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X-Bomber v0.84l

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Player Ships
 - Dynamic adjustment to Braincom sprite scaling during Dai-X junction to accommodate 25% downscale of sprite.
 - Dai-X fighter missiles reinstated as actual missiles, rather than homing lasers
 - Dai-X fighter 'boosters', based on Blitzkrieg Dai-X
	(Collect white boost power-up).
 - Further improvements to Dai-X system
 - Engine alpha channel for all player ships
 - Wingblade mode change animations improved
 - Fixed a few glitches with The Skull

Player Weapons
 - Dai-X black hole ripper improved:
	Shoulder turrets on launchers both work correctly.
	Long-press fires 2 (Z) to fire black hole bomb, (if equipped).
	Automatically selects pulse guns after firing via selected mode
 - Special weapon overlay for X-Bomber weapons:
	ADEN cannons, EM napalm, Gunboys
 - Dai-X booster sprite and logic improved
 - Booster docking and animation logic improved
 - Guided weapon logic accommodates enemies with outlying hot spots.
 - Minor delay applied to scalar mass driver (stage 2 and 3) reloading, automatic fire cycle added
 - Gunboys' firing logic and animations improved
 - Dai-X fighter special weapons toned down, upgrade power-ups made more effective

Enemies
 - Hotspots fixed on enemy Astrowing fighter
 - Improvements to order of operations when enemies destroyed
 - Head added to L14 boss Death-X

Level-specific
 - L7 - Boss weapon logic improved
 - L9 - Improvements to sea environment
 - L8 and 9 - Gradients to blend background changes
 - L11 - background textures and underwater particles improved
 - L16 - Grey attack cruiser variant logic

System
 - Guest enemy system: spawn rates and randomisation tweaked
 - Darkness/opacity of shadows reduced
 - Initial health boost for enemy missiles, to inhibit chain-destroy on launch.
2025.02.06 45 0 comments  » Start a forum discussion.

Slugterra

On one of our recent travels, the hotel had a great on-demand children's TV service that had some good shows like Ninjago.
Another show: Slugterra, didn't want to stream properly, so I downloaded it when I got back and it's a really fun series.

I'm not sure how great it is for children because it's a lot less cerebral than the studio's later show: The Deep, but there's never a dull moment in it.

It's a western-style show about a group of young gunslingers, who ride their robot animals through a bright, colourful underground world of giant caverns.
All the weapons work by firing colourful little creatures called slugs - each with different capabilities - that can be guided and combined in different ways, once fired.

The show has one speed, which is: flat-out, and everything in the show looks terrific: the characters, environments, weapons. The style of presentation is great.

I found that the easiest way to watch it was on their own youtube channel.
2025.02.02 10 0 comments  » Start a forum discussion.

Nokia Design Archive

I spotted an interesting find on the windowsphone reddit, which is surprisingly active for an OS that died, in effect, even before Microsoft unsupported it in 2019:
	Nokia Design Archive | Aalto University
2025.02.02 7 0 comments  » Start a forum discussion.

Demonstar Re-make

I see that Scott Host: the programmer for Raptor, (which was a major inspiration for X-Bomber the Game) is working away on a new and re-worked version of Demonstar.

I am very eager to see it. 

Those games were really well coded and had terrific art direction, which is what, I think, made them so inspirational.
2025.01.24 16 0 comments  » Start a forum discussion.

Recent Site Additions

I wanted to thank Dan from Star Fleet Facebook for sending me some great new images lately from Gary Cass' work on The Skull and Antony Leach's work on the life-size PPA.

2025.01.22 25 0 comments  » Start a forum discussion.

X Blogger - Death on Planet M

Another great write-up: full of interesting observations, of a fun and memorable episode.
2025.01.20 161 0 comments  » Start a forum discussion.

Dekander Dai-X

I was doing a bit of 'research' on the Dekander Dai-X figure, whose 5-tube missile launchers Legtrax's legs are the basis for Legtrax's booster weapon in the game, since the Blitzkrieg Dai-X reproduces Legtrax quite faithfully, without any add-ons and weapons that don't appear in the show.

From the Shogun Warriors article linked above, I learned that the Dekander Dai-X figure has inherited those rocket launchers, and its drill-like sword from this aerodynamic Daikengo robot from the same company.
2025.01.14 31 0 comments  » Start a forum discussion.

v0.84k

Player Ships
 - Wingblade player ship improved in many areas
 - X-Bomber Prototype turrets fire yellow tracers, rather than blue.
 - X-Bomber neck lasers improved

Level-Specific
 - L16 reactor progressed

Player Weapons
 - Dai-X quantum blaster - unselected/beam mode re-worked
 - Dai-X pulse gun shots travel faster.
 - Dai-X arc sabre weapon:
	creates damage particles on target enemies
	consumes ammunition when no enemy present

Gameplay
 - Improvements to Dai-X junction and control mapping systems
 - Improvements to shield and damage indication systems
 - Hit boxes reshaped on Dai-X fighters
 - Bug fixed that occurs when a Dai-X fighter is destroyed
 - Pulse guns selected by default when returning to X-Bomber from Dai-X

Graphics and General
 - Enemy lightning weapon collision effect logic and appearance improved
 - Alpha channel added to power-up sprites
 - Pause button moved to pause/break key

Menus
 - Main menu colour change option - (WIP)
 - Flashing cursor added to high score menu, to make the name input field more apparent.
2025.01.08 181 0 comments  » Start a forum discussion.

General Updates ...

You might perhaps have noticed a few small changes here and there around the site.
After so many years, there are a lot of things about the site that are in the state that they need to be kept in.
At the same time, there are a lot of improvements that the site could still really do with.

The news system, including its navigation has been improved a bit.
Among other things, some new queries were written to allow hopping between articles without needing to go back to the article list.

Behind the scenes, X-Bomber the Game is moving forward a fair bit.
The end-of-game reactor is coming along well.  All the bits that I anticipated to be a bit tricky are now finished and the remaining finishing touches and attacks should be more straightforward.

At the same time, I found a way around the odd polling that the Fusion runtime has for the pause/break key, which meant that the game wouldn't pause reliably when pressing pause/break.
It's quite a round-about fix but it works well.

I'm going to pull out of my to-do list what items will be worked on in v0.84l.
Hopefully, v0.84k will be ready before long.
2025.01.07 46 0 comments  » Start a forum discussion.

Cool Stuff - Stingray

Folder preview
This year, we had quite a Stingray-centric Christmas ...
I found a new, sealed, 2001 clockwork-driven Stingray from Vivid Imaginations on eBay, which set me back a little, for my daughter.
It's one of the best toys I've bought in ages.  It's big and it's very accurate despite the back being a bit chunky to fit the mechanism in.
It has a clutch on the clockwork mechanism, so that it doesn't start to unwind until you press the wheel in on the bottom.
The torpedo launchers work really well.

The first instalment of the Stingray Comic Anthology, which Anderson has done for Stingray's 60th anniversary is really great.
It's bigger than I expected and the paper quality is lovely.  The brightness of the colours is amazing: far better than previous compilations.
2024.12.27 69 0 comments  » Start a forum discussion.


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