News Displaying 1 to 10 of 74  To help with the testing of multiplayer, I made a very minor investment in this Sidewinder game controller from 2002, which, incidentally is when work on X-Bomber the Game started.
My Xbox One controller has a ludicrously big USB wireless adapter to make it work with Windows, although there is a smaller adapter that was released a bit later.
It was irritating: tweaking the game for 10-15mins, finding that the controller had powered itself off to save battery, powering it on, waiting for it to connect, restarting the game to make it detect the controller etc ...
The other thing is that the Xbox controller is a poor controller for playing shoot-em-ups in Windows.
The part of the controller that controls X/Y movement is the analogue stick on the left, which is not as fast as a direction pad and has a vague, wobbly feel to it.
The Xbox controller does have a d-pad but it presents itself in Windows as 4 fire buttons, which makes it useless.
At the same time, the triggers underneath present as rudders, so you can't map those as buttons either.
The shoulder buttons are actual buttons but they're in such an uncomfortable place that that doesn't really work either.
So, the old Sidewinder roasts it in all those areas and USB is just a lot less hassle.
This one was £1.65 on eBay, with it's packaging.
It looks like it's never been used.
So, if you have the urge to run X-Bomber in co-operative 2-player mode, then I suggest saving yourself some money and maybe getting one of these.
I once had the original version of this controller, which had the serial cable, rather than USB.
It was black rather than dark grey, with greyish-green buttons, rather than black ones.
There are one or two other slight differences as well but it brings back memories of playing Star Trek: Star Fleet Academy and Fury3 with the old one.
One thing that my daughter remarked about is that the packaging is "so cool", which is interesting and very true.
It's much more exciting than the bland, sterile and unimaginative packaging of Microsoft's current gaming hardware.  We're now well past half-way with X-Blogger's episode-by-episode review and analysis of Star Fleet.
The bumper-sized write-up of episode 16 is out today.
This is a very memorable episode and it's nice to see that other people have the same questions about certain 'plot holes' in the series that I have.
This episode was one in particular where there are mountains of unanswered questions, while certain statements were presented that you can't easily reconcile.
Episode 11 is another great episode that has similar sorts of questions around it.
Perhaps that's one thing that makes Star Fleet have such a lasting effect on people: that, along with the events that it shows you, it gives you a lot of mysteries and puzzles that can't readily be solved.
▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▱▱▱▱▱▱▱▱  I sometimes feel like an archaeologist when working on the site...
I went looking for some additional info on the Proteus and managed to track down the creator's site on the Wayback Machine, which turned up some very interesting additional details and material about the ship.
This was partly spurred on by the current work on X-Bomber's multiplayer mode, involving the X-Fighters featured in Revenge of Makara / Star Fleet Genesis.
The AS-5 bears a slight resemblance to what I imagine the X-Fighter to look like.
Plus, I came across this DeviantArt post, which shows that the site gets used for some things. Artstation: Thunderbirds | 21st Century Worlds of Gerry Anderson  I posted a while back that Thunder had been a bit unwell.
He's been doing a lot better for a good long while.
In the end, the best fix was to feed him peas every so often, along with his pellets, which sorted his balance problem, almost straight away.
We have a new addition to our tank since a bit after Christmas: Lighting, who is a slightly different type of fantail.  Star Fleet Teams
I wanted to let people know that we have a Star Fleet Teams call set up for 23rd April at 8pm UK time.
Drop me an email or let us know on the forum if you would like to join us.
End of Skype
We moved across from Skype about a year-or-so ago when Microsoft seemed to be steering us towards Teams Personal.
I see that going back to Skype won't be an option in May, as Skype is being taken away:
Microsoft has confirmed that it is killing Skype | Windows Central
It is meeting the same fate MSN Messenger, which I remember using a lot in the early days of X-Bomber's development.
Teams is a drab application by comparison.
X-Bomber v0.84m
A lot of work is going on around X-Bomber v0.84m, focussed on the '2-player helper' ship: Sylph.
That ship has been almost completely re-done and my daughter has been helping me to test it.
Rather than just 4 weapons - one for each fire button on a basic game controller - the ship now has 3 primary and 3 secondary weapons, which you select with buttons 3 and 4, and fire with buttons 1 and 2.
There are 2 3-segment indicators to help clarify which weapon is selected, which appear when the player cycles through their weapons, and then fade away.
Automatic rear-firing guns have been added as well, since not having them felt a little irritating when I tested it.
The Sylph now has a shield that activates when you collect the shield power-up.
The hit area has been re-shaped, so that it follows the shape of the translucent "core" of the ship.
The hit area also starts to glow red to indicate the level of damage to the ship.
It also has afterburners, which give the ship a lot more performance.
The helper ship can't be too complicated because it needs to be usable right away for novice players.
But now it now feels more comparable to the player 1 ships.  Done
- Fixed a little glitch in Wingblade's missile system
- Improve tank <-> turret matching logic
- Deathball logic improved
- Main menu ship preview logic improved
- Additional colour variants for Alliance construction drones ...
- Improvements to Skull player ship
Skull sprite scaled down 25%
Rear lasers - blue (Skull), green (Azuris)
- Player-2 ship: Sylph, undergoing major reconstruction ...
3x primary and secondary weapons:
Guns improved, lasers added
Guided missiles and positron beam added
Rear-firing guns
Improved instrumentation
Shields and afterburners
In Progress
- X-Fighter multiplayer prototype/alpha
- Improve assault tractor logic ...
- L16 - Grey heavy bombers with hoverfans and Minelayers
To-do
- Megacarriers
Implement green variant
Re-instate neutralaser weapon
Match deployed fighters to carrier
- L16 Boss - Death-X Transforming Type
Progress animations and weapons
- Various escape pod types with rotation
.jpg) This is one of the original posters, used to advertise the original broadcast of the show in Japan in 1980.
It shows the broadcast times (6pm Saturday on Fuji TV) and advertises the theme song, which was available on tape any vinyl at the time.
The blue text on the left seems to mention the TV-kun magazine features and manga, based on the show.
I found this item listed for sale on Mercari. I would like to share with you a great new fan story: Star Fleet Trinity by Suzy Jones.
This story is a very seamless continuation of Shane Perry's Revenge of Makara story.
It's been a good while since we had a fan story to add to the site. I come across a lot of artwork and other projects, but sometimes, it's fan stories that stick with us most.
I was very honoured that this came my way so I could get an early look at it.
I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
Check out the fan stories page for more.  With increased focus on developing X-Bomber the Game, I hadn't gone hunting about on nitter for quite some time.
It hadn't been turning up much in the way of interesting results for a while, but this time, I managed to get something really good out of it...
Maki and @ Kenyoko started off making the Star Fleet laser pistol that you see quite a few characters use in the show, which is a big achievement in itself when you look at how well-made it is.
After that, they started work on a Captain Carter costume, complete with the mechanical symbiont creature, which is also electronic: like the pistol.
Anyway, I bunched the media files together for people to have a good look over.
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