Section 1. Progress on UR

I have finished all the special weapons: 11 in total. They run the gamut from the chaingun to the petalgun - a huge variety of weapons, each with its own somewhat-unique use.

IMAGE: The Petalgun in use. Bullet hell - for enemies.

I have also added three new enemies, which are a lot harder than previous ones - a moving ship that fires at the player; a "racer" which moves down the screen, turns, and moves up again - towards the player; and a miniboss-quality "laser beacon" enemy which fires a deadly stream of energy at you if you aren't careful.

In addition, I have created two "menu" screens - the shop, where you can purchase upgrades for your ship and temporary satellites with which to start off the next level. Counting costs, there's enough to purchase in the shop to last the player through the entire game.

Second is a tester-requested key-configuration menu. It allows you to alter the configuration of every command key in the game - very useful.

On an unrelated note, I think that 18 minute stages may be too long. Five minutes, in fact, seems just about right - but making forty bosses and stages to equal the same length might be a bit much. I'll have to see what can be done here…

Section 2: Progress on DoC

I've been working on the AIs again. The CB AI will now build a scouting party, which goes out to explore the map. I tried to make it build offensive armies - but this has not yet been successful.

DoC is now much, MUCH faster than before. My latest round of optimizations have resulted in, for instance, the detail->low setting running as fast as detail->off did before. And that's with TWO city AIs running simultaneously, each building a fair-sized city.

Summary of speedup methods:

* Implemented sight-range disappearance for buildings. They disappear when not near the player, or when not discovered yet.

* Implemented sprite replacement for trees. That is, when the trees get far enough away, they are replaced with billboards - significantly faster.

In sum, many of those who had trouble playing the last demo should be able to run the next one just fine.

Section 3: Recent computer games played

* Baldur's Gate 2: Got this a while back, have been SLOWLY working through it.

* World in Conflict beta: Still. It's a wonderful game.

* Tribal Trouble. A fast, fun, simple RTS.

* Tomb Raider Anniversary. Because it came with GameTap, and because I finished PoP: SoT.