App development in July revolved around my new fantasy soundboard app. During the bulk of the month I worked on sound effects for the app. I made sounds with lettuce, cardboard, cards, coins, shoes, knives, my voice, water, nature, paper and other random items. I also edited various sounds from public domain resources. I used the Go Mic by Samson to record my sounds, and edited those and others in Garageband. I’ve used that mic for years to make sound effects and its been great, although I think I will be upgrading soon. I also used some resources within Garageband like musical instruments and sounds within other sections to make different finished sound effects for the app.

I researched and reminisced various fantasy board games and video games to gather sound effect ideas and make sure that most of the main types of sounds in those segments were included in my app in some form. Throughout development on this app I kept a spreadsheet with the sound categories and specific sounds listed underneath that I planned on being in the app. This spreadsheet along with the sound effects themselves were updated several times. After completing most of the sound effects towards the end of month some sounds were cut and some new ones were added after looking at the app as a well put together fantasy sounds effects collection. I wanted to make sure the app included a wide variety of sounds and not too many of the same ones that basically repeated themselves.

During July I also worked on the visual aspects of the app. I looked around for a font that would fit in well with the app and add a lot to it visually. I narrowed the font choices down to a couple and then quickly decided on one that kept standing out to me. I liked this font the most because it was easy to read in regards to each of the letters being easy to decipher, and overall it had a great medieval fantasy style to it. After deciding on a font I made buttons with a focus on being minimal. I decided to add a slight reflection to the buttons to add a bit more style to them without making them stand out too much. The main focus of this app is to provide high quality sound effects quickly with an easy to use interface wrapped in a modern fantasy aesthetic. An easy to use interface to me isn’t just putting assets in the right areas but also making sure the graphical assets themselves fit in well and form a coherent visual display together.

Towards the end of the month I also made loading screens and the app icon. A day after finishing the app icon I thought it looked kind of dull so I decided to change some of the colors. There were too many neutral colors together which made the icon not stand out like it should. After changing some of the colors the icon looked more invigorating visually overall and the art inside the icon looked sharper.

In August I plan on finishing the fantasy soundboard app and releasing it on Apple, Amazon, & Google Play. I’ve only got a few more things to complete on it and then testing, testing, testing. I’ll probably try to put together a simple trailer and have it ready in time for release as well. I didn’t do a trailer for my last app until after release which kind of made the release not as complete initially as it could and should have been. This soundboard app will be the last new app I plan on releasing this year. After finishing it I’ll be updating a couple of apps on iOS just so I can add some words to the title name. Yeap, it ridiculous, Apple is the only main app store that doesn’t let developers change app titles and metadata without an app/binary update. So in order to change the title of two of my main apps to help them hopefully move up in the search results I’ll have to release a new version of them. The apps themselves are complete in my mind so the updates will just be performance improvements that I can probably squeeze in to shave some time off the meager loading times. After finishing a few more things on my app marketing to-do list work will ramp up on my next startup, which is app related.

Until next time ∞