All those months ago I created a litlle game called Alien Super Mega Blaster as part of LD18 – Enemies as Weapons.

Early today it passed the final peer review and is now available for purchase on the Xbox Live Indie Games channel here:

http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/Product/Alien-Super-Mega-Blaster/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d802585507aa

All the proceeds I receive from the game will be donated to Action Duchenne, a charity established to find a cure or more effective medicines to treat Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy.

In the months between the compo and yesterday I’ve added sound and music, new alien types and over 100 hand crafted levels of blasting fun.

Just found this Global High Score component.  http://spyn-doctor.blogspot.com/2010/12/global-scoreboard-component-for-xna-40.html

Looks really well done from an intial poke through the code.  If only I had found it a couple weeks ago I could have added this feature into Alien Super Mega Blaster. 

Perhaps for the next XBox game....

So after a couple weeks of further play testing and bug fixing I'm back in peer review.  I made it in before the February 7th, 2011 dead line to submit their games made in XNA Game Studio 3.1 to peer review.  Not really a big issue in moving from 3.1 to 4.0, took around an hour last night but its been a useful deadline to work against.

Fingers crossed it will go through this time.  I'm hopeful, especially with all the issues found over the last couple weeks and super bug finding skills of Steve Pro XNA. 

Next on the list will be a Windows Mobile 7 version and sorting out the tax.  Thankfully Steve has come to rescue again with this great article.

So many bugs and changes I could not fit them into the CC 1025 limit.

Hopefully this is the last build... been saying that for a couple months now.  Must think why the bug count is so high.  Unit testing perhaps required, but more of the arch being a little loose.

Bugs resolved

High score Non live signed in gamer
* Start game with non live signed in gamer
* Get high score
* High score should be saved

Checkpoint Non live signed in gamer
* Start game with non live signed in gamer
* Get to checkpoint
* Start new game
* Player should be able to play from checkpoint

Pause shield sound effect continues
* Play game, press X for shield
* Press Start immediately after (to pause)
* Press B to return to menu
* Shield sound effect will play forever

End game Controller rumble effect continues
* Easier to repo in trial and without high score obtained
* Play game, die
* Press A to quickly return to main menu
* Controller rubmble effect will play forever

Start level greater than 100;
* Player to checkpoint level greater than 100
* Start new game
* You should not be able to select level greater than 100

Shields get bigger and bigger, hard to repo
* Shields around player ship got bigger
* Shields around player ship got smaller

Checkpoint level not saved
* Play until checkpoint is reached.
* Die, but do not get high score.
* Checkpoint should be saved

Increased shrapnel cache size
* Large scale basting can exhaust banks and code 4

New features
* Levels greater than 100 should be random selected level between 25 and 100.  Alien types will be switched.  small blue will be small yellow.
* Once exhausted levels, message should be displayed on every level.  No checkpoints saved.

Can't repo
*  I see one small edge case in which the controller does not rumble the first time you die but will rumble every time afterward.  Difficult to always reproduce; not a major issue

Clarifications
* I know any controller can access the menus but during game play, any controller can pause game; is this intentional behavior?
Yes intentional behavior.