[WIP] Ships and Scurvy RPG: Feedback appreciated!

[Whiskeybarrel Studios]

Good morning seafarers!

My name is Oliver Joyce, I'm best known as the creator of the RPG game series Swords and Sandals. I no longer make those games, but I'm still an indie developer with my own tiny label, Whiskeybarrel Studios. Anyway, I wanted to tell you all about a new RPG I'm building,Ships and Scurvy.

The basic premise is you play a sailor cursed with immortality. You wake on the sandy shores of a beach, with a humble raft. You gradually build up a proper ship, hire a crew and go on adventures, fighting natives, discovering lands and (invariably) dying and washing up on the beach again. Each adventure, you get stronger, more skilled until you have a huge galleon and a robust crew capable of taking on sea monsters, pirate lords and the vast ocean ahead of you.

I'd describe it as an ocean-based mashup of Rogue Legacy/Oregon Trail/Faster than Light and of course Sid Meier's Pirates. Kind of ambitious but I'm sure it will turn into it's own unique beast.

Anyway, the last month or so I've been writing a development diary of the game ( I'm up to part 4 ) but I'd love for you to have a read and tell me your thoughts on the game so far.

You can read part one here, in which I go through the process of randomly generating an ocean , islands and ships for your world.

http://whiskeybarrelstudios.com/?p=857

Cheers, Oliver Joyce
Whiskeybarrel Studios.

 

[Whiskeybarrel Studios]

In my first post, we created a vast ocean. This week, I decided to put on my deity hat and populate that ocean with more items from the sea. Since the ocean itself is going to essentially be the ‘overworld‘ part of the game ( the section that interconnects all the various game locations ) , I thought it important to have this section feel both huge but populated. The problem with creating a map that’s 100,000 by 100,000 pixels in dimensions is that it takes a long time to sail around. I timed it on my watch – if you’re sailing at 3 pixels a frame for 60 frames a second, it takes nearly 9 minutes to sail across the entire map.

So, in essence, the map is going to need to have a lot of stuff in there to make it feel less empty. As I mentioned in the last update, I created a class called a ‘seaItem’ which contained the basic properties anything existing in the world would want to have ( a grid position, the ability to check collisions with other sea items, the ability to move if required, and so on). I then extended this seaItem into a bunch of subgroups:

ISLANDS

Islands are the various landmasses scattered throughout the world. They stay where they are and aren’t rendered by the display list at all most of the time – they exist only as co-ordinates on a grid. When the player’s boat gets within a certain distance of the island, they are added to the display list (just above the water but below the boats) and become visible. At the moment when testing this on mobile devices I’m noticing a very slight frame jitter while it adds these islands but I’ll look to optimise that later – it’s because I’m creating the island texture at runtime and adding it in ( I can’t have 100 big images all in the texture memory all at once ) .

For the visual look and feel of the island, I thought long and hard about creating them procedurally and actually changing the colour of the water around them, having them as a series of connected tiles with heightmaps and images ( beach, jungle, rock and so on ). I did lot of searching on google for procedurally generating world maps and found some good stuff but in the end I decided it would be far too process intensive to create these at runtime when the actual benefit to the player was minimal. They’re essentially just images a player wants to land near , once reached, another screen opens with a bunch of things for the player to do. Knowing this, I still wanted to have them look random, varied and geographically interesting. Doing that all by hand was going to be really time consuming ( for now I’m doing all the art for this game myself ) , so I kept searching for a way to procedurally generate islands as images which I could then edit in Photoshop.

