Alex attempts to make a game - Part 1

Full Game Here:
http://www.ootr.com/Alex/NoNameFlyingGame/


So I started this shortly before Thanksgiving.  The idea is to make an AfterBurner Parity with stuff I know how to do.  The next phase of this would be to add some enemies to it, which shouldn't be too difficult.  The collision detection is still a mystery to me but I'm sure I'll figure it out.  After most, if not all, the elements are coded I'm going to make a beauty pass.  Right now the art is simple so that I can just get the point across.  In fact, for a long time it was just black and white squares, but I felt that wasn't the best thing to throw up on the internet and show people.  I also have to do an optimization pass to see if I can get things to run faster and just be better overall.  That sorta worries me because I've already re-written things like 3 times because I found a better way to do stuff.  However, since this is just for my own learning purposes and not for some client, I'm going to allow myself the freedom to make mistakes and some dumb choices.  Assuming I learn something in the end of course. :D  Also, this project has given me the idea to write some sort of Sprite packer.  It is tedious and time consuming to arrange the plane sprite the way it needs to be.  And since I'll be adding a couple different types of enemies and re-doing the plane art, it occured to me that it would be nice to create something that'll pack all those lovely frames together for me.  Plus I can save space by compressing the size of the plane's bounding box on the sheet.  Right now it sits smack dab in the middle of a 256x256 box on the PNG which is about 2048x1536 total. O_o  I can definitely get that down though and get the file size smaller.  I've been reading and doing stuff in C# and I'm pretty confident that I can make it happen.  The only question is 'what to do first'?  Enemies or the Sprite packer ...