Dev News #1 - The Snake is Coming!

This post was originally published here on 2025-12-23 Tue 11:24 AM KST.

Since after releasing the last patch of Defender Patrol, I had been furiously working on the sequel. In order to scale up the game, the first job i had to do was making a bigger, more capable attack helicopter - AH-1F Cobra!

The announcement trailer was planned to be out today, but unfortunately our artist is currently sick and the trailer had been delayed. Instead, I'll simply write down what I had been working on.

Meet the new bird... I mean snake

AH-1F, The final modernized variant of the army Cobra will be the primary choice of helicopter in the sequel 'Low Level Hunters'. This helicopter is packed with new capabilities and unique systems to offer much different gameplay to MD-500 Defender.

New toys for Low Level Hunters:

Tandem Seats

Unlike Defender, Cobra has Tandem seats to minimalize vulnerable​ area. Unlike the side-by-side seat, the switches in each seats (Pilot and Gunner) are only available for the seat owners. Careful cooperation with the AI pilot and sensible seat switching during the combat is needed to fully utilize this gunship.

The capabilities of your AI pilot had been improved to aid your operations in attack helicopter. On top of operating TSU by himself, he can also use countermeasures for you, and he will engage enemy units with turreted cannon on sight when ordered.

New Armaments

Cobra has bunch of new armaments which Defender does not support, delivering more firepower. The Cobra here had been field modified by some unknown 3rd world country to support more kinds of weapons than standard F model does.

1. M197 Universal Turret

M197 20mm turret is Cobra's fixed armament. It can be both tracked by the pilots' helmet sight for immediate response to the enemies, or slaved via telescopic sight for accurate strike up to 2000 meters. with total 750 rounds capacity, one Cobra can cause tons of damage which defenders can never imagine.

2. M229 Hydra Rocket

M229 is an elongated high explosive rocket which causes bigger blast than M151 standard high explosive rocket, at the cost of being the heaviest rocket out of 4 hydra rockets.

3. GPU-2/A

GPU-2/A is a gunpod carring the M197 gatling gun. Unlike Defender's NC621 this gunpod can be fired in 750 or 1500 RPM.

4. AGM-65A Maverick

AGM-65A is an fire-and-forget optic guided air-to-ground missile with up to 5.5 km effective range, offering longer and quicker anti-tank solution to TOW missiles at the cost of less capacity and more weights.

5. AIM-9P-5 Sidewinder

A more capable Air-to-air missile than ATAS with superior range, speed, firepower, and proximity fuse to make sure you can't miss any enemy hinds on sight.

6. M65 TOW launcher

Cobra's BGM-71 TOW launcher that can carry 2 or 4 missiles. The difference with Defender's TOW launcher is that this launcher's pylon is articulated to rotate toward the TSU's line of sight, offering much bigger vertical launch constraint area compared to forward-fixed TOW launcher.

Unique weapon management system

The way Cobra manages pylon weapons is much different to Defender. By setting the weapon selection switch to the desired weapon types, the system will activate the said weapons from 4 armament pylons. After that, you can manually adjust fire rate (gun and rocket), rocket launch mode(single, pairs, quads), rocket launch quantity per button press(1, 2, 4, 8, all), and the desired fire control computer range for your needs.

Head Up Display

The pilot has Head up display which provides various useful information during the combat. The precisely calculated CCIP or CCRP allows precise rocket strike up to 5000 meters, and line of sight interface of TSU helps you to understand where the gunner is currently designating the TSU.

When TOW missiles are activated, The unique TOW launch constraint area box appears on HUD, helping the pilot to meet the launch constraints without too much frustration which you have experienced with MD-500.

AN/ALQ-144 IR Jammer

AH-1F and Mi-24V now have IR jammers along with the standard flare dispensers. IR jammers can be used continuously​ unlike the scarce, precious flares.

However, That does not mean you are invincible​ against AA missiles, because most of them now have proximity fuse. Even if the jammer caused the missiles to be missed a bit, there are still some dangers of the slightly missed missiles detonating on the air and damaging the helicopter.

The only missiles this jammer can reliably spoof are 9K32 Strela-1, which lacks both proximity fuse and IRCCM. Missile evasions with low-level maneuvers is still important with jammers.

XM128 Helmet Sight Subsystem

Cobra pilots have a reticle sight mounted at the helmet. this sight is used to aim M197 turret in helmet tracking mode, or operate TSU through HSS slave mode.

AIM-1 Infrared Laser

AIM-1 IR laser is mounted at the M197 turret. This laser is only visible through night vision and helps aiming the turret during night operations.

Temperature and Wind

Another new major feature of Low Level Hunters is the improved environment simulation. The air density is being calculated based on the current temperature and altitude -- hotter the temperature and higher the altitude are, your flight performance gets worse.

There are also wind which affects your flight and the projectile's trajectory. The anemometer placed at the base will indicate the current presence of wind. Tail winds can aid your flight, but head or crosswinds can seriously hinder your activity.

There will be more kinds of scenery than the green grass in LLH. Each scenes will have unique temperature, base altitude, and wind settings to affect your capability in missions.

Future Plans

In January 2026​, the announcement trailer of Low Level Hunters with pre-release steam page will be released. After that, I plan to work on these features in the whole year of 2026:

1. Sun and Moon on sky.

2. Better shaped clouds.

3. More varied textures on the ground.

4. Camouflage textures on units that changes along with the scenery.

5. 2 new sceneries of desert and arctic with new assets for them.

6. New human models with more polygons and proper shape of fingers.

7. New, more challenging targets including S-75 and 2K12 radar guided SAMs with SNR-75 fan song or 1S91 straight flush radars guiding them, 9K38 Igla MANPADS, 9K35 Strela-10, and more variants of armored ground units like BMP and BRDM series, T-55, T-64.

8. Some destroyable buildings and assets for missions and fun purpose.

9. Complete overhaul of the title screen.

10. Improved unit AIs that can attack and capture the opponent bases.

11. Implementation of pilot career and campaign mode, where the player have to complete the received missions and get awarded for the results, while trying to keep alive.

12. Whole new tutorials for AH-1F.

13. More pilot firearm options - M1911, Walter P38, and CAR-15.

14. Pilot voices.

15. Another new playable helicopter, UH-1H Huey II.

It is highly unlikely that Low Level Hunters will be finished within 2026. I expect the release of 1.0 by mid 2027, until then I'll keep posting development news about the sequel!

— Hijong Park