WHY God - is there no decent Sailing Ship war game?!?!

[mwsheeler]

Richitis and Bix both have my respect for the work they are doing. I hope they both continue on. I will follow with interest.

[con20or]

Very much so - seems there's life in the age of sail genre yet

Rich's reminds me most of Man of War II - one of my favourite AOS games. There were signals and fleet commands in that too - but they never worked for me. Not sure if it needed a patch or what - i played it in the pre-internet days..

[raymond6751]

Here's a passage from "Command at Sea" Michael A. Palmer
[quote]
In the age of sail, fleets at anchor possessed advantages that generally allowed them to drive off much stronger forces. Closely anchored together, the ships formed an almost impenetrable line capable of concentrated fire, with one flank secured close to land and an assault possible only from a single direction.
Mooring (anchoring from both bow and stern) and fixing springs (lines warped to the anchor cables from the opposite quarter of a ship) allowed a man-of-war to pivot to cover all angles of approach and support its neighbors.
[unquote]

[con20or]

Interesting. I always thought the French had just been caught off guard at the Nile.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Nile

[tater]

Originally Posted by con20or

Interesting. I always thought the French had just been caught off guard at the Nile.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Nile

They were, really. They had many crew ashore, and were only ready for action on the seaward side, so the RN ships that went inshore of them had some time of unfettered shooting.

As an aside, I think generalities about position, or French vs Rn tactics and methods are not super useful for teasing out the realities of naval warfare in the age of sail. The French taking the lee, for example. They trained for more accurate gunnery than the RN... before many of their royalist officers lost their heads, or were otherwise drummed out of service. I think they tended to keep their doctrines in revolutionary/napoleonic france in spite of no longer having the skilled men widely available to use that doctrine well. Nelson, and most others in the RN, knew that their standards of gunnery were poor (from the standpoint of laying guns), and speed, combined with placing your ship where you could not miss (alongside the enemy) meant more shot delivered to the target. Making a virtue of necessity, lemonade out of lemons... however you'd like to think about it.

A notable exception that leaps to mind is Shannon's captain, Philip Broke, who trained his gunners not just for rate of fire, but actually put sights on his guns and pushed aiming.

Obviously realistic AI will use the appropriate doctrines of the appropriate navies, regardless of the underlying rationale for those doctrines. Still, having them overlap with different crew qualities, or having some AI behave differently would be great.

Poor gunner skill + French doctrine = meh results (like most French/RN engagements turned out).

Good gunner skill + French doctrine = unmanageable RN ships and French initiative (to leave and do something else if that is their actual mission)

The RN doctrine results in more shots hitting regardless of crew quality since they endeavor to place themselves where missing is not physically possible. They have to get to that range, however. The odd RN ship might also have excellent gunners... in fleet actions doesn't matter much.

I have to say, the most interesting focus for an age of sail game is actually small actions, not fleet actions. My dream game would be command of a single, small vessel (even a sloop of war) that is incredibly detailed/accurate. Then the maneuver aspect is far more important (sort of analogous to what we do in subsims).

[raymond6751]

quote " most interesting focus for an age of sail game is actually small actions, not fleet actions. My dream game would be command of a single, small vessel (even a sloop of war) that is incredibly detailed/accurate."

I'm with you on that. I'd actually buy a "game" that was just realistic sailing in various conditions, without the gunnery.

Oh, to take a tea clipper on a voyage or round the horn with one of the early explorers.

[tater]

Originally Posted by raymond6751

quote " most interesting focus for an age of sail game is actually small actions, not fleet actions. My dream game would be command of a single, small vessel (even a sloop of war) that is incredibly detailed/accurate."

I'm with you on that. I'd actually buy a "game" that was just realistic sailing in various conditions, without the gunnery.

Oh, to take a tea clipper on a voyage or round the horn with one of the early explorers.

I want the gunnery, heck, I want boarding, small land actions... Cochrane stuff (much of which was novelized in the form of Hornblower, Aubrey, etc).

Piracy... meh. The fascination has more to do with fantasy than reality. The reality was that pirates rarely fought anything that might be called a fair or challenging fight, most enemies struck rather than get murdered, and some got murdered anyway. A junior office with a command, or fresh Post Captain is the best bet for exciting times. You have the opportunity to take prizes, or form some small element of larger fleet actions (scouting in towards ports to take a look, sending men ashore to spy, etc). Loads of fun stuff to do that is more interesting than attacking helpless merchants (99.9999999% of piracy), or attacking the wrong ship that is NOT a helpless merchant, and getting killed in action (or caught and hanged).

[bix]

full sails set and we're cracking on!

working title for the game is "Signal - Close Action!" - prolly have copyright issues, but for now, it will do.

sorry for the delay. i had to make some hard decisions regarding the various approaches to physics and display. this is a totally stripped down exe - it is very primitive, but real world physics is indeed driving each little ship.

the basic problem is at the time scale for a casual game in admiral mode, the tack evolutions are just epileptic, and you hardly notice all the wind math going into the sails. in captain mode, at real time scale, this should not be an issue. for now though, this release is set to "casual admiral."

the release was actually ready friday evening, but then of course i had "deployment" issues, solved this morning.


think of it as a "live" video. you can do nothing yet, other than move the camera.

