Peeee-e-e-e-e-e-r Review!  Yes, SPfT is back in peer review, waiting for the happy bunch of devs on the XNA Creators Club to review it.  Regulars will know the drill by now - I sit pressing F5 on a browser window for however long it takes for enough people to test the game until their either satisified it's bug-free or not.  How long will it take?  Who knows.  3 days?  3 weeks?  All I can say is it'll get through when it gets through.  Frustrating, but I knew the job was dangerous when I took it.

This is also the week when I hope to get a lot of work done on Blazin' Balls.  Couldn't get much done over the weekend because of family commitments but now the week is my own (more or less) and I want to get the sound and music engine done before Wednesday evening, and get 10 levels designed and in the game by the weekend, ready to post a build for playtesting.  I also need to get "best practice" controller handling in (so you can play on any controller), get the 2-player code running a little more lean (might need to trim off some special effects to get the requisite smoothness) and I guess I should start on peer-to-peer highscores in there too.  Never done that before so it should be an interesting little sub-project.  Realistically I think we should be able to get to peer review some time around the week of 22nd Februray, and thence have a week off for building some new radios and thinking up new game ideas.  I might revisit Carrum and add a little Avatar action to the mix - avatars is another thing I need to get "up to speed" on, because it's something you should be able to drop in to a lot of games without too much trouble.  It adds value and player interest to a lot of titles if it's done right - I might even have "mugshot" avatars in Blazin' Balls for high scores or something - we'll see. 

Anyway that's the plan for the week.  The more I can get done on Blazin' Balls the better, I'm refusing to even look at the code for SPfT until I absolutely have to (I'm sure it will pass peer review, since all the bugs reported in the previous release version have been squashed and no new ones have appeared), and I intend to have some "proper" time off once BB is released.  With spring approaching I need to get a new roof on my observatory, set up the telescopes again, and get the garden generally ready for the growing season.

One last thing - best of luck to Monty and Emma with the opening of The Walled Nursery today.  We'll come and see you very soon to buy lots and lots of perennials!

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