An amazing programmer called Amit Patel had the answer. His blog post on polygon map generation proved to be the answer – you could type in a bunch of variables and generate a landmass with rivers, mountains, snow and so on. Taking this image and editing it in Photoshop produced the effect I was after – what I’ll do later is go back and add my own artwork over the top of this, things like fortresses, volcanos, castles and towns that the generator couldn’t create. For now, here’s the result:

CLOUDS and WAVES

An ocean without waves might as well be a giant, boring pond, and we can’t have that. Firstly, I needed a weather system so I created a class that kept track of the time in the game and as time elapsed, this class would change the weather in the game. I set up five constants for weather ( SUNNY, LIGHT_RAIN, HEAVY_RAIN, STORM and SNOW ) and added a few particle systems I’d used in other games to add rain , snow and lightning effects. Incidentally, it’s really easy to create a simple but effective lightning flash in your game.

In addition to the weather, the class also included parameters for windStrength and windAngle, which would change randomly depending on the weather conditions.

With my weather system in place, I then created a wave class that extended the seaItem. These waves had their own special functions for moving ( they move in the same direction as the wind and at twice the speed, and then when greater than a certain distance away from the player, they spawn again in a constant loop. I decided to only use waves in big storms – when they hit a player, the boat actually jumps and your hull takes damage ( and crew may or may not fall out of the boat ).

Clouds behave in a similar way to waves except they float above everything else on the display list. They move in the same direction as the wind and at the same angle, then loop back when offscreen and away from the player.

BOATS

The player’s primary mode of transportation/exploration in this game is, of course, a boat. Since you’re not alone in the world, I created roughly 500 or so other boats that would sail around the world exploring – I might just spawn these at random through the game so it doesn’t seem to crowded. Boats extend the seaItem class and add a few other functions such as a particle effect for seaspray when moving across the water, the ability to ‘jump’ out of the water when hit by a big wave and the functionality to rotate and move to a point when the user taps the screen.

The boat class is going to have a lot more detail in it later as I start adding statistics to it like ‘number of cannons’, ‘hull strength’, ‘number of cargo holds’ and so on, but for now it’s enough that it can sail around and interact with the world. When two boats meet, a bunch of options will appear such as ‘parley’, ‘attack’ and ‘trade’, but that’s a fair ways away.

You can see a video of some boats moving across the ocean here:

, complete with early weather effects.

Next post I’ll talk a bit more about the RPG elements and play cycle of the game and perhaps even a bit about sea monsters.

As always, thanks for reading and happy journeys. Please feel free to give me any feedback, comments and thoughts by replying below!

Cheers, Oliver Joyce
Whiskeybarrel Studios

 

[Whiskeybarrel Studios]

Good morning seafarers! Here's dev diary number four. As always, I'd love your feedback so comment below!

Battle systems are one of the most integral parts of any role playing game, and Ships and Scurvy is no different. There are many approaches you can take to building a battle system for your game, from making it the central aspect of your game ( the Diablo series ) to making it an incidental (and possible to avoid ) part of your game ( the Ultima series ) . You can build the combat in real time into the world itself, or have it flash to a separate screen for turn based battles. All of these approaches have been successful, so it means you don’t have to reinvent the wheel for your own combat.

I think the first thing you have to decide is how central combat is to your game and how much time do you want to take up. Long combat can be tedious if you don’t have a tonne of strategic options and variety of opponents. Is your game realtime or turn based? Is it a single hero, or do you have a party of adventurers? It’s important to play other RPGs in order to find what you liked and disliked about each system – if you were frustrated by long combat animations, take them out. If you really liked the spellcasting system from another game, try and emulate it for in yours.

In Ships and Scurvy I’ve decided to make battles real-time (except for the hero battles ) . I’ve come up with three different battle systems: Naval battles , land battles and hero battles.

Naval Battles

When your ship is sailing around the world, you will occasionally encounter other vessels. Based on your actions in the game, your ship and crew will have a reputation stat varying from ‘downright despicable’ to ‘paragon of virtue’ . Other ships will have these reputation meters too, and depending on how you match up, battle may or may not be a foregone conclusion.

