WHY God - is there no decent Sailing Ship war game?!?!

[bertieck476]

Sounds great, Id love to have a go with it.

Good luck
Bert.

[raymond6751]

I'd love to help you with the beta. I think you should perhaps have your own forum, dedicated and perhaps invitation only to beta until more gets done. You will have your hands full and need to deal only with people involved for a while.

I am a designer too, and went through a period of intense email and forum contacts with people who were just being fools with no intent to help.

You can have your own website, including forum, and use this thread to recruit people and publicity. Once you find your testers, move them away from the crowd. Don't waste time with people not working with you.

Just my advice.

[con20or]

I'm always interested in seeing age of sail games - so please do post any screenshots here!

[Blacklight]

This is why I think that our next "Dangerous Waters" or "Subsim" should be a modular thing similar to how "Orbiter" is set up.

That way, with the right content downloaded and put in, and an engine with consistant physics, weather, current, and sound propogation modelling, you would pretty much have a "Build Your Own Naval Sim" kind of thing so with the right addons, you CAN do an "Age of Sail" setup or a "Cold War" setup, or a "WWII setup". It would completely maximize what the next subsim could be and also would maximize the number of fans who would download it because it would have the potential to cover SO MUCH.

And you KNOW that a huge modder community would develop around it.

[bix]

@raymond6751 : advice well taken, thanks, but for the time being i hope i can conduct initial feedback right here, and open to anyone.

@Blacklight : although a "build yer own" sim is a nice idea, i imagine it would be near impossible if the engine is required to handle both powered and wind driven vessels. the means of control are too disparate.

over the next few days i'll start trickling in screens. keep in mind that i am focusing on play first, and graphics later. i feel there are three primary aspects to game play for this to be a nice sim:

1. how the vessels sail
2. the effect of waves on gunnery (fire on the rise)
3. time scale in regards to command

i am using a time scale "slider" that also determines the player's level of "micro management." at real-time, the ships are moving at 2-5 knots, 6-8 knots would be an exceptional maximum, so there should be plenty of time to for the player to set and trim sail, set headings, and command gunnery on most, if not all of their fleet. at this time scale however, it might get a bit boring, so as you speed up time, each ship begins to have more autonomy, unless you direct it otherwise. remember in this game you are the admiral, not the captain, you will be directing perhaps as many as 32 vessels, hardware willing.


play commences in three phases:

1. initial blind placement - you have an expanse of ocean, with some islands and perhaps some coastline. these are to be considered in terms of your tactics. the player deploys their ships within a "valid" area.
2. the chase - once all player ships are deployed, opponent placement is revealed. you now want to hunt the opponent and ideally gain the weather gauge. this is where sail management is critical.
3. close action - when in range, the player coordinates larboard and starboard broadsides, issuing commands for elevation and powder charge for each broadside. you have the choice of timed broadsides or fire at will. you also have the choice of shot, double shot, bar and chain, or grape. once the player has more than a few ships actively engaged in close action, it can get pretty hectic in terms of command, so again ships will have autonomy unless otherwise directed. no "neglected" ship allows itself to become target practice for its opponent. in a sense, you don't actually need to play the game. left untouched, the AI will play both sides.

the goal of the game is basically to obliterate the enemy. if you are in a bad way, you can surrender and keep some of your fleet, or you can fight on to the last man.

secondary goals include "capture the flagship" and "capture the port." eventually i'll work in launches and barges for boarding/landing parties, and as i move towards "campaign" play, i'll have persistence of fleet, prize crews, refitting, importance of maintaining naval bases, and a "world map" level of scale. all that fun stuff will come later, first thing is to perfect sail and combat.

at any rate, enough typing, i have have code to write. i'll post first screens at the end of my day.


best,
bix

[con20or]

Sounds really promising - look forward to seeing them.

