyelashes or otherwise have eye shapes that aren’t perfectly symmetrical, I will need to render the right eye as a flipped version of the left eye. It isn’t something my existing code framework does, but since it is based on top of SDL2, which does support it, it should be quick to add. I ended the week working on part of that effort, and I expect to finish it early this week.

Thanks for reading, and stay curious!

—

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In my previous report, I reported that I had pretty much finished all of the major work and was starting to see that what was left to do was primarily about finishing touches for my second Freshly Squeezed Entertainment project called Clown Alley Creator, a creativity tool about creating your own fun clowns.

I’ve been a lot less productive in the last couple of weeks, partly due to dealing with terrible legislation getting passed in Iowa, but I’m still working on finishing the project.

Sprints 2024-17 and 2024-18: Polishing/Finishing

Completed:

• Defect: clown preview stays on screen while transitioning away
• Main Menu button should look like text is baked on instead of separated
• Call to Action button needs a visible button

Managing a project means needing to prioritize what to work on, even when something seems like a no-brainer to address, even when it seems like an easy enough thing to fix. I like to fix most problems as soon as I notice them because long-standing bugs tend to fester. Yet, sometimes I make a judgment call that some issues can stick around until I’m ready to deal with them.

For example, when you try to exit the Creator Mode, you are transitioned away to an exit confirmation menu. Basically, are you sure you want to stop creating the clown you were working on?

The clown preview stays on screen while the menus are transitioning, and it looks…off. It looks wrong. It makes the game feel amateurish.

I’ve seen it multiple times over the last couple of months, but I never addressed it until now. Why?

After all, I could immediately see that I could handle the rendering of the clown preview differently. Maybe it should be offset the same as the menu offset, so it looks like it is sliding away with the menu? That might be only a couple of lines of straightforward code.

But I left it because much of the initial work involved placeholder art, which was already going to be replaced. Maybe I would want to handle menu transitions differently by then?

In fact, I got rid of the transition entirely. I now have modal dialog pop up, which removes the need for a transition, which means there is no “wrong” looking graphical flicker anymore. Problem solved, and in a way that means I don’t need to replace the background art for the confirmation menu, either.

Anyway, I also made the main menu look more consistent with the rest of the game, mainly by changing the buttons from being just images with text labels that are completely independent (and so seem to float even when the button is depressed) to parented widgets that make it look like a single object on the screen.

These are minor cosmetic changes, but they definitely make a difference.

Thanks for reading, and stay curious!

—

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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!

—

Want to learn about future Freshly Squeezed games I am creating? Sign up for the GBGames Curiosities newsletter, and download the full color Player’s Guides to my existing and future games for free!

In my last report, I had stopped working on hairstyles and started working on updating and creating make-up options for my second Freshly Squeezed Entertainment project called Clown Alley Creator, a creativity tool about creating your own fun clowns.

I spent quite a bit of time either creating or researching make-up options for clowns.

Sprint 2024-15: More make-up!

In Progress:

• Create make-up options

I replaced the placeholder smile and frown make-up options with a few variations that I think look a lot better.

Now I could create endless minor tweaks and variations on these mouths, and from what I could find, real clowns do have a wide variety of just mouth make-up, but I do want to make sure I address other kinds of make-up.

So I made an option for simple round cheek blush:

You can see I also added a smaller mouth.

It’s not bad, but I also know some people blend the blush, so I tried to make a blended variation, and I was surprised how much it hurts my eyes to look at!

See? Or, better yet, don’t! It’s kind of annoying. Some kind of optical effect between the bright, saturated colors and the blending makes it feel like it is fighting with your eyes. Does anyone reading this know what this effect might be called?

So I ended the week trying to find ways to address it, and while I think blending it even more helped a lot, I do wonder if there is something else I could try.

Anyway, now that I am getting rid of the placeholder art, I am pleased that the make-up layering is working out so well. Here is a clown that has buckteeth on top of a frown and with rosy cheeks:

I will say that researching clown make-up on the Internet is challenging, partly because there are a lot of tutorials and imagery out there for scary clowns or Halloween costumes. I have found better luck by specifying Ringling Bros or major organizations such as the International Clown Hall of Fame and Research Center (which I hope to visit soon!) or Clowns of America International.

Thanks for reading, and stay curious!

—

Want to learn about future Freshly Squeezed games I am creating? Sign up for the GBGames Curiosities newsletter, and download the full color Player’s Guides to my existing and future games for free!

Last time, I reported that I had finished creating nose options and had started on creating new hairstyles for my second Freshly Squeezed Entertainment project called Clown Alley Creator, a creativity tool about creating your own fun clowns.

Sprint 2024-14: More hairstyles

Completed:

• Create hair options

In Progress:

• Create make-up options

I continued working on hairstyles. Drawing hair is kinda hard.

But I think I did a decent job:

I have ideas for more clown hairstyles, but I wanted to move onto make-up. I started out by replacing the smile.

It originally looked like this:

But now smile make-up looks like:

It’s…well, frankly, it’s a work in progress. I know I want some shading, but even then, this art is not making me smile, and I want another crack at it.

