This will be a quick one since most of the work done for this update was on the back end. However, I’m happy to say a sought-after and planned addition has finally been worked into the game, and I think it really improves the experience.
Flight sticks/Joysticks are finally recognized and able to be used in-game. After having played/tested with a joystick, I can say the experience is much more immersive and fun. Being able to control nearly everything from a single joystick (essentially one handed) gives a level of control that just makes everything better. It is important to note, you most likely will need to be adjusting your sensor speed/sensitivity depending on your zoom level to maintain good control. Most of the time, I would have the sensitivity at the lowest to allow for smooth and controlled movement.
Configuration is simple and hopefully won’t give anyone much trouble. You will simply need to go into your control options and select “Configure Joystick,” to bring up the appropriate menu. Then you will check the option to use joystick input (when this is active, mouse input in game will be ignored) and select your device. It should detect all USB devices that were plugged in prior to starting the game and after selecting one, you will be able to test the different axis’ and buttons to ensure they are working. Following this, you will need to ensure the X and Y axis’ are match up appropriately to control the sensor as expected.
I’ll emphasize this again, it is important to not be disconnecting/connecting devices while in game. The configuration will not detect them and unplugging them after they’ve already been selected may possibly crash the game. Hopefully I’ll be able to come up with a solution for this, but for now just be aware and avoid this.
Another thing this implementation has solved is the issue with attempting to set input keys while having a joystick plugged into your system. Often times these devices have buttons/switches that appear to the system to be “pressed” and therefore automatically sets the input key to that button, or it hangs waiting for that button to be released while ignoring all other inputs. As far as my testing has gone (this would happen to me with my devices connected), this should be resolved now as I’ve adjusted the logic to account for this (if anyone still has this issue, let me know!).
In addition to this, I had to implement some features to help with the joystick experience, which also has been applied to those who use a mouse, but don’t like the mouse joystick emulation setting. Whenever there isn’t input detected from the joystick or mouse, the sensor will automatically lock – keeping the sensor from drifting along with the aircraft’s movement. This is an important feature to improve control in these input methods.
Outside of joystick support, I’ve spent a good amount of time adding over 60+ new infantry animations to create variety and improve immersion. I still want to add a lot more here to ensure there is a good variety in the infantry’s actions, but this little bit should make a good difference.
There is still a lot more to do here, but it is nice to knock out an important feature that has been requested since the beginning. Going forward, the focus will be on more animation improvements for infantry (particularly, adding more wounded states they can be in) and finally reworking everything about the vehicles. In addition to this, I’m hoping to release some higher quality scenarios that should be more engaging than the last few that have been released.
If you have any issues with anything, be sure to let me know in the steam discussions forum or on the community discord. A lot of optimization work has been done, and this can often result in new bugs, so let me know if find anything! I appreciate all the support and hope you have a good rest of your week!
Thanks! -Sklor
Changelog
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue that could cause the player to get stuck in the loading screen.
Fixed an issue that caused the options menu to remain on screen, despite closing it.
Fixed an issue that caused infantry to get stuck in the terrain.
Fixed an issue that prevented controls from binding when a device (joystick, etc.) was plugged in.
Fixed an issue causing Anti-Air units from taking on damage as expected.
Visual Effects Updates
Gunship Updates
Reduced the step up/down value for the sensor speed to 0.05 from 0.25.
AI Updates
Added new wounded idle and locomotion for infantry.
Added new hit animations for infantry and Anti-Air units.
Added new regular idle and locomotion animations for both friendly and enemy units. There is now a difference in their animations.
Tweaked infantry movement settings to ease into movement.
Reduced the acceleration for the LAV-25.
Slightly reduced the enemy's accuracy.
UI/Menu Updates
Dropped the limit on how low you can limit your frames per second in the options menu (down to 24 fps).
Added joystick support.
Added an automatic sensor lock when using a joystick or mouse (without joystick emulation active).
Within key mapping, mouse scroll wheel, keyboard arrow keys, and space bar are now recognized.
Added a new visual indicator for MANPAD missile launches (countermeasures).
Removed the auto-close function in the exit game screen.
Made various optimizations to the UI.
Map/Scenario Updates
Fixed some issues in the CASEVAC down scenario.
