The new laser fade out effect and the shaking effect when you hit the other
player is very nice.
However, it looks a little strange to allow the base to move while the
laser is effectively shooting by itself and fading out. You should either
freeze the player until the laser is completely faded out, or visually
imply that it's a missile trail (which I don't think you want to do).
Also, the 2-frame animations are still much too reminiscent of Oystron.
I would at least play around with different animation speeds if you stick
with 2 frames of animation. Don't have a single speed for all the animated
sprites. Maybe have some that flip graphics faster than others. It's just
that the middle sprite movement, as a whole, with the gradients, the
double-scanline res, the sprite cloning, the horizontal movement, and the
chosen height of the objects is still too close to comfort to
Oystron. You've got to make it your own.
Maybe if you had the objects do something besides just provide targets,
like shoot-back, morph into other objects, change speed and direction
intelligently, etc... their animations could be given somewhat more of a
motivation.
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