captains,
here's the first screen. like i said, please ignore the graphic quality - i have a nice water shader and to hell with the rest for the time being. look at the image, and before you get all bent out of shape, read the description of what you are looking at.
so, what are we looking at?
the player - you are the orange ships, we are in overhead view, or what i call "admiral" view.
the ocean -the water is flat. i have wave physics, but for now i don't want to confuse the issue with fluid dynamics. we'll get to that later.
the viewpoint - you are seeing the "admiral" view. i can drop the camera to follow the flagship and we can play in "commodore" view ie first person flagship perspective, but for now i want to expose the tactical map, and hear what you have to say in that regard. i can also jump to "captain view" which would be the perspective from any given ship, flag or otherwise. at the aforementioned admiral perspective, the value of the overhead map is questionable, because you can pan out to see the whole engagement, so why have a map hud? contrary, in a ship's eye view, the overhead map will prove essential, because you can see only as far as your best top gallant lookout, and only from the point of the quarterdeck.
the green "lumps" - those are landmasses, islands, reefs, and perhaps even hidden shallows that the ships must avoid, or seek in the case of "capture the port." again, look past the graphics, this is the tactical representation of the situation. these are the places a ship can run aground, or you can force an opponent to run aground.
scale - combat and navigation can occur on the continuous ocean surface, but game play, one way or another, will be focused within the BLUE gridded area, where the tactical challenges abound.
more on scale - is unrealistic to say the least. this is the "admiral" view, and for aesthetic reasons, i want the ships to appear large within the play area. if they were actually to scale they would just be blips on the screen. lets talk about that...
and more on scale - my scale is continuous, i can make the ships relative to the world at any scale i chose, ship physics and action dynamics are completely independent of the size of the tactical map (eg. the blue gridded area). as i mentioned in the previous post, scale is one of three essential concerns of the game, and we will talk a lot about scale.
the black squares - mostly there for the purpose of my debugging. around the green blob the squares represent the obstacles. around the ships the squares represent gunnery range.
that should serve to start a dialog i hope.
best,
bix
ps. all images and names and concepts are copyright (c) 2013 joao bix klima de sa. just want to say i put it out first