Other Updates
Made quite a few optimizations to various classes, which should be more efficient now.
Update Build 0.7.2
Hello! I hope the new year has been going well for you! I was hopeful I would be able to get this out sooner in February but had a family vacation to start the year and then ran into some technical issues that held up everything (updating software tools is fun). Because of this, there isn’t as much included in this update as I was planning, but I’m glad to have got some things out of the way. I’ve been able to absorb a lot of the feedback I’ve been receiving recently and glad to have made some improvements that hopefully will settle some of these issues.
Tutorial: This has fundamentally changed and is now broken into segments. You can now select which section you want to review and repeat, instead of having to listen to the entire tutorial again. The nice thing about this method is it will allow me to add/remove sections as it becomes necessary in the future, without having to rework it again. I also tried to include more detailed explanations to help with some of the more complex sections. Although this isn’t much for the players who’ve been playing for a while, it should help new players understand the key concepts.
Flares and Anti-Air missiles: This system has been reworked and uses a more “realistic” method than the previous. I don’t doubt more tweaks need to be made, but hopefully this puts this mechanic on the right track for now. Basically, missiles will be looking for the “hottest” object in their field of view, so pre-firing flares and/or firing flares early will have a much greater chance of deterring the missile. The closer the missile gets; the less likely flares will be able to affect it.
Collision issues: For quite some time, collisions between infantry and vehicles have been a problem, but that should be resolved now. Additionally, players have commented about infantry clipping into each other (or prior to that, getting stuck on each other), I’ve implemented a small system to prevent these issues. They now run around each other much better than before (at least in my testing).
There are a few other small requests that I’ve been able to deliver on, but that is about it for this update. I have a few more scenarios that I was hoping to drop but decided to spend more time on them. Although, I still want to add a lot more playable content, at this point I’m going to really be focusing on putting out quality – especially as it pertains to scenarios. I know it is annoying from the player’s perspective to have scenarios break down and need to be reset (perhaps as annoying as it is from a dev’s perspective), so I really want to prevent this from happening going forward while giving more engaging scenarios.
Anyways, as always, I greatly appreciate the support and feedback I continually get from people through our discord and steam discussions. I certainly encourage you to reach out if you have anything to say or suggest, because much of those suggestions have led to improvements in the game. Thank you all for everything and I’ll see you in the next one.
Thanks! -Sklor
Changelog
Bug Fixes
Fixed some issues causing the vehicles to get stuck in the Raid scenario.
Fixed collisions between infantry and vehicles.
Fixed an issue that wasn't allowing the projectiles indirect damage to apply as intended.
Fixed a bug that allowed AI to target dead infantry.
Visual Effects Updates
Slightly improved the shrapnel FX for the 30mm, 40mm, 105mm, and AGM114.
Gunship Updates
Flares are now limited and counted in the HUD. They also launch more realistically.
Tweaked the audio warning sound ("Flare") to not call out at every flare launch (no more overlapping audio).
Slightly increased the shrapnel range for most munitions.
AI Updates
Slightly decreased the friction value on vehicle's front tires to help them maintain control.
Added more cover points to decrease the chance of infantry moving to the same location.
Added a small collision avoidance system to keep infantry from clipping into each other.
UI/Menu Updates
Added input keys for zooming in and out.
Added a default key reset for controls.
Added a "restart scenario" button in the pause menu.
Separated the friendly and enemy counts in the training options menu.
Map/Scenario Updates
Reworked the Tutorial to be segmented and more informative.
Added a new scenario: OEF COP defense.
Added a new training scenario: OEF Afghanistan Mountains.
Removed some of the chatter and cut down on the initial waiting in the scenario Raid on Ahmed.
Other Updates
Reworked how Anti-Air missiles react to flares.
Updated the MANPAD missile static mesh.
Anti-Air missiles now move faster but are fired slower in succession.
Did a lot of basic housekeeping that was way past due. Should lower overall disk space.
Known Issues
Debriefing menu can has some wonky stats; still working on this.
Visual screen damage from the gunship taking rounds can only be seen on the U and J variant (forgot to add to the others). Will be patched in to include other variants as soon as I can.
