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[Osteel]

CHOPPER STRIKE

Chopper Strike is a passion project started by a small team out in Toronto. Our goal is to create an exciting top-down helicopter shooter much like some of our favourite games back in the SNES era but created in a 3D, low poly environment. This project is just fresh off the ground and there's plenty to do, so we'd love for you to keep in touch as we log our development experience.

The game is being developed in Unity and currently we are working on the prototype. The goal of the prototype is to showcase:

• Flight Controls (with controller integration)
• A robust objective system, with multiple objective types, secondary and branching objectives
• A variety of enemy types that shoot, track and lock missiles onto the player

Combining these things, we will create a test level that will serve as our demo. We hope be showing it off at the upcoming Unity meetups in Toronto that happen once a month in order to get some hands on feedback. Of course, feel free to leave any of your own.

[Osteel]

[Placeholder Post]

[Osteel]

Hey everyone.

We've been working away on our prototype (unpolished, placeholder models) and have decided to create a milestone to follow. Then, once we're there, go back and polish what we have to make it more presentable, perhaps even attempt to find an artist to join the team.

Our Milestone 1 will focus on the basic gameplay and game flow by creating a very simple mission. The main features the milestone will cover are:

• Basic Chopper Movement
• Takeoff and Landing on marked locations
• Shooting (at mouse location for now) with simply locking of targets near the reticle
• Chopper Damage and Death
• Enemy Damage and Death
• Hook that is used to pick up Fuel and Ammo (including consumption)
• Start/End Level Gameflow

For our test mission, the player will be required to destroy a few missile launchers, while finding fuel and ammo to keep the mission going. Once completed, you will have to return and land back on the marked landing location. Simple!


And to finish, here are some more GIF's of our progress:

Entering danger zone and being hit by a missile!



Basic prototyping of dust particles based on height

[Osteel]

Our milestone is off to a really good start and we were able to do quite a bit over the holidays. Here's a quick update:

• Basic Chopper Movement Ready
  
• Takeoff and Landing on marked locations In Progress
  
• Shooting (at mouse location for now) with simply locking of targets near the reticle In Progress
  
• Chopper Damage and Death In Progress
  
• Enemy Damage and Death Ready
  
• Hook that is used to pick up Fuel and Ammo (including consumption)
• Start/End Level Gameflow

Some of the In Progress stuff is on the verge of being finished such as already being able to takeoff/land when the ground is cleared of obstacles, locking targets with the cannon (but currently working on rotating the cannon over time), etc.

The biggest thing will be creating the framework for implementing mission objectives. But once that's done, we'll create a small little test mission to finalize our milestone. Of course, there's a few bugs that we're already aware of which we'll fix when we review the milestone and clean it up.


Here's a GIF of a rocket launcher being destroyed:

[dszordan]

I'm the other developer working on this project. I wanted to chime in to let people know we would be doing a live stream on Twitch tonight at 9:30PM -> 11:00PM EST.

Our goals for tonight are:

Myself: Complete cannon lock on to enemy targets
Matthew: Complete landing and landing pad events for the chopper landing in key areas.

Everything will be streamed from my perspective, but I'll be taking a look at Matt's screen from time to time to see what he's getting up to.

[dszordan]

Tonight we're going to do some more streaming on Twitch. Again from my perspective, then checking in on Matt from time to time while on Skype.

We're on for 9:30PM - 11:00PM EST. Our link is http://www.Twitch.tv/OokpikGames

Last time I worked on the mostly the visual side of the locking on system - The target placed on the locked on enemy, cycling through lock on targets, losing focus on a target, and what happens when a target dies. Matt was working on the event sequence for landing on helicopter landing pads.

Tonight I'll be working on the objective system, which is part of our first milestone. I've got a bit of it working already, I'll aim to expand on it tonight.

Goals:

• Create basic UI for showing objectives and their completion state
• Implement multi-component objectives (destroy 3 SAM Turrets)
• Implement end state for when all objectives are complete

I'll post once again closer to show time as a reminder.

We're live!

[Osteel]

Hey everyone!

Last night we spent some time merging all of our changes together and basically finished everything we aimed to do for the first milestone. We're now going to go back through and clean the bugs, code and general organization of things before moving onto the next milestone.

Here's a little GIF where the chopper goes out and destroys a rocket launcher enemy. This is all still prototype, placeholder art:

[Cranktrain]

Looks interesting, I know your concentrating on the movement right now, so I'll focus on that. Have you considered the ability to move in a different direction to where the helicopter is aiming, like in twin stick shooter games? That's the kind of freedom of movement that helicopter's give, after all.

[Osteel]

Yeah you're right. In our next milestone, we've already planned to add the ability to move the cannon independently of the chopper so it's more natural. Right now it actually locks onto targets that hit the red circle, and you can cycle between them to allow the cannon to shoot as you move around.

[Osteel]

Hi everyone!

It's been a while since this has been updated, but we're still trekking away with the project. The biggest news is that we finally have an artist on board to help us create assets for our target prototype. They haven't yet been put into the game, so the gif's will still be using the original placeholder models.

