This week, I fixed a number of bugs, including a crash that was possible in the release I sent out last week. Not many known bugs left in the code but I am sure there are lots to find yet. Beyond that, I implemented code to pause the game. Now during a game, any key press will pause the game. This will bring up a prompt saying to press Q to quit or any other key to resume the action. Sound is also suspended and resumed during a pause. There was some discussion around the lack of a clear standard for left/right audio on the GS and there may be different hardware out there which reverses these things. So, I implemented an option to swap the left/right channels. While doing that, I added code to load/save a settings file where this option is stored so it is persistent across restarts. Finally, I have added a top ten scores to this settings file and added the code to insert scores into that top ten. What isn’t there yet is code to prompt for initials. For now, it is hardcoded to my initials (yes, my initials are JSR) but everyone should be good with that, right?
Next step will be to actually add the prompt for the players initials. I would also like to finally implement two player games. Once I have that, I think it could be called feature complete. But I would like to add some support for a global high score list. Whenever you get on your own local top 10 score list, I think the game should send that high score to a DB out on the Internet of the best scores. Then, if you are on a GS with an Internet connection, you would see local and global high scores. Basically, the project is getting to the point where nice to have features and bug fixing is about all is left. I am hoping to do an official release in February, maybe January if things go very well.