New animations, a new stadium, and a smoother game

I've been spending a lot of time under the hood of Snooker Rivals lately, so I thought I'd share a proper look at what I've been working on. Some of it is easy to spot in the screenshots. Some of it is the less glamorous work that hopefully means you can get through a frame without thinking about your phone, the controls or a strange rules decision.

I want to build the best community snooker game I can. For me, that means a table that feels good to play on, but also somewhere you want to come back to, have a chat and find another frame. This latest batch of work touches a bit of all of that.

A complete animation rework

The animation system has had a complete rework. It gives the game 50 times as many animated shot variations as before, with much more room for the player to adapt to different positions around the table.

Snooker puts you in some awkward positions, especially when you're reaching across the cloth or playing near a cushion. I've been spending a lot of time on how the character gets into those shots. The screenshot below is a peek at that work, rig controls and all. There are plenty of fiddly details here, but it's satisfying when a stance starts to look right.

A new place to play

I've also been building a new competition stadium, with a crowd and new ambient sounds to give the room more life. I want it to capture a little of that feeling of settling in to watch a proper match, then stepping up to play your own shot.

The table has a new cloth material too. You spend most of a frame looking at it, so it's one of those things I keep coming back to. The stadium screenshot at the top shows how the table and the new surroundings are coming together.

Making your player your own

Character customisation has been another big chunk of the work. You'll be able to choose your clothes, hair, eyes, ears and other details, so the person standing at the table feels more like your player.

The image below shows the character base I've been working from. It's an early look at the model rather than the finished selection screen, but it's the starting point for all those choices. I'm also working on custom cosmetic cues, so you can give your cue a look of its own. Those are appearance choices; I want the snooker to come down to how you play.

The little things you hear and feel

I've added more ball sound variations to the procedural sound engine. Hearing the same contact over and over can get noticeable during a long frame, so I'm giving it more variety alongside the new crowd and room ambience.

Touching-ball logic has had more attention as well. These situations can be surprisingly awkward to get right, and I want you to be able to trust what the game is telling you when the white is touching another ball. Please keep sending those specific shot reports when something feels off. They help a lot.

Getting more out of your device

A lot of the recent work has been performance reworks. On the devices I've been testing, I've seen improvements of up to 70%. The gains vary by device, but it's been encouraging to see how much room there was to make things run better.

I've also been improving low-latency handling on mobile, with the aim of making the game respond more promptly while you're lining up and playing a shot. This matters a lot to me. Snooker Rivals started because we wanted to play together across different phones, and I want that experience to keep getting better.

Looking ahead to ranked play

Further ahead, we'll be spending time looking at ranked play. I'd love to give people more ways to find a good competitive frame and follow their progress. There's still work to do on what that should look like, and I want to hear what you'd enjoy from it.

For now, I'm going to keep working through the details and listening to the people playing. Thanks for every bug report, suggestion and frame you've put into this little game. Seeing a community grow around it is what keeps me wanting to make it better.

For now, give it a go and let me know what you think. If you'd like to share feedback or follow along, join us on Discord.