In terms of development, we've been going back and cleaning up what we have already.

The big thing is the new objective system. Now we will be able to essentially create any number/types of objectives that we want including things like destroy a target, reach a waypoint, defend an area etc. These can be served to the player from the objective window, or hidden until unlocked through certain events. We can even have branching objectives that only appear if say, an objective is failed and the player must now do something else.


The other thing is the enemy firing AI. Originally, our test SAM launcher would just fire at the player without much consideration. Now, enemies must detect the chopper (red circle) and be facing the it to fire. Of course the fire range and the angle of sight is variable depending on the enemy type.

AND FLARES

Next is to add controller support and a new AAA cannon enemy type.

[Osteel]

Decided to put in the new prototype models for both the SAM and the Chopper. It's starting to look a little more styled which is awesome. We also have new props that need to be put in (trees, rocks, fuel/ammo, etc.).

Here's the SAM:

Here's the Chopper with the beginnings of the map mode:

The lighting is really messed up right now. We're going to get on that to make the scene a bit more easier to look at.

[Osteel]

It happened - all the test/free model assets we borrowed online have been removed from the prototype. It was getting waaaay too messy.

Now that we are starting to create our own, we decided to start with a cleaner slate. The lighting is also finally being worked on so you can actually see the world now (still needs a bit of work).

:D

[Osteel]

Worked on map mode this weekend. For the prototype we just wanted to get it up in the air and let the player pan around to see the world. Eventually we would like to replace it with an actual map with icons and objective pointers.

Speaking of objectives, we're pretty much done a very robust objective system which allows us to create many types such as destroy, waypoints, defend, etc. We can also combine these into a single objective such as "Destroy Target in 1 minute". Objectives can be grouped together allowing us to create primary, secondary and bonus objectives and even insert objectives in real time based on what happens.

Once we merge all this together we will go upgrade to Unity 5 and deal with the million errors that will likely appear. Ugggh.

Anyway, here's the gif:

[The_A_Drain]

This is very cool, I really like the style of gameplay you seem to be shooting for, very reminiscent of the well known Strike (Jungle, Desert, Nuclear, etc) series. Good luck upgrading to Unity 5, hopefully it'll go pretty smooth.

[karlozalb]

This is very cool, I really like the style of gameplay you seem to be shooting for, very reminiscent of the well known Strike (Jungle, Desert, Nuclear, etc) series. Good luck upgrading to Unity 5, hopefully it'll go pretty smooth.

I was thinking about Strike's series too . This looks really good!

[Osteel]

Thanks guys! Yeah, Desert Strike was the huge inspiration/influence to making a game like this. When we were discussing a potential project, we got a little nostalgic for some of the old SNES games and remembered how awesome (and stressful) Desert Strike was. But although we're taking influence from it, we're definitely looking to add to the game as whole with some new ideas. Suggestions are welcomed!

Anyway, update!

Worked on the new AAA-Stationary enemy type. Redid a bunch of the code to make it a bit more generic and configurable by just dragging and dropping two scripts onto new enemy types. Now enemies can fire any weapon type available (set up by the designer), and control their rate of fire, project amount, speed and even have multiple launch points that will cycle through. It's pretty awesome. :D

Also, the model is just placeholder for now while we wait for the one to come in. It's just a gross deformed SAM launcher with orange arms, haha.

Currently we're implementing controller support and looking to clean up the movement as a whole to make sure it's perfect. We will be going to the Unity meetup at Uken Games - Toronto on May 28th to get some feedback. :D

[Osteel]

Worked on the game a little last night, just cleaning up some of the new firing stuff including making the bullets not look like tennis balls, haha.

[Rolkus]

This reminds me of Return Fire. And I LOVED Return Fire.

[blekdar]

Dude, Desert + Jungle strike were some of my favorite Genesis games! Rock on with this one!

I think you should stick to a more simple art style (kind of what you got going with some fancy shading or something like it). I think it could really help this stand out.

[Osteel]

Haha thanks guys. I've never played Return Fire though I just checked it out on YouTube and it looks like good reference material. And yeah, we're hoping to go with a more simplistic approach and just make it look clean and semi-disproportional. This game is influenced by the Strike games and what made them fun - we don't really want to go for the realistic military look.

We've been discussing where to take this game in terms of gameplay. Do we want to do a level based game, or a story based one? We're definitely leaning towards a story driven game, though we need to discuss it some more. It will increased the scope of the game since that would mean creating characters, story, dialogue etc. (all in 2D probably, but still ...).

Anyway, new gif! There's a few things:

• Added spray to enemy firing
• Added new UI
• Added Controller Support

Also, the chopper suddenly started leaning the wrong way when turning, haha. It decided to do that after we put the controller in.


We also have a few new models to add to the game which are not seen here, but here is a look at the new upcoming enemy type - the Flak Cannon:

Oh, and the makeshift AAA cannon is getting a makeover right now.