After a week of discussion, hints, chitchatting about both minimal dedicated trimmings and shmups guidelines in general, here comes a slightly improved version of the test demo!

Some of the perceptible changes here:
- the game is much easier overall;
- dropped coins are easier to pick up, with a longer on-screen time, a higher arc and now they follow the scrolling, preventing the next baddies of the same wave to instantly overlap them;
- changed drawing priority between enemy bullets and player's shots, resulting in a much cleaner output;
- hitting the walls and the baddies now produces an alarming metallic friction sound fx;
- fixed a bug about dead+game quitting;
- paths and bullets now continue to move when the player dies, and the panel are recharged (not cleared).

In the end, time comes: XeO3 Test Demo (Alpha1) will be released tomorrow Friday the 13th of June 2008.
The test level has, yeah we'd said before, its own map, one type of baddie only, no pickups, plain (advanceable) shot only, no big bosses, no minor features yet. But the general gameplay is there, and you can play it and contribute to the project, modifying the attack waves and sendign us feedback about how it is, how it's missing and all the rest.

You know, me and Mike are a run-in duo, and a quick session of testing'n'fixing helped to clean up any issue, like shots stopping enemy bullets, obstacling coins, invincible turrets bases and so on. Even though it's far to be the real game, I'm surprised and...yeah proud too, looking how frantic and funny is the gameplay itself! Shooting rows of baddies in order to jump under the coins cascade risking your own shield energy gives you satisfation, yay!

Ok, 24 hours from now...

A seasonal stop usually leaves to make place for a seasonal restart. Mike has decided that the moment has come. We're back on the track.

Well, to be precise, he is back on the track: we'd left the project when it should reach the release of a test suite, in order to let the players'audience adjust the difficulty level. To achieve that, Mike was facing his most frightful demon, in the shape of...yes: attack waves'design. I have to admit, it's a good reason to get a healthy pause.
About me, and strictly my own tasks, after the improvement to the walker sprite, I was blocked by the instances: there is no urge for a 2nd level's boss (which seems to be a harder job too), I still can't do anything useful for the 2nd level's background animation, due to the well known current limitations, we're so far away from the usefulness of a 3rd level's tune...what to do?

So Mike's back, and he quickly achieved some targeted features.
First of all, we had to change the panel's colors, because a most extended use of the videoram color would need a different contrast, because I implemented that colour as the midst luminance one. This change allowed to have a blue shield bar on the left, and a weapons powerbar on the right, which's splitted in two regions: if the player completes his money bag while the powerbar is in the green region, he improves his weapon, and the powerbar fully recharges; if in the red region, the powerbal is refueled only.

And now, for a nasty feature we all have both waited and feared: now the alien baddies shoot at you!
We have 8 slots for enemy bullets, so why don't spread this between turrets and baddies too? Now reaching the end of a level starts to become very difficult, because certain tunnels full of turrets and rows of enemies are now panic!

...till a new beginning, once again, yes.
RealLife© got Mike in the middle, and when it arrives, it arrives and you can do very little to revert.
We're still alive, and we shall finish it! Oh Death take me tonight if I'm speaking sham (ouch).

Meanwhile, I stared at the walkers, and I thought they're crap! So, in a hour free at work, I did few changes in the overall animation, transforming an icy eyeblinking machine in a bully mechanic seeker. Look at the images, on the left the old version, on the right the new one.

167! I fulfilled a whole sprites pack! Hey it's a goal!
Yes, beside adjusting some little refinements and chitchatting about how things have to work, I bagged all the needed in order to have a baddie capable to appear exactly in the dead angle of your eye, making the most with the infamous pods: they now appear from the shadows.

It's a 7 frames further consumption, the blank frame is the last one, #167, which will be used for several other nice features.

Of course, having a filled sprite pack doesn't mean that's will be the final sprites set for the level 1, but now I know I can build up one. To complete a good sprites showcase, I also reversed a couple of baddies, in order to have left-to-right attack waves too.

Ok, what now?
Well, we told you we're pointing to have a test level. This mainly means we only need code about weapon system, and baddies' attack waves. And we're very close to complete all of this!
But hey, wait a moment: why loosing time and gray matter in order to get closer to the player's whises regarding the baddies' habits, instead of allowign the user himself to built insert and play his own enemies'paths?
So, that's how it comes the idea to release a sort of...mmm..XeO3 Test Suite! With this one you will be able to draw your nastiest groups of attacking baddies, then compile the script in order to autoembed into the test level, hence play it! You will watch the stuff, finally, and everybody could contribute to the final version offering his best waves.

Making use of a large approximation in order to have yielding worktimes, we can assume we'll release XeO3 Test Suite (or how the heck it will be called) before xmas 2007. Well, I really hope "a lot before" but let's talk serious and secure. So wait for it, it's coming!

Yes, this should be the very last pickup we would need for the game, and it should be used for the Plain Shot. Mike seems to be very busy in these days, and that means this new sprite still needs Mike's blessing, but I think you can trust me and consider it case closed.

