Finished above goal at work again today.

I'm not going to pretend I hate that feeling. Selling all day and then coming home knowing I don't have to stress about whether I pulled my weight is a hell of a lot more relaxing than the alternative.

Came home to a 16-ounce steak and corn on the cob courtesy of VantaQueen, ate dinner, then sat down for what I figured would be a quick coding session.

Yeah... "quick."

Tonight wasn't about making the booster work. It already worked fine. Hypnotitron saw it almost immediately and said exactly what I was thinking. What bugged both of us was seeing the word BOOSTER on the HUD. It worked, but it felt lazy.

So I ripped it out and replaced it with an actual gauge.

That's the difference.

Nobody's ever going to point at that gauge and say, "That's why I like this game." They'll probably never notice it. But a hundred little decisions like that are why games feel finished.

The game feels a little more like something that would've been running on a Commodore 64 in 1983 and a little less like a programmer slapped a label on the screen and called it good.

I also got Hypnotitron's UFO artwork integrated tonight.

Every placeholder that disappears makes this thing look a little less like a test harness and a little more like a game.

It's midnight. SR-029 has finished compiling while I type this, and assuming the code doesn't decide to humble me one more time before bed...

...I'm done for the night.