[bix]

captains,

here's the first screen. like i said, please ignore the graphic quality - i have a nice water shader and to hell with the rest for the time being. look at the image, and before you get all bent out of shape, read the description of what you are looking at.



so, what are we looking at?

the player - you are the orange ships, we are in overhead view, or what i call "admiral" view.

the ocean -the water is flat. i have wave physics, but for now i don't want to confuse the issue with fluid dynamics. we'll get to that later.

the viewpoint - you are seeing the "admiral" view. i can drop the camera to follow the flagship and we can play in "commodore" view ie first person flagship perspective, but for now i want to expose the tactical map, and hear what you have to say in that regard. i can also jump to "captain view" which would be the perspective from any given ship, flag or otherwise. at the aforementioned admiral perspective, the value of the overhead map is questionable, because you can pan out to see the whole engagement, so why have a map hud? contrary, in a ship's eye view, the overhead map will prove essential, because you can see only as far as your best top gallant lookout, and only from the point of the quarterdeck.

the green "lumps" - those are landmasses, islands, reefs, and perhaps even hidden shallows that the ships must avoid, or seek in the case of "capture the port." again, look past the graphics, this is the tactical representation of the situation. these are the places a ship can run aground, or you can force an opponent to run aground.

scale - combat and navigation can occur on the continuous ocean surface, but game play, one way or another, will be focused within the BLUE gridded area, where the tactical challenges abound.

more on scale - is unrealistic to say the least. this is the "admiral" view, and for aesthetic reasons, i want the ships to appear large within the play area. if they were actually to scale they would just be blips on the screen. lets talk about that...

and more on scale - my scale is continuous, i can make the ships relative to the world at any scale i chose, ship physics and action dynamics are completely independent of the size of the tactical map (eg. the blue gridded area). as i mentioned in the previous post, scale is one of three essential concerns of the game, and we will talk a lot about scale.

the black squares - mostly there for the purpose of my debugging. around the green blob the squares represent the obstacles. around the ships the squares represent gunnery range.

that should serve to start a dialog i hope.

best,

bix
ps. all images and names and concepts are copyright (c) 2013 joao bix klima de sa. just want to say i put it out first

[con20or]

Looks great to me - the minimap seems to have lots of interesting sounding/bathymetry info - is that applied ingame?

I love the idea of hidden reefs, and visibility being limited to your best lookout

[Gilead Abyss]

Thanks for posting your image and description - You've certainly captured my interest.

Questions:

can you share a sense of what the command interface might be, and maybe more importantly how the tactical encounters will play out?

How much will proper sail handling and/or wind modeling be a part of this?
Dynamic weather systems?

Best of luck - impressive progress in making this so far!

[raymond6751]

Well done. I like the concepts you describe. A few questions/comments:
Will you have zoom in by mouse wheel or will it be key select "Admiral, Captain, etc"?
Will you have weather that will affect sailing?
You say you will have global scale for navigation. Will that be done in fast time, via waypoints on a map, or real time as an option?
Historically, naval units were the only way to move troops around. Will you include transports and mission goals to deliver/escort them to some locale?
Do you plan any land actions? No need as the mission could be considered a success on troop delivery.
Keep up the good work!

[bix]

about the camera - in "admiral" mode the camera pans W/E and N/S, tilts up/down, and elevates and descends. it does NOT rotate - it has a fixed N/S facing. in "commodore" you are shipside, so fully rotating, but limited elevation and no "zoom," well maybe a telescope view, i have not decided yet. in commodore, at real world scale, telescope would be essential for the hunt/chase phase. this will be determined when i start on the "campaign" play. the beta in june will be just the battle, in admiral, commodore (flagship), and captain modes.

weather - i hope so, but i want maximum ships on screen (right now i have 32, 16 per side, i would like to have 64, 32 per side) and this costs CPU. the visual effects of weather are also CPU intensive. what i definitely WILL have is of course, wind speed, gusts, and direction, and wave swell and direction. something along these lines, but "dressed" up for the period:



it will represent current conditions accurately, and a three day forecast of diminishing accuracy. again proper sail handling and gunnery in re current conditions will be essential.

