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YellowFin · 08-02-17, 12:16 PM

Thanks for chiming in. Good to hear that it doesn't sound completely crazy to others.

I agree it's an ambitious idea. The philosophy should be to start simple and build up from the bottom. I think the fact that it isn't a technically extremely hard thing to do, i.e. modelling a body of water (limited at the bottom) with floating objects that can interact with each other and the world in a few, very precisely defined manners is a strong point.

Ships can move in 3 dimensions but are limited to the ocean surface in altitude. Surface ships cannot operate once submerged (through damage effects). They can have 4 kinds of weapon systems (depth charges, direct firing guns (e.g. AA, low caliber artillery), indirect firing guns, torpedoes). They can have 3 types of nav/tac sensors: Visual, electromagnetic, sound. That should be fairly simple to implement. The physics and mathematics of these weapon systems is well studied and a lot of source material is available that should fairly easily translate into code. The same applies to the physics and mathematics of sensors (visibility on a curved surface, radio strength depending on wavelength and antenna power, etc).

A similar breakdown of behavior and interactions can be made for planes.

Then I'd move on to weather and aspects of the ocean as an environment (drift, wind, waves, bathymetry). To start out we would use simple approximations. For example a radio signal might be unrealistically strong under certain weather conditions in early versions of the engine. More realistic models could be added later, or if that's too complex, a simple balancing effect could be added.

Edit: I am not trying to write a computer model of the worlds oceans. The efforts put into modelling reality for the game would be dictated by reasonable aspirations of realism and playability.

And such the engine would grow mechanic by mechanic, model by model. Then the world it provides the "matrix" for has to be filled with life by content creators (*looking at the amazing modder community*).

I have looked into commercially and freely available 3D engines that could be used for such a project. I'm also looking into open source games and how successful they were. I know that some people have written quite sophisticated clones of games such a Civilization for linux for example. I'm also looking into how to successfully manage an open source project with many contributors. I think avoiding infighting, unnecessary forks, etc. have to be avoided for a successful project in a smaller community.

08-02-17, 12:16 PM	#4
YellowFin Engineer Join Date: Mar 2017 Posts: 208 Downloads: 56 Uploads: 0	Thanks for chiming in. Good to hear that it doesn't sound completely crazy to others. I agree it's an ambitious idea. The philosophy should be to start simple and build up from the bottom. I think the fact that it isn't a technically extremely hard thing to do, i.e. modelling a body of water (limited at the bottom) with floating objects that can interact with each other and the world in a few, very precisely defined manners is a strong point. Ships can move in 3 dimensions but are limited to the ocean surface in altitude. Surface ships cannot operate once submerged (through damage effects). They can have 4 kinds of weapon systems (depth charges, direct firing guns (e.g. AA, low caliber artillery), indirect firing guns, torpedoes). They can have 3 types of nav/tac sensors: Visual, electromagnetic, sound. That should be fairly simple to implement. The physics and mathematics of these weapon systems is well studied and a lot of source material is available that should fairly easily translate into code. The same applies to the physics and mathematics of sensors (visibility on a curved surface, radio strength depending on wavelength and antenna power, etc). A similar breakdown of behavior and interactions can be made for planes. Then I'd move on to weather and aspects of the ocean as an environment (drift, wind, waves, bathymetry). To start out we would use simple approximations. For example a radio signal might be unrealistically strong under certain weather conditions in early versions of the engine. More realistic models could be added later, or if that's too complex, a simple balancing effect could be added. Edit: I am not trying to write a computer model of the worlds oceans. The efforts put into modelling reality for the game would be dictated by reasonable aspirations of realism and playability. And such the engine would grow mechanic by mechanic, model by model. Then the world it provides the "matrix" for has to be filled with life by content creators (looking at the amazing modder community). I have looked into commercially and freely available 3D engines that could be used for such a project. I'm also looking into open source games and how successful they were. I know that some people have written quite sophisticated clones of games such a Civilization for linux for example. I'm also looking into how to successfully manage an open source project with many contributors. I think avoiding infighting, unnecessary forks, etc. have to be avoided for a successful project in a smaller community.