So this coming week I will focus on updating the existing make-up options.

Thanks for reading, and stay curious!

—

Want to learn about future Freshly Squeezed games I am creating? Sign up for the GBGames Curiosities newsletter, and download the full color Player’s Guides to my existing and future games for free!

In my previous report, I added the ability to name your clowns and started work on providing more production-ready nose options for my second Freshly Squeezed Entertainment project called Clown Alley Creator, a creativity tool about creating your own fun clowns.

I finished adding noses and started on hair options this past week.

Sprint 2024-13: More noses and more hairstyles

Completed:

• Create nose options

In Progress:

• Create hair options

In this project, you can choose to customize your clown’s nose, hairstyle, and more. I was using placeholder art and options up until two weeks ago.

I’m quite happy with how the noses turned out, especially once I added shading, and now that I’ve worked on changing the placeholder hairstyles so that they are production-ready, the game overall looks and feels so much better.

I just wish I could also do the same with make-up, eyes, and more at the same time, because otherwise it feels like part of the game is more done than the other.

I like the idea of planning my work such that the game is always “done” at any given point, but now I am doing the work in a way that feels uneven. I’m not quite sure if there is a better way to plan the work of adding the production version and variety of options for a given type of customization. Working in a way that I would add a nose option, then a hairstyle, then an eye, etc seems weird.

Anyway, I’m fairly pleased with how the hairstyles are turning out. So far each hairstyle has two variations. One allows for a secondary highlight of color, and the other variation is what I have now learned is called “split-dye” and reminds me that sometimes game design really livens up your browser search history.

Having production noses and hairstyles, the clowns are looking much better, but I can’t wait to work on the make-up to make it more cohesive.

Thanks for reading, and stay curious!

—

Want to learn about future Freshly Squeezed games I am creating? Sign up for the GBGames Curiosities newsletter, and download the full color Player’s Guides to my existing and future games for free!

Last time, I reported that I had added an options menu with audio toggles and a menu for choosing custom eyes in my second Freshly Squeezed Entertainment project called Clown Alley Creator, a creativity tool about creating your own fun clowns.

I continued adding new features this past week.

Sprint 2024-12: Name Your Clowns

Completed:

• Allow player to name clown
• Update navigation buttons

In Progress:

• Create nose options

Up until now, each clown was identified merely by a number, and when you looked at a particular clown up close, that’s what you would have seen:

Today, if you go to add a clown to your clown alley, you get prompted to name the clown first:

If you don’t, you get told you should:

And finally, when you view your clown, you see that clown’s name:

When I first started working on this project, I had envisioned a set of navigation buttons at the bottom of the creator mode, but it was premature, and some of the features they represented got cut.

I finally got around to removing and updating the buttons:

If I get to it, I would also like to add a button for hats and accessories, but we’ll see in a few weeks or months how things are going.

Finally, I ended the week by updating the existing four nose options and creating a bunch more, which required adding navigation for submenu pages.

Some of the noses are a bit more textured and sparkly:

I’m not quite finished creating the various noses, plus I’d like to add some shadows to the existing ones.

Still, I am at the point in the project where much of the feature work is done, and so I am focusing on adding more and more options for each of the submenus in order to provide players plenty of ways to make their own clowns.

Thanks for reading, and stay curious!

—

Want to learn about future Freshly Squeezed games I am creating? Sign up for the GBGames Curiosities newsletter, and download the full color Player’s Guides to my existing and future games for free!

In my last report, I worked on audio sound effects and music in my second Freshly Squeezed Entertainment project called Clown Alley Creator, a creativity tool about creating your own fun clowns.

Since then, I’ve added an options menu and a few more customization options for the clowns you can create.

Sprint 2024-11: Options Menu

Completed:

• Create gear icon for options menu
• Allow player to mute SFX and music separately
• Allow player to choose skin color for clown
• Create eye options

I started the week working on adding the ability to mute and unmute music and sound effects from within the game, which is why the theme for this sprint was “Options Menu” instead of skin color and eyes, which ended up taking up the larger amount of time and effort.

There were already buttons to toggle audio from the main menu, but the player may want to do so while the game is running, so I created the gear icon and created a modal that pops up over the top of everything.

Then I decided it was time to work on clown skin colors. So far the default was that you were creating a white face clown, but not all clowns have white make-up for a face.

For now, I just used the sample colors I’ve been using for everything else, which aren’t very realistic skin colors or even realistic clown make-up colors, but I’ll work on adding those skin tones and such later.

I also wanted to give the player options for eyes. The neat thing is that, assuming my math is correct, now it is possible to create over 9 billion unique clown faces with just the few options currently available! That’s a lot of creativity potential!

And of course, over the next few months, I’ll be adding more and more variety to each menu, so you’ll be able to create your favorite clowns with just the right noses, make-up, and hair styles.

Thanks for reading, and stay curious!

—

Want to learn about future Freshly Squeezed games I am creating? Sign up for the GBGames Curiosities newsletter, and download the full color Player’s Guides to my existing and future games for free!