Okey dokey fellas, we're pumping our way through the feedback and issues reported.  Here's a list of what we've done so far:

Control Options:
Added Y-Axis Invert
Added option to swap roll/yaw between bumper buttons and left stick

Display Options:
Added option to show planet/asteroid markers in GREEN, BLUE or NOT AT ALL
The "floaty blobs" are now more dense and obvious.  With the speed change (below) it really feels more zippy and active.
The new options are backward compatible with the previous version of the game, as are savegames.

Core gameplay:
We've DOUBLED the speed of every ship and missile.  This makes the systems feel a little smaller and brings an immediacy to the gameplay which was missing.
We've eased off on the difficulty of the trial
Missile aiming/locking now works over a much larger distance, but if you try to fire a missile at a target which is too far away, you'll be told they're out of range of the missile.  Also, when you lock on a ship, you can see if they're carrying contraband.
The nonsense which was going on with market prices has been fixed too.

What else are we adding to the game?  Well, not actually too much more to do:
Trial Mode Tutorial - A nice easy intro which will guide you to your first kill before introducing any more ships.
Changes to the "full game" tutorial - kills required for hyperspace licence will be reduced to 2, the options screen will be explained and the function of the direction-finder arrow explained.  I also want to add an option for the "click left stick to rotate toward station/enemy" so that it can be set to Off, Only Station, Enemies and Station or Enemies, Station and Cargo.  The space station, planets and sun will also be MUCH bigger by the time I've finished with them :)

So on to the main course...what about these Code4 crashes?  Well we think we've made some progress toward finding and fixing them.  It's to do with using unprepared texture memory.  We know how to stop this happening, but given that it didn't crop up in testing it's going to be hard to test any solution, but we're going to sit in playtest for as long as it takes to be sure we've bagged it.  At the current rate of fixing and testing, we'll be ready to submit for peer review maybe at the end of next week.  From there it could be another 2 weeks to marketplace.  So it's been a great day, lots of progress.  I'll keep you all updated as we go along, but for the moment things are going very well.  I'm about to upload the latest build to the XNA Creator's Club website for some seriously ferocious testing!

DrM

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