Videos (development)

[JotDora]

Hey,

if the mobile Version has the same potential as it seems in the Videos i would be glad to do a donation to additionally push the Desktop Version!

Sebastian

[v-i-c-]

I could need a clone…

[flag4]

...all that hard work deserves a few pennies in donations. I don't think it would be unreasonable to charge a cost.

please, though - an android version?

[Xaron]

He stated there won't be an Android version anytime soon but there will be one for our game.

Sorry vic for hijacking!

[urfisch]

hey vic. nice to see, u are still on it! very good work so far.

maybe you gonna be the hero of all the subsim fans here, by creating the ultimate sim. seems, your game could be the base of something great. you should involve the community for the desktop game as soon as it is possible.

hope to see this evolve...

[v-i-c-]

Thanks.

The new math behind the boat itself should be pretty accurate now, simulation of the ballast tanks & blowing system is based on the math of real world computer controlled ballast tanks. And the boat's behavior on the surface almost (90%) matches what's known about the real thing from german and british documents. (slightly different tactical diameters and times to turn at different velocities)

For the historical technology of the boat I have great help from the former (1950s) chief engineer of a Type VII and some others who are amazingly deep into this stuff.

My goal was to create a simulation based on the different ways used by ship designers to estimate vessels - and that works now by just feeding it with the correct data of the boat and estimations where no exact data is known.
I've started with the simulation of the diesel engine itself, shaft & propellers, the different drags, the rudder, a new buoyancy system, the ballast tanks, vents and compressed air installation and finally I'm busy with the pumps right now.

But all this stuff doesn't make the game itself complicated for the player if he doesn't want it - the only difference to the usual faked or over simplified approach is that a serious calculation of the physics behind the boat and its systems lets it act more like the real thing automatically. …and I can give the player control to some details if he wants that, like control of the ballast tanks and the flooding & drainage installation - if the player doesn't wants to touch that then that's no problem at all because the "crew" will do it for him anyway.

From the boat's simulation itself I'm at a point where I think that only tiny details could be improved in future desktop versions but I also think that most of that will be unfortunately out of my scope and I would really need to hire someone for this task who is a professional in hydrodynamics, someone who is doing real world ship calculations all day. (I doubt I will ever be able to afford such a person).
Anyway, developing this part of the simulation was boring and often extremely frustrating, can't count how often I felt like a prehistoric man who is trying to understand the drawings of a fusion reactor - but in fact I was someone from Utopia trying to understand the stuff of people 60-250 years ago… damned nerds.

[v-i-c-]

Test of the AI controlling the MG 34 mounted on the conning tower. Test set up! Graphics are worse than in game. Aircraft models and the impact explosions of the MG 34 ammunition for testing purposes only. Aim & hit test, no damage simulation:

[makman94]

Originally Posted by v-i-c-

Thanks.

The new math behind the boat itself should be pretty accurate now, simulation of the ballast tanks & blowing system is based on the math of real world computer controlled ballast tanks. And the boat's behavior on the surface almost (90%) matches what's known about the real thing from german and british documents. (slightly different tactical diameters and times to turn at different velocities)

For the historical technology of the boat I have great help from the former (1950s) chief engineer of a Type VII and some others who are amazingly deep into this stuff.

My goal was to create a simulation based on the different ways used by ship designers to estimate vessels - and that works now by just feeding it with the correct data of the boat and estimations where no exact data is known.
I've started with the simulation of the diesel engine itself, shaft & propellers, the different drags, the rudder, a new buoyancy system, the ballast tanks, vents and compressed air installation and finally I'm busy with the pumps right now.

But all this stuff doesn't make the game itself complicated for the player if he doesn't want it - the only difference to the usual faked or over simplified approach is that a serious calculation of the physics behind the boat and its systems lets it act more like the real thing automatically. …and I can give the player control to some details if he wants that, like control of the ballast tanks and the flooding & drainage installation - if the player doesn't wants to touch that then that's no problem at all because the "crew" will do it for him anyway.

From the boat's simulation itself I'm at a point where I think that only tiny details could be improved in future desktop versions but I also think that most of that will be unfortunately out of my scope and I would really need to hire someone for this task who is a professional in hydrodynamics, someone who is doing real world ship calculations all day. (I doubt I will ever be able to afford such a person).
Anyway, developing this part of the simulation was boring and often extremely frustrating, can't count how often I felt like a prehistoric man who is trying to understand the drawings of a fusion reactor - but in fact I was someone from Utopia trying to understand the stuff of people 60-250 years ago… damned nerds.

Originally Posted by v-i-c-

Test of the AI controlling the MG 34 mounted on the conning tower. Test set up! Graphics are worse than in game. Aircraft models and the impact explosions of the MG 34 ammunition for testing purposes only. Aim & hit test, no damage simulation:

Bravo BRAVO BRAVO V-I-C !!!!!!

i can't express myself better but i believe that you are creating the sim that i always had (-wanted) in my mind and hoping some day to show up !

all the best to your really worthy effort !

