A good and productive day despite an uncomfortable night. I've completed my proposed upgrades to Radioactive, with many small changes. The menu now includes '<' and '>' arrows where options can be cycled, for example. Most interestingly I've created 6 new levels and 6 new colour schemes "1970S PLOTTER", "GREENSCREEN", and "AMBER" for the 1970s themed set, and "COMMODORE 64", "DRAGON 32", and "BBC MICRO" for the 1980s themed set.
The new maps are interesting in that most are based on real locations, something that was more difficult when I first made the game. Here's the EUROZONE level in the DRAGON 32 colours:
The 'actual' DRAGON 32 used stark, fully saturated colours, but I remember them being more subtle. Of course, these computers were all displayed on home televisions, with manual colour and brightness controls (in my case, black and white for years), so the actual results could vary per household. I've taken liberties with the accuracy of this setting, and with that of the BBC Micro. The real Dragon had 8 colours, but could only use 4 at a time (green, red, yellow, blue was the most common option). I've included some of the orange and magenta hues. Similarly with the BBC. The BBC Micro, Dragon, and ZX Spectrum all used somewhat boring, and very stark fully-saturated hues (pure red, pure green, pure cyan etc.), so that they all looked the same. The Vic-20 and Commodore 64 were different. They had advanced palettes that spanned a range of tones and hues, so with a similarly limited palette could render much higher quality graphics.
Here's an image of the GREENSCREEN colours, with the "HOT FALKLANDS" map:
Even without these new maps, the program itself has a few important and useful changes (like Steam Achievement and Cloud support). I'll keep testing tomorrow and will start work on the DLC store etc. The two items of DLC will be low-cost enhancements, probably $3.99.