I'm placidly proud of this 6 frames animated stuff, it's not the easiest in the whole world to animate, and it would look cooler on real monitor, where pixels merge and are kneaded in the video display.
Ok now let's Mike finish the whole weapons and pickups system, meantime I could finally help him with the attack waves for our test level's demo release.

I'd drawn a solid hexagonal pickup we probably shall use for momentary invincibility. Our ship can look invincible in a cheap way: it can flash like baddies do when shot, and probably that will be the solution.

The hexagon experience has been a little but tough one, this is what I learned.
I drew a wonderful hexagon with light and shadow effect along the corners. An hexagon is perfect to do on a 320x200 resolution machine. The width/height ratio is 1.6 and we can assume one single pixel has to be similar too in this proportion. Avoiding annoying explications, this means that if you put your pixels in a neat diagonal, you'll get a 30° angle instead of 45°.
If an hexagon is your target, you can place the bisections in vertical. Hence, the hexagon's 60° angle between two bisections now only needs our beautiful "fake" diagonal with a 30° angle with the plane.

Ok the result was nice. Then, I tried to rotate it in 4 frames, changing all the shadows at any frame. Hell, but it would mean I had to rotate by 15° a crappy bunch made in 8x16x4 resolution!
I tried and tried, and must say I obtained a certain outcome, but all the other frames were a bit worse than the "magic" one, and the final result was between mediocre and almost sufficient.
That's because I did that simple "lighthouse" animation (which is not bad in all, Mike suggested me to make it smoother but that means 12 frames...12 frames oh my gosh!).

So this is the first thing I learned. the second is: draw simple animations for elaborate sprites, draw elaborated animations for simple sprites.
Good, on with the Plain Shot pickup now.

Little graphics improvements, combined with fundamental chitchattings about weapons and pickups.

Me and Mike had a decisive Messenger session, in order to reach a practicable solution for the weapons/pickups system, looking forward to a playable test level.
Several things has been refined, but the notable change is that the initial weapons now can be considered as a real 4th weapon which can be enhanced along 6 levels. Plain Shot's levels don't look different while changing level, nor they show progress in bullet's power: when enhanced, Plain Shot increases bullets on the screen, simply. Of course it means we need a new system sprite. One new, or maybe two, if we would have one more for the temporary invincibility.

Two sprites are just gone. In facts, I decided to add one frame to both the side shots pickups, and now their pickups look better.
Another little smoothing has been given to the level1 map. There were too many mines at a certain point, that make the gameplay to be too much claustrophobic. Hence, I dropped some...

Yes. Exactly. Yeah of course. Six. No mistake, six, really. Six months, half a year.
And now? But of course! Yes, a re-re-re-re-re-reprise.

Let's see what's happened during the months passed in silence.
A whole month has been wasted in order to fight against nasty bugs. Every effort has been spent around sprites system, which still has to be considered the pulsating heart of the whole project. In the end of June, the sprites cache has been fixed once forever, allowing Mike to stare at a new task to achieve: the weapons and the whole working pickups system.

First of all, we decided how the weapons would work in the game. Here comes a brief picture of it.
There are 5 enhacements for 3 different weapons (bullets power and frequency will change'em), up/down/rear fire, and a common level 0, at the very beginning. You can "feed" your weapon's level, in order to keep up a decreasing powerbar, and you can advance your weapon once the coinbar is filled. Changing your weapon by collecting the corrensponding pickup will you recompense with a powerbar addon.
Ok, there are some more pickups and subrules, nonetheless by now we're able to talk about the same stuff.

Then, summer has come, and the productive line of XeO3 has been completely lost, in favour of certain speculations about SuperCPU MMC background animations et simila.
In particular, the background animation affair has to be kept as frozen: Mike elaborated some conjectures that may set free background animations level per level, we shall see in the next future. Probably, my beloved temple flame will burn continuously, it will survive! Crossfingering...

On other XeO3 shores, things had moved too. Look, for example, how cool is the new testing demonstration by Russel, to push& forth the ZX Spectrum XeO3 conversion.
It moves 8 softsprites over a big big smooth scrolltext. The global result looks very cool, I was personally pleasured!
Yeah, my opinion is absolutely positive about this, and I persist to believe in a great Sinclair game!

But now it's November, the first rain keeps you in the house and suggest you to analyze the point of our situation.
Although some brand new bugs involving the high level's weapons management, Mike included the whole pickups and weapons system into the main code, and this means another fundamental target has been reached.
Because of this, we decided that it's time to show and let the audience judge the whole circus in action. Mike prepared a test level with the level's buildup I did...yeah exactly, the moment has arrived finally. Wait for a 100% working pickup system, some decent baddies'attack patterns to probe the gameplay balancing and a general downgrading in sprites/weapons variety, and you will play this test level, in order to feedback all your personal opinions.

Point one: come back frequently again by now. Point two: Santa's coming ohohoh!