Greetings!
I had originally planned to provide a SITREP at the start of the new year, but I wasn’t able to get to it until now. It has been quite a while since the last update, and I want to share some perspective on what has been happening behind the scenes.
First, I want to say how much I appreciate everyone who has supported the game from the beginning. Development has been complicated and slow, but the project has improved significantly thanks to the consistent feedback, patience, and encouragement I’ve received from all of you.
Although I’m the developer behind Project Gunship, my background is in finance, not software development. That has made this a long and challenging learning process. Like many of you, I’m first and foremost someone who loves gaming, and ever since playing the original Call of Duty 4 gunship missions in 2007, I’ve wanted to see a dedicated, stand-alone gunship experience. After years of being frustrated that no studio seemed interested in that niche, I decided to try building one myself. That effort began as Combat Simulations: AC-130U and was later renamed Project Gunship.
I think that context is important because it helps explain many of the development struggles and decisions made in the past few months. This was my first serious programming challenge and my first attempt at game development, so the road has been rocky. I’ve had to learn, often the hard way, what it takes to build a reasonably solid game—and that’s still something I’m learning today.
Because of that, the original codebase became increasingly difficult to work with. If you have any development experience, you probably know how frustrating old, fragile code can be. Small changes that should have been simple often broke major parts of the game, requiring a great deal of time just to restore things to a working state. This has been the basis of my burnout from the beginning.
One example was the infantry AI framework. Attempting to rework and improve it ended up breaking individual AI behavior across every scenario, which then required those scenarios to be rebuilt (Unreal Engine has some quirks that made this especially frustrating).
Since the last update, my plan had been to focus on several major systems I had been putting off for some time, especially the AI rework and custom scenario building. But once I fully got into that work, it became clear that much of the original framework either broke outright or had to be rebuilt to support the improvements properly. I was increasingly relying on temporary “band-aid” fixes, and eventually it became too frustrating to keep forcing those changes into a weak foundation.
Because of that, I made the decision to rebuild the game from scratch.
This has allowed me to structure the codebase in a way that better fits the needs of the game, while also focusing on optimization from the start. Just as importantly, it has allowed Project Gunship to evolve beyond feeling like a simple tech demo and into something much closer to a complete game.
Fortunately, that work has been underway for the past few months, and the results have been very promising. Performance is substantially better, development is much smoother, and there is now a much clearer path toward a 1.0 release. Systems that were once tightly hard coded together are now modular, which means they can be changed individually without risking major breakages elsewhere. On top of that, some features that were previously limited by performance constraints can now be implemented in a way that better reflects the realism I’ve been aiming for.
While this is not a complete list of changes, here are some of the more obvious differences you can expect to see in future updates:
Realism and Scope Adjustments
Gunship control has been removed and is now exclusively controlled by the scenario. Previously the player was given the ability to set the "NAV" marker to adjust where the gunship orbited, but going forward, the gunship will always orbit the action that is related to the scenario and player. This allows the player to focus on being only the sensor operator.
Sensor traversal range is now limited to the traversal range of the guns. The most common complaint or misunderstanding was related to sensor and gun misalignment. After many attempts to prevent this for new players, I think it is best to limit this and concentrate the action within these limits. Additionally, this allows greater detail in levels as maps are generally reduced in size, as opposed to before. This makes it much more manageable for me to build. Oddly enough, this limitation seems to have improved the immersion and even better sells the illusion that you are in fact over a large battlefield (it didn't help previously when the player could see the physical end of the map at any time).
Ballistics have overall been simplified, focusing on the most obvious ballistic challenges gunship have to deal with. It is often pointed out targeting and range estimation are automatic, so manual adjustment of the impact is no longer required. However, engagement ranges have increased for all gunships, so timing and offset are much more important to hit moving targets. (This is one of those things some of the hardcore players will be disappointed to hear, but I'll simply say wait until you try it - I'm confident it'll still be enough to scratch the itch.)
Munition selection has been minimized to remove only marginal differences between types. An example: including the PGU25 and PGU38 is largely unnecessary, because the differences between those rounds in game are so minimal that it makes virtually no difference to the player, using one over the other.
Gameplay improvements
Each gunship variant will have a "sortie" or campaign associated with it, providing an experience in the conflict it operated in. Each sortie will consist of several levels that progress through events unique to that sortie. For example, the sortie flown in the AC-130A "Project Gunship II" variant is a mission in the Vietnam conflict to disrupt enemy logistic operations on the river and destroy any infrastructure that supports their logistics.
Each level has several checkpoints that allows the player to save their progress through the level, allowing them to restart at their last checkpoint, rather than having to replay the level entirely. This previously has been a big pain point for players and finally is resolved (it certainly helps testing too on the dev side).
Chaos destruction is being implemented to nearly every object on screen. Environment destruction is important for gunship gameplay.
Massive improvements to AI and animations. Infantry units have more variety in their engagements, allowing more versatile and realistic action. AI is able to operate in groups, within formations, to further sell infantry combat in game. Animals have also been added to decorate and further complicate target acquisition for the player.
All VFX and SFX have been improved, giving a much more immersive experience visually and auditorily.
There is still a great deal left to do, but the day-to-day work now is focused mainly on building scenarios for each gunship variant’s sorties. This used to feel like pulling teeth; now it’s actually enjoyable. I’ve already made strong progress on the A variants (Project Gunship II and Surprise Package), and I’m confident the rest will come together much more quickly than before.
I do not have specific dates for upcoming updates yet, but the goal is to have the 1.0 release ready by—or before—the anniversary of the game’s Early Access launch. I may also release a 0.9 version containing whatever sorties are completed before then, but that will depend on how development progresses.
Regardless, development is continuing, and I do not intend to stop until the game is finished. I believe this will be the year that happens. I truly appreciate the support and patience of such an outstanding player base, and I hope to have more to share with you sooner rather than later.
I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season and that 2026 has treated you well so far. Thanks!
