The most important tool in the making of XeO3 is the paper, no doubt about.

Ideas about graphics or music pop out from your mind in the most unpredictable occasions, especially when your emulator and your original machine are distant: in the bathtub, at workplace, when driving, on the toilet bowl. The last one, particularly...
In those instances, a paper sheet represents your salvation, either if you are quite good in handdrawing or not. Mine is the second, of course. A chequered notebook can simulate video matrix as well, predicting the 4x8 partition and the global look.

This is exactly the way the new graphics for level 1 began its very first steps, and a piece of paper saved my day.

As you can see, there will be glass balls everywhere, combined with metallic tubes; and platforms versatile enough to be 3 or 4 or 5 chars long, in order to underpin both 3x2 and 2x2 turrets. Apropos, I hope that 3x2 turrets will open and release baddies, instead of shooting around. I'm also able to have a DNA shaped column, due to the balls. Moreover, I added some more pipe chars.
Now the level 1 charset, keeping into count the system stuff (bullets, chars explosion etc...) has 50 chars left, to be used in more backgroud elements, non collidable background and, maybe, few little animation.

I achieved this easy improvement for level 1 graphics using the older XeO3 levels'editor kindly coded for me by FatMan, but I had to switch off DirectX to make it work good. Because of this, Mike is still sweating hard on a bug free and much extensive editor, as you can wonder watching the following rare snapshot.

A little offtopic note.
I received a pretty and very heartening email from James McKay. I just had the taste about his retro project: he's working on Klass of '99, a Spectrum 128 porting of a PC stuff, in turn inspired by the cult classic Skool Daze. No need to say I root for James'project like a drunk hooligan.
But our and James'projects are not alone, 8bit life's out there! Do we need a button banner recognizable ring, that keeps all us linked?