Sanctioned Mutant Hunter is my new shoot 'em project.
Requirements: The usual Dark Basic stuff: DirectX 8.1, some form of graphics card etc. In addition this teaser runs in 1024,768 resolution.

Version 0.76: http://www.nirejhenge.plus.com/SMH0.76.rar

Cursor keys to move about.
Z fires an energy weapon.
X fires a bullet weapon with limited ammo.
Boost button + Cursor key boosts in the appropriate direction if you have S-DODGE or S-THRUST
Boost button is Shift, CTRL, Space or number pad 0.
S jettisons fuel tanks and returns player ship to shop.
1 and 2 select different camera modes

Bullets travel faster and have automatic fire, but have limited ammo, are weaker than energy bolts and generate lots of heat especially at high rates of fire.

As I've not added an in-game description of the addons:

• E-ROF: Increases rate of fire for energy weapon
• E-DAM: Increases damage of energy weapon
• E-TWIN: Adds multiple shots to energy weapon (up to 6-way fire) (must rename to E-WAY or something)
• E-WIDE: Makes energy shots wider.
• E-LASER: Makes energy shots faster (but thinner, but compatible with E-WIDE)
• E-PULSE: Gives energy weapon trailing shots.
• B-ROF: Increases rate of fire for bullet weapon
• B-AMMO: Increases bullet ammo capacity by 50.
• B-SPRAY: Makes bullet shots spray from left to right.
• B-SABOT: Improves bullet's ability to penetrate shields.
• B-ROCKET: Upgrades bullets to rockets (slower, inaccurate but explodes into fragments)
• S-DODGE: Lets you quickly dodge left and right (with Boost button + left/right)
• S-BOOST: Lets ship boost quickly forwards (with Boost button)
• S-SCAN: Shows egg data on Zone map, and position of nearly-hatched eggs on the scanner. Level 2 shows position of all eggs on scanner.
• S-DATA: Shows mutant data on Zone map, and mutant's health bars. Level 2 shows mutant's energy bars.
• S-CELLS: Increases total energy capacity of your ship.
• S-RECHARGE: Improves energy recharge rate.
• S-COMBO: Allows player to fire energy and bullet weapons at the same time.
• S-SHIELD: Shields stop 80% of damage; each hit reduces the shield strength (shown as an orange bar under the energy bar). Shields will recharge if player is inactive for a short period of time. (Thanks, Halo.)
• S-ARMOUR: Improves ships damage capacity by two points.
• S-EFFIC: Your ship starts with one unit, and at the moment is not available to buy. It exists to give the player an advantage over the mutants in terms of fire rate, shot distance and maneuverability.

Level and cost of the addons need balancing. Playtest away!==Known issues

• 3D sound is sometimes goofy (particularly when coming out of shop)
• Requires front end.
• Bullets sometimes go through small eggs.
• On the map there is always one (and only one) thing that is not subject to object collision. This may be a mutant or an egg. This means the last remaining egg or mutant in a zone is invincible. I have no idea why. Looking into it.
• General lack of excitement.

0.76

I've played this for around 90 minutes today. 30 minutes earlier and 60 just now. Nothing unusual seemed to happen gameplay wise.
The shop is still slightly buggy. The item in the no.1 slot is sometimes blank but can still be bought. I don't recall seeing it in any others but it may happen.
I usually only play until I've been killed. I don't seem to bother buying dodge.
Rockets and SABOT are good. Lasers also. 3 way fire seems a tad rubbish. Perhaps three shots in a row is better?
Thinking about a button which changes between spread, linear and side-shots.
Once levels get full it pretty much seems to be impossible to take down the enemy at a rate fast enough to clear it.
Yeah, I've found that.
Pulse seemed crap and useless.
Hurrah! Still, it's something for the Mutants to have if the player doesn't.
Threat levels still don't really work as I've had threat level 1 kill me more than 3.
That should read 'potential threat level' I suppose. It's still a bit random.
Make the ship icon bigger on the scanner. I often lose myself.
Oki doki

It's still not really very exciting and the only difficulty is in clearing the levels rather than the danger posed by the mutants. I don't really know how you can change that though.
I've found it a bit dull just sitting there and blasting stationary mutants. I'll just have to make them more intelligent.
Possible shop variety decrease when in a particular level for a long time. Deliberate? Imaginary? Coincidence?
No, not related or deliberate.
Would a continuous instant laser be a too powerful add on?
No such thing as 'too powerful'. I'm sure I can arrange something.
It is tending to get rather slow when I have a big gun with lasers.
More optimization required then.

