Version 0.1 update 1 is more of a preview update. It has a couple of interesting features, but hints at more which are currently in production. What you will notice immediately is the new front end screens. Many of this are placeholder screens for unfinished features but they do well to show the functionality the front end will provide such as ship customization, mission selection, stats and more.

The following images show some of the new screens:

New Welcome Screen


Player Section


A mock up of the Space Dock


Mission Selection Screen


Gameplay has seen several new features as well. Among these are the floating text messages for in game events. Currently, they apply to only two events, but they will eventually be used for more. There will also be an option of turning them off through the Options Menu. Next is the Power Up system. After completely destroying an asteroid and all of its pieces, a Power Up will appear. These power ups are limited to weapon and ability recharges now, but many more will be created in the future. There is a third type of power up that has been introduced as well. They look like the ability recharge, but their floating text message will say something about an item being discovered. These are Item and Technology power ups. They are used in the Shipyard and the Space Dock for customizing your vessel. This feature is in progress and we hope to have it out in the next or following update.

Floating Text Messages In Game


Find Power Ups among the Asteroids


Find Special Items and Technologies


As always, if you have any comments or suggestions, please feel free to let me know.

--Enjoy

The upgrades from JME 1 to JME 2 and from LWJGL 1.4 to 2.0 are complete. There were a number of issues but nothing too difficult. One of the problems we had was resource compatibility. The worse case of this was with our particle systems. They had to be completely remade. The new ones haven't received the love and care the old versions had so you might notice some slightly odd difference in that department.

We have also successfully deployed our first Web Start. This is very exciting for 2 reasons. First, the Web Start is much more reliable than the applet so many people who had trouble might find this works better for them. The second reason is we were able to build the Web Start with the same jar files currently used by the applet. Going forward, we will be able to support both versions of the game with ease. The Web Start is now available on the main game page or it can be accessed from this link: http://lefty2shoes.com/xspace.jnlp.

New Web Interface showing the choice between Applet and Web Start:


The best news is the addition of a new contributing member to the team. Jens, who joins us remotely from Europe, is a java programmer by profession and has been making games as a hobby for a long time. Not only does he bring a profound understanding of Java to the team, he is also a talented artist. He has been making his own models and textures for his games and has already made some beginning assets for XSpace. He is also the designer/developer for the Front End system, Nifty GUI, which XSpace employs. As if that were not enough, he is also familiar with composing music and sound tracks. As you can imagine, XSpace is very lucky to get Jens and we look forward to seeing and hearing great things from him soon.

Jens' first model:


With all the recent changes XSpace will finally be moving to version 0.1. Unfortunately there are no new features to announce, but stay tuned. As more art resources come online new ships and weapons will become available. Also, the Web Start should work for many of the players who were having trouble with the applet so please, give it a try.

See the latest version here.

--Enjoy

This has been a short and productive round. In only 8 days, there have been significant changes to the back end game logic in preparation for AI which led to the Radar being revisited. Also, several Front End issues were dealt with. As a bonus XSpace now has a shinny new paint job. Please take a look for yourselves; http://lefty2shoes.com.

Special thanks to Jens and his Nifty GUI Project that has made the Front End migration so quick and easy.

In the next round improvements will be made to the error handling and logging system in an attempt to learn why so many of you are having trouble getting the game running. If you are currently have difficultly with the game that does not include difficulty with asteroids, please let me know. There is a discussion board for troubleshooting. Just take a moment to explain your problem and hopefully it will be dealt with very soon.

Thanks,
--Marc

Screen - Front End Screen - Main Menu


Screen - Front End Screen - Logon


Screen - In Game Pause Menu

The next version of the game will feature a revision to the HUD radar. View this image to see the differences:



The most notable change is the round shape. Less noticeable is the object clipping that occurred on rare occasions when an item was transitioning from one region to the next. This is easier to see later in the game when the asteroids become significantly larger.

This is the first part to the planned radar revisions. Other revisions include multiple radar styles such as a sonar type pulse and a radar sweep. Each type of radar will have different features such as extended range, threat analysis and invisibility detection.

Stay tuned for the next release to see this new feature in game.

--Marc

Things have been very busy for me lately between visits and helping with All Negative sales, but I have been able to get a few new features in. The most notable is the score/stat tracking system.

This new system uses a generic statistics system to monitor the game and tracks certain events which are then used to build a score. Currently it tracks an arbitrary asteroid shooting score, accuracy based on the weapon energy usage and a play time.

The system maintains three aspects of each stat. The first is the current statistic. This is accumulated during play. The second is the best so far. When a game is over, the current is compared with the existing best determine the highest achieved stat. Finally a career stat is tracked by summing the results from each game.

The last part of this feature is a web page which pulls the user and stat information from the database and shows the top ten from each category. The page can be found here http://lefty2shoes.com/highscores.php This way you can track your best score, your overall accuracy and compare them with your friends.

As new features are introduced new stats will be created but for now, lets see how well you can do and if you can make your way to the top of the list.

Enjoy...