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!