WIP Wayward Ventures - Co-Op Multiplayer Treasure Hunting

[Jackseno]

​

Wayward Ventures is my personal project. My vision of a co-operative sailing experience, allowing friends to inhabit a ship together, and face all the challenges that entails. Design focus is placed on exploration, social dynamic, and journey. Basically - we throw the players and their ship in to a world, and it's up to them to explore it and pursue their own interests. Whether that's getting rich, filling in the edges of the map, or finding out more about the universe they inhabit.

Some screenshots:

Spoiler: Screenshots

If anyone here has any questions about the game, I'd be happy to answer them. When I'm more awake and less in dental pain - I might put together an FAQ in this thread. I might try and per suede some other team members to sign up here too.

Useful links:
Our IndieDb Page
My Youtube Channel (Some dev videos on here)
My twitter
Seb's twitter
Official twitter (nothing there yet, set it up today!)

// (Original Post)

My game can be found here!

It's a co-operative sailing game. The team is a loose bunch of collaborators, so progress comes and goes pretty sporadically. I'm committed to it though. Something that's always bothered me about sailing games is the inability to stand and walk around on deck as you sail, it's an important part of the experience, and something I struggle to see in other age of sail games. Blackwake is heading in that direction though, which is great! I'm looking to make something more open and exploratory, rather than competitive.

There's a whole bunch I could say about it, but I won't go on. If you have any questions about the game you can PM me or just ask in here (assuming that's okay with the rules here).

//

Edit: Wow a proper thread! I'll Add a little more information about the game up top so this is a little more dressed up.

 

[Robert Nutter]

Loving the weapons and weather effects/colour scheme! The landscapes are certainly something to be admired too. Thanks for sharing with me

Definitely going to follow this project

EDIT: Question. How far have you come with the volcano mechanic? Sorry but that's of particular interest over here

 

[Pieter Boelen]

@Jackseno: You should add a link/banner in your forum signature for your game!

When we find the related forum thread, the last above posts should probably be moved there.
Always best to have discussions grouped by subject.

 

[Robert Nutter]

My thoughts too! Be great to discuss it more on here...

 

[Jackseno]

Loving the weapons and weather effects/colour scheme! The landscapes are certainly something to be admired too. Thanks for sharing with me

Definitely going to follow this project

EDIT: Question. How far have you come with the volcano mechanic? Sorry but that's of particular interest over here

Thanks! I've sent you a reply to your PM, but I'll answer about the volcano stuff here;

Back in our Cryengine build - the volcano was a pretty neat set piece (that, as with all our islands, had a random chance of spawning in the world). On the island, when players stepped in to the Incan ruins, the volcano would erupt - leaving players to grab as much treasure as they could as the lava rose around them. Often, greed would get the better of them and a lot of players would get themselves killed trying to take everything with them.

In our unreal build, the volcanic tileset we have for our islands is quite recent, so we don't have anything quite as flashy. However, I definitely plan to remake the level, with a few variations also.

@Jackseno: You should add a link/banner in your forum signature for your game!

When we find the related forum thread, the last above posts should probably be moved there.
Always best to have discussions grouped by subject.

It hadn't really occurred to me that anyone other than me would want to talk about my game here =P
If the demand for a thread has reached one person though, I'd be happy to start one up. Where would/should I place it Pieter?

 

[Thagarr]

@Jackseno, you are more than welcome to create a thread about your game, in fact, I highly encourage it! If you want to post new threads about your updates, that would be great too, I can always promote them and put them on the front page. I might even be talked in to Tweeting them on occasion. You can either post them here in the the Burning Brig, or over in Other Pirate Games, whichever you prefer.

Unlike some forums, we do not mind the competition at all. Competition only makes everyone better in the end. It has actually also been known to lead to cooperation!

If only a handful of the Indie developers that are currently working on pirate related, or sailing games, actually got together and decided to work as a team, we could easily create the single best sailing game ever to hit the PC gaming world!

