Soar to the skies with our new jetpack!

Back in Tremulous, the jetpack provided the human team with their sole means of vertical movement. Available at stage 2, the jetpack could be worn over light armor, allowing for the user to be protected while slowly hovering across the map, picking off aliens from the air with a mass driver or another reliable long-range weapon. On certain maps, this led to particularly irritating behavior, as the alien team lacked the capacity to take down the flying human, short of destroying the reactor or firing a well-aimed dragoon barb. The rare legitimate usages of the jetpack involved building in interesting places and taking advantage of routes normally available to aliens in the early game. Inexplicably, the jetpack also allowed for rapid movement in vents.

Our new jetpack was designed by Alex B. O’Dowd, and while we haven’t gotten to modeling it yet, we’re already working on it from the gameplay side of things. In fact, you can expect to play with some of the new jetpack features this weekend on our Sunday development game. Unlike Tremulous, our jetpack will not allow you to slowly hover in place. Instead, the jetpack will integrate with your regular movement and won’t be triggered manually anymore. The jetpack will provide much more rapid flight, at the expense of a fuel limit. Presumably, the jetpack fuel will regenerate over time, or may be renewed at a base structure.