It certainly feels excellent to be in my own space again. I'm much more adequately wired than I ever was back in Wales, with a good solid dialin to the Santa Cruz netcom node to get me on the Net, and thank God a line of sight to the DSS satellite (back in Wales we had no cable, crappy terrestrial reception of two out of the four UK channels (one of which was in Welsh), and the line of sight to the satellite went right through the hill behind my house)..
I can now revert to my 'natural' work mode, which frequently involves late-night, CD-blasting, inspirational coding runs which just weren't possible in the old place. One can't hack Jaguar late at night without loud music. It's not natural. I'm certain I'll be more productive in this environment.
I've even found a local - even if at 15 miles' distance it isn't that local. However, it's worth the drive as the Penny Farthing in Salinas is a proper British pub, with proper beer and excellent food. A man's got to have his local. It's important.
To revert to the subject, with all this going on I've done a relatively small amount to the game this time. I've been going back through Classic and Plus while I wait for some artwork for 2K, fixing up odd little things that bugged me while I was playing the game at E3; I should soon be able to label those portions of the game as completely finished with. I got one of the 6-button controllers from Atari, and I've implemented the Classic control mode from the arcade game, with Thrust and Reverse completely decoupled from the d-pad and exported to separate buttons. On the new controller the left shoulder pad is used for Reverse, B is Thrust and A is Fire. This gives your hands and fingers almost exactly the same tasks as on the coin-op controls - the left thumb controls up and down and the index finger Reverses, while the index and second finger on the right control Thrust and Fire respectively, leaving the right thumb to fall naturally on the Smart Bomb on C, as God and Eugene intended.
Since those controls went in, I've been having a massive binge of Classic-playing. It now feels *just* like the original game to play. It's a bit harder than the mode with thrust and reverse incorporated in the d-pad, but somehow it's just a lot more satisfying to play this way. As I've said in newsgroup, Uncle Eugene knew exactly what he was doing, taking those controls off the joystick. Classicdudes are gonna llove it.
The easier mode will still be there as an option, 'coz of course not everyone will have a 6-button controller. Although you *can* use that mode on a 3-button controller, as the L shoulder pad maps to 4 on the keypad - if you lay the controller flat on a surface and use the index and second fingers on the left hand to do up and down, the thumb falls on Reverse, even closer to the ordained button layout for Classic...
Otherwise.... been tidying up. Rez-in works properly. Optimised a bit. Fixed the left hand edge clipping of pixelshatter coz of the A1 clip bug. Corrected the dangle height for Humanoids under the ship in Classic mode. Kinda stuff. Hey, it has to be done sometime and better now than in Final Test...
This week, I look forward to trying out an idea for an unusual feedback effect, which the hardware may or may not allow, as I shall be asking it to do something unnatural once per scan line. Sign off mentally on Plus and Classic; instigate Predator and Prey classes for the object handler; and I really must get cracking on some Easter Eggs.... oh, and I hope I shall get my desk from storage at Atari, as my llegs sometimes go to sleep while I'm sitting on the floor and typing. I still need a bunch more furniture to fill this big house :)
\ (:-) - who is probably the last person on the planet to finally get his MTV /