Update Build 0.7.1 Hotfix
Quick hotfix to address some pressing issues. Everyone has been very helpful with their bug reports and suggestions. Keep it coming! Thanks!
Changelog
Fixed a bug causing the gunship to not spawn on the Vietnam training map.
Fixed a bug causing the vehicles on the Afghan Rural Village Training map not to move after spawned.
Removed the ZSU-23 from the training range temporarily as it is not working correctly. Will add this back in the next update.
Update Build 0.7.0
Hope everyone had a good holiday season and that you were able to enjoy time with your loved ones.
Been a busy last few months with many some unfortunate setbacks, but luckily, I have some content and improvements that you will enjoy. My largest concern and need of feedback is how things perform in this update. Much of the work has been rewriting code to be more efficient and performant and from what I can tell, has worked well. Additionally, it would be helpful to receive insights as to what types of scenarios you enjoy the most and what you'd like to see going forward. I tried to have some variety in the new scenarios being released today, so I'll be curious to know what is best received by you.
There is still a lot to do, but main things on the list going forward are (1) more scenarios, (2) Vehicle overhaul, (3) infantry animation improvements, and the (4) Ho Chi Minh Trail map - along with new appropriate vehicle models and anti-air assets. I'll plan on having another update at/near the end of January with more scenarios, but that most likely won't include much more than that (planned life circumstances are stealing dev time). I'm hopeful I'll have the vehicle overhaul done by the following update in February, but there are some dependencies that may prevent that from being released... but I'm hopeful.
The general vision of the game has certainly evolved since the beginning and even at this point doesn't have an absolute clear direction, but the short-term goal is to get a lot of new scenarios out for each map to give a solid base of gameplay for the game. I'm not sure if it will make sense to spend the amount of time required to create a formal campaign or other complicated game mode, but that will depend on how things turn out over the next one or two updates.
I will mention, the goal was to just work hard to the 1.0 release, but because of popular demand, I've reverted back to smaller, more consistent updates. The "developer has abandoned the game" sentiment can't handle longer development periods, so I'll make that adjustment.
As usual, I appreciate the support for the project. Been a fun project to build and it has allowed a great community of people to come together. I'll continue to chug away day after day and hopefully the project will shape into something we all enjoy. Be sure to let me know if you have comments/suggestions in the steam discussions or in our community discord.
Thanks! -Sklor
Changelog
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue that prevent airburst rounds to influence enemy AI.
Fixed the issue causing AI infantry to 'push' vehicles around.
Fixed an issue causing the DHSK pickup to not be able to see targets to its front.
Fixed an issue causing the AC-130J HUD not to show the weapon/munition info
Visual Effects Updates
Made visual and performance improvements to vehicle destruction.
Implement effects pooling to improve performance with large numbers of effects.
Improved the airburst impact effect for both the 30mm and 105mm. (Think these look pretty awesome now)
Gunship Updates
Improved the visibility on older gunship variant sensors (not so blurry).
Rebuilt the gunship model and texture to reduce overhead.
Added the ability for gunships to be damaged, audio sounds, and a rough cut "gunship going down" scene when destroyed. (More to be done on this; will have different scenes for each gunship variant)
Added functionality to flares and added new audio sounds.
Visual damage can now be seen on screen when gunship takes damage.
AI Updates
Decreased the range Vietnam era enemies can engage.
Added new anti-air threats: (1) Infantry Igla MANPADS, (2) Static DSHK machine gun, and (3) ZU23 anti-aircraft gun.
Reworked the AI's ticking code (like checking for line of sight, etc.) to be much more efficient, but as usual this has created some strange bugs in their targeting. This will be fixed ASAP.
UI/Menu Updates
Made menu texts larger to be easier to read on smaller screens.
Created a new standard debriefing menu that is displayed after a scenario. (see Known Issues below on this)
Adjusted the size of the subtitle textbox in the HUD.
Objectives in-game can now be seen in the pause menu.
Added the 1920x1200 resolution in the display settings as requested
Map/Scenario Updates
New Map: Afghanistan Mountains
Updated old maps with newer static meshes.
New Scenario: (Vietnam Outpost) Ambush Breaker.
New Scenario: (Vietnam Outpost) Outpost Defense.