When ships meet, a little menu will appear with the following options:

Parley (friends) – When both vessels are of similar alignment, you can talk to them and sometimes get rumours about the world. They may know the location of some treasure, or the whereabouts of a dangerous sea creature.
Parley (enemies) – When faced with enemies, you can attempt to avoid battle through negotiation. If the other ship is more powerful than you, captain may demand payment of gold, crew or cargo. Refusal can lead to battle.
Trade – If both vessels are of a similar alignment, you can trade goods ( which may be life saving if your crew is down to eating rats )
Attack – If you want to ignore the pleasantries and get straight to battle. You can attack both friendly and enemy vessels, though your reputation will suffer if you betray alliances.
Once attack is selected, the game view is switched from the top down overworld to a side on , 3 quarter angle of your two ships in combat.

Each ship has three primary statistics:

Hull – determines the strength of the ship’s hull. Once this reaches zero the ship sinks and there is no chance of salvaging anything from the wreck
Sails – the ship’s ability to flee battle. Once this reaches zero, the ship is stranded and may be boarded for attack. This allows you to salvage stuff from the other ship.
Crew – literally the number of sailors on board the vessel. If this reaches zero, your ship is defeated.
So, during the battle, you are able to select one of these areas to target: hull/sails/crew. Your ship will auto fire cannonballs at whatever you target, at a rate of fire depending on some other stats like crew morale/health etc. The more cannons you have, the more often you can fire – however if your crew dwindle, there’ll be nobody to fire the cannons. You can see there’s a bit of strategy involved here.

Situations may arise like “this enemy craft is much stronger than me, do I destroy their sails and attempt to flee?” , or perhaps ” I have a lot more crew then them, but less cannons – perhaps I can attempt to board them and fight hand to hand?”

Here’s a little animated GIF of a sea battle in action. Notice how both ships have lost their sails – eventually the hero’s ship loses all it’s crew too and is sunk.

Land Battles

Land battles can occur in several situations. If you are able to successfully board the enemy’s ship, a land battle can occur on board the deck of the ship. Alternatively, if your crew are exploring one of the many islands in the game, they may encounter unfriendly natives, hostile soldiers and so on. In this case, you’ve got a land battle on your hands and the game switches views to another 3 quarter perspective shot , this time with a landscape background in the distance and two crews facing each other.

I got the concept for this kind of battle system from a classic Broderbund strategy game from the early 1980s, The Ancient Art of War. This game is seriously one of the best war games I’ve ever played – it has a wonderful mix of strategy and action that was really lost in the more complicated wargames of the 90s and beyond. It feels much more like a casual game than anything else, battles are decided quickly and there’s no hex grids or anything like that to bog you down. Now, in Ancient Art of War, battles were side-on and both forces ran at each other and attacked. You have the option to tell troops to advance or retreat, but that’s about it. Fights are done in 10-30 seconds, and the game is so much better for it.

Incidentally, how many times have you sighed or shouted in rage when playing RPGs where random encounters mean a ten minute meaningless battle against Foozle’s henchmen , wandering boars or whatever – this is exactly what I’m trying to avoid by having fast battles.

Here’s a very rough work in progress of the land battles – I’m still drawing the character avatars and I’ll need to hire a real artist to do the backgrounds ( holler if you know anyone!) . At the moment all the character avatars have a random colour ( and the same eyepatch ) but in the final version they’ll be colour coded according to which side they’re on.

Your crew is divided up into three troop types:

Heavy armour – These sailors move slowly, carry large weapons and wear metal armour. They have an advantage against light armour troops.
Light armour – These sailors wear light clothing and carry sharp weapons, allowing them to dart quickly across the battlefield. They have an advantage against ranged troops.
Ranged -These sailors wear light clothing and wield ranged weapons such as bows and muskets. They can do damage from afar, making them effective against slow heavy armour troops.
As you can see, it makes for an interesting ‘rock-paper-scissors’ dynamic. Each troop has an advantage and disadvantage over the other two. You’ll want your heavy troops to defend your archers from light troops and so on . The trick here is you can only take up to 30 troops into battle, and you must pre-select these troops before you see your enemy’s forces.

