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Space Crüesader version 1.0.1.0 is now out on the Xbox Live Marketplace!

There’s ton of fixes, but the #1 most important thing is that backgrounds can now be disabled entirely, if the player wants it.  Following closely at #2 is that nobody is shunned from the highscore boards if they play with backgrounds or flashes off.  Instead, they get an icon next to their entry for each thing (flashes, backgrounds) that they have disabled.

Another huge plus is that, although the Marketplace name hasn’t been changed, Bing can now find the game!  Woo-hoo!  Turns out that Bing does, in fact, look at the game descriptions, so all I had to do was remove the umlaut from the description.  Now you can find the game by typing in “Space Cr” into the Xbox’s Bing search, and it’ll give you “Space Cruesader”.  Follow that link and it’ll take you right to it!

Have fun!

If you’re interested, you can read the full, behind-the-scenes changelog below.
You might learn something!

Major Changes:  

• Added an option so players can remove the background entirely.
• Added two option so players can have *some* of the flashes and fireworks disabled, but not all of it.
• All scores are now allowed on the highscore boards, regardless of whether they used some options to make the game easier.
  • Entries that had backgrounds disabled, or flashes off, will now have two icons next to their entry, so players know that the player was using those options.
• Added icons to the left and right of “Background” and “Flashes”, if the player has those disabled. (So the player can work out that those icons are linked to the highscores)
• The highscore boards will now update every minute if you are currently looking at them.
  • Added a small spinning icon in the lower left of the highscore boards if they are being updated.
• Updated three screenshots, and replaced the fourth.
• File size decreased by 10mb!
  • Some large textures were optimized or compressed.  No visual quality was lost.
  • Reduced memory usage by ~15%.

Other Fixes:

• The player’s personal best time in Co-op will now be saved separate from the highscore boards.  This ensures that if I need to change the structure of the boards again in the future, I can add time entries along with score entries.
• “Best Survival Time” is now tracked in the Exploration Log.
• Fixed some Missile Launchers not being reset correctly upon exiting a mode (if they were alive when you quit).
• Fixed an issue where the game wouldn’t fade in on a Survival game if a controller was disconnected.
• Fixed an issue where the title screen wouldn’t fade in correctly if the main controller was disconnected.
• Fixed an issue where “Times Played” could have been incremented too many times.
• Fixed Player 1 being able to control the Pause menu even if Player 2’s controller was disconnected (and the prompt was up).
• Added missing confirmation and cancellation sounds to the player 2 prompt before Survival.
• Controller disconnect prompts will no longer show in any sub menus if the game is paused (Sound, Advanced, etc.)
• Fixed a typo in an exception message.  (Note: the exception has never occurred in a real play environment, I just ran across it while fixing something else)
• Stars now scroll as soon as the Zone is shown, not after the Zone message has faded out.
• Added review quotes to the in-game “Buy Screen”.
• Fixed a few lines of debug code not being removed from release compilations correctly.

Known Issues:

• Local highscore boards will be reset, since the structure of the boards has been changed.  Your personal best score will be re-added to the board immediately if you’ve already played it.  Any times for Co-op Survival will, unfortunately, be lost.

Possible Issues:

• None that I’m aware of.