Ok, must admit: I'm pretty troubled about graphics and levels building up.
There are so many little issues, painful like needles under the skin, and even worse hooked altogether in a dangerous ring-a-ring-o'roses...with needles!

The worst comes from the background animation code theory. I did the 1st level's background move with no special care, and in the end it supports two 2 chars and one 1 char continuous animations (5x turrets up/down, 8x mines), and a series of cascade animations: two 1 char 3x little orbs, two 2 chars 4x orbs and a 2 chars 7x light tube.
I was almost sure I could change these variables level per level. No, instead no, simply no no and no: in the next levels, I must subdue my background animations exactly to those frames and memory locations. Also, at the moment I dunno if another continuous animation can be performed, besides turrets and mines.
Mike told me that background animation issue will be one of the last to be solved. Unfortunately, it jeopardizes my work on graphics and level building up right now, don't force me to write here the sad succession of troubles all interdipendent each other.
Little step after little step, we shall get rid of all them, but we're moving on a pillar's planet: nothing can be taken as definitive.

Anyway, I had my very first attempt in composing the level's map, and have to see, I completed almost 10% with great satisfaction, but wasting 35 3x3 blocks out of 199 available (counting the blank one out).
Also, I spotted a mistake done my me: I was sure to reserve 4 empty chars, but I'd wrongly used the forbidden 4 chars memory where we perform the bullet's masking. Overall, memory is gone. Then I needed to have an empty that shut off the stars in background, hence I had to sacrifice one char too!
Pretty hard, guys! :(

Ok, I'll hang on with the level building up, though I know since now that must keep prepared to change big slices of it, if it will be needed, no tears!
That's how the level's first seconds look like, but I admit it doesn't look as well as the real view on a monitor.

Though I'd been taken by other +4 projects too, I'd manged to finish the 2nd level's graphics charset.

Well the above sentence doesn't tell the full truth.
First of all, I deliberately left out a 4 characters slice, in order to save some when I would need them to solve squared overlapping issues between different elements; if they won't be fully used for this, I'll decide in the very end the final destination for spare ones.
Moreover, I just decided which chars must be animated, but I didn't animate them yet, 'cause the rewriting of main code will tell us if I can have another continuosly animated element, like the burning flame for example, even with turrets and mines. If not, I have to do it periodical, hence I must prevent the player's ship from reaching a deadly unfair blank char (when the flame quenches, that blank char keeps to be energy soaking). As Mike told me: they can just wait now.
Moreover, equally as for the 1st level's building up, several contingencies and unexpected wills may decree the death for a graphic element, and the birth of another one.
Finally, a little new graphic touch has to be fed up with some chars, and I must decide how many and which of them.

Apart of all those facts, I've begun to play with XeO3edit again in order to achieve the best from my new set. And, must say, I prepared a really versatile set of graphics, that let me try so many changes in chars'mixing to achieve several different backgrounds.
And this sounds to me like a sort of "suitable trouble", because I see so many paths toward me... But: less words, let's start instead.

We have to admit it: the deep rewriting of sprites cache system had been a hard blow to the constant flow of developing we'd taken in this lucky project's period.
The whole to-do list written by Mike few days ago, has to be considered as thwarted, until he'll find time patience and mood in order to sit down in front of a monitor and clean it up. The code of course, not the monitor itself. It's a pity, to have this quench of burning in passion exactly in time of big steps. On the other hand, that's a necessary issue, and we can't miss it out.

Again on Mike's to-do list, I'd seen he listed "add loading screen" very soon, and I did read it before, oops.
Anyway, what should I do while Mike decides his own moves? Well, its quite obvious that I can't put my hands on the big bosses, because there's no chance at the moment to decide their buildup technique.

Probably, the best thing to do now is beginning to rewrite the early 2nd level's background graphics. I remember the older version was poor, because I had to force in the boss'graphics too, and those large mohai heads were quite big and expensive. I've just drawn some 4 chars wide columns (but those chars work well by 3 too...), and all the necessary slices to build up little temples. I also resurrected the old turret in order to convert it in a brand new mythological form, with a 4 frames animated 1 char fire on it. Hope that another continuous backgroud animation, in addition to mines, wouldn't be a severe slow down of the whole stuff.

I've written in a list all the elements I wanna have into this level (boulders, diagonal roofs etc...) in order to don't miss any, also I just have an idea about the 2nd level's midboss; then, the new sprites will come, waiting for big boss too. Before all of these, I could get start in squeezing the level's music into the new music format, as I just did for level 1.
Hence, my priorities will be:
- 2nd level's background graphics
- 2nd level's tune
- 2nd level's map buildup
- 2nd level midboss graphics'n'animation
- 2nd level's new sprites

I love this feature! I love it so much, I wanna be the Mike's blog echo and publish the image here too!

Mike is hitting the code again with a target to reach: find spare memory for the second time. In the meantime, he's trying and trying several little solutions here and there. One of those, will cost about 200 bytes and a bit of speed, but that's so cool and useful!
When you hit an enemy, it flashes. Apart of the big improve in player's satisfaction, it looks pretty nice, and allows us in the usage of weak point for larger enemies: the player will know about a possible damage to the enemy when he'll shoot at the weak point, hence a whole slice of changes has been added to the big bosses'build up.
Apropos, I may picture how to roughly draw a big boss for level 1, but at the moment we're deciding how they're done: yes, initially we said:"Chars!", after some time we said "Sprites!", and now...well, we will see.

Ah I wanna tell ya, music has been composed! I can't pillory it yet for several reasons you will know soon, but I could start describing it.
The game will load one music file per level. Mike is deeply persuaded about the needing of let the player starts to play immediately, once the game is loaded. This means, in the available 4 Kbytes for it, I have to squeeze both frontend and level music, without too much loose in quality for both.
Once said, then done. I squeezed in a decent main tune, two jingles for end level and game over (obtained from the main theme itself), and the 1st level tune. The latter is the older 1st level tune you can hear in the radio, converted to the new instruments'set.
Believe me, I had to fight a lot against lack of memory, I had to reduce some instruments'quality and to cut the tune's length. But in the end: success! Soon, you'll listen at all the 4 tunes.