6th of February 2017

What happened up to now:

I started thinking about how to implement the game. I did a first shot at a game loop and at implementing a “release” control.

I started of with fixed polygon for testing:

The “growing” upon touch and let go does work. But I do not like the current polygon “technique”.

There are a couple of things working in the back of my mind:

• in the original the polygon rotates (ever so slightly)
• the polygon “form” changes upon each “Release”, the polygon can be 5,6,7 or 8 sided

The current implementation uses 3 vectorlists:

• outer polygon, inner polygon and the “grid” in between
• the size (in relation) is fixed, the area growth (and in general) is only realized using a scale factor

Things more to consider:

In the original, once the shield has grown to its maximum (outer) size – it  grows inward and eventually filling the complete screen (no idea how I would realize that on a vectrex).

Cycle counting:

Having the experience with Karl Quappe – I am afraid. Cycle counting will probably be neccessary from some stage.

The original has following features:

• high score
• each destroyed object has an own “explosion”
• each destroyed object leaves behind a “score”
• there are MANY objects visible at higher levels
• there is even a starfield with sometimes rotation in the background
• the main “shield” can be become monstrous in size
• sound effects and music

I am sure at some stage I have to compromise. I will probably at first program “all in” and than look at what can be optimized and left out.