To do for future versions:

• What should happen when the player's ship is blown up? Lives? Loss of addons? Possibility of salvage? Monatary loss? Insurance deals in shop? Escape pods? Or is death DEATH?
• Storyline. Player has been sanctioned to clear area of mutants because it is a trade route (cargo ships to protect) or is populated (Rescuing people, Defender stylee)
• Shop to be tidied up. Cursor keys to select as well? Descriptions of addons. Addons limited to a certain number, but expansion bays can be purchased.
• Stuff to make game fun: Bonuses, rewards, money in bigger font.
• Missiles, pods, charged shots from Blipfighter IV.
• Availability of different ships and zones.
• Drone; addon which is deployed and roams independantly. It's neural net can be modified by the player.

v0.76 (16/3/07)

• Decreased boost energy cost
• Shop addons scale correctly again.
• Added some music
• Added a frontscreen
• Maxmimum eggs and maximum mutants both set to 32 (as 100 eggs seemed to, uh, slow the game down)
• Seperated release_bullet() from fire_bullet() to allow for delayed shots (in a rapid fire burst, for example)(
• New addons
  • B-ROCKET (Less accurate than normal bullets; explodes on contact [with number of shrapnel pieces equal to 2*damage]
  • Multiple B-ROCKET buys increase number of simultaneous rocket launces)
  • E-PULSE (Gives energy weapon trailing shots [descending in damage])

v0.75 (12/3/07)

• New addon: B-SABOT; bullets that are better at penetrating shields
• Different coloured aliens to denote threat level
• Threat level 4 aliens (coloured white) have the Ship Efficiency addon and can be particularly deadly.
• Invincible enemy bug fixed.
• Energy costs for firing tweaked.
• Added some grey boxes to the playing field; these are going to become space stations.

v0.71(11/3/07)

• Small update to increase number of shop items and remove item rarity.

v0.7 (11/3/07)

• Named the 16 ranks.
• Shop:
  • Items are now level-locked, and rearranged to allow ship stat display.
  • Addon icons will scale down if more than 8 columns is acheived.
  • Repair in slot 4, costing $100 per point of armour restored.
• Neural net bugfix; also hand-coded some neural nets for each 'threat' level.
  • Therefore no need for the mutant 'direct fire' (removed)
• New / altered Addons:
  • Armour addon adds two points of health instead of one.
  • New: S-CELL increases total energy by 20
  • New: S-RECHARGE increases the recharge rate.
  • New: E-Addon: E-LASER is a faster energy bullet.
• Zones added; mutant and eggs counts are retained and increase when player exits to shop.
  • Threat level 0 to 3 indicates toughness and intelligence of mutants
  • Higher threat level means higher bounty.
  • It costs some money to jump from zone to zone.
  • If you buy S-DATA or S-SCAN you can see approximate number of mutants and eggs respectively.

v0.6 (20/2/07

• Corrected bug in which newly hatched mutants did not display their charging flash.
• 'Empire' style camera as default; keys 1 and 2 toggle
• Scanner now rotates with ship; bigger dots;
• Addressing performance; scanner updates once every 8 frames
• ; Bullet collision checked once every 2 frames.
• ; AI neural net calculates once every 2 frames.
• Player can now fly out of bounds, and receives a warning message.
• Fixed crash issue after player dies
• Temporary shield provided when player first enters map.
• Shield addon which reduces incoming damage by 80%; when drained it recharges when energy bank at max
• Moving forwards drains energy slightly (so shield shouldn't recharge on the move)
• Beginnings of an xp/level system
• 'S' key jettisons fuel tanks and returns to shop.

v0.52 (17/2/07)

• Small bugfix with restoring mutant health after shop.
• Mutants display a purple 'charging flash' when they are ready to fire.
• Mutant direct fire has a built-in inaccuracy.
• Corrected some egg hatching stuff.
• Slightly improved player ship graphic.
• When player ship is blown up, player sent back to shop (sans addons)
• For your entertainment: E-WIDE addon for energy weapon.

v0.5: (16/2/07)

• Thruster addon
• Thruster and Dodge activated with CTRL + direction.
• Blipfighter IV style display for armour, energy and weapon cycle.
• Guns and booster lockout when energy reaches 0 (as per BF IV)
• Level 4 and 5 E-TWIN shots.
• Improved bullet collision.
• Mutants will no longer flicker at edge of map (was caused by things reversing out of bounds)
• Mutants may learn to fire directly at the player.
• S-DATA addon will reveal mutants' health (and energy at lv 2); was added as a diagnostic tool but I suppose some players might find it useful.
• Added a cute muzzle flash for the player's ship.

v0.41:

• Made B-bullets brighter.
• We now have a starfield in the background and the 'alien webbing' in the foreground. I hope this will help with the motion sickness during the slight zooming as it should help 'place' the objects.
• Armour level displayed; armour addon available in shop.
• Some different mutant images (although one looks a bit too 'thin')

v0.4:

• Player returns to shop automatically when fuel runs out (after 6000 ticks).
• If temperature reaches 100 degrees, the ships guns will lock out until the ship has cooled down.
• Egg-scanner available in shop; one level detects eggs which are about to hatch; two levels detects all eggs.
• Dodge jets available in shop allow ship to rapidly strafe left or right to dodge bullets.
• Mutants may evolve some addons. Mutant population cap increased to 20; framerate seems stable.

v0.3:

• Mutants now lay eggs. To avoid massive framerate drop, population is capped at 16 mutants, and each mutant cannot lay more than two eggs.
• Removed independent damage/recycle rates from things. There is now the same global constant for player ship and mutants alike, but player ship gets a 'ship efficiency' addon which gives it a good rate of fire compared to mutants.

v0.2:

• Rudimentary shop (press 1-7 to select add-on, press 0 to exit)
• Two weapons available; Z fires an energy weapon, X fires a gun pod with limited ammo.

v0.15: Mutants (and player) can be killed, and have mass (which effects speed).