Sound

Sound tells a player what happened without looking: the dice landing, a capture, the turn passing. It is never the only way to know.

Ten cues, each with something to see

Cue	What it marks	What the screen shows
A roll	The dice thrown	The dice appear
A roll with nothing to play	No die can be used	“No legal moves”, dimmed dice, the reason
A move	A piece moved	The piece moves; its squares are tinted
A capture	A piece taken	The piece disappears
Castling	King and rook moved together	Both pieces move
A promotion	A pawn became another piece	The chooser, then the new piece
The handoff	The dice pass to the other player	The other side’s name in the headline
A win, a loss or a draw	The game ended	The result, written out

The roll, a move and a capture each have two or three takes, one picked at random, so they do not sound the same every time. Castling plays a move’s sound: it is one action of the turn.

Chosen by ear

The dice, promotion and result cues come from Kenney’s CC0 sound packs. The move and capture sounds are JDSherbert’s, shown with credit on the About screen as the licence asks. Every cue was chosen by listening to the candidates. The result cues are one family of pizzicato stings, so that a win, a loss and a draw sound related but different.

The cue for a roll with nothing to play was added last (#85). It had to sound like bad luck rather than an error, and unlike the loss. It plays half a second after the roll, so that it follows the dice landing instead of covering them.

Heard together, cut short where it matters

The app plays on three players: board, dice and result. A capture and the win it causes are heard together, because they are on different players. A new move on the same player cuts the last one short instead of piling sounds up.

Silence

• Mute. The Settings screen, opened from both menus, turns every cue off, and the choice is remembered. In the game menu Settings is one press of Up away, because the menu wraps.
• In the background. Sound stops when the app leaves the screen, for the launcher, the screensaver or another app, as Amazon’s submission checks require.

Music that follows the danger

The game has adaptive music (#76). The menus have their own theme. Over a game the theme follows the danger to a king, and changes at the start of each turn:

• Calm while neither king can be taken soon.
• Tense when at least a tenth of the rolls would let the side about to roll take the king within its turn.
• Critical when the king is attacked directly, and only the right die is missing.

Against the computer the music follows the danger to your own king. In hotseat, where both players are in the room, it follows the danger to either king. It rises at once and falls one step per turn, so one quiet turn does not drop a tense game to calm. Themes crossfade over two seconds, and a new theme starts from its beginning, as chosen by ear; after a result the music waits, so the jingle is heard on its own.

The Settings screen switches music on or off and sets its volume, apart from the sound effects. Music stops at once when the app leaves the screen.

The four themes are by pepka-prygni, made with Suno and used with his permission: Warm anticipation in the menus, then Clear Space, Tightening Layers and Tense Minor Pulse as the danger grows. A build without them plays no music, and its Settings offer only the sound effects.

What has been heard, and where

The cues have been heard from the Vega Virtual Device through a computer’s speakers, not yet from a television. The tests check that the players pause when the app leaves the screen. On the Virtual Device the app came back from the launcher as it left, but that nothing plays over the launcher is still to be confirmed by ear.

Sources

• native/README.md, “Sound”: the route that plays on Vega, and what the probes found.
• src/core/cues.ts: which cue each step of the game plays, checked against the engine in its tests.
• #85: the empty-roll cue.