Need Help New Age of Sail Sim Announced

[bix]

Yes, I'm making an age of sail sim. I've been trying to make this for several (hmmm, 5?) years, and finally a number of situations have contributed to its critical mass, and I am going Beta June 1st 2013. I say Beta because hook or crook, it is on the market October 1st 2013 for free or for pay or for whatever it can be.

I'm looking for beta victims, all are welcome. It will be a public FTP download of approx 20 MB, easy. I'm looking for feedback and declarations of interest. Keep in mind I will release simultaneously to tablets (droid and ios) and PCs (win and mac), so some of your usual expectations will be a bit off. The "serious" hardware releases will support way more than the "toy" hardware, but gameplay will be the same. Just more ships per CPU cycle.

In the below posts, there is going to be a mass of text. I suppose I am serving up a game design document, but really it's the beginning of the user manual, because mostly all of this is code-complete and I'm going public Beta June 1st.

All images, concepts, and words copyright (c) 2013 Joao Bix Klima de Sa

That said: Read on for further details and screenshots!

 

[bix]

greetings admirals, commodores, post captains, and commanders

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.

 

[bix]

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.

 

[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.

 

[bix]

gunnery command - 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]

navigation menu - 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

 

[bix]

there you have it.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

That sounds pretty detailed. There will be three levels to this? Admiral, Commodore, and Captain?

 

[bix]

yes and no, not levels, camera viewpoints really. admiral is the view in the screen shot, it is overhead and you can pan/zoom to see the entire conflict area. you can issue orders to any ship in your fleet. commodore is a "shipside" 3rd person camera, it follows the flagship of a squadron. you can NOT zoom or pan, you might have a telescope, not decided yet. in commodore you can issue orders to any ship you can see from your topgallants. captain mode is again 3rd person shipside camera. in captain you issue orders only to this ship and any launches/barges belonging to it.

the game is most successfully played in admiral mode of course, where you can see everything and do everything. but it is no extra effort to allow a 3rd person/ship camera, and i understand that many players might enjoy the excitement from that perspective. however, at this time, the graphics are less than stellar, and i am not going to focus on that until i have solid tested game-play, so the primary focus now is on admiral mode.

thanks for you interest!

best,
bix

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Haven't had the chance yet to read through your whole text, but it looks interesting.
What is the name of your game? We should split this off into its own thread so people can focus on just your work there.
And then we can, of course, also announce it on our main page and various profiles to give you a bit more exposure.

 

[bix]

hi pieter,

i would be grateful if you launched that thread. i can repost everything there. oddly i don't have a name yet, i was thinking "signal, close action!" but i might have copyright issues. internally i call it B2Qs - "beat to quarters," but there already exists this game. evidently they didnt have copyright complaints. i'm keen on a literary reference, but not keen on lawsuits. then there is always "rum, buggery, and the lash" but that might not go over too well - or maybe it would. any suggestions?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I can split off your posts into its own thread; I just need to have a title for it.
But perhaps for that purpose, just "New Age of Sail Sim Announced: Going Beta 1 June 2013" will do?
You can ask people on the forum for suggestions on the name; you are going to need a good one, right?

 

[bix]

sounds great, split by that thread title. open call for the name too!

thanks,
bix

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Done. Your opening post is now showing on the main PiratesAhoy! page too.
I adjusted it a little bit to read more like a News post, but perhaps it could use some further work.
I don't want to mess around with your text too much though, so perhaps you could make whatever further adjustments you see fit yourself?

 

[Thomas the Terror]

Impressive. But looking at the screenshots alone I am a bit overwhelmed by all the options though.

 

[bix]

thanks again pieter. if my engine can prove useful to hearts of oak, lets talk.
best,
j.b.k. de sa
ps. that is my real name

 

[Pieter Boelen]

if my engine can prove useful to hearts of oak, lets talk.

What engine are you working with? What are the graphic capabilities?
Regardless of whether it could work for Hearts of Oak, your game looks like a very interesting concept that should be supported.
Especially the game mechanics sounds very interesting to me and I'd eventually quite like to see comprehensive fleet battle command be possible in HoO as well.

Anyway, once you've got a good name, we should post another announcement, but that time plaster it EVERYWHERE!

 

[bix]

hi thomas,

great point!

answer: you should not be overwhelmed, there is this thing called "auto" mode. in this mode, you just basically point and click, you DO care about tactics and the current situation, you don't give a whore's nickle about the trim of yer jib.

that said, yer barky ain't gonna run like if which it had an infernal engine. it still needs to tack to position (this is not waterworld or mad max). otherwise, why would yous want to play an age of sail sim? iow, your actions are subject to the physics of sailing, but i have really solid AI that allows a player to ignore it, but they still must deal with it on a tactical level. hey man, not every troop has a light machine gun with unlimitted ammo.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

iow, your actions are subject to the physics of sailing, but i have really solid AI that allows a player to ignore it, but they still must deal with it on a tactical level.

Does does sound really very interesting!

Especially also considering the HoO where eventually we'll be wanting to put the player in the position of actual Captain and thinking about the tactical aspects of the game,
rather than just having the player as helmsman/gunner like in so many other pirate/seafaring games.

 

[bix]

@pieter - precisely! that is why i finally cleared my plate and made this game for my own-self. all the naval sims i've ever played (with the exception of harpoon, which i actually worked on briefly) always eventually compromise everything to this notion:

mastering a ship should be the same as driving a car.

MASTERING A SHIP HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH DRIVING A CAR!!!!!

that said, in a game, a player should not a priori be burdened by the distinction. their success, or (more likely) failure in the game should encourage them to explore the subtleties of their subject.

putting the player in the position of the captain is a big mistake. they must start in the position of the admiral, and work their way DOWN to the noble rank of master and commander, and maybe someday if they just sit and wait, or pay hard earned prize money, or are to the manor born... and yet still, admiralty willing, they may fly their pennant. and maybe someday they will hoist blue in the mizzen.

jah forbid you end your career as a yellow admiral.

best
j.b.k. de sa