global navigation - this is campaign level, and i have not given it full thought yet. if i stick with my variable time scale, down to real time, i suppose it could indeed be an accurate navigation sim, no reason not to. but do you want to take 3 real months to arrive at the battle . waypoints are most likely, or a planning phase where you tick-out the whole voyage in advance, in a period accurate manner.

troop transport - this is certainly possible, and will depend on the campaign objectives. for the campaign narrative, i'm basically gonna lift stuff from aubrey/maturin and hornblower, which conveniently condenses history into adventurous escapades. i am all ears to hear any historical suggestions for the campaign system, and i intend in the long run to have a campaign and scenario editor for the modding community. i do not expect however, to make the ships moddable.

land actions - capturing ports, cut-out missions, and the like are definitely planned, but no "people" will be engaged. the smallest unit will likely be a barge or a longboat, used for capturing ports and prizes, and cut-outs. in the case of a port capture, just get your men ashore. you prolly want to soften it up with a heavy bombardment. in the case of a cut-out, get yer men to the prize and sail it out of port without being detected.

command interface - i'll post a screen with descriptions later today or tomorrow. stay tuned! i'll also zoom in on some points in the last screenshot and describe what is playing out in terms of tactics, eg. which ships in that image are doomed by all means let me know which you think are doomed and why. it will only make my AI more devious.

bathymetry - yes. the minimap, which currently represents the whole blue gridded area, will represent the bathymetry for the area of conflict. it will purposely contain inaccuracies due to poor charts, shifting sands, etc... i am still undecided if the scenarios will occur in real-world places, or hand built for the purpose of game play. i'm leaning towards hand-crafted, but once i build the editor, no reason a modder cant pull in real world data. it's actually pretty easy. here's a not terribly pretty screenshot of the island of mozambique, viewed from what would be roughly commodore mode. high and low tides will apply around all land masses. this is actually a 3d view of a portion of the minimap in the previous screen, so i got that map-to-world stuff all working.




thanks for your interest and kind words!

best,
bix

[con20or]

Looks really nice to me,! And this is sounding better and better, shifting sands, wow. Can't wait to try the beta.

Looking forward to seeing captain view

[raymond6751]

"about the camera " I love it.

"weather - i hope so, but " OK. Maybe scalable in options for those with high end vid and cpus? Also, maybe increased cloud, background sky, sounds, and crew weather report "Storm a brewin, capn".

"global navigation - this is campaign level"

I vote for waypoint planning on chart with "return to course" order when diverted due to action. Also I vote for, if possible, navigator take a sighting and report position with % accuracy circle around actual. Maybe navigator quality/experience determines size of error.

"troop transport - this is certainly possible"

Excellent. Maybe we can learn how to contribute scenario/campaign design to help.

"land actions - capturing ports, cut-out missions, and the like"

Perfect! A naval game should not include land fighting. Get them there and let them do it. I agree.

command interface -Looking forward to this

bathymetry - yes. Unbelieveable. Fantastic ideas. I am just now reading the log of Christopher Columbus (a book) and he had lots of issues with narrow channels, sandbanks, currents vs wind, and so on.

Great stuff.

[bix]

all menus should be done by the end of the week. this is the final plan for beta, unless someone sees obvious dereliction of duty!




so what do we got here? well, first, you click on a ship - circled in red for now. you may notice the row of signal flags. this is the current orders of the selected ship. if you know the code, you know exactly what it is up to. i have yet to nail down that code. it will be as true to life as possible, but i imagine i'll need to take liberties to condense info. i think this will be a really fun and useful feature. so, you chose either navigation or gunnery menu, and the whole thing expands. there will be NO rummaging around into collapsed menus, i hate that stuff. the elements are large, as i want it playable on a tablet. the idea is that you will be able to quickly set all params with no game-play pause.

