Shock Game got new character - Old Man (the one with the raindeer)

Now with music (again), special effects. Read more about the effects and other improvements here:

Yes! Thanks to few donations and some out-of-pocket money, I was able to buy back some of Shock's music.

• Each character has a theme song now. The new character - Old Man, is named after that guy that flies raindeers and distributes gifts through his Christmas distribution chain.
• The music has new engine now, with "announcing" control (a popup that displays the song title with information).
• Other improvements include sounds for everything - ball hit, shattering glass, etc. To make this work, I had to create an AutoPlay MediaElement for each mp3 and play it. There are few tricks here that you can use to minimize objects created and mem usage - code will follow!
• New visual effects include "shatter" effect which is based on this: http://www.shinedraw.com/animation-effect/flash-vs-silverlight-colorful-fireworks/, with the following simple changes/improvements:
  • Fireworks consist of 2 ellipses instead of 5 - speed optimization
  • The effect has "range" - e.g. you can make the dots appear everywhere on the brick, not just one point
  • The effect takes TimeSpan (e.g. 0.5 sec), and plays for a specific time, then the Canvas removes itself from it's parent. This allows to just add the effect anywhere and then start it and forget it. Nice and self-manageable :)
• Many speed improvements related to GPU and BitmapCache. For some weird reason, I've left the bitmap cache off many of the images before...most notably the background image that takes a lot of space

I have few more improvements in the pipeline - mainly perf and resolving few minor issues (I doubt if anyone will notice most of them)

It is a busy Christmas :) I'll post some code from v3 of the game soon...first let's wrap it up.

Yes, the game is here: http://nokola.com/shock

I strongly advise playing with the Old Man, as it provides the most festive experience! :)

Please let me know your opinion - does it play well? What do you think about it and what would you change or improve?

Thanks!

Note: donations are still open, since the game hasn't paid for itself just yet and I'm planning more games :)