I’m toying with the idea of bringing the captain ( your character ) into the battle as a hero character with more stats – this could be cool as it’s more risky ( you can potentially die and lose the game this way ) but the reward could be high in that they can cause a lot of damage to enemy forces.

Speaking of which, the third and final battle system:

Hero Battles

This may or may not make the final build of the game , but I’m thinking of having a special section of the game for when two heroes ( generally ship captains ) meet in battle. Picture an atmospheric duel on top of a mast, ala Pirates of the Carribbean 3 and the wonderful showdown between Davy Jones and Captain Jack Sparrow. The idea for this would be you select a series of attacks ( high/high/low ) and parries ( the same ) and the battle plays out in quick sequences. The winner forces the loser back along the mast until they eventually fall off and are defeated.

Anyway, that’s it for today, I hope you got some ideas for battle systems in your own RPG!

Cheers, happy journeys in your game development!

Oliver Joyce
Whiskeybarrel Studios

 

[Whiskeybarrel Studios]

In last week's developer diary I talked about the various forms of combat you'll see in Ships and Scurvy. In a nutshell, there are sea battles, hero battles and land battles - which are in fact the subject of today's update!

I've always been a fan of the 1984 game Ancient Art of War's battle system, mainly for its simplicity and visual appeal. Lots of little troops running at each other, you give them basic orders during the combat. I've tried to emulate this battle system a few times in the past but never quite nailed it - when I built Swords & Sandals Crusader, I ended up having to make combat turn based instead of realtime because with the vast number of troops it just became unwieldy and too chaotic. See the image below: Troops would move into the center of the field, attack, then retreat to their positions in formation. It worked fairly well, but some battles felt like they went for far too long - combat was one of the central parts of the game, so I didn't want it to feel tedious.

For Ships and Scurvy, I took what I'd learnt from previous battle systems and came up with the following key issues:

1) The battle was to be on one screen, with no panning left to right - this means limited real estate
2) In realtime combat, it's too difficult to control individual soldiers - especially as they die so quickly
3) More than 30 troops on either side becomes visually too busy and combat becomes hard to follow
4) There's a technical limitation of about 100 troops on each side before framerate drops, but battles of these size were too chaotic in early tests
5) Controlling groups of troops with general orders makes combat a much more tactical affair

Knowing all of this, I started work on creating a basic sailor class - this extends my character class (which controls animations, basic movement etc ) and adding to this some battle specific AI functions. I then grouped the sailor into either Heavy, Ranged or Light troop class and created a hero and enemy array full of such sailors.

Each sailor has five statistics:

Speed affects how fast the character moves in battle
Attack is how likely the character is to hit their enemy
Defence is the character's chance of defending an attack
Health represents how many hits the player can take before falling in battle
Morale represents how likely the character is to flee the battle

The basic premise of the groups (and the heart of the tactics ) is thus:

HEAVY troops have an advantage against LIGHT troops
LIGHT troops have an advantage against RANGED troops
RANGED troops have an advantage against HEAVY troops

It's essentially a variation on rock paper scissors, each troop is stronger or weaker than another troop. Once these battle groups have been created, I then ask the player to select battle tactics from an optional menu. Each troop can change their behaviour by either cautiously or furiously attacking a specific group. In the below example, the light troops will cautiously attack the enemy's ranged troops, giving them an advantage in attack accuracy but a disadvantage in firing speed.

Once battle tactics have been selected, the battle begins. I start battle by having the troops rush out on the the field (from the left and the right) and then looping through each group array and assigning them orders based on their tactics. Each sailor has the following basic battle AI functions.

FindTarget: The sailor seaches for an enemy who is a) alive and b) in the group their are tactically programmed to attack. If they fail to find one, they will try to attack any enemy on the field.

Move: The soldier then moves towards their target. Using the cos/sine method, I get the player to look at a target, then move their x and y velocity according to the cos/sin of the looking angle. It's pretty basic but it works well. The characters move per pixel at their speed stat , but furious characters will move twice as fast.

