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Game Design Game Development Geek / Technical

Freshly Squeezed Progress Report: Polish and Tester Feedback

In my last report, I added a neat transition effect for my second Freshly Squeezed Entertainment project called Clown Alley Creator, a creativity tool about creating your own fun clowns.

I kept on adding polish to the effect and started to get feedback from testers this past week.

Sprints 2024-28: Adding pizzazz!

Completed:

  • Create special effects when option changes clown preview
  • Defect: crashes whenever deleting make-up option on any layer

Last week I had a neat curtain closing and opening animation whenever you choose a different option in creator mode.

Clown Alley Creator - curtain animation

But I didn’t like that the curtain looked like it was standing on its own, so I created a nice background to go with it.

Clown Alley Creator - curtains background

Clown Alley Creator - curtain animation with background

I think it helps give the animation some context, but it still feels off to me. I think it is because the curtains and background are just kind of…there? There’s nothing anchoring it to the background.

I have some ideas on how to address it, but in the meantime, a tester discovered a pretty easy-to-reproduce crash bug. Basically, when working in the make-up submenu, which is a layered set of menus, if you select the trash button, it should clear the current layer’s make-up.

And it worked…until I added the curtain transition, in which case after the curtain was done closing, it tried to set the make-up layer to that trash menu option instead of a special NOT SELECTED value, and since there was no actual make-up sprite to render, it crashes.

I’ve fixed this defect and plan to send out another release for my testers soon.

Thanks for reading, and stay curious!

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