Ultio, thanks for the big review! Much appreciated. You've given me some good points to think about, and some ideas for things to tweak and improve. I've already chatted with you about some of them, so I won't go into it again here.

Trent... that's cool, glad it works for you. You shouldn't have to restart the program, though... the frameskip change is immediate. Could you check again and let me know if that's the case for you? Press 'F' to show the framerate, and then change the frameskip and see if the framerate drops.

Don't go exploding a battery on your lap there, Trent. That would suck.

You know, I found something cool: Skipping. If you move down to the ground and land on it without opening the legs. Then, you can tap in a direction, and you get really good speed and avoidance abilities.

BTW, I found something cool: If you set the resolution to 400 x 300, and the color depth to 8-bit, it looks like an old arcade game!

Lastly: What is the requirement for winning?

I've just uploaded an update. It has the following changes:

- Added a tinted letterbox mode
- Changed behaviour of guns, let them shoot at a lower angle
- Added an ALT+ENTER shortcut for windowed/fullscreen
- Press 'H' to show highscores at title screen
- The saucer can shoot itself in the foot if it's too near the ground.
- More delay skipping options for gameplay and scores

File mirror on googlepages:
http://ratziggurat.googlepages.com/saucelifter-demo.zip

Ultio, you shouldn't be able to easily accomplish your cheat anymore. I think my adaptations are fair, but let me know what you think. I've just had an idea about making certain enemies smarter, so we'll see what comes of that.

Also, you can skip those spots that frustrated you now using the ENTER key, and you get the 'H' highscore cycle key. I'm not going to add a menu option at this point.

The minimap shows the saucer (blinking white diamond), so I'm not sure what trouble you were having with it. The bounds of the arena in the minimap are the bounds of the screen.

I'm not likely going to add other levels (want to move on to the next project), but I might add some unlockable options and modes.

Neil, yea Sympatico seems to have trimmed its server bandwidth lately, my mail is slow now too with them. I'll call them next week. In the meantime, try the googlepages mirror above.

Kikaru, heh I'm not quite sure what your new technique is, but it sound fun. To finish the game, save the majority of the 64 captives without dying. Glad you like the retro resolutions... I play in those modes myself sometimes.

gnolam, thanks! I've noticed that bug too, and I can't seem to be rid of it. It only happens to me when I ALT-TAB from fullscreen, and my registered display switch function does get called, at which point I set the volume to zero... but it doesn't work. I've even tried stopping all samples at that point. In windowed mode though, everything behaves as expected. It could be an Allegro bug dealing with looping samples. I also noticed that when I switch screen modes, the display switch callbacks get unregistered, so I have to re-register them.

Windows only works with amnesia in fullscreen mode. It does work with pause in windowed mode though.

Hmm, strange, that. I'm using SWITCH_BACKGROUND. I was using SWITCH_PAUSE, but that's when I first noticed the looping problem, so I switched to BACKGROUND so that I could continue controlling the program and try to set the volume to 0, etc.

I've certainly set the hooks, as I mention above. My breakpoints catch the switch-in/out as it happens. The sample loop just occurs anyway. I'm not checking the return value of the switch register function though, so I'll take a look at that. My logic update is robust, I've checked it already, and it's not getting stuck in any kind of weird timer loop.

Really, it doesn't matter what switch mode I'm using, this shouldn't happen. Switching out while a looping sample is playing should not cause problems, and as far as I can tell, it's an Allegro bug or undocumented issue.

Yes, I'd thought about FMOD as well. We'll see how it goes, thanks Neil.

Maybe I'll code up a simple test that just demonstrates the loop bug.

FMS, yes, you have to shoot the base of the turret in order to destroy it. This follows the behaviour of the arcade Choplifter. Plus, it would be too easy otherwise.

Damned, those missile turrets are pain in the ... if I miss them in the first attack run I'm toasted. Anyway I have a decent chance to score direct hit from at least one of the missiles. On the other hand jet planes are piece of cake.

How to get a highest hi-score? Just kill only enemies, without rescue any of the aliens and you can play forever. This should be fixed, because players could have 50 000 scores without any effort. I think, that how many enemies are hunting the player (tanks, choppers, turrets...) should be calculated by how many enemies player had killed.

Also, number of aliens should be unlimited. Game shouldn't end when all of the aliens were rescued, but when player lost all of his lives. To make game harder in the later stage the enemies could be faster, shoot more often and accurate. Maybe even more instances of the same type of enemy should appear (10 tanks, 4 choppers...). IMHO this would be great!

OICW:
Yes, but I was talking about a situation, when player kills only enemies and this way he can beat hi-scores very easily without any effort, because number of enemies doesn't increase this way. It's like destroying this first tank, that appears in the game. To get 50,000 score you can just kill 200 of them and you won't even lose a life (at least when difficulty is set to easy).

If you switch away while sounds are playing in looped mode they will still loop unless you stop the samples before fully switching out.

I had to do the same thing in Neon Wars.