Songs of the Sea

[vimza]

Sots is a new project to create a submarine simulator with a focus on coop multi player. The project is really just getting started . Some info about what it will be in point form as i to lazy to write a real deep article about it all.

Basic

• Name of the game is Songs of the Sea, short name is Sots.
• The games focus is on multi player coop play with all the players in the same group (wolfpack) of submarines.
• The ways to play is single battle or a campaign
• Battles is what you think and nothing special about them.

Technical

• Engine for the game will be Unity.
• The game code itself will be done in C#.
• The game part will be put on Sots Bitbucket homepage.
• For task tracking I will use pivotal tracker. Feel free to spy on it to see progress or lack off.
• I'm not that sharp at making models, sounds or submarine history so i hope to get some help from all the captains here .

Campaign Setup

• Campaign takes place on a world map that simulates the state of the world.
• To play a campaign one selects two things, the Year and the Nation to play.
• Year is selected from 1914 to 2014.
• The game contains a History Timeline (HT) that updates the world as the game progress.
• The HT change such as things what Nations can be played, what the enemies are, rules of engagement, the technology available and so on.
• If you play a Nation that stops having Submarines (such as Germany in 1945) the game is over.

Campaign Play

• When playing more then one player one of the player is given the title Admiral (ADM). The players can change who is the admiral at any time.
• The admiral is the one who moves around the whole wolfpack on the game map and can change the game speed to speed up time.
• The map contains a number of home bases for submarines and they are the ones where the patrols start and end.
• The admiral can choose to rebase the wolfpack to another base.
• Each time the wolfpack leaves and returns to port is called a patrol.
• Before each patrol the admiral can pick the mission for the patrol. What they are depends on the year and nation.

Fame

• As the player complete mission and sinks ships he gets Fame.
• Fame can be used to upgrade your submarine equipment, crew or to call in favours other combat units (like requesting airsupport in a mission).
• It is also possible to use your fame to upgrade another player submarine in your wolfpack.
• Fame is lost if you make misstakes like sinking neutral ships.
• Some missions will cost fame to get.

[vimza]

So looks like bitbucket will be used and Songs of the sea will in the future be found at https://bitbucket.org/vimarina/songs...-sea/wiki/Home. I'll write the design in the wiki, not really sure that a wiki is the optimal trool for that but i'll try. Then work on the engine. Next update when i made some progress .

[vimza]

Working on the design and it would be nice with some feedback on some parts.

https://bitbucket.org/vimarina/songs...a/wiki/Physics Summary of Submarine Movement describe how submarines work and if someone spots any major errors it would help.

https://bitbucket.org/vimarina/songs...wiki/Interface Will be the main page about the controls of the sub. Just started but any ideas could help .

Note that the Wiki pages is listed on the main page as part of section GDD(Game Design) and TDD (Technical design). Most of the things in the TDD you can ignore as it will contain the details of how the game will work behind the scenes .

[Hawk66]

Hi,

>>>Year is selected from 1914 to 2014

Frankly, I think this is a very big scope....if you want to build sth realistically I would start with a much smaller scope.

And the first thing I'd do is to build a prototype to see what efforts you have before going too deep into a functional design and then later you realize it's too much work.

But interesting project

[vimza]

>>> Frankly, I think this is a very big scope....if you want to build sth realistically I would start with a much smaller scope.

Yes, so i have changed the design to focus on the design on Germany in WWII (lack of originality i know) for now but setup the game so it's easy to add other times and nations later.

>>> And the first thing I'd do is to build a prototype to see what efforts you have before going too deep into a functional design and then later you realize it's too much work.

True, the first thing in the prototype is the basic physic system for the subs and ships.

>>> But interesting project

Thanks .

[vimza]

So a small update. Thing was on ice for a while but back on the subsim now so soon some progress .

One change that I have done is to switch from Custom Engine to Unity. Mostly so it will be more easy for other to join and help out on the project later on.

Current tasks is a world map and a basic boats physics. All with horrible looking mockup art .

[vimza]

My task list is public so you can track my progress at https://www.pivotaltracker.com/s/projects/1050706 .

If anyone has a submarine model that I can use it would be helpful, something with control surfaces would be nice to try to move around. Need to be something you have done yourself or otherwise has the right to use .

Ohh... and buoyancy physics is really not fun

[TheGeoff]

This is a really ambitious project but it sounds awesome!

I think starting with WWII is a wise decision, there's a lot of info available about U-Boats and US Fleet Boats, and it's an era a lot of people are familiar with. Plus a lot of the systems on the boats (sonar, radar, fire control) were a lot simpler back then, so it's quicker to add them to the game.

Unfortunately things like buoyancy physics will never change and will always be a pain to simulate The best advice I can give is to make sure your code is very modular, and to use simplified simulation models at first. That way you can start simple and plug in a more realistic function for dive physics or whatever later. How realistic are you planning to make this? Are we talking Silent Hunter level simulation or a more arcade type game?

How many people are working on this project by the way?

[vimza]

Yes it's a bit ambitious but it will be done in many small steps .

The end goal is to have a simulation style game like Silent Hunter. This whole project really started when I tried to play SH5 with a friend in coop and we where less then impressed by it. I said something about I could do something better myself so here i'am . I think most system in the game will start out Arcade then move towards the simulation side as I learn on how to improve them. Core project ideas here https://bitbucket.org/vimarina/songs...-sea/wiki/Core that describe that.

Right now for the phyics i will try to do a voxel like idea that split the hull in many small cubes and then sample them for buoyancy. See how it works. Any ideas would be welcome .

For now it's only me. I hope to get some more people to help out as the project moves forward. My art skill do not impress that much .

[ReallyDedPoet]

You guys ever see this: http://dangerdeep.sourceforge.net/

[vimza]

Originally Posted by ReallyDedPoet

You guys ever see this: http://dangerdeep.sourceforge.net/

Yes but the project looks a bit on ice as no real activity since 2011 . I did look at the source code and it use a form of voxel system to sample the water. That's where I got the idea to try that myself .

[TheGeoff]

Sounds like you have some great ideas for the game. Good luck! I'll definitely be following this project

There are a few free 3D submarine models linked in this thread:
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=143576
It's an old thread, and there are a lot of broken links, but there seems to be some promising stuff there.

This weird site seems to have a lot of free 3D models too, in various formats:
http://artist-3d.com/free_3d_models/...hp&count=count

[vimza]

Thanks for the links.

Looks like SketchUp 3Dwarehouse has enough of the models that I need for my early testing

[Chad]

It looks promising. I have been using Unity wow, almost 5 years. Also looks like you're well versed in software development, even using some kind of Agile methodolagy by creating a backlog of tasks. Well done!

[vimza]

Thanks .

I have some experience building software and used pivotal before and it works well. Five years in unity, that's a lot. What are you using unity for? .

Looks like there will be some contractors improving my home for a while from next week so progress will stop for a while. Will be back when I have a place to have the computer again.