I've distracted myself again - this time messing about with trying to come up with a decent title page.

Acknowledging that I can only draw pictures that are 16x16 pixels I've tried to side-step the issue of drawing a decent title/logo for the game by instead generating one dynamically out of electricity:

The font is terrible so I need to mess around with ... there's also the nagging feeling that it doesn't really fit with the style of the actual game, however I always intended to have some electrical effects in the actual game itself so as to fit in with the theme of scientists-lab-run-amok, so I think I might feel better about it once I try incorporating the effect into the actual game. Or not.

Anyhoo, it's a start.

The implementation was easy in concept but a pain to quickly test out.

Each frame I randomly associate nearish pixels from an image (the text) and generate a spark of electricity between them using a simple midpoint displacement algorithm (that I also used in QB1-0 for the laser effect from one of the enemies). The sparks hang about for a few frames as they fade out.

To render a spark I have a 3x1 pixel image that I stretch over a quad formed around the line I'm drawing.

Given the low-res I'm working in I didn't bother making round end-caps or anything - seems to work well enough with out the finesse of a really proper solution.