News

I see that my shipment from Japan, which contains one or two items pertaining to Star Fleet, is showing as: "Item held at delivery depot/delivery office".
I infer from that, that they're going to stick me with some import duty charges.

Anyway, here's a Japanese toy catalogue from December 1980, uploaded by twitter user ShowaRainbow, containing some items that some may find familiar ...

Happy week-middle!
For X-Bomber the Game, I did quite a lot of work on the player special weapons.
The gunboys, lock-on-lightning and plasma grenade launchers all received attention in different ways.

I also made the last outstanding special weapon; the arc sabre, for the Dai-X.
I noticed that Multimedia Fusion seemed to have some new expressions which made the geometry and formulas amazingly quick and easy.

The game's onboard screenshot engine has yet to capture a really good image, illustrating it, but I'm very happy with it.

In the meantime, here's a doodle that I did ages ago, of the minelayer ship that I will need to sprite for the last level.
I also added an image of WingBlade to the website quite some time ago but it was never announced on the front page.

Star Fleet Saturday; a little closer to Saturday this week than is usually the case ...

Japanese artist marsanno21 has done some more illustrations based on Star Fleet recently, including on based on quite a memorable scene from the show.

You can find him on twitter:
https://twitter.com/marsanno21

I have a collection of his images here as well:
https://xbomber.co.uk/?dir=Star+Fleet%2FFan+Work+-+Artworks%2Fmarsanno21

Mission-Specific
 - Level 16 (final level) substantially progressed:
	- Space fortress reactor 90% finished
	- High security area
	- Cargo block exchange (graphics upgraded, pictured)
	- Drone storage hall
	- Deathballs on rails
	- Space environment and transition to fortress exterior improved
	- Cruise missile vapour trail fixed and engine glow added
	- Energy net behaviour and textures improved
	- Eye laser emplacement graphics improved

 - Level 15 - Battlecruiser damage indication improved

Engine
 - Messages subsystem - fixes and improvements
 - Terrain and ground-object handling improved
 - Object ordering
 - Scorekeeping improved
 - Enemy weapons improved, including smart laser
 - Music engine improved

Briefings
 - GUI improved; colour matches HUD of selected player ship
 - L16 briefing images added

Menu
 - various fixes, including updater

Star Fleet Saturday!

I found a couple more scans of the manga that featured in Gekkan Shonen Jump, uploaded by MTJMTJ02.
Don't ask me though why Shiro is dressed like a medieval knight in one of the images.
Apparently, the artist wasn't able to see the show before producing the manga and didn't have much info to work with.

Twitter user nami_happy also uploaded a photo of all the Televi-kun issues that featured instalments of their separate X Bomber manga.

The space fortress reactor is nearly finished and quite cool.

I suddenly had to do a lot of work on the xbomber.co.uk site.
I upgraded the SFXB forum, and it now needs PHP 7.
Unfortunately, PHP7 helpfully has all the MySQL functions removed.
The re-working of the website is reasonably far along.
I should have the forum running alongside the website again within the next several days.

I promised a new X-Bomber version at the end of the month but I don't think I'm going to make that.
Once the PHP situation is fixed, I'll finish the gun ports/missile launchers for the reactor.
After that, I'll do a playtest and tidy up what's there before uploading the first new version in well over 2 years.

Here's a little story, ready for Star Fleet Saturday ...

Shinichi Wakasa posted some photos on twitter of the matte painting of the EDF Moonbase lunar city which was done by Rikuo Mikami; one of the show's directors.
Presumably, he also did the paintings of the EDF headquarters on earth.

From what I understand, this painting was hanging in some company's staff canteen until one of Shinichi's friends, working there, recognised it, notified him and Shinichi bought it.

Anyway, the point is that not everything from the show's production was destroyed when the studio burned to the ground, shortly after the show was made.

Here's a further update on X-Bomber the Game ...
L16 - Space environment and transition to fortress exterior improved
 - Cruise missile vapour trail fixed and engine glow added
 - Energy net behaviour and textures improved
 - 'Eye' laser emplacement graphics improved
 - Work on main reactor started
Engine - fixed chatter glitches
Briefing - GUI improved

Well, that's the end of another working week, and that means that it is nearly time for Star Fleet Saturday ...

Here's a fabulous illustration of Dai-X (who appears to have undergone a pleasing makeover).
This is the work of two artists: Riccardo Pieruccini, who produced the lineart, and Daniele Rudoni; the colourist.

I think I first found this on instagram but I see that Riccardo has his own facebook entry about the artwork:
https://www.facebook.com/ruggine610/photos/a.1491530487525396/2644817265530040/?type=3&theater

X-Bomber Update Wednesday ...
 - Level 16 - High security area
 - Level 15 - Battlecruiser damage indication improved
 - Messages subsystem - fixes and improvements
 - Updater - fixes and improvements
 - Game engine terrain and ground-object handling improved
 - Mission briefing - improved
 - Scorekeeping improved

Please don't hesitate to get in touch. I'll be glad to hear from you and I'll reply as quickly as I can.

Email me at:
... or contact me via the SFXB Forum contact page.

Profiles: SFXB Forum