yellow indicates the current settings for larboard and starboard gunnery. larboard fires at will, automatically, at the nearest target, using round shot, with an elevation of 12 degs and a pound of powder.

starboard is a coordinated broadside (meaning they all fire at once, or in a ripple if the old barky's beams can't handle it), at a selected target.

when you chose selected target, the menu hides until you make your selection, then it pops back up. the target does not need to be in range, it can be on the far side of the world, the gunnery commander will wait till hell freezes over, or it's in range, before he fires. in this image i have toggled "Command" for the starboard battery, thus the right hand "fire" button is active. this means this ship will not fire until i hit that button, period.

this unfortunately also means i have to select the ship before i can fire her, which also means i need to easily identify ships in the scene. which means i think i need a hud name or pennant display for each ship - unless of course the models themselves are different enough, which is definitely planned for the final.

for now (and for then too perhaps) i hope to implement a smallish "mouse over" telescope window that radically zooms onto the ship under the mouse, showing it's pennant and construction - this is a tricky piece of business, it's difficult to get it right when ships are clustered, and also assumes some measure of uniqueness in each ship. we'll see just how bad the identification issue is in the beta before i implement a telescope. but damn that would be cool!

you will notice that the double shot option is disabled. as was generally true, double shot was loaded only prior to an engagement, and not during.

there is also a top-down view of your gun deck - only one deck for now - which will eventually display crew efficiency, casualties, serviceable guns, etc... all to be implemented in the future, not for june.

although at first glance, it seems a hell of a lot of menu, if you think about it, it's pretty clear and fast to use.

best,

bix
ps. copyright (c) 2013 joao bix klima de sa
pps. navigation coming right up

[bix]

okay here she is:



and the user's manual:

like the gunnery menu, the navigation menu expands fully when you hit the top button. you have the choice between auto and manual. in auto, you chose point, friend, or foe.

auto will automagically plan a tack based on wind and current to the object or location you specify. it does a darn good job of it (spent a lot of time on that). point selection works the same as gunnery targeting. choosing friend or foe seeks the selected target and will adjust course based on current position of the target ship. it DOES avoid coast and shallows, but it CAN run aground. it will avoid friendly ships but WILL engage foes along the way. an expanded command menu will eventually handle optional settings of this nature, but for now, auto is auto.

and manual is manual. there is absolutely no automated control in manual mode. you WILL run aground. you WILL collide with friend or foe. to change heading, you click on the compass rose. the indication arrow shows the current heading. it will begin to shift to your desired heading, but ya gotta trim sails in accordance to the helm.

you have but three masts, sorry, you trim each to lar or star with the slider. you set or furl sails with the three sail boxes. sorry only three sails per mast. eventually i'll get fancy with this, but i feel this is plenty for a good start. sail configuration is very important to combat, as set sails/rigging take damage from shot, particularly chain and bar. a fool rushes in with all sails set.

the ballistic physics is another thing i spent a lot of time on - charge and inclination are not the usual params to a ballistic calculation, particularly when your AI needs to ESTIMATE an angle and a charge to hit a specific spot. the shot knows if the shot hit sail or hull. naturally, bar/chain does little damage to the hull - all the obvious logic applies.

next we have three views to the ship - back,side,top. back will show current heel of the vessel, damage, and sails set. side will indicate damage and sails, as will top.

about damage - i just roll a dice and pick the damage from a table, though as i mentioned, the shot knows sail or hull, and at what its poundage is. i have not yet built differences for carronade, cannon, or mortar. i also take into consideration the top-down shot angle to the ship, ie. a raking fire from stern to bow inflicts murderous damage to the gun and nav crews, depending on a sail or hull hit. conversely, a broadside to broadside hit inflicts more damage to the ship and less to the crew. though simplified, this is generally true to life. hmm i guess this should have been in the gunnery post. indeed it seems i'm writing the user's manual.

again i hope to have signal flags for quick reference.

bix