Blog Posts

Helicopter Tennis Devlog 2

Build Version 0.5.7

Major updates

• we'll be showing the game at Boston FIG!
• added a control mapper to the options menu
• randomized the starting service player

Minor updates

• added SFX on charging flip shots
• polish on the copter movement sounds

Now to ramble about those updates...

Boston Festival of Indie Games

We'll be showing Helicopter Tennis at the Boston Festival of Indie Games coming this October 15th! We're really excited and don't yet know what to expect. The event is being held in an online format using gather.town which I've never used before and am looking forward to.

Gameplay and Controls

We poured in a lot of care and love into the control scheme of this game - we designed the controls and actions assuming that players are using a gamepad/controller.

However, while we'd love for the game to be played in ideal conditions, we'd much rather have more folks enjoy the game in whatever way best works for them. So we've added a controls remapper in the menu options so that you can remap the controls in whatever way suits you best.

Pretend this is like one of those messages at the start of the game that ask you to please wear headphones while playing the game...if you are able to, we strongly suggest you play this game with a pair of gamepads or controllers!

We've also randomized the player with the starting service at the beginning of each match - so it's not just the red copter starting matches.

Sound and Audio

Our collaborator, Sebastian Gutierrez, continues to produce awesome sound effects wholly from the ether for the game.

For this project, we've been using a custom audio manager script that works with Unity audio components. It gets the job done and between our usual hackneyed implementation and prototype-y sounds there are no (significant) problems...but since working with a professional sound designer, it seems like it may be worth looking into an audio solution for video games. There were more than a few times when we thought to ourselves, "there's gotta be an easier way to do this" while implementing sound effects or trying to figure out exactly what line of code we needed to call the audio from. Something to look forward to for our next project!

Visual Dev

We've been working on some visual development for the game but my lips are sealed for now - I don't want to let the genie out of the bottle prematurely.

Until next time

If this post feels shorter than the last one, it's because we've been caught up with project logistics and life. Also, the holiday season is almost upon us!...bringing myriad events and gatherings with folks that I look forward to.

Sometimes it feels like so much time goes into getting the game out there rather than working on it, but that's just how that cookie crumbles.

Thanks for reading! See you at the Festival or in the next post.