Project Operation Trident Offical Development Log

[nsomnia]

New water shader coming

[nsomnia]

SS CLASSIFIED Tench GUPPY CLASSIFIED USS CLASSIFIED at dock at CLASSIFIED.

BuShips is working on declass'ing information for SubSim. Hang tight men, a few more bells.

[nsomnia]

Old Stuff. Reserved for future.

[nsomnia]

So what is this game?
I started designing a WW2 u-boat simulator in my free time with Unity during 2012-14, at the time I was very new to programming and game design and just learning to take my AutoCAD skills to 3D modelling work.

I later decided there were too many WW2 sub-sims and decided to make an alternate reality cold-war subsim, heres and excerpt from my old code-bank that gives you a synopsis

You are the captain of a submarine that goes out on missions (a mix of scripted and random) during the cold war. However you are infact at war with Russia, thus you will be required to not only hunt her submarines and warships when they try to attack you, you will be required to attack their merchant shipping.

The game will follow history. When a certain class of submarine is historically available, you will have the opportunity to command it instead of your current class instead, at the expense of losing your crew and upgrades.

We start out in 1946 with a GUPPY class diesel-electric submarine not at war. Your taught the basics of of the game and how submarines work through a series of interactive tutorials (skippable) that take you into 1950 or so. At this point nuclear submarines are becoming a possibility (USS Nautilus, SSN-571 is the first nuclear submarine in the world, and thus will be your first real command). At this point you are asked to take her out on sea trials to explain how a nuclear submarine works. The campaign now begins.

A year after I posted that game idea I started a thread on the forums here with my progress and it got fairly far with interiors, characters, controllable subs, enemy AI, torpedos etc. but my team left to work on other projects and I mothballed it, we were very new with the very new and currently used game engine however, Unreal Engine 4, so it was a toy project.

That thread got a lot of attention and sat idle after I left it. A year almost to the day after I started that thread I got some new code for the ocean setup and started a new project and actually posted the downloadable game as I develop it, which you see here today. I will be continuing to post downloads of updates until I either give up or decide the game has financial potential.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Whats the release date and what platforms?
Release dates at this point with the indie game scene changing so much and my team consisting of just myself and freelancers if I get funding a solid release date for a beta version cant be given.
Operation Trident will be released on win32 & win64 first and then cooked for Mac and Linux afterwards. Linux may be a problem due to shader issues but it gets easier every month with Unreal Engine updates.


Whats the expected price
I've toyed with everything from a full 21.99 game to a 4.99 game with 1.99 DLC's. This isnt set in stone yet.

What Submarines/Countries/Technology will be available?
I will start with the US Pampantino class GUPPY conversion first and your second command will be the USS Nautilus. Then I will start the Russia campaign with a boat from the era that I can find enough info on. Technologies will be exactly as in real-life unless reference data isnt available then it will be guessed on or omitted.

At a later date either as an update or as a DLC depending on the pricing model other countries like the UK, Canada, Denmark etc. will be added.

Some surface boat missions will be available too.

Is this an arcade game (Silent Hunter 5) or extreme simulator game (Janes 688i)?
Initally it will be fairly arcade like to speed development but eventually difficulty levels will be added from Landlubber akin to Silent Hunter: Online all the way up to Sub-Nut akin to Janes 688i

How can I help?
If you have C++ or blueprint programming skills, modelling skills etc. and would like to help contact me at

info@optrident.com

Donations can be made via paypal at http://paypal.me/OpTrident and will receive mention in the credits with your payment note.

What about Kickstarter or GoFundMe?
If the reception is good as versions increment and its deemed financially viable a campaign may be started to fund the ability to pay for a small team

What cool features can I expect that I havnt seen before?
Import custom boat insignias, full PBR rendering, real-world scale, huge amounts of controllable boats and upgradable technologies, realism like nothing else, towed arrays, sound layers, the list goes on and on.

Contact us on skype @ blendertek, email at

info@optrident.com

or private message us here or Nsomnia @ forums.unrealengine.com

[nsomnia]

New underwater FX holding depth


Edit: I also drew a 4x8 subUV bubble grid for cavitation fx but its really cheesy looking like it belongs on a mobile game so I'll probably make a fresnel lens/refractive sphere and spawn that as a particle based on accelleration and such (anyone know of any research on cavitation?). Its cheesy but it adds that little bit more for now. In the meantime ill either spawn it from each blade at random times or spawn it from behind the sub and scale the bubbles way up and spawn it at random rates using a secondary spawning object that trails the boat.




-Added underwaterFX
-Surface = 'R' Hold Depth = 'F' Dive = 'V' emerg surf/dive to come
-Engine telegraph up/down changed to ins/del

Unfortuantly the diving controls override the manual tank venting/flooding and visa-versa so I'll have to come up with a better system I'll probably make the dive/hold depth/surface controls set the amount of water/air since thats how its done in real life. She doesnt come down/up perfectly straight which I could tweak but I think could be nice to have to manually tweak the trim every once in a while. Thoughts? Any input is going to have effect on the game.

[nsomnia]

We've got fish in the water. Its simple and only a mk14 with its 2 speeds and 2 ranges but its a start, not bad for a mornings work, being uploaded as I write this.

The further along I get in this little toy the more time I spend practicing my c++ and less time prototyping these systems.


Unless you guys want more of these simple setups sooner.. ARK got plaged because they blueprinted everythingb to get a full game out on time and it ran like crap (still does mostly) till they started recoding everything in real code.



http://i.imgur.com/3TXwVK5.png - Full resolution

[nsomnia]

Re-modelled the structure of the control room and store room compartment this morning, the normals need some work to show up properly but its ready to start playing with different ideas to be able to control and "ride" the ship without actually possessing it (when the ship becomes the "player")




Also got a basic mini-map working, just trying to get it to work without a landscape present, it will show the players position, enemy positions and areas of interest as-is but hopefully can be extended in the future for plotting without having to do any real serious coding. As a bonus it can be displayed on the dead reckoning table.


Lastly got SSR (sub surface reflections) and foam working at a basic level and cubemap reflections to enhance the quality of the water



Edit: Unfortuantly the minimap I brought in from an old project only works with landcapes, I know of a major game that was released mid last year that used ue4's landscape system for water but it involved some heavy engine source code editing that I dont want to get into right now. Going to try to make it work with the ocean tiles when I have free time.