Not much new to report. Last week was vacation time here. I was about as far from the modern world as one can get. ^^

Just getting back into the swing of things this week. Working on soundtracks, art, and scripting.

Nope, we're not at Area 51 today.

Here's a work-in-progress promo image. It's not representative of gameplay, just for fun, riffing on the "I identify as an Attack Helicopter" meme that originated ~5 years ago, right around the CTH timeline. Feelin' nostalgic yet?

I just added weapons to our attack helicopter, tweaked the title lettering, superimposed a background, smoke, fire, and HUD. Need to get rid of that Blender cursor, choose a better background, blur the rotors, add a tail rotor, detail the body, show some missiles launching, and put some afterburner flames shooting out of the engines. Hard scifi does not equal banal realism!

In-game, this advanced attack helo will be a boss-type enemy that you face in the final levels. It can be yours if you steal one; you'll need a character with the expensive and otherwise useless Rotorhead trait. Development wise, we'll have to add support for aerial units that don't occupy ground tiles. We need spinning rotors or an animated texture. The 30mm chaingun is straightforward. I think we can do turret rotation. Sadly no BRAAAAP; that's the A-10. Missile animations will be a variation of gunfire and grenades; they'll probably launch from a bay on the underside, because it's a stealth chopper, and it's easier than showing individual missiles launching off the pylons. Lastly, no scifi RPG would be complete without the experimental laser weapon, at least 10 times more powerful than those reported IRL.

Tactics: this chopper will have ~10 AP and enough speed to cross the battlefield in one turn, but it'll cost AP to turn this beast. Missiles and lasers can only hit distant targets straight ahead. The chaingun can target anything within a ~45-degree cone with a burst of explosive rounds each with a ~5-tile blast radius. Below or behind it, you're safe for at least one turn, so evasion is possible. It also flies low and slow, and its armor is vulnerable to rounds over .50 caliber.

Also on the drawing board: alien draconoid warriors...