I worked on getting a new enemy in the game most of this morning. It was hard, but I eventually did it. This enemy does not disappear until you shoot it, unlike the others. Also, it goes fast back and forth across the screen. It's really hard designing the enemies with just 63 characters (well, 64, but one is a space). I decided to make a picture of the enemies and what they do.

Most of the difficulty came in trying to get the enemy to not disappear off the side but instead bounce back and go the other way. Some of the difficulty came when I was trying to fit code in but it didn't want to fit in. So I had to give up and try again, and that time it worked. The game is now 8k. I figured I should get extra space in the game. Now I have used 1,175 of my 2,048 bytes in the bank the in-game stuff is in. I saved a lot of room by moving the title screen to another bank. But there is a nice problem to have: I have an empty bank! Perhaps I'll make an Easter egg. Perhaps I'll put in a second game in it. I don't know. It'd have to be a pretty large Easter egg when it's 2k worth of space.

If the ships look really weird, it's due to the characters I have to work with. Although I guess a poor craftsman always blames his tools. Or something. I discovered that you CAN'T cut off more than 6 lines. So the lasers for the second ship are the subtraction sign character. I need to play Turmoil again to see what else I can put in. I have planned to put in different levels with different ships available for each (for example, the enemy that doesn't do anything doesn't last very long in the game. He'll be turned off around level 4 or so.) When you complete a level, the grid will change color. I'll see if I can put in a "WAVE #" screen in when I'm done putting enemies in. Or perhaps that can be used for that empty bank I have...