• New Horizons on Maelstrom
    Maelstrom New Horizons


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Congratulations! This looks amazing! I've always thought how awesome it would be to have a pirate game in first person, like The Elder Scrolls Oblivion or Skyrim. Wish you all the best in your project!
 
Thanks, I did indeed get inspiration from Skyrim. (And hundreds of other FPS games iv played of course). I have plyed it a few times specifically to see how melee combat works and how some environments are put together.
I have finally got a good way of manufacturing environments, and having enough props to fill it up with, along with enough characters and enemys, animals, and plants to make it seem real, without over use of one particular vendor of models. (Other wise its just like kind of their game and not mine!).
The code for the world I have created allows me to do nearly anything in a flexible way, linking AI to objects found with tasks, conversations, and character story lines (i'm a full time Senior Principal Engineer at a major electronics manufacturer) so that kinda helps!). It just a question of making enough of the world to make it a decent enough to give the player things to explore. Im not going to have the 400+ caves that Skyrim has got.. but.. alot of people said that's too big, and too much of the same. Of course that's a totally different league to indie games like this. But just because I can't make a A++++ game doesn't mean I cant make something people all over the world enjoy playing for a number of hours.

Any suggestions of questions / requests please feel free to ask!
 
Capt. Phil said:
Thanks, I did indeed get inspiration from Skyrim. (And hundreds of other FPS games iv played of course). I have plyed it a few times specifically to see how melee combat works and how some environments are put together.
I have finally got a good way of manufacturing environments, and having enough props to fill it up with, along with enough characters and enemys, animals, and plants to make it seem real, without over use of one particular vendor of models. (Other wise its just like kind of their game and not mine!).
The code for the world I have created allows me to do nearly anything in a flexible way, linking AI to objects found with tasks, conversations, and character story lines (i'm a full time Senior Principal Engineer at a major electronics manufacturer) so that kinda helps!). It just a question of making enough of the world to make it a decent enough to give the player things to explore. Im not going to have the 400+ caves that Skyrim has got.. but.. alot of people said that's too big, and too much of the same. Of course that's a totally different league to indie games like this. But just because I can't make a A++++ game doesn't mean I cant make something people all over the world enjoy playing for a number of hours.

Any suggestions of questions / requests please feel free to ask!
Click to expand...

Keep it up, you are doing an awesome job! I was wondering, since the islands looks huge according to pictures that you provided, how will the towns look like? How do you plan to make the transition between land and sea (getting from island to ship)? In Akella's games, it wasn't much of a free world to explore. Actually, it is New Horizons mod that made PoTC fun to play. But I guess that's the engine limitations problem (I don't know much about coding).
 
The towns/villages, well il upload a pic of one (without giving too much away). There are buildings you can enter by going up to the door, and icon will appear, then you are transported inside (like skyrim).
What actually happens is I move the player into the building, and enable all the contents, and deactivate most of the outside.
The transition from land to vehicle happens in a few ways, one way is that you can just enter the ship and pilot it using the keyboard. But the main way is you get on the ship tell the pilot where to go, and he takes you. When you arrive, you enter the jollyboat (it lowers into the water), it takes you to shore, where you exit.. do your adventuring.. then you can reenter the jollyboat, it takes you back to the ship, and you can then choose a new heading. So some automation which prevents the player from getting into places they shouldn't and drowning all the time! So the entire game is all one scene, where you are free to go where the ship takes you and then you can walk wherever you like in an openworld style. The only time you are confined is when you are inside a building, or in a cave.
 
This is a port, show in Edit mode in Unity. You can go in nearly all of the buildings. They are mostly filled with drunk pirates. The grog's on special offer ;-)
 

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Capt. Phil said:
But the main way is you get on the ship tell the pilot where to go, and he takes you.
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That is also really cool! Sounds very similar to a wish I had for Hearts of Oak.

Please replace "pilot" with "officer" though. ;)
 
Capt. Phil said:
He's no officer.. an escaped convict more like! (You have to aid his escape from jail.. )
Click to expand...
"Pilot" can either be an airplane pilot (not likely) or a nautical pilot (generally used for brining ships in and out of port).
Neither of those two should be sailing your ship at sea. Should be a captain or one of his officers who navigates the ship. :rolleyes:

I assume your escaped convict actually has some knowledge on navigation and ship handling, right?
That makes him an officer then. :wp

I should know. I've done that job for 5 years in real life. :cheeky
 
Capt. Phil said:
Yes.. Ok good, he is now officially a 'Captain' once he's aboard.
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Better. :cheeky

So do I understand correctly that in your game, the player character is NOT actually the captain of the ship?
That's definitely new for one of these type of games! :shock

Capt. Phil said:
In my defense.. I never actually used the word Pilot in the game - just the GameObject was called that hah
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Ah, well... That's OK then. In some of the software I work on, that functionality is named "Helmsman" as well, even if "Navigator" would be much more appropriate.
That's what happens when non-seafarers write code. :razz
 
No, he doesn't have a the ship (he makes a raft early on, which is controllable) but that's never going to make far away lands).
He charters a ship, in return for a favor.. I can't rip off assassins creed black flag! And all those other game, good to make something a bit different.
I see other games are heavily into sailing the seas, although it is a part of it, its not the main action of the game. (I think Hearts of oak ect. will always excel there, and I dont have the manpower to make a big thing of that.) However.. there are a number of ships.. and cannon battles, be it shore to sea, not sea to sea.
 
I probably asked this question before, but could you remind me if your game is supposed to be commercial/for profit or purely "for free"?
Can't remember now.... :unsure

Capt. Phil said:
I can't rip off assassins creed black flag!
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Having the player be a captain is hardly a rip off from AC4!
There have been a gazillion games before that which did the same thing, starting with the original Sid Meier's Pirates and including the entire Akella game series.
So don't think for even a second that AC4 is "original" there. It totally isn't. :wp

Capt. Phil said:
He charters a ship, in return for a favor.. [...] And all those other game, good to make something a bit different.
Click to expand...
Definitely agree with you there! It'll be nice to see a different approach.

Capt. Phil said:
I see other games are heavily into sailing the seas, although it is a part of it, its not the main action of the game.
Click to expand...
In my experience, the Sailing Mode has always been a big favourite of the players of these games.
Take for example the 2003 PotC game: You had to travel between islands using an "arcadey map mode".
Once one of our modders figured out how to make that work without that silly map, there was much rejoicining! :cheeky

Capt. Phil said:
However.. there are a number of ships.. and cannon battles, be it shore to sea, not sea to sea.
Click to expand...
Indeed good sea battles are not so easy to pull off. Trying to make a good land AND sea game by yourself would definitely be too much for one person.
 
Well I have spent an awful long time on it.. and its cost me money.. so i'm thinking on Steam for a modest amount.
No I never thought AC4 was original, but probably the most expensive Pirate game ever made.
I'm just going to do what I can for now and hope people like playing it.
 
What am I looking at there?
The tentacles I get; but what's the rest?

Will you have them animated? If so, you'll have a better Kraken attack than the one we put in PotC a few years back! :onya
 
Yep the arms fly around in all different movement based on math functions sin/cos setup and exported from 3dsmax, so you get that nice waving motion all around randomly, plus the manually created animations of each one as well based on what things the player does. The rest is a crack in the ice.. probably needs improving that bit. Not done yet but you get the idea. (You only get to him after the underworld throne room... ;-) )
 
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