Breakneck speeds!

Holy oilcans, another cracking day of progress. The shipyard menu code is more or less done, I've added a fun new effect for player taking damage - the screen shakes, fuzzes up and goes red. It's a really simple little tweak of the motion blur postpro from the old version of the game and the impact of the effect is lovely. If you're viewing the on board menus at the time, the screen goes crazy!
The control icons on the shield panel have been re-ordered, and I'm going to make them multi-function tomorrow. More details on the control model soon - it's almost finalised and in-flight is fantastically smooth, even on a standard def TV.
Some optimisation also done today, and we can now run 50 enemy ships with only occasional slowdowns when there's a lot of cargo crates knocking about, and this now means it's a real struggle to just wander about without getting attacked. Knocking enemies off is doable, but you really need to lean on your missiles. When I knock the power ups down to every third kill, it'll be quite a challenge in the busier systems. Suffice to say I'm really happy with the speed the game runs at - it gives me confidence when considering processing non-local enemies and markets in real time. Finally, the market screen now shows the total value of each type of cargo you have in your hold.

The game is so playable, the UI is coming along so quickly and hangs together beautifully and - amazingly - the packaged game is LESS THAN 7 MB IN SIZE. That's right. Less than 7 meg. I've got a tonne of PNGs for the HUD, and it's only about 5 floppies worth of stuff. I'm going to have so much room for music, and maybe even some video! Speaking of music, I've started to get the old muse tickling the back of my neck, and I'm going to set aside a couple of days next week to start on the music. I'm thinking of doing a programmatic sound engine, which reacts to your ships speed, laser fire, impacts and maneuvers. I wonder in fact if I could use all of the user input and game telemetry to drive music, so that the soundtrack is unique in your current play situation. The velocity of the ship could control the density of drums and bass line, laser fire controls a guitar riff, missiles flying around trigger an arpeggio, explosions introduce percussion breaks...now that's something to think about...

Anyway, must stop getting sidetracked like that. This is always the problem when I'm in top gear. I have so much mental energy, and my body can't keep up, and everything seems all bright and shiny and interesting. I'm not posting images today, but I'll have a load of them tomorrow, when I'll go through all the features so far.