- to pan the camera, click and drag the mouse. be careful, it's a bit touchy.
- up/down arrow keys pitch the camera.
- left/right rotate the camera, but i would not recommend it. that's really just for my own debugging.
- w/s keys raise and lower the camera. careful with those too, there are no "stops."
- escape key exits.

it will run in full-screen mode, but you need to hack a text file called "app.icf" in notepad, and enter your screen resolution:

here's the salient portion:
WinFullscreen=1
WinHeight=480
WinWidth=640
WinFullScreenHeight=768
WinFullScreenWidth=1366
WinPosX=10
WinPosY=10

my res is 1366x768 - put yours in there. i assume everyone can handle this.

about the scenario -

16 orange ships (you) face off against 16 black ships (the enemy) with hazardous islands between. each ship chooses it's opposite ship to hunt and engage. no cannon yet, soon soon. the wind is coming from due east so no side has the gauge.

i truely hope this does not "underwhelm" you. there are many things i had to gut from the release because, here and there, they were producing unexpected results. i did not want to confuse this first release with anything blatantly horrible, so it is a little less advanced than i would like. oh shut up, stop apologizing!

from here on in, every friday afternoon(ish) i will make a release with the latest and greatest. here's my roadmap till june 1 (and beyond)

week 1:
- add user ability to change the wind direction.
- command ships (sail to point, follow ship friend/foe)
- automated gunnery
- ship "animation" ie sail orientation, helm/rudder, and ship heel
week 2:
- set sail plan on individual ships
- change time scale
- visualize tacking/wearing/boxhaul (i hope)
- visualize combat damage
week 3:
- initial "captain" mode, fully manual control of the ships, toggle to auto
- gunnery control/command manual semi-auto and auto
week 4:
- captain mode complete (i hope)
- multiple scenarios with different objectives ("missions" or "levels")
- "official" beta release.

most everything mentioned above exists in one way or another, just not yet fully resolved.

and here's the url you have been waiting for:
http://www.cityarts.com/signal/signal.zip

unpack to a folder of your choice, edit the app.icf, and run engine.exe. upper left corner of the screen shows fps, you should be running at 50+

it is just a very very simple little game at this point, but the foundation for all we have been discussing is properly laid, i've achieved critical mass (ie. i'm actually putting it out there), and it's clear sailing ahead!

best,

bix

[raymond6751]

Congrats bix. She sails.

I didn't get my copy until this morning, Saturday.

I did notice that ships were moving Eastward, against the wind. Otherwise, it looks good. Land avoidance, units maneuvring.

Thanks. I will watch some more, particularly picking a ship to see if it does follow an enemy, as indicated.

[tater]

Kid stuff most of the day, but I'll take a look later.

[mwsheeler]

looking good bix....

[Gilead Abyss]

Won't be able to have a look until the end of the dog watch, but i'm really excited that this is real.

Congrats Bix on the initial deployment, and the weekly schedule just adds to the sense that this really is professional-caliber work.

I'll post any feedback ASAP, and it sounds like the really good stuff is yet to come.

[Gilead Abyss]

Curiosity got the better of me - I had to have a look before the end of the day.

As raymond says, "she sails!"

Basics:
I'm running Win7 64-bit at 1920x1080 @ 60hz
notepad edit of .icf was very easy, though I assume this gets built into a "setup" step for the final program
engine ran steady at 50-60 fps throughout.

I ran the engine for about 5-6 minutes. would it run indefinitely in this form? I assume that since damage etc is disabled theres no "end" to this demonstrator. I'll run it again "after hours" for a longer stretch to test.

It looks like ship-ship collisions are not enabled; is this just an artifact of zoom/scale?

I watched one black ship sail across/over a green land mound - this only happened once that I saw.

Again, as raymond noted: windward progress is common almost due east - granted VERY SLOW progress. nothing evident in the way of "beating" to windward - long repeated series of tacking. Is this also a question of scale/zoom?

good ship recognition (visually distinct), and a strong impression of interaction and revised reactions as they navigate around and between each other. I don't know if it makes sense at this "admiral" view, but is there a way you've considered to indicate "pairs" of engaged units? maybe mouse-over of one highlights the counterpart enemy ship?

despite comment above about windward progress, I was initially pleased that both fleets don't ultimately end up clumped at the leeward end of the map - maintained relatively even distribution throughout. Not sure where this effect falls on the gameplay/realism spectrum, or even if it falls on that spectrum as a compromise.

touchy camera as you noted - maybe "borrow" the idea from SH4 etc of ctrl-arrow for slower movement and shift-arrow for faster. ie ctrl makes 1/2x speed and shift makes 2x. That way, default (arrow only) can be a little slower than it is now, without losing the ability to move across whole "map" quickly if needed.

All in all, a very impressive start, and a clear indication of the foundation physics and behavior.

keep up the good work, and I can't wait to see what comes next!

[bix]

thanks all for the great comments both pre and post release! just getting through them now, top priority is windward movement.

although i'm pretty sure mathematically, they are not actually progressing windward - though it may appear so, as i'm more generous with point of sail.

that said, it could also be a bug, or they are in irons but i'm not applying sternway. indeed tacking a ship often involved loss of way, ie, backwards, as part of the evolution.

i'm gonna twiddle a lot (again) with the representation of the sailing this week, for the next release, and open up changes in the wind direction. that will surely produce some interesting results.

best

bix
(more comments to come)

[raymond6751]

Hi bix -- looking very nice.

I chose one ship from bottom right (East) to follow and observe. You had said each ship had one to follow. I was not able to determine if 'my' ship was actually following anyone.

Each time I thought I had it, she would veer off and proceed in an independant manner.

However. I did keep wanting to zoom in and enjoy the cruise.