Boom
 

bix, I like your idea. All is clear about the formation and the destination. Into this equation you will have to factor in the enemy somewhere, interfering with the plan.

Each ship will attempt, to its best ability, to move to its assigned position in the formation (and then?) head towards destination.

What happens when they get there?

Once on station, will each ship react to avoid collisions? Land?

When the player issues "general chase" command or equivalent, each ship heads for nearest enemy?

Sorry if I'm not thinking, like you, about the current problem - only about how it interacts with future problems.

captain's log - hms beta - 29 may 2013
 

latitude - 38.7N good sighting at noon
longitude - uncertain - between 9W and 30W

lost the chronometer in a righteous blow with a lee shore, shifting winds throughout watches.

crew mended sails and yards, the squadron is reforming and took station smartly upon point of rendezvous, no hands lost.

after a complete turn of watch, this 24 hours also proved enlightening. the squadron is now forming lines and avoiding a lee shore with alacrity. we may make seamen out of them yet.

final conclusions:

each ship chooses the closest enemy (or the point you choose) as the "ultimate" goal. center of mass of squad and center of mass of squad goals is calculated by the "commodore ai," and an overall squad heading is assigned. immediate ship goal is determined by the chosen formation of the squad, ie abreast or column, in relation to the heading vector. ship stations are determined by mobility (weather) and distance to station.

without any lee shore (island obstacles) the ships transition between stations in a most seamanlike manner.

when a lee shore forces a break in the line, things get more complicated. depending on the obstacle, a different line may be more or less efficient at navigation and reforming at "the other side." this is a problem for the AI more than the player. an experienced player will choose a line of battle and choose a navigation around the lee shore to optimize their position once the obstacle has been averted. they can also just ignore it and let the AI work its way around the obstacle, given the ultimate goal and the current line of battle, but this might not be the best approach.

that said, this *is* the game, right?

you want to be able to comport your fleet and command them in a well ordered manner to sink, burn, or destroy the enemy. comes down to line of sail, and navigational goal point.

once a squad is engaged in battle, you will have different primary concerns (ie gunnery). so your squad mind will be focused on effective gunnery in close action, and navigation will be mostly automatic. i will soon enable gunnery control (along with ocean swell).

i think i have the lines of sail thing finally under control. will post a new test build tomorrow. the problem now is interface - how to make selecting the squad (1 of 4) and assigning the goal to that squad effortless.


stay tuned,

bix

lines of battle screenie
 

will definitely release (sometime) today. here's a nice screen of squads reformed after obstacle avoidance. most of them made it through in good order.

a diagonal van weather formation seemed to work well here.

bix

http://www.cityarts.com/signal/index_files/squad3.jpg

I still haven't been able to try your sixth release as your link is redirecting me to a web search.

Looking good! Think I loaded the latest version, same link right?

After many a drunken conversation in the pub with a nautically minded friend of mine I decided to make my own one. It was going to be based on the SH5 Engine.

The game would place the player in command of a frigate in either the US. Navy, the Royal Navy, or the Imperial French Navy under Napoleon around 1799. The player would progress (if not sunk) through the rank of Commander to that of Post-Captain whereupon one would be assigned a rated ship.

The game would be called "Man-of-War".

Unfortunately it never got past this point. I would love it if someone made it though.

Lost link
 

bix I seem to have missed the Friday release. Did you put the link in a message?:/\\!!

friday release
 

my apologies, i'm still working on the friday release. yeah it's saturday night...

loading it up soon, i hope.

i *almost* have squad combat working nicely with formations. once in close combat, sheesh, it makes little sense to stick with the formation. i'm trying to balance these concerns.

i do have star/lar broadsides and bow/stern chasers choosing their own "target of opportunity." formerly, i just had either had bow or stern manned and star or lar broadside manned, but not both.

naturally as your gunnery decreases due to battle casualties, manning all guns will not be possible.

i'm slowly re-enabling everything now that squad formation navigation is functioning. i'll release once i'm satisfied all is more or less correct.

then i gotta finally address the user interface for the true "beta." well, it's really an alpha, but who cares!

stay tuned, almost there

bix

busted links
 

as far as i know the link is not busted, though i may have typed it wrongly in a previous post.

the last release (the new will come soon, hang on...) is and always will be:

http://www.cityarts.com/signal/signal.zip

i just now tested on my crappy mobile pen connection, and it works. please let me know if you still have problems

bix

Link is OK
 

Sorry, the link is fine. I just wondered as it is the same thing I already had.

