Dev News #5 - World Renovation

Last month introduced new actors. In this month, I focused on improving the stages!

New Bases

The small crude helibase from 'Defender Patrol' had been replaced by huge airfields with multiple helipads and various air defense systems. There are also newly designed helibases, and a military outpost you'll occasionally spot during the mission.

Utilizing the structure destruction feature introduced in 'Low Level Hunters', there are now 'Base Attack' mission scenarios.

Each strategic structures inside the bases can be locked and engaged by the player or other AI units. In 'Base Attack' missions, the player is required to sneak into enemy bases and destroy the assigned objects within the base, like hangers or fuel tanks.

Since bases are usually well defended by various anti-air units, careful approaching and engagement is required to successfully complete the mission.

New Decorative Assets

Various new buildings had been created for Desert and Snowfield worlds.

There are also some 'neutral' wildlife like vampire deers, camels, and polar bears hanging around the world while you are too busy to blow up the Hijonstan army.

Since there are not the main point of the game, The chances of spotting them during the mission would be pretty low.

They can't pose any harm to you and can be easily decomposed into mince meats with your munitions, but rumors had it that some individuals are extra hostile than others.

There are also some street lamps lighting up the city roads once everything is getting darker!

Multi-threaded Vegetation

Until this day, my game had been suffering great challenge at rendering enough amount of vegetations to create something to call 'forest' due to severe performance drops and very long generation time.

But today, That's no longer an issue with the new multi-threaded vegetation optimization. There now can be around 100,000 of trees being generated within a second and existing without any performance drops, while every trees are still destructible!

Cobra Emergency Transport

Although AH-1F is not an ideal machine for troop transport, it can carry two people with ammunition bay doors under emergency situations. But since this is not a proper transporting seats, there's a danger of passengers falling off from the chooper and dying painfully if the pilot violently steer the cobra helicopter.

To ensure a safe ride, It is recommended to lower collective below 50% and maintain less than 100 knots flight speed. Of course, any heavy combat should be avoided!

New Armaments for Mi-24V and SA-342L

While working on the new assets, I also added some new armaments for the enemy helicopters: S-5 rocket pod for Mi-24V, and a dedicated GIAT M621 cannon mount for SA-342L.

In order to prepare for the day we can actually play these enemy helicopters, more possible armaments will be added for them in the future.

What's next?

With enough new assets for the gameplay, It's now time to create new Title screen and UIs. The pitch black title screen and UI of 'Defender Patrol' leaved a lot to be desired, my work in May is improving them!

— Hijong Park