Hi all,

This week we have Mission#7 released with the first fixed-wing aircraft available:  the A-1H Skyraider Attack Aircraft.

Equipped with 8 x Mk81 bombs, 4 x Mk82 bombs, 2 x 70mm rocket pods (19 rockets each side) and 2 x 20mm cannons on each wing  loaded with 720 explosive rounds,  the Skyraider is a monster on the Ho Chi Minh trail.

In Mission #7 you will enjoy the new 200km X 200km map of Central Highlands South Vietnam. All activities are happend around a small airbase named Pleiku AB. This area is the end of the Ho Chi Minh trail started from North Vietnam connects to Laos, Cambodia and finally South Vietnam through a networks tunnels, jungle and mountain trails.  It is used by the North Vietnam Army (NVA) to supply weapons, food, rice.. for the VietCong that fighting in the South.

Your mission is to disrupt the trail by bombing and attacking the convoy trucks traveling along. A light observation aircraft (O-1 Bird Dog) will be your FAC (Forward Air Controller) who will fly low and mark enemy positions with  colored smoke. Be aware of anti-air guns, it is far more dangerous then those VCs you’ve met in previous missions. Those AA guns are much bigger and mounted on trucks, about ten to twenty rounds of those AA will destroy your aircraft. The terrain is also another factor: mountain terrain together with high altitude  reduces aircraft performance and climb rate. Also, use your bombs first to reduce weight load, don’t do hard maneuver while still carrying bombs (total 3 tons), your Skyraider may stall and as you know there is no chance to recover when terrain is around you.

Full version has unlocked mission 2-3 (and 4 on Android).

Also many minor bug fixes.

Mission 8 will come shortly next week.

The update is now available for Google Play, about two days from now on Amazon and three to four days from now on Apple AppStore.

Thanks,

Phillip

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/gunship-iii/id654380005?ls=1&mt=8

Anyone like to have a promo code, please email me at info@gunship3d.com, subject as “promo code”, only 50 codes available.

Thanks

For iOS devices, we’re still waiting for approval on the first release (3.0.0).

Finally, I have all the works done on Gunship-III and it is ready to ship. However, I’m not getting problem distributing the game on AppStore. The main issue was Gunship3D has been on AppStore for 2 years and at that time the game did  support iPhone 3GS and the iPad1 (One app for both devices). The problem is Apple now requires the game to support all the devices that had been supported before except Apple iOS is no longer supported on that particular device.

So now to be able to post the update, Gunship-III has to be able to run on iPhone 3GS which is impossible. iPhone 3GS has only 256MB memory and it won’t load anything that taking more than 110MB RAM (iOS6 takes more memory than previous versions). For the iPad1, it is no longer supported by Apple iOS 6, so it  could be masked out from this update.

The solution suggested by Apple is to create a new app for Gunship-III and remove Gunship-II from the market, which means this cannot come as an update, and everyone who owns Gunship-II has to buy Gunship-III as a new app.

For people who own Gunship-II HD, you might automatically get the update since this HD version doesn’t support iPhone/iPod devices.

The price for Gunship-III will be $3.99 , $4.99 after all 10 missions are available, $5.99 when online play is available.

For Android/Amazon/Mac people, Gunship-III might get the update for free just as promised.

I really want to have this update available for free of charges and really got bumped by this last minute issue.

Some people who own Gunship-II suggest that it is not fair if people who own the HD version don’t have to pay for Gunship-III, so Gunship-III should come as a completely new app and everyone has to buy it including Android and Amazon.

So please let me know your ideas and suggestion on this issue.

Thanks

Phillip Phan

Hello everyone,

Today, I have mission #4 completed. Most of the work on this mission are  focused on the AH-1G cobra. As some discussions in the previous post, the main problem of the AH-1G cobra is the ability to control the gun turret while still be able to fly the heli. I’ve tried  finger  head-look control for aiming the minigun, unfortunately this method doesn’t work. It’s extremely hard to shoot at ground targets while you’re on a moving platform. The finger just cannot keep up with target movements, even though finger swipe has proved to be very useful and intuitive for head-look and zooming.

