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Added some helicopters.
Cost me 800 bytes of model data (3 detail levels).
I don't have enough tokens to make them fly or shoot back, so they'll just be targets in "destroy enemy airbase" missions.

AA guns!

I had to nearly crash a helicopter into a hangar in order to bring you this close up. You're welcome. 🙃

This one at least should be able to shoot back at you (due to the existing heli cannon code).

Tom Mulgrew

Engaging AA guns head on is not a good idea.

Also I need to figure out a good way to convey helicopter damage.

Scrounged together enough tokens to make a somewhat passible menu screen.

These ships. Just sitting there. Looking all unexploded.

The gameplay is starting to feel there.

I tweaked the enemies' AI so they can always see at least 200m - prev. you could fly really low and be essentially invisible.

The countermeasures are OP, but tweaking the number you can carry makes you think carefully about wasting them.

Had a good playtest flying up-river to shoot some ships, and ducking inland to use the hills for cover. Eventually tried to rush in and got shot down by an AA gun close range.

More tweaking required, but getting there.

Turns out the targeting camera can be made a lot more legible by simply using a chequered dither pattern.

@tmulgrew are bullets rendered as single pixels? no tokens left to render them as ‘tracers’ eg using a line?

@fsouchu might be stretching it.
I'm down to 30 tokens, and still need to display player damage and do something sensible when you complete all the missions.

It would look nice though..

@tmulgrew little heli sprite is too cute!
side windows will immensely improve readability of heli model imho

@tmulgrew vessel shape is 👌
(good show of BSP - will certainly hack a wireframe render when game is released)

@fsouchu thanks. BSP tree feels slightly overkill for this type of game still, but it is nice just being able to add a model and not have to think about draw order.

@tmulgrew unrelated - have you seen new tline precision setting? don’t know if your engine is exposed to small du/dv

@fsouchu it rings a bell, but I haven't looked closely at it. I wasn't aware that tline had precision issues before tbh.
For me the ragged texture mapping is due to tracing lines of constant z.

@tmulgrew Looking great!! Good job!!

@tmulgrew this is bloody amazing. are you a magician? <3

@mantis just a gen-x geezer obsessed with writing 3d software renderers on 2d platforms