Today I added new air-to-air missile for Cobra - AIM-9P-5 sidewinder.
with bigger explosions and proximity fuse, it can competently shoot down Mi-24V Hinds who now have IR jammers.
In the future there will also be AGM-122 sidearm once I add various radar units.
Only 4 days are left before X-mas but unfortunately new trailer is not ready.
I’ll just prepare an announcement news introducing AH-1F features in the steam and itch.io news.
For the sake of discussion and curiosity, the Hind’s L-166W Ispanka was developed to counter spin-scan IR seekers, like the Redeye or the Strela 2.
Vs. an AIM-9P-5, the Hind would be much better off dumping flares to spoof it. Against an IR guided missile like that, the Ispanka was almost useless. It’s why you’ll see old photos of Hinds in Afghanistan during the '80s flying with the Ispanka still under its dust cover. It was reasoned that they shouldn’t even risk falls to get a ground crewman up there to uncover it when flares and terrain masking were more proven methods to counter the Stingers they faced.
In my game IR jammers are balanced in a way that low level missiles like Strela-2 can be spoofed easily, but high level missiles like ATAS, ATAM, and AIM-9 are nearly impossible to spoof with jammers alone.
but when it’s used together with flares, there a very small chance where the missile miss the target because of the temporal missile deactivation time caused by tons of heat spams.
ATAS lacks proximity fuse that the direct hit is required to hit, and the explosion is not big that most of the damages are concentrated on Direct hit damage.
However AIM-9 has proximity fuse and much bigger blast radius that it can still detonate in the air and damage the target even if it slightly missed, and its stronger blast damage has higher chance of destroying multiple parts at once.
Only 2 days before christmas, I made an announcement news for Low Level Hunters which will soon be uploaded on Defender patrol news as well.
I fear it would be too long to write the whole news here so I’ll replace it with itchio link !
Now I’ll start working on the announcement trailer with the artist while fixing some technical debt from my early unity mistakes.
In this weekend I worked on fixing MPSM weapons.
When I heard that MPSM has around 40 meters coverage area I thought It should be 40 meters radius of circle, but no it was actually supposed to be oval.
To achieve circle area I had to use weird artificial spread which made it not accurate with CCIP location. It caused troubles when using MPSM rocket from long range.
I fixed it so that the coverage area is actually oval shaped, and accurately land around the CCIP.
Now Both the AI and player can accurately land sub munitions by aiming toward the calculated CCIP.
Happy new year, and here comes the new skybox to appreciate the first ever sunrise in my flight sim.
I have added sun, moon (with varied phases and different locations based on it), starts, and a new textured cloud that replaces crude floating 3D mesh.
I have spent last 2 months making cobra, the next 2 months will be graphics improvements time which is crusial for making this game actually look different to defender patrol.
In this week I’ll focus on completing skybox alone, and I’ll start working on human model remake and hand animations by next week.
I expect remaking human models and making hand animations will take lots of time, I’ll do the hardest job first.
There are now some changes in the gameplay affected by new environments.
the FLIR is now affected by current temperature. In high temperature other objects have almost same heat level with units and becomes less useful, where High contrast DTV will be a better choice.
and the Night darkness is depended on the moon phase, it becomes pretty bright during full moon night.
I’m on the way to remake human models and add proper hands.
In VR, proper shape of hands is pretty crucial to select buttons more accurately. I also want to enjoy doing some hand poses during flying.
Since I was not born to be a talented artist with good understanding of human shape, I’m tracing the 3D model of the game Fade to black. it’s helping me to grasp better low poly human shape without making everything too simple and blocky. surprisingly many old 3d games had way more polygons that I expected.
Fade to black is a disaster as a game, but I really loved its low poly aesthetics. my guilty pleasure.
new Human models with more distintive looks for infantries.
Now I need to apply new rig, new animations, and hand animations.
Today, I applied finger poses to every switches. it looks way better than the retarded mittens from Defender Patrol.
In this remained week I’ll make VR hands as well. With Quest controllers it will be able to thumb up, fist, and pointing pose and there will be additional special poses with the use of joystick.
I’m too broken to afford index so unfortunately no full 5 finger tracking.
I’m hoping steam frame to have 5 finger tracking at affordable price.
This is shaping up to be the year of the Cobras in flight sims, and I am here for it!
Today I implemented finger movements in VR as well.
No full 5 finger tracking cause I don’t have index, but i added the finger movements that can be performed with quest controller sensors.
There’s also torso tracking toward the headset position, so that it can create the leaning pose.
Applying new models for the player is done. Now I need to apply the new model and animations for infantry units.
ROFLMAO you’re a god. I love it.
Took several hours animating hands for using revolver.
My game may looks like a helicopter simulator but secretly it’s also a revolver simulator.
The relationship with your co-pilot is rapidly degrading, I see
Today I have finished Applying new human models everywhere, and I made a new mince meat effect when infantries are killed by explosions. Low poly brutality !
The human model remake is completed, I’m prepared to make another monthly development news on steam.
Today’s new feature is a FOV based target acquisition order, inspired by boresight mode from DI apache.
I remember someone complaining in steam discussion that AI copilot doesn’t lock the target he want to check or attack, and I’m a victim of this as well, This feature eliminates the frustration of manually cycling target lists until he locks the wanted target.
By looking toward the wanted target and pressing a key, the AI copilot immediately locks TSU toward the target you have spotted.
The Ai pilot in this game is inhumanly good at spotting and designating targets, but that’s expected as a singleplayer sim-lite game.
Today, I bought and played Digital integration’s Hind.
I was pretty disappointed with Di’s Apache which felt somewhat underwhelming compared to gunship 2000. but Hind is a different beast. There are many improvements from their previous game, and no radar / targeting sight focused gameplay is more engaging. it essentially feels like a reverse version of my game as AH-1W cobra appears as enemy unit in that game while mine has Hinds as enemy.
And after having some fun with hind’s intutive targeting system and AI WSO, I realized that my game’s targeting sight operation leaves a lot to be desired.
In Defender Patrol, Locking and tracking a target is automatically done by aiming TSU around a unit and handing off the control stick. The problem is that this automatic tracking often causes unwanted results and it especially felt so janky when trying to attack enemy helicopters with TOW missiles because I essentially fight with my own sight to make some offset for guiding the missile while keep tracking the enemy.
That’s probably what real life TOW helicopters were doing with no help of advanced stabilization, but I value playablilty over realism and decide to rework TSU system by taking notes from DI Hind’s targeting mechanic and Kiowa Warrior’s MMS system.
Now, when pressing the mode function key (or function button of gunner controller) the Telescopic sight turns into manual mode and there’s a tracking box displayed at the center.
By pressing TRK function key (or function left of gunner controller) when there’s a unit inside the tracking box, TSU will switch to Point Track mode and follow the unit’s center position.
Tracking a unit is now done by the player’s input to allow more precision in operating TSU.
During Point Track mode, moving TSU control stick activates Offset Track mode, where the sight still tracks the locked unit but allows to adjust offset point with the stick.
This feature is especially useful when attacking moving units with TOW missiles, where some offset is required to guide the missile toward the enemy.
Pressing TRK key during Offset Track returns the sight to Point Track position, and moving the sight outside the tracking box cuts tracking and switch back to manual mode.
Di’s Hind is giving me a lot of inspirations. lack of randomized elements like Gunship 2000 is a bit sad in terms of replayability, But I’ll enjoy it as much as possible while developing Low Level Hunters.
