All this tarting-up is leading up to D2K's first public outing, which is going to be at the ECTS in London at the end of this month. By that time Defender Plus should be largely done, and there may be some early progress on the 2K mode to be seen, too.
Finished up the week by starting into the tiling generator for doing the multilayer parallax in 2K. At the moment there's a screenful of parallax-scrolling Flossies on the screen of my Jaguar... got the object builder and tile map reader bits running now, just going to add a bit of optimisation in the object list builder section, to ensure that the OLP only has to traverse objects it really really needs on any given scanline, and then I'll be ready for a full test, running the existing game over the scrolly background, to find out just how much background I can put in there before I max out the OLP or drop out of my lovely fluffy 60Hz...
Next week: some more new graphics and more work on the tiling routine. We're also expecting some new sound FX soon, and... the first three tunes on CD! We're hoping to have the game running off CD and playing the tunes by ECTS. Apparently Imagitec got a bit freaked out when they knew that they were composing for CD instead of cart, and begged for a bit more dosh from Atari... to pay for all the session musicians they've had to get in now, to do screaming guitar solos and that sort of thing... yum yum yum!
\ (:-) - Maybe they'll get in Dave Gilmour for my *next* game..... /
Just after I arrived in the UK, and again the night before I went back, I had most excellent chicken vindaloos. I love vindaloos. Yum.
Being back for longer than I expected, I decided to spend a few days back in my old place in Wales before it gets sold (sob). It was fine to sink a few down the Fox, hang out with various characters from that area, and go and visit my girls. My house just isn't the same without the white woolly objects in the garden, and my Flossie bleating gently at me in the mornings...
Took my Alpine card with me, so I was able to try out Defender on my chief game tester (my dad). He didn't touch Doom while D2K was there so I think he llikes it :)
Also took a trip to London, where I obtained some new CDs, scored a new Peruvian jumper, and got to meet and get drunk with a net.friend of mine I'd been waiting to meet for ages.
Anyway, there's nothing new yet and I'm feeling a bit shitty so I'll cease and desist now. Great strides next week, ewe wait and see.
\ (:-) - Where's my goat? /