MCHeli [MODERN PORT]

Feedback to me in Discord: https://discord.gg/k9FeFYCAmh

This project is a faithful port of EMB4's legendary Minecraft Helicopter mod (MCHeli <-- link) to modern Minecraft.

Military helicopters, jets, tanks, and emplacements; the mod that put a whole army in your Minecraft world is now ported to run on NeoForge 1.21.1, while staying true to the original in as many aspects as possible.

This project exists because of one man: EMB4, who is the original creator of MCHeli. All models, textures, assets, and gameplay mechanics are his original conception. See Credits below.

This is an ALPHA

This is a "drop it in and go flying" build, not a finished product. The core loop of spawning, boarding, flying/driveing, shooting, and taking damage is solid and working, but several systems are still in progress. Please read Roadmap & Known Limitations before you use this. Bug reports are hugely welcome.

Vehicles are creative-spawn only for now (no survival recipes yet), so play in Creative to try them out.

What's built now

• 112 vehicles, all faithfully ported from the original: 33 helicopters, 51 planes, 12 tanks, and 16 static AA/SAM/naval emplacements
• Full flight & drive model: real, config-driven handling per airframe. Helicopters hover and translate; planes need airspeed and bank into turns; tanks steer on their tracks.
• Working weapons: machine guns (barrel round-robin, spread, heat & overheat lockout, cartridge ejection, block-impact debris) and rockets (smoke/flame trails, FAE / underwater / standard blasts, cluster bomblets, full fuse chain).
• Marker / spotting rocket: plant it on a target and call in a multi-bomb airstrike.
• Config-driven cockpit HUD: heading & pitch ladders that bank with your roll, ammo counter, reload/cooldown bar, barrel-overheat gauge, and control-stick indicator.
• Crew & gunner support: take a gunner seat, switch seats, toggle gunner mode, per-seat weapons, and scope zoom.
• Free-look, camera cycling, rotor-fold on parked helicopters, wrench-based repair with an HP overlay, a cargo container entity, and a pilot-only resupply/rearm GUI.
• Damage, armor & destruction: per-part armor, rider eject on death, explosion, and a tumbling wreck.
• Guided Missiles: you can hold left-click, lock onto a flying target, and fire a guided missile from your craft.

Controls (basics)

• WASD: throttle / collective and yaw / steering
• Mouse: pitch & roll / aim
• Left-click: fire the selected weapon
• F: switch weapons
• Special actions: Vehicle Menu (resupply), Toggle Gunner Mode, Gunner Zoom, Previous Seat, and Free Look are all rebindable under Options -> Controls -> MCHeli.

Right-click a block with a vehicle item to spawn it.

Roadmap & Known Limitations

Deferred features — not bugs, just not built yet:

• Bombs & torpedoes can't be dropped yet, so dedicated bombers and torpedo craft currently have no working offensive weapon.
• A few pure recon aircraft have no fireable weapon (they fly fine).
• Not yet in: flares/countermeasures, VTOL thrust-vectoring hover, teams/PvP tuning, survival crafting recipes, the add-on / content-pack loader, UAV drones, and night/thermal vision.
• Some of the newest features are freshly landed and still getting polish.

If a combat aircraft feels toothless, that's the missing guidance. Spawn a gunship or a rocket-armed helicopter and you'll have a full fight.

Credits

MCHeli was created by EMB4. The vision, the enormous vehicle library, the models and textures, the sounds, the flight feel, the HUD, and the config/add-on format are all EMB4's original work, built over years for Minecraft Forge 1.7.10. This mod would not exist in any form without them.

This project is only the engine-level port: translating EMB4's mod so it runs on the modern NeoForge 1.21.1 platform, while preserving the original content and behavior as faithfully as possible. All the credit for what makes MCHeli special belongs to EMB4.

Links

• Original MCHeli by EMB4: https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/mcheli-minecraft-helicopter-mod
• Source code for my port: https://github.com/ThatSoulyGuy/MCHeli

Requirements

• Minecraft 1.21.1
• NeoForge 21.1.235 or newer
• Java 21 or newer