Hornet Virus - 3D helicopter shooter (now completed)

hijong park

Member

Hornet Virus is a sequel of my previous game 'Steel Alcimus', and my first 3D game project.

It's an arcade game about flying an attack helicopter to blow up the enemies in 3D atmosphere.

The gameplay is inspired by The niche 3D shooter called Zarch from acorn archimedes,(or Virus in other platforms) as well as many other arcade helicopter games including infamous strike series, seek and destroy, and zeewolf which is also a Zarch-inspired game.

Having no experiences about 3D at all, it was a big challenge to make the 3D space from scratch. But fortunately I have managed to make the basic prototype of it.

Currently, I made basic controls of the player's helicopter and 3 different types of enemies.(Land, air, and sea)
 
It looks great, and I congratulate you for pulling this off while being new to the dimension, but I could never play it. Despite working exclusively in 3D, being lost in 3D space is ironically a huge fear for me, for whatever reason, and those short draw distances had me nervous.
 

Japster

Member
I like it! - Seems REALLY fast, which is obviously great, and intentional, but I'm a bit older now, and I think that this game at about half the speed would be ideal for me! :D

Great stuff though, and I'm loving the Virus, Cyclone (remember that on the Speccy?) Desert Strike, and Swiv 3D vibes I'm getting from it! :D

Talking of Cyclone - I used to love that collecting mechanic in the game! - it might add to the playability if, as per that old classic (and desert strike), etc, you could maybe have to collect or winch ammo, rescuees, etc too! :) Maybe even have a hover mechanism or a way of locking / locking your height, with slower moving etc whilst in that mode?

Just ideas to throw into the mix! :D

Oh, and one last thing! - some games with a closer view, like this, 'ghost' the stuff coming in - i.e. draw half as bright / dithered with black, 1/3 as bright etc, just outside the area that you're actively rendering (ie. perhaps a couple of blocks further out) - this can greatly remove the appearance of things quickly popping up and disappearing as they enter/exit the view (a good example is at 18-19 seconds in), but I'm guessing this may impact performance, so you're probably aware of it already... ;)
 
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hijong park

Member
I like it! - Seems REALLY fast, which is obviously great, and intentional, but I'm a bit older now, and I think that this game at about half the speed would be ideal for me! :D

Great stuff though, and I'm loving the Virus, Cyclone (remember that on the Speccy?) Desert Strike, and Swiv 3D vibes I'm getting from it! :D

Talking of Cyclone - I used to love that collecting mechanic in the game! - it might add to the playability if, as per that old classic (and desert strike), etc, you could maybe have to collect or winch ammo, rescuees, etc too! :) Maybe even have a hover mechanism or a way of locking / locking your height, with slower moving etc whilst in that mode?

Just ideas to throw into the mix! :D

Oh, and one last thing! - some games with a closer view, like this, 'ghost' the stuff coming in - i.e. draw half as bright / dithered with black, 1/3 as bright etc, just outside the area that you're actively rendering (ie. perhaps a couple of blocks further out) - this can greatly remove the appearance of things quickly popping up and disappearing as they enter/exit the view (a good example is at 18-19 seconds in), but I'm guessing this may impact performance, so you're probably aware of it already... ;)
It's really fast just because I didn't balance anything. The final game will be much slower, It's frustrating to aim something in 3D when it's too fast.

The fog sounds like a good idea, I'll see if it's doable without affecting the performance too much.

The control works like this - in normal flight mode, the helicopter keep hovering in middle height. Moving the pitch down to move forward will slightly decrease the flying height.

By extracting landing gear, the helicopter starts to keep descending to land.

If you press the throttle button the helicopter increases rotor power to fly higher and move faster.

Flying high increases the targeting radius which is useful in combat, but it will drain the fuel much faster and you can be easily spotted by the enemies.
 
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hijong park

Member
It looks great, and I congratulate you for pulling this off while being new to the dimension, but I could never play it. Despite working exclusively in 3D, being lost in 3D space is ironically a huge fear for me, for whatever reason, and those short draw distances had me nervous.
The levels in this game have wrap-around feature, you don't have to worry about getting lost. There will be a radar as well.

The draw distance must be limited because of wrap-around feature, but I'll increase it a bit more.
 

hijong park

Member

Today's progression of Hornet Virus:

- Added UI

- Added some soundeffects.