PrepareAttack: Launches the soldier into their attack animation. If the character is ranged, it actually fires a projectile at their enemy and waits half a second. Once the animation is complete, I then launch into DoAttack.

DoAttack: The heart of combat. Here, the character 'flips a virtual coin' once per attack stat. Each coinflip that returns 'tails' is considered a successful attack. The defensive character then flips coins a total amount of times per defence stat. If the defensive character rolls more tails than the attacking character, they defend the attack; otherwise they lose health. If their health reaches zero, they of course invariably perish on the field.

So, for example: Soldier A has 3 attack, and solider B has 2 defence. Soldier A flips a coin 3 times and gets (heads/tails/tails) for a total of 2 hits. Soldier B flips 2 coins and comes up with (heads/tails), defending one of the hits. They take 1 damage.

CheckMorale: Each second that passes in battle, I force each soldier to do a morale check. Morale is a number between 1-100 , determined by the ship's crew going into battle. Underfed, poorly treated sailors will go into battle with low morale, for example. Upon performing this function, the character rolls a number between 1 & 100 . If this number is lower then their morale, they will flee the field. Each death or sailor that flees reduces the squad's morale by a number, meaning that the longer goes on and the poorer your squad fares, the more likely they are to flee.

Battle continues until all the soldiers on one side have either fled or died. At this point the winning side may either free the captive enemies, invite them into the ship's crew (for a fee), enslave them or even put them to the sword. The player's reputation through the game will of course depend on actions like this. Nobody likes a slaver ( except perhaps another slaver.)

Anyway, thus end's today's development diary - as a bonus, here's some a video of two squads in battle on a beach. Enjoy!

I'd really love some user feedback from anyone in the group interested in this game - in a month or two I'll have a playable prototype out so please get in touch if you'd like to be involved.

As always, happy journeys!
Oliver Joyce
Whiskeybarrel Studios

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Impressive!

Are you sure you shouldn't be renaming to Rumbarrel Studios now that you're going all pirate?

 

[Thagarr]

Ahoy Oliver, welcome aboard mate!

That is indeed a very nice start you have there, it is looking pretty good so far. It's taken me a while to fully read and digest what you posted. Since you asked for some input, I thought I would take the time to do it right and not just give you some quick reactions to what I have seen. It's obvious you have put a lot of work in to this, and I feel you deserve at least some genuine feedback.

I am not big on mobile gaming, in fact, I don't even have a smart phone. I do have a couple of things to suggestions, although you may have thought of them already and dismissive them, but I will mention them just in case. I really do like what you have done with the islands, that was probably the best solution with the limited processor power of most mobile platforms. However, multi-core processors are becoming more prevalent, and if you haven't planned for that in your code it is really something you should attempt to take advantage of. I am certainly no programmer though, and it may be more complicated than it is worth.

For a mobile platform, I think the top down view you have chosen works quite well for navigating, especially from a touch screen. One thing I noticed in the video is the speed of the boats however, they behave like speed boats and not sailing vessels. I do understand that you are trying for a quicker gaming experience, but some gamers prefer to take things a bit more casually. How about giving the gamer the option and adding the ability to upgrade sails or copper hull plating for speed, or even add steam engines for a greater speed boost.

I like the “parley” and “trade options you have chosen as well. One thing to consider though, you say that two like alignments will be considered friendly. I think something that might make the game a bit less predictable is if anyone denoted as a “scourge of the seven seas” would be just as likely to attack you if you attempted to to parley or trade with them, regardless of what your alignment was.

I actually did play The Ancient Art of War myself, I also played the heck out of it's sequel, the Ancient Art of War at Sea! That game had some great Lineship tactics! Speaking of ship combat, since your not planning on Crossing the T in this game, I think the three quarter angle you have chosen works quite well. Part of what I have to suggest here will depend on if you intend to allow any maneuvering during combat. Have you given any thought to adding a bit more strategy such as the ability to use grape shot to destroy crew, or chain shot to take out sails quicker. Of course you would need to maneuver in a bit closer to use these different cannon loads, which would put your own ship in more danger, but a good raking with grape could cut the enemy crew by half.