My solution is to use accelerometers for controlling the gun turret while AutoPilot takes over pilot controls.

Here is the explanation:

Normally, you will be in the back seat of the cobra (pilot seat), fully control the heli and weapon systems. If you are not selecting the minigun, an AI gunner will control the turret and will do the shooting job, you still could fire rockets or launching smoke grenades  independently with the front gunner. If you select the minigun, AI gunner will be disabled and you could only fire forward just as a fixed mount gun on the heli.

To be able to control the turret, tap on “view”. Instead of functioning as a zoom button, the “View” button will bring you to the front seat. You’re still in control the heli and still could fire forward with rockets or whatever selected weapon. Until now if you activate AutoPilot (“Auto” button), AutoPilot will take over the aircraft, maintain current altitude, heading and whatever airspeed at the moment. Your accelerometers are now disengaged with the aircraft contro; however, they’re now control your head movements with a gunsight attached. The turret will follow your head and point the gun at wherever you look at.

In practice, the sequence is pretty straight forward:
* First, you fly the heli approach enemy target, select rocket as weapon.
* Second, you have visual on enemy positions, tap on “View” to aim, and now shooting some rockets at targets. AI gunner controls the turret and fire minigun at whatever it see.
* Third, you tap on “Auto” to take over the turret. Tilt forward/backward/left/right to point the gun at target and fire.
* Fourth, tap on “Auto” again to regain aircraft control, AI takes over the turret.

Another new feature for this mission is the ability to direct airstrike using smoke grenade. In this mission both the AH-1G and UH-1B have smoke grenade as  weapon and you could throw smokes at enemy positions such as bunkers, buildings..etc. A purple smoke will draw nearby bomber; as a result, they will deliver a bomb right on top of the smoke.

Also the minigun  has better sound and shooting with much higher rate now.

Thanks,

Phillip

Airstrike explosion

Another strike

Real footage of the cobra:

Hello everyone,

This week, I have Mission#3 finally completed together with lots of new improvements for the whole game in general.

First of all, you will see the  scenery is more detail now with much more objects such as trees, buildings, houses, and jungles. It was a problem before, as you know, mobile devices are relatively weak, populating a large city or a jungle of  trees would significantly reduce FPS (frame per second) due to high object count, that’s why most flight sim on iOS or Android have very limited trees and city rendering. However, this won’t be the case for Gunship-III, this time I finally figured out a way to have a full size city  with tons of small houses populating as you fly over but still could maintain the smoothness at very high frame rate, about 55-60 on my iPad3, and should be the same or higher on ipad2 (ipad2 is actually faster than ipad3 on rendering).

Also, other mobile flight games, developers usually place large buildings or enlarging houses to make players feel like it is a big city while maintaining a low number of rendering objects. For me, I didn’t like this approach. Imagine your heli lands next to a house in middle of a city and your aircraft looks like a remote-control toy compare to houses and trees around. In Gunship-III houses and cities are in real scale, the city is couple miles wide with thousand of houses, town houses are small just like real typical housing construction in South East Asia.

Enemy graphics are also much more detail with lots more actions such as dying, shooting RPG, Machine Gun or AK-47, and you can clearly see VC soldiers wearing black shirt with bamboo hat, and when they’re dying some blood would come out too. (just wanted to make it little more realistic).

Since everything is in real scale, it is kind of hard to see your enemy  while flying, so I decided to add a small screen which will zoom in on the enemy.Basically,  whatever the gunner see, you will see it.

