[nsomnia]

I'm thinking of going this route for developing the (new idea for a) demo.

You start out with graphics similar or better than seen above in third person in 1945ish USN attire and are prompted that the captain and FO and a skeleton crew are aboard {some fleet sub that survived WWII} and doing engine work right now and it needs to be tugged over a couple knots to the dock for technology upgrades. Thus you get to take control of the tug boat and have to select which (oh what the heck are they called im so rusty the round cleat things) to attach ropes to.

Once your ready to get underway the skipper of the tug gives you an overview of the controls and how a boat works and what the tide/weather is like comes from the FO or something. Once your ready to go a torque meter appears, go from green -> red and ropes snap and you start over.

I already have a cable setup that would allow you to attach from x to y and have it go slack and tense up, snapping it would probly be easy enough just create 2 with the breakign point being teh center and make tehm 1/2 the size. If it went into the water it would play a small water spray effect and the mater would get shinier.

[Infact thats one cool thing i've been thinking about is every material (textures applied to a 3d object) in unreal can be changed dynamically so I can make a parameter for the roughness (shiny-ness) called "dryness" and overtime it goes to say 0.1 (barely shiny paint) to 0.5 (wet paint) and could even apply water drops on top with their transparency set by a dynamic value too. Going even further Substance Painter would allow me to make a rust layer where the ship would actually rust (hence Physically Based Rendering) and then I could apply that Substance to the ship and overtime your ship would slowly rust in areas where water hits it and you can have the men paint it to get "admirals points" or something.]

You have the ability to open a widget (menu) to "radio" over to the sub for them to go slow ahead or back slow or rudder x degrees to y with a short delay.

After "docking" the sub successfully the tugs skipper radios to the fleet subs captain how you did well and you start your way into the full career.

After that your've given command of a boat (I'd still like to make the main "big start" of the game the Nautilus) for after war patrols or something and get to select a loadout and where to attach it (which will affect center of mass and thus how she handles), start off with the ability to select 1x bow mounted 3" gun or stern & bow quad 50's, torp loadout, how much freshwater, your crew, how much fuel oil, what kind of luxerys ie maybe you take on a set of tv's + whatever else for crew leisure instead of 1 freezer full of food for a long trip since you plan on at-sea replenishment etc. You can choose to automate all functions except speed and course or take control of them yourself through menus on the F1-Fx keys and you go on a short cruise to a friendly port to pick up crew members or some other "quest" to get "accustomed" to the way a sub handles with drills required to pass this 'second' mission.

Thats whats been going through my mind lately, then I can do it, cook it and release it here for you guys to play and get feedback.

When I start development for real I'll start a thread for just development updates I'm really feeling getting back into this.

This little demo of 1-2 mini missions with no real action would be a good chance to try out the static (doesnt affect the ocean) weather setups and dynamic flooding/water pooling setups I've been working on too.


Would love to hear your guys ideas for what you'd like to see in an indie demo of 5-15 minutes gameplay with a 1-3 month development period.

thinking of kickstarter too. Maybe 10,000 USD and tehn look for a 5-10k Epic Games dev grant and see if anyone on here with skills or in the Unreal Community wants to get onboard.

I'm thinking of incorporating BB's and DE's and probably PT's and Oilers etc. too. Or would that be taking it too far. Gotta compete with teh best afterall (world of warships). Surface boats are really no harder than subs and easier to model the interiors sicne theyre more "house like".