New Scenario: (Afghan Mountains) Aerial Ambush.
New Scenario: (Afghan Village) Precision Strike.
New Scenario: Tutorial
Other Updates
Rebuilt the projectile class to be much more efficient and performant.
Rebuilt some of the infantry models and textures (more coming on this) to reduce overhead.
Rebuilt how shrapnel damage is dealt to have more consistent results (think it feels much better with this now).
Improved how airburst rounds work to align better with expectations.
Zombie Rush: Zombies will no longer increase in health for added difficulty.
Known Issues
Sometimes AI may target seemingly nothing.
Infantry still may collide with vehicles and cause physics interactions.
Debriefing menu can has some wonky stats; still working on this.
Flares currently are unlimited.
Visual screen damage from the gunship taking rounds can only be seen on the U and J variant (forgot to add to the others). Will be patched in to include other variants as soon as I can.
SITREP November 2024
I hope everyone is having a good month and has exciting plans for the upcoming holidays! I wanted to give a peak into the progress that has occurred so far and what remains before we can see the next update. Much of this is still subject to change, so everything seen shouldn't be considered final, but it is close. There also has been a slight change in the plan, but I'll fill you in below.
Finally... a tutorial
This has definitely been on the list for a while (since the jump to UE5, when we had to abandon some of the older scenarios), but I'm glad to say it is basically done. I do have to still do some testing to ensure things function properly, but it should give new players a clearer understanding to how things work and where the focus should be. This will be included in the next update.
Gunship Damage and Anti-Air Threats
This has been a long time coming and I'm glad to finally be incorporating it into the game. Anti-Air threats create an important dynamic for the gameplay and it should add the much needed tension. At the moment, there are (3) different types of Anti-Air threats:
9K32M Strela-2M Man-portable air-defense systems (MANPADS)
12.7 x 108 mm Dshk Machine Gun
ZU-23-2 Autocannon
In addition to these, all vehicle variants will also target and fire on the gunship when within range.
Now, with the addition of these, the gunship is now capable of taking damage and can be shot down for a mission failure. There is a somewhat randomized level of damage applied to the gunship on each hit (depending on the munition) that will give both visual and audio indicators to the damage sustained.
Very early cut of a "Gunship down" sequence.
Countermeasure flares will play an important role in defeating MANPADS that are actively tracking your gunship. These require good timing and a bit of luck to cause the rocket to change its heat target.
Improved Models, Textures, And Physical Assets
This effort has been largely tied with the performance optimizations, but multiple static and skeletal meshes have been reworked to have lower polygons, while improving the overall look in game. Despite my unfortunate burnout, that time away gave me a lot of opportunity to improve my modeling and texturing skills which was something I had always struggled with. More importantly though, it has pulled me back to focusing on what is important to achieve a better result visually.
Clean topography allows animations and physics to produce higher quality results and the lower polycounts reduces the overall memory and rendering load. As an example, this Taliban infantry mesh originally had 16,958 triangles, compared to 4,182 in the new.
This has also been applied to other meshes that are abundant in any given scene (like bushes, trees, and rocks). Each of these have been retopologized (if that is a word) to substantially lower polycounts, allowing substantially more of them to be present in a map (this is particularly important for the Vietnam maps). It has always been a challenge since the beginning to make the game look as realistic as possible and this is a good step in that direction.
Additionally, there have been plenty of acquired assets that sat as placeholders that have been replaced with optimized models and higher quality textures.
I know it can be frustrating to some to hear the work being done is reworking these things that they probably deemed fine to begin with, but this type of work is important for a number of reasons and looking on the bright side, is nearly done. Luckily, there isn't a lot of assets to begin with, so it hasn't required much time to complete.
New Map: Afghanistan Mountains
This map (loosely based upon the Korengal Valley, Afghanistan) features a Combat Outpost (COP) surrounded by large mountains and small villages.
Because of the mountainous terrain, maintaining a good fire geometry can be difficult and overshooting a target is a real concern. This map will challenge you to ensure your impacts are ranged appropriately to avoid collateral damage.
This map is completed, and scenarios are currently being created. I am hoping to release 4 new scenarios on this map, along with a training scenario and zombie rush scenario. These kinds of scenarios are pretty time consuming to put together and get all the assets required, but I'm optimistic I can pull it off.
