Today I have a lot of outside playtesting planned. I’m having some gracious volunteers come by the “studio” and we’ll be duking it out Whirlygig style. Hopefully we can tease any bugs out of the code and I can get them patched up before I submit to the contest, hopefully Thursday. Before Thursday I also need to make a video trailer, which I will be posting here.

One thing I’ve seen some developers ask about on the forums is creative: sound and art. My own background is in graphic design and marketing. Game design and development were things I took up as a hobby after I had a successful career. So, throughout the development process of Whirlygig, I did all of the artwork myself. This is great if you have those talents and no deadline. For me it has been a struggle to accomplish all game design, art and programming while  working against a deadline. Especially since I have a career and family. I did approach several graphic designer friends but nobody was interested in seeing their work in a game (probably because I didn’t have any finances to offer).

But while I was able to create and integrate the artwork into the game myself, I had no source for music or sound effects. I did a lot of Google footwork for royalty-free and affordable music and sound before I found stuff that would fit into my meager project budget. I did some editing work to get sound with the free program Audacity and a $120 USB condenser mic that I picked up awhile ago. While searching for music I ran across Incompetech, a website with royalty-free music by Kevin MacLeod. While his published work wasn’t exactly what I had in mind for the game when I set out, it was very professional quality and really grew on me once I integrated it into the game.

I hope that I can work with Kevin in the future on projects that actually have a budget as I really like his style.