- Some graphic improvements.

- Added various weapons including machine gun, rocket, missile, bomb, torpedo, and some special ones like Doomsday bomb, Fuel pod, and radar jammer.

- Added camera rotation.

- Added Two playable helicopters.



Blue Hornet

Blue hornet is an armed scout helicopter. By extracting landing gear, The maneuverability increases a lot and it can automically hover which is useful for comfortable flight.

with its great rotor power It can easily reach the highest height and perform dive attack, which is especially useful for using rockets at ground enemies.

However it has weaker armor with worse fuel efficiency.



Steel Alcimus

Steel Alcimus is an attack helicopter has great armor with great fuel efficiency. not only that, it can carry one extra weapon for not having the extracting landing gear.
However, it is a lot slower than Blue Hornet and you must keep pressing throttle button to fly - or It will go down and crash. also It can only carry 2 hostages at once.
 
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hijong park

Member

- Added Platinum Sabulosa. Platinum Sabulosa is a transport helicopter that has 2 door gunners and can carry 10 hostages at once.

- Added various enemies including infantries, mobile SAM, Sub marine, and Jets.

- Added Enemy helipads and airfields which spawn enemy aircrafts.

- I'm Currently Working on instant action mode before the campaign. Instant action is a quick arcade mode, where you complete your randomly generated missions.

- Some more optimization works.
 

hijong park

Member



The developlemt of this game wasn't so smooth for several weeks.

I tried to make a dynamic 3D terrain for many days but failed and eventually decided to go with flat square grounds, and the project got corrupted once that I had redone all the works again.


- Added title screen.



- Tweaked the controls and autoaim angle. It feels much better now.



- Added 2 more helicopters : Sawfly warrior (based on Oh-58D Kiowa Warrior) and Bronze Vespula.(based on UH-60 Black Hawk)



Bronze Vespula is a transport helicoter with slowest maneuverability and largest boarding size.

Compared to Platinum Sabulosa, It can equip only 1 weapon and door gunners has smaller effective range but slightly faster and has more durable armor.



Sawfly Warrior is a light observation helicopter with weakest armor and fastest maneuverability.

It doesn't have any fixed turrets, but instead it has IR jammer which deactivates enemy missiles and Mortar observer to call the mortar support.

Mortars deal great amount of damage, but it's only efffective for inmoving ground targets.



- Added more missions in Instant action including Escort and capturing enemy base.



- Various bug fixes and optimizations.
 

hijong park

Member

- Got rid of ugly square islands and replaced them with procedurally generated islands.

I figured out a way to use tiles in 3D and tile collision check, so I don't have to worry about slowdowns anymore.

- Added Enemy C&C vehicle who spots you and calls air support to their aircrafts.

- Added Radar range adjustment.

- Added Training and Free flight in Main game mode.
 

hijong park

Member


- Added Air Patrol mode.
In this mode, You have to protect 4 bases frome eneimes and destroy all enemies that invaded your archipelago. You can also get some health bonus by saving civilians.

- Improved flight controls with much faster and smoother flying.

- Added Crosshair for ground attack.

Hornet Virus 2020-03-22 오후 3_21_51.png

- Added Flare. Flares are automically launched when the guided missile is approaching. You must perform Avoidance maneuver when the flare is launched to avoid the missile.

The development was stopped for a moment because my laptop is suddenly screwed up. Fortunately, I could buy a better new laptop and continue the development.
 
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hijong park

Member
I have made a major patch to polish the gameplay and prepare the steam release.

Hornet_Virus 2020-05-04 14-05-00-627.png

- Weapons except bullets are not infinite anymore. Now you have to buy the weapons with credit while landed on the helipad. you get an extra credit by earning 200 scores.

- Air patrol mode is completely reworked. Separated attack waves per archipelago is now removed but each wave take longer to beat instead. And during the wave you get simple side missions to do while defending bases. Side missions are not mandatory, but you get repair bonus and score for completing them.

- Improved flight controls. Now it's generally more agile and you don't have to tilt the helicopter to almost 90 degree to move forward.

- Fixed lots of bugs.
 

hijong park

Member

Hornet Virus is now available on steam !
 
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