Another new feature are pilot head G-effect which is only found on high-end flight simulator or add-ons. As you can see in the video, the OH-6A is an agile helicopter, it accelerates fast and makes tight turns;therefore,  it would be a waste if players could not feel all the forces affecting on the pilot while in hard maneuvering. With this new feature, when the ship accelerates you would be pushed back on the seat and, of course, pulled forward in hard decelerating and also pushed to the sides while turnings as well just as in real life. This effect makes piloting the OH-6A is just as cool as driving a sport car.

At this point, Gunship-III has 2 more missions to go before I could release the first 5 missions, so I think it would take about 2-3 weeks from now. So stay tune, and enjoy the video.

Thanks! Phillip.

Ready for takeoff

Low altitude fly over BienHoa city.

Shoot down VCs on a little boat.

Look at a village

Low altitude over a jungle

Heavy enemy contact

Watch out for RPGs (white smoke), it is dangerous.

Rocket fires from the 2 killer gunships.

VCs in the jungle

In flight collision with the cobra

Formation with Huey, nearby BienHoa AFB

Also just like to share a real footage of the OH-6A in Vietnam War:

Hi guys, this week I have the Chinook mission finished. Even though the mission seem to be simple, modeling the chinook and its physics are  really tough, especially, when it tows a five tons howitzer or an army truck. Finally, I have it worked as desired and very happy with it.

It’s pretty simple, all you need to do is hovering or slowly move on top of the truck. If you were low enough (about 5 meters high),  sling’s hook would be attached automatically and you could lift. For tow release, just need touch the ground (in drop zone),  load will be released in 3 seconds. The only problem is cargo cannot be dropped  in mid-flight or emergency situation, so maybe a release button will need to be implemented.

The chinook also features camera view from below its fuselage that allows player to monitor his cargo as well as a good view point for pick up and drop off cargo. Be careful when flying with heavy load, if you turn or bank sharp, the sling will start to swing and as a result the heli will be out of control. However, since in Gunship-III all helis are stabilized, you could easily regain control by leveling and reduce forward speed.

This mission also features an AC-47 Spooky as AI which will help you neutralize some anti-air.

New chinook model with lots of details.

Full chinook cockpit

Towing a truck

Fully function avionics

Closeup shot

Dropping cargo

Towing a howitzer.

The AC-47 Spooky shooting down on enemy position.

Trying to hover on top a downed huey while receiving enemy fires.

Trip A finally got me, spin out of control.

Finally, hit the ground and got kill.

This is the preview of the Mission #1, coming up update for Gunship-II. In this mission you could fly either the H-19 or the H-34 transport helicopter. The objective is to fly through enemy fires, pick up marines on a helicopter carrier ship and drop them at the Landing Zone (LZ) for reinforcement.

Pay attention to the helicopter physics, from the wheels to the gear suspensions, everything works very realistically  When the soldiers got into the heli, you would see the suspensions are compressed as the aircraft weight is added, and the heli climbed rate is much lower than before make it become an easy target for ground fires.

Helicopter flight characteristics are also highly simulated, even though it is stabilized for easier handling on a mobile device or with keyboard. You could do many advance maneuvers such as auto-rotation or coming in hot and then pitch up for immediate stop, stable hover, rolling take-off, etc. This allow you to fly much more actively in combat compare to other games currently available on the market.

You could see AIs are very agressive (the Huey Gunship, and the gunners), they will try their best to take down any enemy in range  and really don’t care about their own lives .

Also, in this game the map is in real scale and based on real terrain data, so what you see is actually very close to what real pilots would see in reality. This mission features a 200km by 200km map, covers Saigon and Bien Hoa and many small provinces around in the south of Vietnam. Coming soon will be more maps to cover the middle and north of Vietnam as well.

Please feel free to post your suggestions for the game, and it would be great if someone could help me with the instruction texts for this mission (the yellow texts). I’m open to replace these words because I feel like they are too shorts. Since I’m not a native English speaker, it’s really hard for me to find the right words. You could post your suggestion here or email me  at info@gunship3d.com.

Thanks and stay tune!

Phillip Phan