Joypad-Controls are now finished, tested with two Xbox controllers. With fallback for older joypads, tested with a logitech playstation2-like-controller. Also, joystick-detection slowdownbug fixed.
And for your amusement: I somewhen accidently incremented engine smoke size instead of decreasing it. Looks even more funky in movement.
After some betatesting (still not much feedback, though) I´m now working on a more universal gamepad support. It seems older controllers work fine with the existing code, but not Xbox compatible ones. But the Xbox compatible functions don´t support the old joypads – so I guess I have to combine both.
Finally, I think it´s time for a closed beta of Zerocron, or else I´ll get stuck in endlessy tweaking the game.
Known things to do:
Known Bugs:
As an easteregg, I wanted to include the space station of Environmental Station Alpha as a background image, but sadly got no reply by it´s author, Hempuli. So I removed it and replaced it with incredible pictures of Pluto (thank you, Nasa)!
Since my PC is still to slow for screengrabbing-software, here a new preview, filmed with my camera:
I wasn´t sure if it still was possible to buy Warblade / Deluxe Galaga (see my last post…) or if my money would be lost on some paypal-account, but I just had to try and some days later I got an email:
First of all We want to regret that it has taken a long time and that you have
not received an answer or the product you paid for.We are sorry to inform you that Edgar has passed away this spring (2015) after a short illness.
We are currently working to send out the Warblade game to everyone who bought the game.
We also want to thank you so much for buying Warblade !!
…
Yours sincerely
Warblade Team
So, better late than never, I guess, thanks Edgar and whoever now manages the warblade-orders. And since then I had a lot of fun playing the full version of warblade with my son. It´s not easy to keep up with him, he´s quite good at shmups ;).
I just found out that Edgar M. Vigdal, author of one of my favourite SHMUPs died earlier this year.
I remember how impressed I was that he constantly worked on Deluxe Galaga and its successor Warblade since the good old Amiga times in 1995. Thats 20 years! Hell, he even had a successfull kickstarter campaign running for Warblade MK II and started a Deluxe Galaga Remake. God, how that frustates me.
While visiting my favourite Arcade/Flipper-museum (http://for-amusement-only.de), my games had their first betatest, which was quite helpfull.
Especially Zerocron got a lot of small changes afterwards:
-no more shootable asteroids in the shoplevel (too confusing)
-the size of the levels now increases while progressing, which reduces the difficulty a bit and gives the turbo more sense
-the first level of all weapons is now free
-credits are worth more
-replaced the radar into a less original but more intuitive box, originally it was surrounding the player
-tweaked a lot of effects, added screenshake for smartbombs
-added a rebound-shot as bonusweapon
Thanks to Ariane Fugmann for betatesting!
I still wasn´t happy with the look of the ingame credit-coins, so instead of pixeling, this time I rotoscoped a real coin with the same setup I built three years (yes, years!) ago for the asteroids. 
The whole process took me about four hours for bulding the setup, removing the background, stabilizing the image and, ridicoulusly the most, experimenting with a proper darker border and size ingame.
Large version:
Small, ingame version:
Old, pixeled version:
Doesn´t look like that much work, does it? 😀
I tweaked QUERX a bit, fixed some bugs and added a background.
Get the new version here.
In the last three days (well, more evenings), I created a new mini-game called QWERX.
It´s a very simple arcade-style game, you have to collect marbles while avoiding to hit the QWERX. Every level you have to collect one more marble, attached marbles increase your inertia. Until now I didn´t get past level 30 :).
Controls are Cursor or AWSD and space to release all marbles.
As sprites I reused Ron Buols wonderful marbles, which I already use in Marbellous.
I called it QWERX because the enemy reminded me a bit of Qix.
It is still beta, if you find any bugs please report them to me.
This time from the nearly-finished alpha-version of Zerocron. Just missing some more backgrounds, all 99 Levels are finished.
Attractmode:
More Attractmode:
Ingame: