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!