WIP Map: Ho Chi Minh Trail (Vietnam)
I have made a good amount of progress on the new Vietnam Ho Chi Minh Trail map, but in order for this to happen, much of the asset optimization had to happen. Vietnam is the home to many jungles, which means lots of assets to load and render in game. With these assets created, I've been able to start blocking off the map and putting it together.
There isn't much to show off yet, but I don't think this will require more than a few days to complete. Because the map terrain doesn't have a complex layout, this will be a much larger map than any we've seen before. This is an important aspect for the map as "truck hunting" was a substantial role of the gunship during the Vietnam War. The gameplay dynamic for these scenarios will be a little freer (compared to the usual) as it will require the player to change the gunship's orbit often to spot/find logistical convoys (and avoid Anti-Air threats).
I most likely won't get back to working on this until the new year, but it will be completed as soon as I have the scenarios done for the Afghanistan Mountains map.
Performance Optimizations
TL;DR: Game devs are nerds and the game should run better for everyone which hopefully will allow it to be more accessible to a larger audience.
This has been a big part of development over the last couple months and has made a big difference during gameplay. One of the important systems implemented is "pooling" of projectiles and impact effects. This allows projectiles and effects to be spawned at the start of the game and remain inactive until activated. As they provide their function, they are then deactivated and sent back to the pool to be utilized again, later. This method allows us to save processing time by removing the need to destroy and spawn tens/hundreds of actors in a matter of seconds. This has a particularly large benefit to the gatling/autocannon weapons. Previously firing for an extended period would eventually lead to lower frames, while now that performance hit is fixed, regardless of how many rounds are fired.
Additionally, any actors that are required to be updated/ticked are now aggregated together, to allow CPUs to process through these actions much more efficiently. Rather than jumping between different objects to process them individually, loading and unloading the appropriate assets, the CPU process all of the same object at the same time, requiring it to only load/unload the assets once per tick. This has shown substantial improvements to performance and it's nice to see the game running so quick.
What is the plan?
So, my previous post back in July had outlined that I had to decided to stop with frequent updates and have the next release be the big 1.0 release. Because I've had to deal with a decent amount of... let's say, non-believers, I think it is best to make a release as soon as new maps and scenarios are completed. This most likely will make things roll out a bit slower (as I have to spend time making these posts, etc.), but at least the accusations that I'm somehow a scammer will be silenced.
With that said, I'm hoping to have a new update released sometime in late December. Holidays and other good news things will get in the way a bit (big hurray to my wife who is cancer free and will be completing her 2.5 year cancer treatment!!), but I'm hopeful the overtime I've been working will pull this to the finish line (the December update that is).
Still quite a bit to do and there is more I wanted to say here about the future, but I'm tired and I need some sleep. I'll be sure to say more in the update next month.
As always, I can't thank this amazing community enough for their continued support and I'm excited to get some more stuff for you to play with. I've had the pleasure to talk with more AC130 vets and am proud to hear the gunship community is enjoying the game so far. I am truly grateful to everyone as I know the only reason we are where we are, is because of your support. Thank you and I'll see you at the next one!
SITREP July 2024
Hello everyone! I know outside of sporadic appearances in the discord community, I have been somewhat disconnected from you all since the beginning of this year. I hope to shed some light on what has been going on, what the status of Project Gunship is, and what you can expect in the next few months.
What has been going on?
To begin, what has been going on and why has there been a disconnect so far this year? To be put simply, burnout has been knocking at the door for some time and getting into the new year just sort of broke the camel’s back. It has been a long, complicated few years of development; not only is Project Gunship my first project, but it is a complex idea that has a relatively steep knowledge/development skill requirement curve that I’ve had to battle against since the beginning.
Because of this, I decided in January to temporarily begin working on a new concept/project to deal with the burnout and although it took longer than I initially suspected, I believe it was a successful decision for several reasons.
First, it seems to have cured the original burnout and I’ve developed a second wind to jump back into development of Project Gunship. As I’ve mentioned in the past, Project Gunship is a passion project and I have always been eager to create a solid AC-130 gaming experience (since you can’t find any substantial ones still).