That's about all I have for the moment, I will finish reading about your land combat when I have a bit more time and make any more suggestions then if I have any of course.

 

[Whiskeybarrel Studios]

Ahoy, Thagarr! Wow, that's some great feedback and from no less than one of pillars of this site. Thank you sir!

So the game itself is built using a technology that allows me to deploy it to both mobile and desktop, and as my previous games were mobile, I'm building it with multiple platforms in mind. Having said that, the primary focus is actually as a PC desktop game , so you'll be able to play it just with your mouse. Admittedly it's definitely not as strategic or hardcore as a traditional naval game as you'd find on your PC, but it's by no means one of those tooth-rotting 'Candy Crush' style mobile abominations

The speed of the boats at the moment is exaggerated while I build the game , but you're definitely right - they feel and turn a lot more like speedboats. A real galleon would turn with a much wider arc, correct? I'm trying to find a balance between playability ( players being able to turn at a moment's notice ) and believability ( big ships can't turn on a dime ) - I might be able to solve it by offering different classes of boats ( you actually start with a hand built wooden raft) and as you said, upgrading the sails and things like copper plating ( I'd never heard of this, what a cool idea! ) . Perhaps the easiest thing to do might be to give those big ships the wide turning arc so they still feel responsive but you have to be smarter in when you turn.

Good call on the varying alignment conflicts. A villainous pirate king would be just as likely to feel threatened/antagonistic to the player. So an 'evil' alignment will give you a better chance of negotiating/parleying with pirate captains but it'll just as soon end with them trying to board your ship.

I plan on having the royal navy ships ( the 'police of the sea' ) being huge 80 gun beasts that you really don't want to mess with but you can outrun.

One of the things I'll talk about in a future post is the idea of bounties and quests , eg to capture and bring to justice a renegade sailor or discover the location of a pirate stronghold. The alignment thing might come in handy here... so the game is very much turning into an RPG / adventure trading game... something a bit unique!

You hit the nail on the head with the different cannon fire tactics, grape shot/chain shot etc , they're actually in the game as we speak but I haven't got any buttons to select them... it should definitely make the sea battles more strategic - I love the idea of having to sail in closer to use those attacks , and taking more damage if you do so.

I want to also add the ability for the player to give orders to the sailors during the battle ( diverting men from the cannons to try and repair the sails etc ) so that might improve the strategic aspect.

Anyway, I really appreciate your feedback, it totally puts the wind back in the sails - it can be a pretty lonely experience building a game by yourself, so interest from the community makes a world of difference.

Cheers, Oliver

 

[Pieter Boelen]

You intend to allow the player to get bigger and better ships throughout the game, right? In your game, will "bigger" always equal "better"?
That may be more understandable for "regular" players, but it would also massively detract from realism and player choice.

One thing that more realism there adds is that smaller ships aren't useless once you can afford a big one, because manoeuvrability.
Also large ships don't necessarily have a huge turning circle; but it does take a while for them to start turning and a while again for them to stop.
Same thing with speed; large ships CAN be fast too because they've got a larger sail area.
But they'd take a while to reach top speed and wouldn't immediately slow down afterwards.

 

[Thagarr]

Believe me mate, we fully understand how important feedback in game development is. Without the feedback and participation we have received from the community over the past 12 years, our mods would be nowhere near as successful as they have become. At one point, I thought the big gaming companies were actually going to catch on to that fact and start making games that players wanted. Unfortunately the corporate philosophy is far to ingrained in most cases, and all they are concerned with is maximizing profits. The explosion of Indie developers over the past decade has given me new hope however, and part of the reason we chose to strike out on our own and develop a game ourselves!