 

[Pieter Boelen]

It hadn't really occurred to me that anyone other than me would want to talk about my game here =P
If the demand for a thread has reached one person though, I'd be happy to start one up. Where would/should I place it Pieter?

What @Thagarr said!

I took the liberty of creating a thread for you and moved the relevant posts into it.
You're most welcome to keep discussing your game. And if you've got news, we can post that to the site's front page too.

 

[Robert Nutter]

It'd be brilliant to have a go at that level! I thought it may be linked to gameplay somehow. That morality involved is a nice addition too; gives the game some narrative meat having such difficult decisions to make! Something else that intrigues me just from looking at your screenies; the light seems very realistic, especially the AO. Have you spent extensive amounts of time on this or is it an asset?

 

[Jackseno]

It'd be brilliant to have a go at that level! I thought it may be linked to gameplay somehow. That morality involved is a nice addition too; gives the game some narrative meat having such difficult decisions to make! Something else that intrigues me just from looking at your screenies; the light seems very realistic, especially the AO. Have you spent extensive amounts of time on this or is it an asset?

Ahh I'd need Seb to answer that in better detail - but I know Unreal's lighting system is pretty nice as is. I know Seb's spent a lot of time getting the sun cycling through day to night looking fantastic. So I'll guess it's a combination of the two.

If you'd like to play that level - you can download our cryengine build and hunt around for the volcano island. The build is horribly buggy, but it's still pretty indicative of a lot of the systems we still want to incorporate - intentionally hand crafted islands in random locations with random percentages of inclusion, random loot, map drawing from scratch. A lot of it was somewhat poorly executed in our Cry build, but we're hoping to nail it this time around in Unreal. =)

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Ahh I'd need Seb to answer that in better detail - but I know Unreal's lighting system is pretty nice as is. I know Seb's spent a lot of time getting the sun cycling through day to night looking fantastic. So I'll guess it's a combination of the two.

What "Seb" is this? We used to have a good guy named Seb on this forum. I wonder if it could be the same person?

 

[Robert Nutter]

Downloading! Look forward to seeing it all for myself Liking the intro you wrote into the first post by the way...it'll be an interesting game for sure once done! The hand-crafting on the islands shows too...

 

[Jackseno]

What "Seb" is this? We used to have a good guy named Seb on this forum. I wonder if it could be the same person?

Ahh I doubt it! He's a friend of mine I studied with at the University of South Wales, and has helped considerably with WV. He's the closest thing we have to a programmer at the moment, but he tends to just work on whatever as he goes along. Particles, 3D stuff, setting up the multiplayer stuff. You name it the guy probably does it.

 

[Robert Nutter]

Jacks of all are always handy to have on board See if you can get him on here, I'm sure we'd have much to learn from one another!

 

[FirePaw]

Hi! I'm Seb, game artist and blueprint programmer for Wayward Ventures! As Jackson said, I usually try my hand at anything I'm interested in so I've done a bit of everything towards the game, so I'd gladly answer any questions you guys might have - from how it works, to anything designerly!

Something else that intrigues me just from looking at your screenies; the light seems very realistic, especially the AO. Have you spent extensive amounts of time on this or is it an asset?

Yeah, I spent quite a while getting the lighting to look right - the 3 main parts that it uses is an direction light (for the sun), Skylight (for indirect scattering, ambient lighting) and Distance Field Ambient Occlusion (DFAO). The DFAO was added somewhat later; its a feature for Unreal that is usually disabled by default, but results in gorgeous shadows underneath things like the cannons, and gives extra shading to the interiors of the ships.

The day-night cycle used to be a sort of static system where the entire world would be at the same time, so two people on islands on opposite sides of the world will still experience dawn and dusk at the same time. It's now dependant on latitude and longitude, which means we can do fun stuff with sailing north or south and reaching a point where there is perpetual dawn/twilight.

There's other things to complement it too, such as world curvature occluding islands (based on player height from sea level, gotta be in the crows nest to see a decent distance away!)

