Only days to go now...

Firstly, a great big birthday kiss to Elite - the game is 25 years old today. Only a stone could have failed to notice the influence Elite has had on me, and on Space Pirates in particular. One of only a handful of genuinely ground-breaking games, Elite's popularity has endured through the years, to the point where many folk download emulators just to play this one game. The controls are tough, there are bugs, and seeing what's going on can be a nightmare, but please give it a go, even if it's only to say you have.

And now on to the news. We're only days away from first play test now - the front end menu is finally looking like the front of a game rather than a tech demo, which is nice. Here are some screen shots, which also show some of the new models that are in the game. I did dun them myself!

Here's a fun little ship, called The Turtle. This is a little more nimble than the old "default" enemy ship (which is still in the game), but it's collision profile in a dogfight is slightly bigger. Looks great in deep space when you strafe it with combat lasers.


I was starting to think I wouldn't be able to make chunky ships that looked OK as well as tipping a nod to some of the older 3D games which have inspired Space Pirates, and then The Tub came along. Just a load of old trapezoids and a funky metallic, retro texture and there you have it.
Aah, The Wasp. Very vast and nimble, it can speed past you in a dogfight and is the toughest of the enemies to hit. Another great fun model, and the glowing eyes look nice in the rear-view camera as it buzzes toward you.
Watch out, it's the rozzers! I really REALLY like this model. It's simple, looks great blasting pirates away, and looks businesslike. No messing from these guys. In, bang, out. The police don't carry missiles, and you can't lock missiles on them, so if you get in trouble it's a pretty even match. They're good shots too.

So that's the main menu almost done. I've added a music management game component which interrogates all available music libraries on the players 360 as well as the in-game music, so in-game you can have any combination of available tunes - game, xbox hard drive, and media connect. This will be a configurable option by this time tomorrow which loads pre-menu so you can even choose not to have the nice, gentle looping menu chord sequence (lifted from the main theme). When you're in free space the track details are shown on-screen in top right. Even album art works if you've got it in your library!

Charlotta's working on the box art, and the logo for that will also appear on the menu screen. That aside I've got to get the how-to-play screens, ship handbook and upgrade info screens knocked together and we're good to go to test. And that means also starting the PR push for the game. Gulp.

Anyways it's twenty past one in the morning and I promised myself I wouldn't have a late one tonight, so off I go, up the wooden hill...