LHX Attack Chopper cheats, notes, anything

Classic '90s helicopter flight simulator, but there is few info about it, so here goes some interesting observations. (And VM Cheats!)

Trivia/Scoring

• The military rank you hold solely depends on the number of points. The range is: 0–1999 2^nd Lieutenant, 2000–5999 1^1st Lieutenant, 6000–9999 Captain, 10000–15999 Major, 16000–19999 Lt.Colonel, 20000–Infinity Colonel. There is no end to the game. The counter will wrap at the usual 32-bit signed integer boundary (2^³¹).
• The “Purple Heart” is awared when hit. (Helicopter windshield has a hole and the text “You've been hit” appeared in-game.) Most likely requires that you got shot from the front, obviously.
• The “Good Conduct” medal is awarded after a streak of mission successes.
• The score for a mission seems to be deductable by 50% if the player quits the mission over enemy territory and was captured as a POW but could escape.
• Germany map, "Pickup" mission: you get points for destroying the defecting minister's Hokum helicopter, even if the mission as a result is unsuccessful.

Trivia/Missions

• “Aerial Intercept”: The fleet will not take off if the target MI-HIP helicopter is destroyed before the party left.
• “Aerial Intercept”: shooting any of the companion guards makes them immediately take off, but the MI-HIP continues to sit around until the timer for their leave expires.
• “Aerial Intercept”: a Hind and a Hokum occupy the same spot in the formation.
• “Supply Run”: the crate must be dropped (X key) from a few feet floating above the ground. It cannot be dropped while landed.
• Medevac etc.: pickups sometimes only work when hovering
• Landing within 1.3 miles of your landing base will end the mission.
• Weather conditions do affect the game. For wind, this may be obvious, but it also affects the range of sight.
• You can actually land, rather than crash, on the white square buildings on the Germany map.
• The in-game Osprey can indeed tilt the rotors (V key) and attain some 318 mph under ideal conditions.

Trivia/UI

Abbreviations:

• RWR – Radar Warning Receiver
• RD/IR — radar/infrared
• STG — search/track/guidance (Apache/Blackhawk radar/infrared sensors)
• VSI — vertical speed indicator
• TFOH — Engine/Thrust, Fuel, (Engine) Oil, (Flight Controls) Hydraulics
• AR – Autorotation
• MFD – Multi Function Display (usually implemented as a CRT – Cathode Ray Tube, since TFTs/flatpanels were not common in 1990)

Trivia/AI

• The in-game Osprey is the most economical vehicle; when switched to flight mode, cutting the engine still makes the plane go at least 90 mph in every case.
• Resting enemy aircraft will not take off (and be a nuisance) unless shot or the mission code makes them leave.
• Shooting any resting enemy helicopters or fighters makes them take off immediately, by raising the nose (normally helicopters do a vertical lift-off). The graphics usually cause this to look like a tailstrike, but what's more, fighters suddenly getting full speed is not going in line with reality.
• (In all skills:) The AI randomly spawns enemy aircraft starting from an airstrip.
• In the “Hard” and “Very Hard” skill, the AI randomly spawns enemy aircraft in mid-air.

• Usually, no randomly spawned enemies will appear if you already have more than four enemy aircraft within radar range.
• Infrared-guided missiles usually lose track of their target just before potential impact when the missile has to climb above ~6000 ft.
• The Gaskin won't fire infrared missiles if your heli is too low on altitude.
• The chance that a SAM will target you is much higher in higher altitudes. (IOW: Fly below 200 ft.)
• AI aircraft are able to fly as high as your chopper (i.e. up to 9000 ft) (and then shoot you)
• AI enemies will usually not follow you behind the Allied/Soviet “border”.
• AI helicopter units (including Allied ones) always seem to be a bit slower than the player with the same vehicle type. (You can overtake the other Black Hawks in “Chopper Escort” with your own Hawk.—With keyboard controls, matching their speed is not possible as keyboard control only allows for three speeds selects.)
• Enemy aircraft will, after some time, land on a base. The game engine will then deallocate the aircraft.
• Hind helicopters, in direct pursuit of the player, will shoot with their chaingun, but evidently miss when the player is below 200 ft.
• Subsystems can be damaged multiple times.