I'm away for Valentines right now, but I'll be back to my PC on Monday - I'll see if I can get some nice videos of these features ^^

 

[Robert Nutter]

Kudos on your work so far, Seb!

That's cool, so you've almost got a 3-point setup going on globally? Still very new in this field so take what I say with a pinch of salt, but I've been messing about AO a lot recently in V-Ray and I find the concept of DF, or having a mesh respond to the environment in that way, fascinating. I also read that it can reduce render time using DFAO? Either way, it's definitely noticeable. So when you say the skylight is scattered light, does it accurately emulate the effects of an overcast skybox? So ie, like a massive diffuser has been put over the sky? Or would you say it's more to emphasis the effects of the current sky scheme? I'm just curious what happens when there's no directional light, how the shadows respond then or if they're still accurately rendered (again, newb!)

I didn't actually realize you could do that with the cycles. Really need to start learning these engines myself! Just out of interest, what's the tolerance level of that? So ie, how often does the weather update itself? Or is it a constant motion?

Curvature sounds like an ultimate upgrade for a game like this! So you can literally 'spot an island on the horizon?'

That'd be awesome if you could! I'm still trying to download the Cry version (my net is slow here), so looking forward to that

 

[FirePaw]

Kudos on your work so far, Seb!

That's cool, so you've almost got a 3-point setup going on globally? Still very new in this field so take what I say with a pinch of salt, but I've been messing about AO a lot recently in V-Ray and I find the concept of DF, or having a mesh respond to the environment in that way, fascinating. I also read that it can reduce render time using DFAO? Either way, it's definitely noticeable. So when you say the skylight is scattered light, does it accurately emulate the effects of an overcast skybox? So ie, like a massive diffuser has been put over the sky? Or would you say it's more to emphasis the effects of the current sky scheme? I'm just curious what happens when there's no directional light, how the shadows respond then or if they're still accurately rendered (again, newb!)

I didn't actually realize you could do that with the cycles. Really need to start learning these engines myself! Just out of interest, what's the tolerance level of that? So ie, how often does the weather update itself? Or is it a constant motion?

Curvature sounds like an ultimate upgrade for a game like this! So you can literally 'spot an island on the horizon?'

That'd be awesome if you could! I'm still trying to download the Cry version (my net is slow here), so looking forward to that

Hehe thanks! ^^

Yep, its global! The skylight is more like a constant ambient light currently - officially, it's meant to blend light between areas with direct line-of-sight to the sky and shaded areas, like a courtyard transitioning into a building. Unfortunately this only really works with static objects, not the dynamic stuff like ships! That's where the DFAO comes in! I'm not sure if the dynamic lighting in Unreal can handle proper diffused lighting, but I might have another look when I'm back!

I did test the DFAO without the directional light, and it ends up looking like soft overcast lighting. Here's the UE4 documentation for it, probably explains better than I will :V
Distance Field Ambient Occlusion | Unreal Engine

In general yeah, it's more to emphasise the effects of the current sky scheme - we've got a different set of curves for lighting for the global over-arching weather types (Clear, Cloudy, Precipitation, Storm) which just messes with the colours/intensity.

The weather is changed at random times (currently around 30-120 seconds), where it increases or decreases the 'intensity', so transitioning from clear to cloudy for example. Your location and surroundings can affect what weather you actually experience though, so if you are in the far north, you'll get snow instead of rain, blizzards instead of traditional storms.

Also, we have roaming storms that increase the intensity of the weather by +1, so when the global weather is precipitation, you'll get some deadly storms!

The curvature probably needs more tinkering but yep! You can climb mountains to get an even better view of the world, which is quite awesome when you see your ship down in a nearby bay, and a volcano billowing smoke on the horizon!