Second, it allowed me to explore new problems/concepts and develop solutions for them which has altered my perspective on how things can be changed for the better in Project Gunship. With an emphasis on performance and quality, it has helped me realize where I’ve gone wrong conceptually in Project Gunship and ways to fix it.
Third, with the new project having differing requirements, it has allowed me to focus on aspects of game development that weren’t exactly big priorities originally in Project Gunship. This includes simple things like 3d modelling, animating, storytelling, etc. Most importantly though, the critical fact that Project Gunship is a game and it needs to be fun. Shocking, I know… who would have ever guess that?
I could probably dig up some reasoning for why things happened the way they did, but regardless it is clear to me at this point how imbalanced my approach to development has been over the years and it is time to fix this critical piece.
Status of the game
So, what is the status of Project Gunship? If I were to frankly sum it up in a sentence; Project Gunship is currently an unoptimized tech demo providing only a narrow AC-130 experience. There is certainly much to be fixed and added before I could ever call the game done. Regardless, I’m excited about the opportunities available to improve and make a more engaging game. Many of you have offered advice on how to make this happen and so there is plenty of potential remaining.
What is coming next?
Features and Systems The majority of the important features/systems are in place, but there are still some to be added.
Gunship Damage and Anti Air Threats. This has been on the list since the beginning and has been in various stages of development throughout the years. As some players have pointed out in their feedback, tension is important in games, particularly in Project Gunship. This feature is a good way to improve this aspect of the game.
Joystick Support. Again, this has been on the list since the beginning but because of constraints in Unreal Engine, has proven to be a difficult one to implement. Nonetheless, this is important to allow players to get the most immersion in their playtime, utilizing the same equipment as real-life AC-130 crews.
Custom Scenario Creator. Replayability has always been a problem with the game as scenarios generally provide mostly a linear experience. Allowing the player to create their own scenarios would help contribute to a game that is simply more replayable.
Integration of the Steam Workshop with Custom Scenarios. If the ability is granted to players to make their own scenarios, they should be allowed to share them.
Rework AI for Infantry and Vehicles. There needs to be an increased variety of how the AI interacts with their circumstance. Marginal changes here should greatly improve the experience for the player.
Rework Vehicle Damage Models. The current implementation has been a placeholder until I could spend more time on this. The goal is to accurately emulate real-life experiences of AC-130 crewman engaging vehicles.
Additional Radio Feedback on Player Action. The player needs to feel like they aren’t alone in the air. Communication is a primary aspect of the AC-130 experience, and it should be felt by the player.
New Content
Improvements on scenarios already in game.
Add a Tutorial.
Add (3) New Maps. Afghanistan Mountains (OEF), Kuwait City (Desert Storm), and Ho Chi Minh Trail (Vietnam).
Each new and existing map should have a minimum (4) realistic scenarios, (1) zombie rush scenario, and (1) training range scenario.
Additional vehicle models for all conflicts.
Improved Infantry animations.
And last, but not least: Polish, Polish, and Polish.
Finally, it is important to mention how grateful I am to everyone who has supported the project and stuck around despite the lack of updates. Project Gunship has always been a passion project and I’m dedicated to ensuring it gets finished. Despite losing a few months of development time, I think that time away will prove to be an important step in improving and finishing the game. I’ve already made a good amount of progress already and am excited to see the game improve!
I do intend to have the next update be the 1.0 release, so it will be a few months before you will see that, but I will do my best to post update logs to showcase the progress each month. I’d love to hear your thoughts and suggestions, so be sure to leave a comment or jump into our discord community to reach out.
Thanks for everything and hope all is well with you all!
P.S. If you are interested in a western, vertical scroller, shoot 'em up game, check out my new project that will be released on steam soon. See the game here. Also, in case anyone is wondering, development is completed on this game, so I'm back full time working on Project Gunship.
Update Build 0.6.8
Happy Holidays everyone! Hope everyone has an opportunity to spend this season with friends/loved ones.
Nothing much to report on this one, but wanted to push some content that I’d hoped would have been included in the last update. In the past two weeks, I’ve spent a lot of time working on new assets and the new map, Afghanistan Mountains. This will provide a new flavor to the Afghanistan maps as flat deserts turn into mountainous terrain.