Trivia/Weapons

• Stingers have half the firepower of a Sidewinder rocket.
• Sidewinder rockets travel about 15.5 miles (in-game), with a lifetime of 30 seconds, i.e. ~1860 mph. This matches the official rating, which is Mach 2.5+ (1918+ mph) and 0.6–22 miles.
• Hellfire rockets travel about 3.0 miles, with a lifetime of 20 seconds. (540 mph / 270 mph adjusted.)
• LHX Chaingun rounds travels 1.8 miles.
• Gears down on the LHX chopper reduce speed by 25% (215->161 mph).
• Destroying any non mission goal targets does not seem to award any points.
• A grid cell (those oddballs lying on the ground in a square pattern is 0.195 miles on each edge.

VM Cheats

Write to the following addresses (using the DosBox debugger or other technique) to do the cheat. These cheats are transparent to the program and hence do not affect scoring.

DS = 0x393E [verify with dosboxdebugger]

• uint8_t @DS:F360 — primary weapon string pointer
  0x00: * DAMAGED *
  0x0c: 7.62mm × 5 gun (BH-60)
  0x1c: TOW
  0x48: Hellfire
  0x64: 25mm × 5 gun (Osprey)
  0x6c: 30mm chaingun (AH-64)
  0x74: Stinger
  0x98: 20mm chaingun (LHX)
  0xa0: Sidewinder
  0xe0: 7.62mm gun (BH-60)
  0xf0: 57mm FFAR
  
• uint8_t @DS:F361 — primary weapon type
  0x00: damaged hardpoint
  0x11: gun (BH-60)
  0x12: gun (Osprey)
  0x13: chaingun (Apache, LHX)
  0x14: missile
  
• int16_t @DS:F36A — ammo for primary weapon
• int16_t @DS:F36C — ammo for secondary weapon
• int16_t @DS:F36E — ammo for tertiary weapon
• int16_t @DS:F370 — ammo for quarternary weapon
• int8_t @DS:F37A — number of available chaff charges
• int8_t @DS:F37B — number of available flare charges
• int32_t @DS:F633 — score for current mission opportunistic targets (i.e. the fixed score for the mission goal is not included until the mission concluded)
• int32_t @DS:F637 — total player score

General cheats

• Standard cheat: Ctrl-R refills ammo and fuel, but will not award any points for the mission. Use a direct memory write (VM cheat) to bypass.
• Easteregg: On the Vietnam map, located 10.6 miles heading 246 from the westernmost allied base, is a black monolith portal behind a mountain that teleports to a random location on the map (including enemy territory).
• Easteregg: On the Germany map, located 24.0 miles in heading 68 from the southernmost allied base, is a black monolith portal behind a mountain that teleports likewise.
• Easteregg: There are reports of a monolith "in the desert", but have not personally spotted it yet.
• IHATS Crash cheat: Choose the “Free Flight” mission, crash into an object, and end the mission (Ctrl-Q) before hitting the ground. When the next mission has started (map zoom cinematic has finished), the game engine finally sets the "life" to zero and runs the destruction animation for the helicopter (you will find a hole in the ground), but without ending the mission. Enemies will not shoot, but they will preferably spawn and however around the player. In this mode, it is not possible to pick up cargo/people, thwarting completion of all the rescue missions.
• When the player is killed, the score is only reset once the debrief page has been dismissed. If one terminates the program beforehand, the .cfg file still has the score and medals.
• It is possible to shoot backwards; hit Enter to target the object, and switch to another view (F7/F8/Shift-F10). As long as the player is in range, the target can still be hit.

“Cast & Crew”

Locations

There are some bugs with respect to location names in the game. The central allied base as well as the northern allied base is known as Boitzenhagen, which cannot quite work with a real map. But see for yourself. Game North is not north in the real maps either (esp. for the Libya map).

• Germany map on Google
  
  • 29399 Wahrenholz
  • 29413 Schmölau
  • 29413 Dähre
  • 29413 Diesdorf
  • 29378 Boitzenhagen
  • 38489 Jübar
  • 38489 Stöckheim
  • 38489 Rohrberg
  • 38489 Beetzendorf
  • 39649 Trippigleben
  • 39649 Buchhorst
  • 38471 Rühen
• Libya map on Google
• Vietnam map on OSM (Gio Lin and Cam Lo appear)

Medal view

• 1st row: (rank indicator, see above)
• Silver Star
• Good Conduct Medal
• Purple Heart
• x
• 2nd row: Distinguished Service Cross, awarded when mission yields more than 2000 points
• Air Medal, awarded when 10 enemy aircraft are trashed
• Distinguished Flying Cross, awarded when 20 enemy aircraft are trashed
• Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal
• Medal of honor

Command line options

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