I am very glad to hear that your primary focus is development for desktop PC platform! PC gaming is very much alive and flourishing, regardless of the rumors that have been circulated stating that it is a dying platform. Those rumors were started by the same corporations I referenced above in an at temp to force gamers on to platforms that they had complete control over, like consoles. Unfortunately, they have been partially successful. Once again though, the Indie explosion has again proven them wrong and they are having to adjust.

Anyway, back to your game! Very glad to hear the speed is a bit exaggerated at the moment for development purposes. I also think starting at the bottom and working your way up through different sizes and variety's of boats is a great idea! You could also incorporate many improvements such as going from stick and rudder to ships wheels making the ships more manoeuvrable. The coper sheathing was actually developed to help stop shipworm and other parasites attaching to and ravaging the hull, it had the added benefit of increasing the flow of water across the hull. It did not provide a huge speed increase, but it certainly noticeable. You can read a bit more about it on Wikipedia HERE!

I like the idea of hero captains in the battles with increased stats. I also like the ideas you have for land battles as well. One thing I will mention though is bows were not used very much at all during the 17'th and 18'th century,, with the exception of maybe an occasional crossbow. Ranged weapons were mainly flintlock muskets. Pistols were not very accurate beyond about 15 feet. I know your not trying to make a historically accurate game, but accurate elements in a game make it much more fun to play in my opinion.

While I am thinking about combat, do you plan on having boarding battles during ship fights, or are you going for just a sink your enemy battle? This could potentially be the best place for your Hero Battles take place.

If your thinking about boarding, please keep in mind that a lot of what sailors used during combat at sea were everyday items like marlinespikes and belaying pins, boarding axes and pikes were also prevalent. These were probably more so than cutlasses and pistols, though those were certainly used. Another item to consider is the blunderbuss, which came in both pistol and musket form. Basically, you can think of it as a hand cannon firing grape shot. It was quite effective in close combat.

I am looking forward to your next article mate, good stuff!

 

[Whiskeybarrel Studios]

You intend to allow the player to get bigger and better ships throughout the game, right? In your game, will "bigger" always equal "better"?
That may be more understandable for "regular" players, but it would also massively detract from realism and player choice.

One thing that more realism there adds is that smaller ships aren't useless once you can afford a big one, because manoeuvrability.
Also large ships don't necessarily have a huge turning circle; but it does take a while for them to start turning and a while again for them to stop.
Same thing with speed; large ships CAN be fast too because they've got a larger sail area.
But they'd take a while to reach top speed and wouldn't immediately slow down afterwards.

Pieter, thanks for your feedback! It's given me something to think about - the original thinking was to 'just get the biggest ship you could' but the idea of having different vessels with different specs ( top speed, acceleration, turn speed space for cargo, number of cannons etc ) would certainly add heaps to the strategy of the game. I'll definitely look to implement this, because as you say player choice is really important in a game such as this.

Cheers!

 

[Whiskeybarrel Studios]

Believe me mate, we fully understand how important feedback in game development is. Without the feedback and participation we have received from the community over the past 12 years, our mods would be nowhere near as successful as they have become. At one point, I thought the big gaming companies were actually going to catch on to that fact and start making games that players wanted. Unfortunately the corporate philosophy is far to ingrained in most cases, and all they are concerned with is maximizing profits. The explosion of Indie developers over the past decade has given me new hope however, and part of the reason we chose to strike out on our own and develop a game ourselves!

Thagarr, 100% agree with you here! Indie gaming has really picked up where the +AAA games have dropped the ball. For every 'Call of Duty' monstrosity there's an amazing indie game built like 'Darkest Dungeons' or 'Terraria'. Like you said, it gives us all hope. I grew up on PC gaming too, everything from Monkey Island and Kings Quest to Ultima and Ancient Art of War!

I love this idea of upgrading the ship piecemeal too, that story about copper plating is really interesting - very flawed.

RE land based combats - yeah I was thinking the flintlock/musket will be the default ranged weapon but you may encounter natives with spears ( and maybe crude bows ? ) ... having the hero join the battle could really turn the tide, and you also risk losing it all if he/she dies!

