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Hearts of Oak News 2nd September 2014

Armada

Armada

Sea Dog
Staff member
Administrator
Project Manager
3D Artist
Storm Modder
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Welcome to another edition of our Hearts of Oak progress articles!

Each week*, we will bring you a summary of the latest development news, including work-in-progress screenshots and in-game footage, along with a more in-depth look at featured content.

Following the recent announcement of our switch to the Unity engine, we have some details to share regarding donations, as well as the latest information on our development progress.

Fundraising
Due to the Unity Pro licensing and many available add-ons, we have started to accept donations to reduce the costs for our developers.
Even a single Unity Pro license that we need for improved functionality and graphics costs USD1500.
We have already raised the first 1500 dollars through an internal round of donations within in our own team, but that's only the beginning.

If you would like to contribute as well, you can do so through Paypal using the Donate button on HeartsOfOakGame.com.
We are publicly listing the latest status, including proper credit to those who donated, here on our forum.

We are currently looking into the feasibility of added perks for those who donate.
These may range from having your name used in the game to receiving a "Hearts of Oak" t-shirt.
Anything that we decide on will be retroactively provided to everyone who donated before to ensure that nobody is missing out.

All releases of the game will remain completely free as this is and always will be a fully non-commercial project.
None of our developers get any of this money for personal use as 100% will be used to further the development itself.

In other words, these donations are completely voluntary and nobody is required to make any unless they want to.
However, all contributions will be much appreciated and we promise to put them to the best use that we possibly can!

Engine Development
- Ship proxies

This video explains how a ship's collision detection is handled, and how that affects the character's movement on board.

- Ship buoyancy

Here we show how the ships react to the waves, and how different mass values affect this movement.

- Ship firing points

The 'firing points' are our solution to gun placement on ships.
They provide an intelligent system for determining the maximum gun size a ship can accept at each gunport, eventually allowing the player to create custom batteries, even within the same decks.
These points also work with the gunport lids, so guns can be run out or stowed with the lids opening and closing accordingly.

Top Contributors
Below are the latest members of our development team to be recognised with our Top Contributor award in recent weeks:

@RobinPC - For his continued contributions to our project, especially to terrain development, and his willingness to learn and improve.
@Dario - For his dedication to laying the foundation on the quest writing effort and his willingness to do whatever needs to be done to help move this forward.
@Mask - For his valuable work on establishing the formatting of the quests, as well as developing methods for working together on writing multi-branched stories.

Their contributions have been invaluable to the game's development, and we hope to give out more of these awards soon!


That's it for this week's progress; we'll have more updates for you soon!
Don't know what the Hearts of Oak project is? Take a look at our Frequently Asked Questions for more information.
*Please note that while we're aiming to post a new article each week, we can't always manage this, but we will post articles as regularly as we can!
 
Also, we tried Unreal before and it was quite impossible to create our game with it for various reasons.
In any case, Unity is serving us quite well so far.
 
Hylie Pistof said:
After a year of getting exactly nowhere with UE and its community it was time to move on. You had your chance and fumbled it.
Click to expand...
Let me correct you. You were using UDK which comes without sources just like CryEngine does. And nowadays situation has changed because Epic released UE4 with all sources. And if you don't understand, with an access to engine's source code you can modify/create anything you want (except for some third party libs, like speedtree), the only thing you need is skill and time. Also there's an interesting way of visual scripting in UE4 called blueprints. So you can code in C++ or play around with node based visual scripting (let's say for PoC or prototyping, when C++ devs are busy with other things). And it costs only 20$/month to get access to engine and its sources. Also you can get 1 month subscription and then use engine without further payments, but you won't have new updates.
But well let's wait another 6 months till you hit a ceiling of Unity's capabilities and/or run into big performance issues.

P.S. Yes, I like UE4 very much and if you have any questions about the engine - please ask.
 
why don't you give backing system a try . i think there's really a place for a good pirates game . imagine a game with the deep of CoAS with ACIV graphics . off course project devs would have to get a more "professional approach" if they decide to choose that way of development . but they could rise more funds and hire more and qualified (professional) devs .,which means a faster game development too . . backers should have few advantages as a counter part , like their names in game or any other thing ... Star citizen game did this and they raised 40 M $
 
shockwave: Again, you had a year to do something and your "very friendly" community did nothing at all in a positive manner. Frankly, at this point you are looking like a troll.
 
hylie pistof said:
shockwave: Again, you had a year to do something and your "very friendly" community did nothing at all in a positive manner. Frankly, at this point you are looking like a troll.
Click to expand...
FACEPALM. I wasn't involved in this project as a developer and I became an UE4 community member just after the initial release of Unreal Engine ver. 4. So please don't compare UDK and UE 4 communities they are just completely different.
But ok, if you think I'm trolling, I'll wrap up our discussion.
 
@Shockwave: More information is always interesting, even if we can't do much with it right now.
UDK didn't work out, but indeed we didn't try UE4 and perhaps that would indeed allow someone to make a game like the one we are working on.

But we cannot afford to keep swapping engines, because that will doom us to miserable failure.
Unity is working out well so far and several other historical seafaring games are based on it as well.
So chances are good that we indeed can accomplish this project using Unity. And that is the most important thing.

jpm1 said:
why don't you give backing system a try . i think there's really a place for a good pirates game . imagine a game with the deep of CoAS with ACIV graphics . off course project devs would have to get a more "professional approach" if they decide to choose that way of development . but they could rise more funds and hire more and qualified (professional) devs .,which means a faster game development too . . backers should have few advantages as a counter part , like their names in game or any other thing ... Star citizen game did this and they raised 40 M $
Click to expand...
We have started to accept donations, but not for the purpose of making money.
As @ODemuth says, we are fully non-commercial and we want to keep it that way. :cheeky
 
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