I'm now replacing all the placeholder sprites from Phantasy Star with my own creation. These new water tiles definitely need some brushing up, but at least they are mine.

Replaced the edge tiles now.

Edge tiles for the alien planet tileset have now been replaced.

I've changed the ocean tiles for the alien planet tileset from red to yellowish green (trying to make it look like some kind of acid) because the bullets and the player's crosshair blended in with the red oceans. I originally wanted to make the oceans yellow (color of sulfuric acid which could be an alternative to water for alien life forms) but the yellow oceans would've looked too similar to the sand tiles.

I've added a debug menu (really just a level select) to make testing levels easier. I should've done this earlier, but here it is.

Now you can change your power up status in the debug menu.

I also added a fun little message to anyone accessing my debug menu.

Hopefully this will be the last level I make for this game. I only plan on having 8. The old level 7 is now level 8.

And if you noticed, I didn't change the tile assets in the level editor.

I guess this level is going to be about storming some alien base. I don't know. I never bothered writing a story for this game.

I've programmed a freeze frame when you die.

Are you happy now, Sakurai?

I've added a red flash effect to the hit stop.

Now there is a hit stop effect when defeating a boss.

I wasn't going to make anymore bosses, but since I have 8 levels, I need to have 8 bosses unless I want to have a repeated boss. I decided to make it ones of those shmup bosses where you have to destroy their shield (which has orbiting generators) in order to damage it.

No gameplay screenshots because I only got the class definitions started.

Something I just noticed. I have alien hut tiles which I place to make small alien villages (only a few tiles big), yet on the same level, I have a huge alien base that is hundreds of tiles long. So, this alien base is probably the size of a fucking region.

Whatever.

Finally got the 8th boss to work. I just need to create a texture for the shield, but I got the orbiting shield generators.

Got a basic texture for the force field. Still not complete, obviously.

The shield generators now explode when they're destroyed and flash red when hit.

Improved the texture for the boss's force field.

Boss 8 now attacks. (It only shoots directly at the player)

Adjusted the bullet speed a little bit.

Finally swapping the placeholder music with free to use music. (Which I can't show because I can't get OBS to record audio)

A lot of the music I find doesn't fully fit with the level but I'm trying my best to find music that fits as closely as possible.

Also, reminder that if you are a music composer and have scores laying around, consider uploading them to sites like OpenGameArt so other people can use them.

I finally got OBS to record audio. Now, you can hear the BGM that I used for level 1 and the boss battle.

gamedev

Added edge tiles for the metal platforms.

The game now has a custom icon instead of the default MonoGame icon. I haven't gotten around to that until now.