Command Of The Sea - Development Log

[CommandOfTheSea]

Hi everybody!

after 2 years of work on our game Command Of The Sea we're finally ready to release the first screenshots & information to the public!

Key Points of the Game:
- Historically accurate simulation of naval warfare during World War 2
- Global Open World (~360 000 000 km²)
- First Person Gameplay & walkable ships
- Under development
- Crowdfunding







Details:

1.1 Whole Earth Open World
At first, we’d like to create a digital copy of the whole earth (well, only the oceans and the coastal areas) as a gameplay area. We’ve developed a way to achieve that, and if you take a look at our Screenshots you’ll see that we’ve already been able to reproduce locations of the world with an accuracy of a few meters!





1.2 First Person Gameplay
Then we’d like to be able to command our own ship, and as a player we’d like to be able to interact with our ship from a First Person View, we’d like to be able to walk on the deck, we’d like to be able to command the ship from the bridge, to enter the machine room and to take a good read in our cabin. We’ll start with a Battleship of the Bismarck Class, and add more playable ships as our community supports this.
In a distant future, we even want to make the game playable with a VR Headset.





1.3 Dynamic Weather
Further, we’d like to have a realistic dynamic weather system with low hanging clouds, fog, rain and snow. This is especially important for the time before Radar (or FuMO/RDF) became so dominant in naval warfare. Back then visual sight was mandatory for any engagement on the enemy.





1.4 Celestial Navigation
Additionally we’d like to simulate a correct day cycle, moon phases and star movement for any place on the earth, at any given time between 1939 and 1945. This will allow celestial navigation, so if provided with a sextant & a watch the player will be able to determine his position by the stars (or the sun). The technical problems for this milestone are also solved already





2. State of Development:

We’ve started to work on this game in early 2016. Since then we’ve heavily focused on solving the most obvious technical problems, to determine if it’s even possible to build this game of our dreams.
As you can see we’ve come a long way since then, and about 95% of the most difficult problems are solved. We’ve built a small (~100 000 km²) digital copy of the world, covering Spitsbergen, Norway, Germany, Italy, parts of Africa and Antarctica. We’ve created a reproduction of Sun, Moon & Star movements between 1939 and 1945, we’ve created a playable & walkable Ship (Tirpitz), we’ve created primitive, self-navigating AI Ships and a visual sensor for AI Players and we have a primitive weather & ocean system. So we’re confident now that this project is doable if we get enough support from you and our community ��


3. Next Milestone -> Tech Demo:

Our next milestone would be the development of a playable tech demo. As described above we’ve solved most technical problems, now a lot of time expensive grunt work needs to be completed to release a Tech Demo version of the game that’s actually fun to play.
This Tech Demo shall include:
– an Open World covering 250 000 km² around Norway, the North Sea, Great Britain, Germany and the Bay of Biscay
– a first playable & semi-walkable version of Bismarck
– one or more AI opponent that’s capable to challenge Bismarck


4. Further Roadmap:

4.1 Pre-Alpha
Once the Tech Demo is working we’ll start working on a Pre-Alpha version of the game. In this Pre-Alpha we’ll include a bigger playable Open World, more AI warships, AI merchant ships, an improved dynamic weather system, a basic NPC crew of seamen & officers for our player ship, first harbor buildings and AI airplanes for reconnaissance & attack

4.2 Alpha, Beta:
In the following game versions we’ll continue to expand the playable Open World, add more AI ships & planes and more harbor buildings.

4.3 Game Release:
The first release of the game should include the whole North & South Atlantik as playable Open World, and a reasonable number of AI warships, merchant ships & planes to provide a good & entertaining gaming experience.

4.4 Further Releases:
For further releases we’d like to expand into the Pacific Theater, with the US Navy Pacific Fleet and the Japanese Imperial Navy. That will also include Aircraft Carriers.
We’d also like to create playable submarines, especially for the German side of the game, commercial surface Raiders (like Atlantis & Thor) a VR game mode, and multiplayer options.
We consider this game as an ongoing project, and hopefully we’re able to create a large enough community to support & fund for the years to come!


Thanks for your Support!

[CommandOfTheSea]

Update August 17th, 2018:
Our Tech Demo is ready to be released! -> Download
Please take note that it only offers very basic gameplay at the moment.
To be eligible to play you need to be a Sponsor/Patreon of our Game, and you need to register for a Player Account too



By the way we are a crowdfunding project, so it would be great if you could support us on Patreon.com, even $1 would help to speed things up a bit!




It would also be great if you could help us by sharing our posts on Facebook / Twitter and Instagram
The more people we are the faster we'll be able to achieve results

Oh yeah, and finally our own website -> CommandOfTheSea.com

[CommandOfTheSea]

For promotion purposes we've created a little hypothetic scenario where Tirpitz is taking a short trip from Gotenhafen to Oslo/Norway in January 1942

Tirpitz passing Hela Peninsula, medium fog
06:40 in the morning, January 12th, 1942
(State of Development February 13th, 2018)



Map position Hela Peninsula

[CommandOfTheSea]

Our latest Version 2018-05-27 is almost ready. During the last weeks we've made parts of Tirpitz walkable for the player, added some basic sound effects, improved our sunsets, added a little AI-Ship (visible in the left-foreground) and implemented a lot of smaller tweaks to get closer to a playable demo for you guys!

[con20or]

looking good - nice models!

[CommandOfTheSea]

Originally Posted by con20or

looking good - nice models!

Thanks, even though Tirpitz is missing a lot of details at the moment, like her medium artillery, or her AA-Guns

[CommandOfTheSea]

Tirpitz capsizing & sinking

We've created a little video showing our sinking (and capsizing) simulation for our ships. The scenery is located around Oscarsborg, nearby the historic sinking location of the German heavy cruiser Blücher.

[Platapus]

Question on the video.

Would the propellers still be turning that long after the boilers were flooded?

[CommandOfTheSea]

Originally Posted by Platapus

Question on the video.

Would the propellers still be turning that long after the boilers were flooded?

No, but we haven't implemented a function that stops them by now

[Julhelm]

How big is your team?

[CommandOfTheSea]

Originally Posted by Julhelm

How big is your team?

We're actually two people, ideally we'd like to build up a small team of 5-10 people in the long run, that would definitely speed the whole development process up a bit