I wanted to highlight some refinements to polish the game up.  I had plenty of brainstorming sessions on how I could improve the game.

1.  Random initial weapon cooldown value at start of round for computer players.

Without this the ships would be shooting perfectly in synch and would often die perfectly in synch... I didn't like that.

2.  Half width front scanner for moving human player.

I mentioned this already, but worth mentioning again.  This makes it much easier for a human to navigate a complex screen while still benefitting from playfield dodge assistance.  You would definitely notice if I hadn't implemented this!

3.  Sticky edges for AUTO flight games.

I was crashing immediately at the start of a round too often in AUTO flight rounds.  By keeping the player stuck to the edge of the screen for about a half second at the start of the round you have a bit of time to react and don't have too many cheap deaths right at the start of the round.

4.  Disabled couch compliance at end of a match until screen saver starts.

This prevents the player from jumping to the select screen immediately after a match and gives them time to read the score.

5.  Random initial delay before scroll out.

This delay can be fairly long so the screen may start moving when you don't expect it.

6.  Flipping screen when it's scrolled out.

Spices the game up a bit - creates unexpected surprises on occasion.

Speaking of polish ... Initially my jet looked like this:

It was hard to hit it with wavy shots, so I changed it to this:

Albert made a comment about the graphics - he thought they were glitched.  I said it's just bad Atari graphics; however, his comment kinda stuck in my head.  Eventually I revisited the jet graphics.  Here's the end result.

And here's a WIP animation.