Apologies for the lack of updates as of late pilots, but we've been very busy. So today, we're going to showcase a few things coming down the pipeline for Heliborne over the coming weeks. Firstly, a new Helo is joining the roster...
The United States marine Corps UH-1Y or UH-1 "Yankee" "Venom"
Here's some basic information on the UH-1Y from our friendly neighborhood wiki,
"The Bell UH-1Y Venom (also called Super Huey) is a twin-engine, medium-sized utility helicopter, built by Bell Helicopter as part of the United States Marine Corps' H-1 upgrade program. The helicopter is also called Yankee for its variant letter, Y.
The UH-1Y is currently in full-rate production to replace the USMC's aging fleet of UH-1N Twin Huey light utility helicopters first introduced in the early 1970s. The UH-1Y was to have been remanufactured from UH-1Ns, but in 2005, it was approved for the aircraft to be built as new."
Information on the H-1 Upgrade program can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1_upgrade_program
Oh, and yes, if you're curious about the AH-1Z Viper? Don't be, we'll be working on it. :)
Here's a quick video of the UH-1Y in operation,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v44ynsY1z-g
Moving on! I'd like to introduce the next set of special soldiers to the game and the game concepts and features behind him.
(Unfortunatly during the writing of this article, we were having a lot of technical issues with uploading photos, we're nto sure why but the decision was made to continue on with the update regardless.)
We'll be adding the long talked about Mortar Troops "Soon", which means in the next few updates. Mortar troops will take up "2" slots in your Air Assault Helos and when deployed by you, they will not fire automatically. Instead, mortar troops have to be guided by a "forward observer" or in our case, a scout helo with the new Scout special weapon.
Scout helos will have a "6th" weapon slot that only they can use (we are looking at this so don't worry, give us your feedback when it goes live!) that brings up a new camera and screen that shows you the number of mortar teams in range. Scout helos then "designate" targets for the Mortar Teams to Fire on. We are hoping this adds a new layer of tactical team based play to the game as air asault helo will be deploying troops that scout helos will be guiding. We look forward to your feedback on this. You can thank Xorboo for this new feature as it's been his project with guidance from Itold since his joining the team.
Besides the above, gerodrus, or other friendly programmer, is working sling loading and cargo transport. There's not a lot to talk about here unfortunatly but I can tell you that we are actively working on the phyics of the suspended load below the helo. Picking loads up, collision detection and dropping loads are also being looked at actively.
Outside that, the move to Unity 5 is going better than expected and should be something I can talk about in another month or so. It's a difficult process, but it's worth it.
I'll have more to talk about next week pilots so stay tuned!
-Rayne
Team JetCat