Now I see that you are working on it some more...good on you.

I'll bookmark the link for later. :03:

NEW RELEASE - FORMATION and COMBAT
 

sorry for the delay!

in this release:

1. disabled grapple and rescue to best demonstrate formations
2. enable squad selection and goal
   • click and hold a ship - the SQUAD is selected
   • click and hold on the ocean to set destination (only highlights in tactical area)
3. enabled formation selection
   • keyboard "L" key iterates each Line of Battle
4. enabled combat chase / combat maintain formation
   • keyboard "C" key toggles formation or chase
5. enabled play/pause
   • keyboard "G" key (go) to play/pause
6. moved the ships back a bit from the tactical area
7. enabled lar/star broadsides and bow/stern chasers independently

NOTE: when you toggle combat, you toggle for ALL squads of your fleet. when you iterate formation, all squads of both fleets assume this formation.


LOB are still pretty flakey, but i have a good sense of the cause and will refine over time. i'll bore you with the details, but basically they dont always do the most efficient evolution to the new line. i need to take account more carefully current ship position, goal, and wind, but they do form up after a bit. islands do confound this, as does combat chase.


in combat chase, the squad tends to follow the tack of the leader when possible. in combat formation the squad tends to maintain its assigned formation regardless of the enemy.


this will do for now. i next need to focus on player (your) control, and several other gui issues, then i'll slowly perfect LOB. you need to effortlessly control each squad, and clearly see the results of your command.


in general, the ships are too agile, but remember the time scale is way way high - captain mode is still to come...


the usual url:
http://www.cityarts.com/signal/signal.zip


best,
bix
ps. will soon post thoughts about gui and control

Got it
 

Thanks again. Great effort.
About the units not reacting to orders right away...good. In real life the signal flags would go up but might be blocked by smoke. Any unit already engaged would have to deal with that situation before altering to obey orders.

You also have the "point of view" of the individual ship commanders and personalities. (Not that you have put that in, but could explain reaction to events and orders.)

I'm gonna play now.

Well, bix, I let her rip. The ships starting off the grid means they won't move. I was able to order one ship/line forward but they didn't move.
I changed the wind to make it better but still no movement.

By the way, I think you need your own thread for this game now. Ask Neal about making it sticky, but you deserve your own.

@ray

rtfm ;)

keyboard "G" key toggles play/pause as mentioned in the release post

i think it prolly is time to create a separate thread though there is a ton of info in this thread that serves as a design document in a sense. particularly your exhaustive lists of signals and commands.

thanks for your great inputs

bix

link
 

Yes, link is good now, so is the one I was using from your previous post. Not sure what happened there.:hmmm:

Anyway, look forward to checking out your great progress!

Maybe if the OP could be contacted and approval given, a mod could change the thread title, or extract the reletive posts to a new thread where the first post is reserved for bix?

Engage!
 

Ah...that's better. Like most users, never read the docs,eh?

Things went swimmingly for a while. The black ships never seem to sink!

Do the formation commands apply only to the selected group or are they for all?

I suggest the flag list be a toggle with command list. My old memory!
Final version would have an officer watching for flag hoists, changes, sothe captain won't have to. I hope? Get a message like "Signal from flagship, sir"

In real life the command flag signal was repeated by all other units, so visibility was less of a problem. Then executed when command flags dropped. Like saying "Execute the order."