After this map is completed, I’ll continue to spend more time creating short and long scenarios for the new maps (I haven’t forgotten about the Vietnam map). Content is the goal right now, so you can expect to see more and more scenarios coming out (if you have any requests, let me know in the discussion forum).
In addition, there have been a few tweaks made to the projectile variables. There have been several optimizations made to the class, allowing us to increase the quantity of shrapnel pieces that are calculated on each impact. The effectiveness of each round is a balancing act between the amount of shrapnel pieces (ultimately, the likelihood of scoring a hit on a target) and the amount of damage that shrapnel causes.
To keep performance high, the quantity of shrapnel was kept low while the damage was relatively high. Essentially, an impact was less likely to hit the target, but when it did it usually damaged enough to kill the infantry. This ultimately has led to frustration for people as seemingly close hits were leaving the AI untouched. I’ve tried to address this by doing two things:
Improving the numbers across the board for shrapnel count, shrapnel range, and damage causes. Previously I tried to approach this from a more structured, scientific (if you will) method but thought it would be better to (although keeping some structure) base it more on “feel.” It is a tricky balance as I don’t want guns to be overpowered (*cough Call of Duty
cough), but I also don’t want consistent, unnecessary frustration for players.
Adding a “hit” animation for the AI, to give some physical representation of them being wounded. I intend to take this much further in the next update or two, by adding different states (wounded, unconscious, etc.) with additional animations. This should give additional depth to the experience, rather than it being binary – dead or alive. I think having the opportunity to “knockout” personnel who later recover and move again is an important aspect of the experience (despite the natural obscenity of it).
I have also been considering giving the user direct control over the munition variables if they choose to alter them. This would allow users to dictate their own experience and “feel” for the guns, regardless of what I think may be more realistic and accurate.
That pretty much wraps everything up on this one. Be sure to check out the roadmap in game to see a more itemized list of what I’ll be working on for the next updates. If you have any suggestions on new content, changes to already implemented systems, or bugs to report; please shoot them my way in our community discord or in a steam discussion forum. I actively monitor these and try to answer/respond to these as quickly as possible. No doubt the feedback I’ve received from players is what is driving this game towards improvement, and I greatly appreciate the efforts.
Until next time! Have a good holiday season and New Year!
Changelog
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue that was causing the physical character meshes to stretch on dismemberment.
Fixed a bug that was preventing AI cover points from being created. This would cause AI to sometimes not move after being fired at.
Fixed some terrain issues causing AI to get stuck in the map Afghanistan Rural Village.
Visual Effect Updates
Tweaked the smoke in the impact effects to last longer.
Gunship Updates
Tweaked the projectile/munition variables to increase lethality.
AI Updates
Added a new “hit” animation to the infantry.
UI/Menu Updates
Added an audio slider for music (only applies to the main menu sound right now).
Map/Scenario Updates
Added a new scenario for Afghanistan Rural Village: Training Range.
Added a new scenario for Afghanistan Rural Village: Taliban Shoot.
Added a new Zombie Rush scenario for Afghanistan Rural Village: Close Quarter Compound.
Update Build 0.6.7
Happy holidays to everyone!
It has been another month of development and I’m excited to see playable content beginning to grow for the project. There still is a lot to add for the project to be completed and released, but it’s always good to see progress.
New Maps
In this update, two new maps have been added to the game: Afghanistan Rural Village and Vietnam Outpost. With the relative success seen from the Chaos Destruction test map, both maps contain all destructible assets (aside from trees and foliage). Additional optimizations were added to hopefully maintain decent performance, but in all my testing performance has remained stable (if this is not the case for you, be sure to reach out with a steam discussion or via the community discord server).
With these two maps comes several new scenarios:
Training Range on Vietnam Outpost
Troops in Contact on Vietnam Outpost
Jungle Outpost (Zombie Rush) on Vietnam Outpost
Taliban Ambush on Afghanistan Rural Village
I intended to have the Training Range and a Zombie Rush map ready to go as well for the Afghanistan Rural Village map this update, but somehow spaced it thinking they were already done. Despite this, you will see those released in the next update that is planned this month (a smaller update before the holidays).
