I've decided to use machine rendered graphics instead of sprites for everything but the background (star field). I've been messing around with polygons and have my ship shape figured out. I still need to make the vertices rotate with the ships direction (which should be fairly easy to accomplish with the lengthdir_* functions). The first enemy I'm gonna make is the diamond that flucuates in size. All I should need to do is set a variable that I can use to change the various vertice's positions. My biggest concern is the 'wave' effect that the grid performs when shots are fired, explosions are triggered, black holes are created, etc. Unless I can come up with a 2D line distortion system, I may end up having to completely shift my ideas to 3D (using a flat 3D terrain to get the desired affect.) This wouldn't be too much of an issue, except for the fact that it will make it more difficult to keep the game running at a high, or even a decent fps. Anyway, I guess that's it for now. I'll upload with a screen shot once I get a decent amount done. Untill next time.