"Ahoy!": Age of Sail 1st Person Multiplayer Action/Adventure Game on Unreal Engine

[Pieter Boelen]

On our Discord, member @AhoyTyler shared this with us:

Ahoy is a dream project for me, I've never been super knowledgeable on the specifics of sailing, but the dream of sailing across the open sea, free to experience life at sea in the 18th century with friends has always really inspired me. I love history, and I find specifically the 18th century super interesting. The goal is to provide an initial naval combat and navigation experience, focusing on the second-to-second gameplay (loading guns, trimming sails, direct interaction with the articles and equipment of the ship). This naval demo will outline the 'at sea' content, and hopefully develop enough of a basis to support an expanded persistent level of content (land-based gameplay - such as managing your own port town, gathering resources, and ship construction, but also island-to-island trade networks, facilitating a need for piracy and protection). Currently, as mentioned, the plan is to get that naval gameplay demo together. My current ship is the Alert, but more will be added over time

One feature I'm implementing right now - localized weather systems / wind. Using real wind data to establish a persistent but modulating wind direction and speed. Ai driven weather system movement which introduces travel considerations when storm clouds are approaching on the horizon. It's a mammoth project, but I'm not rushing it. It'll be ready when it's ready, and I'm really enjoying the ride so far

For me, this project is just out of a wish for all of the projects that didn't make it. So many age of sail projects seem to fizzle out for one reason or another, (and I can understand how/why, it's not unusual for indies). By hook or by crook I'm going to see something 'set sail', it's just such an awesome setting to explore.

And I honestly think something like this needs to come from the community. I'm not sure some of the larger game releases in the Age of Sail genre really captured that feeling of wonder that I had playing PotBS for the first time, or reading Treasure Island.

More information available here: https://twitter.com/playahoy

 

[AhoyTyler]

Ahoy folks,

Thanks so much @Pieter Boelen for sharing here (I have a feeling he knew I wouldn't post it myself haha!)

Ahoy is a passion project for me, which I'm solo-developing in Unreal Engine.
If anyone has any questions or would like to follow development, you can certainly follow over on Twitter, or perhaps I can update here as well.

The folks over on Discord have been so welcoming, and I really appreciate the support. I've loved browsing PiratesAhoy for years.
We do have a development Discord server as well. Feel free to join there for the most regular updates (I post there most days).

Thanks again for the support!
I'll leave you with some images from development

 

[Mirsaneli]

There was a similar project a few years ago, it was 3rd person game. Hope this one will be successful. I wish all the best to the developers in this project.

 

[AhoyTyler]

Ahoy folks!

So a lot has happened since April. We've been joined by some amazing artists, and continued development of the underlying gameplay mechanics (though less of this is visible today than the visual progress).

Today I'd like to introduce you to our first ship, the Phoebus-class Post-ship. Based on lines from HMS Pandora.
The resident shipwright, Loïc Derrien has been working on Phoebus for a few months now, and she's really taking shape.

Here are a batch of images over the past months of progress...

 

[AhoyTyler]

Continued...

 

[AhoyTyler]

Next on our list of updates, characters!

We've been working on character customization options, and how that might impact the process of creating clothing, hair, and other items.
You can watch a video of the male character being randomized through the current available options:

 

[AhoyTyler]

In addition to this, work started on some initial pose work for various interactions. Here we can see the Ship's Books and Naval Gun.

 

[AhoyTyler]

There are more updates, but I run the risk of spamming the forum!

Feel free to join us on Discord for regular (almost daily) progress updates.
Join the Ahoy Discord Server!

We also have a Twitter page:
https://twitter.com/playahoy

And you can find more links on our website:
Ahoy

Finally, if you'd like to contribute towards the project, we have a few open positions, along with information about the team here:
Capstan Games


Thanks for reading! See you again soon

 

[Sand 2 Go]

Can I just say how beautiful some of the pictures looked? The pictures that do not show the grey background look very realistic.
If that is how everything will look, then wow, this will be a beautiful game.

 

[Mirsaneli]

I always prefered 1st person RPG's good luck with the project!

 

[The Nameless Pirate]

Beautiful work once more, makes me want (even more) to go sailing the high seas!

 

[AhoyTyler]

Can I just say how beautiful some of the pictures looked? The pictures that do not show the grey background look very realistic.
If that is how everything will look, then wow, this will be a beautiful game.

Thank you! Our plan is to match this quality throughout the project, of course this is a huge undertaking so don't quote me on this haha! It's always great to have a quality bar set early on though, makes balancing future work against it a lot easier.

I always prefered 1st person RPG's good luck with the project!

Thank you! First person is certainly the most immerse, which is the aim of Ahoy

Beautiful work once more, makes me want (even more) to go sailing the high seas!

Thank so much! Me too, I'm hoping I'll have my sea legs just by play-testing Ahoy, but I don't think it works that way

 

[AhoyTyler]

Maarten, one of our community members has collated progress pictures from our shipwright Loïc to view on Flickr:
flic.kr/s/aHsmWniZGR

 

[Pieter Boelen]

First person is certainly the most immerse, which is the aim of Ahoy

In theory, you would say so; wouldn't you?
For some reason it never felt so for me though.
Guess there's something wrong with me...

Maarten, one of our community members has collated progress pictures from our shipwright Loïc to view on Flickr:
flic.kr/s/aHsmWniZGR

Lovely lines!
And really good details too; exterior as well as interior.

 

[The Nameless Pirate]

In theory, you would say so; wouldn't you?
For some reason it never felt so for me though.
Guess there's something wrong with me...

Same here. There's something about seeing the player character run, what clothes they wear, etc.
IRL you can feel all that, because it is you who is doing it. In games you can't because you aren't actually performing these actions.
This doesn't mean I won't enjoy the game though.

 

[AhoyTyler]

Hey folks!

We've just launched our new website. You can find us on:

Ahoy.gg

 

[AhoyTyler]

In theory, you would say so; wouldn't you?
For some reason it never felt so for me though.
Guess there's something wrong with me...

Oh, not at all! It's all subjective of course! Hopefully our eventual offering will feel immersive for you, though

Same here. There's something about seeing the player character run, what clothes they wear, etc.
IRL you can feel all that, because it is you who is doing it. In games you can't because you aren't actually performing these actions.
This doesn't mean I won't enjoy the game though.

That's totally understandable! I think the first-person animations, seeing your body and the actions you perform should really help with this.

 

[AhoyTyler]

Ahoy folks,

Some more screenshots for your viewing pleasure... Unlike the previous images of our first ship, these are taken IN ENGINE!

More very soon

 

[Lrv]

Incredible work!

 

[Lrv]

Will it be posible to join online games with random people? 20 random players on the same ship for example(or whatever number needed to play a decent sized ship) or do you need to have a team /group of friends to play?
In that last scenario I'm f**kt