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...

...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.

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!

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

A short note to reassure you that the project is walking forward day by day, and that soon you'll know about what who where and why.

It's that genre of time in which the mountain moves but you can't spot its movement. Despite of it, trust and have faith.

Really annoying, why this flu captured my nose and my head? That's a real mess, a mess of 38°C unfortunately.

Before the flu manifested, I had the time to build a test level.
The main idea would be: release a working beta of the first level, in order to allow all the people to test the game, in an alternative environment (a different level map), with one type of baddie only, and no mid level or end level bosses. The test level must have a simpler graphics assembling, and different pathways, in order to don't reveal the 1st level's original gameplay

So, all of you, be prepared to test the tangible gameplay, on the level I put below in order to zoom into. It will be around when the pickup/weapons system will be fully implemented, of course.

First of all, THE news: Russell Kay has started talking about a XeO3 version on the Spectrum, and, believe me, listening about a multiplatform release would make me scream:"Any Zzap!64 around where to send our game? Where is one when you need it?". His blog is here, and is now in the XeO3 gateway, I will root for him!

From the coding side, several bugfixes had been performed by Mike: a ghost sprite that occurred when (and where) you collect a coin has been overcome, anda makor bug involving the whole starfield affair will come back no more!
But the main interest goes to the editor: Mike's projects about it are simply inflating more. The first idea was to have a good PC editor in order to manage all-in-one +4 sprites, level graphics and mapping. But with the dread advent of a C64 version, so many useful option has enriched the whole project. Currently, having into the editor all the tools for Spectrum too, is a temptation that a coder can't despise!

So, you could say, Luca's sleeping while the whole XeO3 armada slowly moves to the final achievement. But noooo, of course, on the countrary: I'm so close to finish the sprites for 1st level, 22 sprites left and a whole big boss to invent from zero.
But let me show my waste of the last days'sprites.
I managed to shrink and compress walkers in the little 8x16 area we have, and the result doesn't look so bad! We will swap different walkers level per level, choosing which when and where. Hope I will be able to move them correctly, with no mismatch between animation and scrolling...

Another sprite I needed is the pod, a non-directional baddie of general use, it could be either grouped in menacious attack waves and set it orbiting around the big boss. First, I tried a full moving version of this, with the core ball rotating too, afterward me and Mike thought that the simpler the better. Then, the result.

Ok, what is the best object to make a sprite collide? Yes, caught it: another sprite!
The middle boss has a huge bazooka, and this last toy looks like it can shoot big bullets. And that bullet will be a sprite. I used 7 frames to animate it, 4 frames for the flying trajectory and 3 frames in the shooting itself. A well spend single hour of working, have to say... The animated gif below is a guess, not to take so seriously, but it can let you imagine how it really plays. Hey, something you must see in the game only, right? ;)

A little but neat retouch in the panel. Why don't use much color when you can? Let's enrich the little logo with some more colours, look. Little touches, preparing mind and body to challenge against the big boss'drawing. I'll do it, don't worry, I'll do it!

After so many years, after so many alternating hiccups times of either coding-a-lot and no-coding-at-all, time has come.

When I started this weblog in January, I felt that all the stuff we'd slowly collected had reached a level of general growth that can't be stopped. In the last 7 months we stopped again in the middle, and although this we maximized our "in action" period, setting the guidelines to aim a definitive target. We didn't get fear when we had to perform heavy changes in the graphics, code, gameplay, music.
Today, we feel that the whole project has entered an advanced state, that will take us to an happy end: now, and now only, we're sure about a happy end of the whole enterprise.

We wanna set a milestone, the first of a series, that could make you fill the new era has come. Hence, download the first XeO3 demo!
We don't wanna show too much, because we're at work on most of the code, gfx, music and gameplay; but in my opinion, this first sample will catalyze your attention.
Look at the rightmost column: a "Demos" cell is born! Here we will collect all the demos released before the final version. Currently, it also contains a very early engine, father of the whole stuff!

We strongly suggest you to try it on the original hardware, for a better output in both visual and music.
If you're not able to run the demo on the real Plus/4, you need to set this minimum configuration on latest version of YAPE emulator:
- 64Kbytes, any machine;
- SIDcard emulation at $FD40, new chip 8580, TEDclock.

Download it, run it, watch it, but don't forget to tell us your opinion in the comments area here, or by different ways.