 

[Robert Nutter]

That real-world correlation with the weather sounds great. Sadly I havn't been able to be in Windows enough today to give it a see for myself, but boy can I not wait

Sorry if I'm way off, but is it a little like how early HDR worked on games like Lost Coast? So as opposed to newer HDR which just reshades the overall scene, it actively changes how objects in certain lighting conditions react with others? Like looking at a dark doorway, but not actually walking in, a little like an enhanced dynamic range. As I understand, it's a lot like real world light transmission in that everything creates something; be it a colour reflection or transmission; and it's how and what surfaces it hits which determines the overall look. If so, this is truly something to look into learning myself!

So if DFAO is needed for the dynamic objects, surely we're looking at quite a frame penalty as it tries to recalculate? As I'm guessing nothing can be baked in and AO is enough for me on most games to more than half my framerate; let alone it updating itself on a dynamic object?

That curvature mechanic sounds ace, as does the weather system. Thanks for sharing all this with me, man

 

[FirePaw]

That real-world correlation with the weather sounds great. Sadly I havn't been able to be in Windows enough today to give it a see for myself, but boy can I not wait

Sorry if I'm way off, but is it a little like how early HDR worked on games like Lost Coast? So as opposed to newer HDR which just reshades the overall scene, it actively changes how objects in certain lighting conditions react with others? Like looking at a dark doorway, but not actually walking in, a little like an enhanced dynamic range. As I understand, it's a lot like real world light transmission in that everything creates something; be it a colour reflection or transmission; and it's how and what surfaces it hits which determines the overall look. If so, this is truly something to look into learning myself!

So if DFAO is needed for the dynamic objects, surely we're looking at quite a frame penalty as it tries to recalculate? As I'm guessing nothing can be baked in and AO is enough for me on most games to more than half my framerate; let alone it updating itself on a dynamic object?

That curvature mechanic sounds ace, as does the weather system. Thanks for sharing all this with me, man

Yep, that's pretty much how I understand it!

The DFAO has a range limit to what objects can affect a certain point of lighting, which I think is about as optimised as it'll really get. Currently the max range is about the length of a third-rate ship of the line, just so the interiors look quite decent!

I haven't had too much of an impact from it though, but my PC is somewhat powerful, so I'm probably not too great a judge! ^^

The distance field stuff can be used for other things too, like grass displacement! It's quite robust, as I think it is based on the texture and scale of an object. I did think about using it for the clouds too as an experiment, but they were always too far away from the player

Baked-in AO is still usable alongside it I believe! I might need to work out how to make an options screen of sorts, to enable/disable certain features like that! (Would probably help a bunch when we have laptops and things displaying the game at shows)

Glad to share it! I'm usually quite bad at explaining things, so I hope this all makes a decent amount of sense! :V

 

[Robert Nutter]

It definitely does, and is very inspiring!

That baking's a good thing because as you say, I don't even want to think about a lower end laptop trying to do all that for every frame; great as it is!

You say that limit is the length of a ship, so on land does that still apply? As in some ways I can imagine that may be too much of a limiting factor when it comes to static objects/landscapes, or is there an easy switch for that?

 

[FirePaw]

It definitely does, and is very inspiring!

That baking's a good thing because as you say, I don't even want to think about a lower end laptop trying to do all that for every frame; great as it is!

You say that limit is the length of a ship, so on land does that still apply? As in some ways I can imagine that may be too much of a limiting factor when it comes to static objects/landscapes, or is there an easy switch for that?

It's limited to about the length of a ship, but it works on land too It's a general shader of sorts, just affecting stuff thats around the player~

Here's a few pictures to emphasise it:

Traditional Ambient Occlusion: http://puu.sh/n9nDB/d0a648db2f.jpg
Distance Field Ambient Occlusion: http://puu.sh/n9nys/cb1fabffab.jpg
Normal view: http://puu.sh/n9oBf/a23ceee21a.jpg

So you can see it's not actually too high resolution but it gives an extra layer of shading, which is perfect for dynamic environments such as this!

Here's how it affects exteriors of islands (we haven't got any islands with caves yet, but maybe soon!)
DFAO: http://puu.sh/n9nM8/9855696107.jpg
Normal view: http://puu.sh/n9nMC/b8ff2500d5.jpg