Additionally, I’ve rebuilt the Cannon Air Force Base Desert map – improving landscape textures and foliage assets. Although map building is my least favorite activity (mainly because it is so extremely time consuming), I believe I’m getting better at creating more realistic/believable environments. With this new map, I’ve reworked the training range and Zombie Rush “In The Open” scenarios for it as well. I really believe the changes to this map made it much more interesting to play on; particularly the Zombie Rush scenario (I probably spent the most “testing” time playing through this one, because I was really enjoying it).
Speaking of Zombie Rush, all scenarios for the game mode are now selectable in the scenario menu. Due to the dual menu system for Zombie Rush (selecting a Zombie Rush map, then selecting a Zombie Rush scenario in the following menu), there has been quite a bit of confusion about how many different scenarios existed in the game. Consolidating these should help clear up this confusion, providing all playable scenarios right up front.
The scenario menu is also finally graduating from the nostalgic text walls of the 1990’s - all scenarios now come with an image to help better differentiate each map/scenario from each other. You can expect to see more improvements here, in terms of scenario customization soon.
I also wanted to point out that I’ve begun working on an audio feedback system, that will help improve immersion when playing. This will include commentary from various crew positions that will respond to what is happening on the battlefield. Now, you can expect to hear comments whenever you score a direct hit on infantry units. Although this is one specific instance, you can expect to see this feedback system expand going forward. I believe audio cues and responses from crew members is a very important aspect of gunship gameplay – not only to help steer the player in the right direction (i.e. attempting to fire a hellfire without an active laser designation, etc.) but provide good commentary on the action.
Finally, I’ve switched up the roadmap menu to be a little more specific and meaningful to you. Now you can find specific primary features you can expect to see in upcoming updates, along with an estimated release date. Obviously, these dates are tentative and depend on a lot of things coming together, but they are personal deadlines that I’ll work to meet.
That concludes the items that I think are worth mentioning here. You can find the rest of the changes down in the change log. As always, I appreciate everyone’s support in helping make Project Gunship a success and I look forward to seeing you in the next update! Thank you!
Change log
Bug Fixes
Fixed a bug causing the HUD Speed Variable in the bottom right corner to not have the proper decimal count.
Potentially fixed a fatal error occurring when using the laser designator.
Fixed a bug causing the key input window to be created behind the options menu; preventing the player from changing input mappings.
Visual Effect Updates
Optimized the foliage static meshes to improve performance.
Gunship Updates
Increased the zoom of all gunship variants.
Decreased the change value when tweaking guns to allow for finer tuning (from 0.25 to 0.15).
Changed the sensor on the AC-130H to FLIR, instead of NOD.
Added the option to disable the sensor shake when firing guns.
Added radio feedback for direct hits from the air crew.
UI/Menu Updates
Fixed some information in the scenario details that was inaccurate.
Added the option to disable the sensor shake when firing guns.
Added images for each scenario in the scenario menu.
Made some tweaks to the subtitle system (font and font size, plus dynamic durations).
Map/Scenario Updates
Added a new map: Vietnam Outpost.
Added a new scenario for Vietnam Outpost: Training Range Outpost.
Added a new scenario for Vietnam Outpost: Troops in Contact.
Added a new Zombie Rush scenario for Vietnam Outpost: Jungle Outpost.
Added a new map: Afghan Rural Village.
Added a new scenario for Afghan Rural Village: Taliban Ambush.
Rebuilt the Cannon Air Force Base Desert map. Improved landscape textures, road textures, and foliage.
Rebuilt the Training Range scenario for Cannon Air Force Base Desert map: Training Range Desert.
Added a new Zombie Rush scenario for Cannon Air Force Base Desert map: In the Open.
Made improvements to the Chaos Destruction Test Map.
Moved all the Zombie Rush scenarios to the scenario menu to keep everything in the same place.
Update Build 0.6.6 Hotfix 2
Change Log
Fixed the UI menu bug (options menu not removing itself), being caused by having the Fire Control Computer UI open.
Fixed a bug causing the input window to not be the main focus when opened.
Update Build 0.6.6 Hotfix 1
Change Log
Fixed the terrain on the "Raid of Khalid Ahmed" that was causing the vehicles to get stuck.
