General
Welcome to the BabySmash! official feedback forum. Do you have an idea? Do you recognize a good idea when you see one? We want to hear from you!
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458 votes
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369 votesplanned ·
Adminshanselman (Admin, babysmash) responded
If I made it so you could record your own, would you have the patience to do all the shapes, colors and letters?
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Discourage "smashing"
Make it only respond if a single key is pressed and not when banging the whole hand on the keyboard.
275 votesplanned ·Good idea, I’ll see if it’s possible to detect multiple keypresses at the same time. What do you want it to do? BUZZ? Big “No!” or Red X?
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internationalization
Support other languages
217 votesplanned ·Do we need more than just internationalizing the Options Dialog? Don’t we need Sounds as well? So language-specific SmashPacks?
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ScreenSaver Mode
be able to have BabySmash listed in the Screen Savers dialogue box.
138 votesplanned ·Working on this…
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122 votes
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Add live webcam support (maybe as screen background?)
My 2-year old loves BabySmash, but she also loves watching herself in the webcam on our laptop. How about combining the two? Maybe the webcam video could be lightened and used as the screen background.
117 votesplanned ·Great idea! I’ll take a look! Like a mirror?
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Play notes from songs on keypress
Rather than random sounds or speech on keypresses, how about an option to play notes from songs? For example, each press would play a note from the melody of a (presumably public domain) song, possibly from a midi file. I've seen a hand-puppet that barks out notes from "old macdonald" and "it's a small world" every time you squeeze its mouth shut. In other words, the user doesn't control the notes, just the tempo. I believe the upcoming game Wii Music also takes a similar approach.
77 votesI love this idea. My son has a guitar that does the same thing. I’ll give it some thought. Feel free to email me midi files of public songs.
At what point would we CHANGE songs?
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Make exit keyboard command more difficult
My 1 yr old played for the first time today and she was out of the app and opening up multiple instances of Windows Media Center in about 5 minutes. Any thought about making the keyboard command to exit the app a little more difficult or involved (i.e., adding additional keys besides just Alt-F4)?
60 votesplanned ·OK, she hit ALT-F4 fast? My concern is that if I make exiting harder that parents won’t be able to get out. ;) (I’ve had this complaint before). However, your point is well taken. What’s a good keystroke? CTRL-SHIFT-ALT-F4?
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Create a version for LINUX!
cross platform is the cool thing to do....
54 votes -
Find the key game
A new mode where a letter (or key) is displayed on the screen (with speech possibly) encouraging the baby to smash that particular key.
Trying to not make it frustrating or annoying to the baby (such that hitting other keys isn't a bad experience) but that there is a rewarding experience for hitting the correct key. My daughter loves the laugh sounds - so maybe provide a cool sound experience when they get the correct key.
51 votes -
48 votes
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Show letters on MouseDown instead of MouseUp
My kid presses the keys and holds them down, waiting for the graphics to display. It isn't until you let go that the images show. This confuses her dearly.
48 votesHm…interesting point. I’m using a global keyboard hook, not a KeyUp event, but I’ll try!
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create a "portable" version
I'd really love a non-installer version I can run off a USB key, so I, uh, I mean Baby can play in places where I don't have permission to install software.
45 votesplanned ·Working on this…
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phonetics instead of text to speech.
instead of the voice to speech use actual phonetic sounds.
44 votesplanned ·Are you saying like “ah” rather than a long “a” in order to encourage reading?
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"Playtime is over" or "Time for baby smash! to sleep"
My 18mo son LOVES baby smash! so much that it's impossible to get him off. Other than just turning off the machine, the only thing that will get him to stop is to convince him that baby smash! has to take a nap.
I think it would be great if there was an animation similar to the closing sequence of Teletubbies (ugh . . . I know) with a sunset and then fade the screen to black [then exit the app.]
Just a thought. Thanks.
37 votes -
multilanguage
enable seeing letters in other languages such as hebrew
35 votes -
allow user selected images as shape backgrounds
allow user to select images to use for shape backgrounds. e.g. I could select pictures of our kids to display back to them as background images.
32 votesplanned ·I like this idea…so instead of gradients, randomly select pictures from a folder?
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disable "Power" and "Sleep" keyboard buttons
My keyboard has Power, Sleep, and Wake Up buttons for the system, and the whole idea of this app is to keep toddlers from being able to do dangerous things like that, can these please be disabled?
28 votesSurprisingly, this is not possible with those exact three buttons. Vista will not allow anyone to prevent the system shutting down. I’ve had to cover these buttons.
UPDATE: I’ve looked into this, and it turns out that you can go into Windows “PowerOptions” and change the option for “When The Power Button is Pressed – Do This” to “Do Nothing.” Maybe if I told the Parent that as the app starts up?
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Connect mouse position to midi
As the mouse moves the tones go up and down the scale. You could use random instrument voices.
28 votes
