Both me and Mike had been tired this week, that's why the project had a certain slowdown.

Anyway, I completed the whole level 1 graphics, adding another little animated element, and using the left chars in order to have some 1char stuff to play with, and a couple of chars I'll use in the big tubes'overlapping. Also, thanks to the glass pipe's joint animation, 2char and 7frames, I had been able to close a 64 chars big (512 bytes) level's animation set, as we plained before

Time to have a fully working level 1 map now!

Nothing to point out in the last days. Mike is on the editor and the main program's features, and Luca has to complete the charset (9 chars left!) with something, probably pipes elements.
To say the truth, I would head to a 512 bytes animation set, that means 64 characters. I just used 50 of them, then I still could capitalise those 14 left. So, I might use some of those 9 characters left in the level charset, in order to have a last little animation.
Apropos, lemme show you some lighting orbs, and, finally, the crumbled turret we'd chosen.

This time, we have less news than the past days, but the enthusiasm is exactly the same, don't worry!

I wondered about some mine dropper baddies: they should fly around, dropping some 1 char mines when they cross over blank spaces.
Mike created the 8 frames animation for the mine we will use, and I simply ported from his specimen, with little retouching.

But the snag can hide everywhere, most of all in the simpler smaller harmless things.
Once the turrets'animation had been achieved, I had to draw a simple 2x1 crumbled turret. Yeah, you got it, we want to have a residual obstacle after a turret has been destroyed, though you still need to shoot at it in order to clean your pathway. The 2x1 stuff must depict....well, rubble, simply rubble. That means, it seems to be a somewhat easy aim to reach, doesn't seem so?
Theory is fluff. I tried to nobble Mike's approval drawing several 2x1 crumbled turret's rubble graphics, failing all the times: unfortunately, no one of these solutions had been able to satisfy his taste. The last words I had from him sound like:"I'll show you what I meant".
So, let me show you some of the discarded crumbled turrets.

Once this difficulty will be overtaked, I'll only have few chars to assign to either animation or backdrop elements, then build up the map, so that level 1 will be marked as "done".

Some genres of news can't communicate their intrinsic importance. This is one of those cases.

After the powerful boost achieved by the graphics engine, we felt a healthy incentive in reach a good point for the level's build up.
So, finally we dropped the old level 1 charset, implementing in place of it the beta version of the actual graphics, only missing of the last few backdrop elements. Obviously, I had to build up a quick level's map in order to let the graphics scroll, so I spent a sunday afternoon composing backgrounds; now, we have a 40% long early specimen of the graphics I'll use in the real 1st level.

Once solved a little bug involving lateral shots, and stopped bullets when they touch a graphic element, Mike is now on the turrets stuff: they have to shoot, rotate, and leave some 2x1 crumbles when hit.  That's the reason why tonight I had been active in drawing and animating them. You can see what I obtained: a couple of up and down 5 frames rotating 2x2 turrets.

The following images will give you an idea of how the new level will look. You can notice the "club" shaped turrets that we will probably discard.

In every project, we may detect a rare magic point, during which time the destiny of the project itself is determined. It happens several times, this moment extends in a very short but golden time, few dozen minutes only.
Well, probably Mike experienced something very similar, today.

The question is: why getting busy in sprite managing, when actually the target sprite is not overlapping other than the empty space? Why don't let the sprite routine check for special cases, in order to save precious cpu time when the sprite doesn't need to be manipulated cause the background under it? We have to consider that a sprite flies in the empty space for the bigger slice of its own flight path, and that means you can move more that 7 sprites with no slowdown, if almost one of them is not undergoing a disadvantageous circumstance.

Lemme show the actual screen in the current beta:

You are watching to a real world record on our beloved +4: 10 fully masked sprites moving around at good framerate, with SID music and 21 chars high scrolling background. Be honest: have you ever seen something similar on a +4?
When the deep space begins to spread on the screen, the biggest hordes come out from their hoards! Then, we only have to modulate baddies'waves and background's fillup, in order to obtain a furious battlefield to play with.

This important result needs some changes in the level graphics supply, like a little reduction for the available chars. Due to this complex change, we used the occasion to come to an understanding about some dedicated placements in the level's charset. But we also took some important decisions about level's item: 2x2 turrets are in, and I must draw something in order to display hit turrets too; 3x2 bins had been totally removed, if we'll have bins that open and set free some baddies, they will be 2x2 and sprites in turn. All the little animation that have to be displayed, is located outside the charset, where they will be copied from.

Heyhey, I said that we'd lost some chars to make space for the new sprites, but in the end I have a bit more chars per level, due to the new project's guidelines! Ok, let's complete the level's graphics, while Mike will work on background's collision.

What about the menhirs'dilemma, did you asked?
Well, Mike was right. Non collidable backdrops are some very cool stuff, unfortunately your +4 literally pukes a 21 chars deep scrolling with 7 software sprites, while music and all the gameplay's rest simultaneously do their jobs. Moreover, we can't spend cpu time masking sprites, and this means: a sprite, while spending time over a non collidable background, becomes a chameleon, merging its margin's colors with the background itself.
At this point, it would better use the last free slice of the charset in 2x2 turrets, little animations and backdrops again.

I said music, so let me spend some further words about this subject.
The main audio output, on which the music is based, is Solder's SIDcard (or Csory's compatible), hence conceived for newSID 8580. Though considered a standard among the sceners, I personally bought the last one years ago (phew!), then this brilliant hardware gem soon became a chimera. Surprisingly, in these days some rumors made us hope for the best to come in the next future, in order to have a new SIDcard source to feed the scene.
If no SIDcard available, then the good old TED: I suggested to Mike about using the great Mconv 1.6 by TLC/CNS, fast, smart and incredibly small ($0400!). The SID sound will be squeezed into TED voices, in a democratic way to play.

As you know, I decided to trash the jingles and tunes I just composed for levels one and two, cause so much time passed. I'll compose fresh ones, but you can click on the blogradio 2.0 icon here, in the right column, in order to listen to both of them.