DirectX 9.0c Shaders; Perhaps some distortion effects on the explosions, and a matrix distortion OR a motion blur effect on bullets. Maybe improve the wormhole with some awesome shader effects - glare and maybe some distortion, and as you would get closer or get warped, your entire screen would be fading into a hyperspace effect. Shaders, just in general! OpenGL instead of D3D! From 0 to 99999 total frequencies. Be able to have up to like 1,000,000,000,000 points. 3D overview ships! It would remove the need for animations and lighting. The map could have light/sun properties that would show themselves uppon the [minimally?] bump mapped ship. Of course, you wouldn't really see the very bottom of the ship unless you had another feature perform flips or barrel rolls or something. Better rotation method. Instead of having a rotation that rotates your ship every 8 degrees or whatever it was, why not remove this and leave it up to 3D ships to do the trick of rotation. Lights wouldn't affect tiles or lvz (although there might be an option per specific lvz graphic to allow shadows/light casting to dynamically/print), but would affect ships. Either you could have a sun or not. If you don't, you'll see your ship with its "lights" on, kinda like in the oldschool DOS Raptor game. Man, if some of Continuum was more 3D, it could change a lot of things and introduce a bunch of new ideas and tricks. EDIT :: Semi-3D Top View (certain things would be 3D objects [specifically ships], while tiles and such would be 2D)