[v-i-c-]

This video shows the water surface refraction and real time global illumination in WOTA. It does not show any game play (but a weird rotating boat ;-) ). In the 2nd half the time of day is accelerated to show the effect of the global illumination: basically everything always automatically visually fits together - at any time of day or any weather. Unfortunately my touch solution isn't really smoothed yet which causes the camera movements sometimes to stutter, but the device can handle it at constant 60 frames per second.

[Sung]

Outstanding VIC.

[makman94]

this water.....IS WATER ! bravo V-I-C
Much better(and i mean it) water than many serious AAA companies have shown

have you prepared the look of water at heavy seas ? can you show us a video of the most heavy state of it?

[v-i-c-]

Originally Posted by makman94

have you prepared the look of water at heavy seas ? can you show us a video of the most heavy state of it?

Basically it is still the same ocean as before.
Heavier sea states will have more foam. This is an older picture before I've improved the light. I currently haven't finished tweaking higher state settings, I'll post something on another day.

[makman94]

Originally Posted by v-i-c-

Basically it is still the same ocean as before.
Heavier sea states will have more foam. This is an older picture before I've improved the light. I currently haven't finished tweaking higher state settings, I'll post something on another day.

even this old pic is so beautifull V-I-C .
i guess that the engine you use is not allowing high waves ? am i getting it right ?
one way or the other, your work here is beyond my greatest expectations so i am really waiting each time your next video with a lot of impatience

[v-i-c-]

Originally Posted by makman94

i guess that the engine you use is not allowing high waves ? am i getting it right ?

No, you are wrong.
My water is a 100% custom solution and it would work in any engine if I would port WOTA. I can use any size of waves and the water (and ships) also takes curvature of earth into account (which works up to the highest available camera position in WOTA). I can add new features any time if the target hardware can handle them or completely switch to a new water shader. (still not sure how I will do it on desktop)

An engine basically does the job to help you organizing your things and it handles low level stuff for you, it handles the drawing for example.

The engine I am using is Unity - Pacific Fleet, Silent Depth, Crash Dive and Battlefleet 2, they all use Unity.

It offers a lot of features on top of the important core things but I don't use or need most of them.
You really must do the work on your own if you want to get decent results. A huge portion of the time for WOTA development is spent on writing shaders or things related to the environment.
The look of your game entirely depends on your shaders, you can get nice results with stock shaders but if you want to optimize your visual quality or need special things like water you better write your own shaders.

Or if you are in a rush you could buy something from the Unity asset store where other developers sell their solutions - I sometime buy water assets to take a closer look on them just for curiosity - this one for example seems to be the one used by Battlefleet 2 (I am 99% certain because I've got identical results when I've played with this asset) https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/11384

Pacific Fleet, Silent Depth and possibly Crash Dive use their own water shaders.

At least I know it for Pacific Fleet because I've once helped them optimizing it.
For Silent Depth it is also obvious that they use their own custom shader.

I am not 100% certain for Crash Dive because most of crash dive's 3D models were bought on the asset store https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/2726 (I think Battlefleet 2 also uses this package)
But I never have seen a water shader that looks like the one in Crash Dive so I think it might be a custom one.

In WOTA almost all shaders are custom and work hand in hand, the whole thing is getting pretty complex now. I avoid using 3rd party assets (it usually ends in wasting time and more work than writing your own solution that will fit much better to your needs) or Unity's stock solutions. The performance even of so called "optimized for mobile" shaders is usually no acceptable and beside that they won't work with my environment anymore.
The only 3rd party solution I use is an asset that controls the background color of the sky (Silent Depth uses the same one), but even that isn't 100% the stock version anymore.

But partly you are right, sometimes the engine is not your friend but basically you can fix 99% of the issues.
Physx for example is a bad feature, you can't use it for serious things. It is made for games and not for simulations. I only use the very basic core of it (inertia) and let it handle matrix calculations for me.
Yesterday I had to write my own solution for some vary basic functions of the .NET framework because they were causing performance issues. - I can't understand why they add new features to Unity instead of fixing or creating their own override for serious issues first. Especially if something accidentally disappeared like it happened to a Cg function last year, they said next update will fix it… 12 months later

[makman94]

Originally Posted by v-i-c-

No, you are wrong.
My water is a 100% custom solution and it would work in any engine if I would port WOTA. I can use any size of waves and the water (and ships) also takes curvature of earth into account (which works up to the highest available camera position in WOTA). I can add new features any time if the target hardware can handle them or completely switch to a new water shader. (still not sure how I will do it on desktop)

.......

reading these lines gave me a big smile ! So, we can definetely expect big stormy seas if your time and will ... allows it?


i understand the main points of your post V-I-C and it was very enlighting as i had the faulty sense that game engine is the real power behind the scene.

also, each time you give one more info of your project...the curvature of earth...sounds like 'heaven' to me. what can i say V-I-C.....it is unbelievable that this is a one man show !
i am wondering ,if there was an imaginary company with five 'V-I-C's working on the same project, what would we expect to see ?

bravo, bravo V-I-C , all the best to your amazing effort