Definitely planning on having the board ship phase - it'll transition from the sea battle to land battle that way.

This week I'm building the character creation stuff which I'll be sure to post some screengrabs for later in the week!

As always, thanks for your support guys!

Cheers Oliver

 

[Whiskeybarrel Studios]

A preview of the character creation screen for Ships and Scurvy. You can choose male or female sailors, change the colour of your clothes and even design your ship's flag.
No hook hands or eyepatches yet , you'll earn them through adventures (and misadventures) in your travels.

What'd you think so far?

 

[Whiskeybarrel Studios]

Here's a few more characters from the character generator - various assorted sailors and pirates. Still a lot of hats, eye patches, peg legs and outfits yet to draw but progress moves along. Next up, to finish the game introduction and get onto actual gameplay!

 

[Mask]

Oh, I've played Swords and Sandals! I really enjoyed the games, and Crusader. Your land battle demonstration looks quite good, and this project is looking to be excellent.

To offer some more usable feedback, I think it is a good idea between you and Thagarr about moving ships during battle. You could do some interesting things with the mechanics. I'll mention the ideas this brought to mind, in case any of them are helpful. Some of what I mention is kind of elaborate for a real time system, but I thought I'd mention it anyway in case it gives rise to other ideas:

Ship Combat Movement
Proximity: You and your opponent receive an accuracy bonus, the closer you are to each other. This might also translate as a damage bonus in your combat system. The further you are, the more accuracy and damage are penalized. Grape shot and chainshot become more effective the closer you get (possibly requiring an extra bonus, so that cannonballs don't outgun them).

Move Closer/Away: You try to move closer or away from the opponent. Your speed would probably be important here. If you're faster, you can quickly close the distance--even if your opponent is trying to move away. Hitting your opponent's sails is a good way to make getting closer/further easier.

Charge Closer/Away: You point your bow at or away from your opponent. This gives your ship a speed bonus, but lowers attack power (as you aren't able to give them a broadside). It may make you slightly harder to hit, as your ships profile is narrower.

Sails: You might have the option to control how full your sails are. Fuller sails means more speed, but also makes them more vulnerable to damage.

Wind: Wind strength and direction might be a thing. The only directions that would matter would be windage from you to your opponent, or vice versa (as I don't guess you want to have the option to circle around till the wind is in your favour). If the wind is towards your opponent, you can move toward them more quickly, but away from them more slowly (for experts reading this, I'm simplifying here). This could work to give players a tactical situation, where they might charge in close when they normally wouldn't.

Chain, Grape and Round Shot: I'd suggest all shot types inflicting some damage to each of the areas/ Something like.... Round shot would inflict the most damage to the hull, and lesser damage to sails and crew. Grape damages crew the most, sails the second most, and hull last. Chainshot damages sails the most, and crew and hull less so.


With the ground combat, it's hard to give suggestions, as there are a few directions you could go in. I have a couple of thoughts I'll share, in case they're helpful.

Troop Engagement Range: I wonder about increasing the troops' engagement ranges, as currently it may be a bit too easy to get past the infantry to the ranged units.

Personalized Gear?: This is more of a question. How do you want players to manage their troops? Do soldiers have levels, on an individual or crew basis? Is equipment level based (if there are levels), or do you choose what gear your troops carry? Do you decide what gear your troops carry individually, or as a group (if you do at all)? This is a question of simplicity (you buy 50 soldiers) to depth (you can customize every soldier's equipment). Since you have limited input during combat, often input emphasis is placed outside of combat.

Musket vs. Pistols: An idea for balance and troop types would be to have musketeers or troops with many pistols. A musket has much greater range, armour penetration, firepower and accuracy, but takes a while to reload, and you can't carry more than two of them reasonably. While pistols have worse stats you can carry a dozen of them, and fire them off in quick succession. This game may not ever have fully realistic muskets or musket reloading, but you could still make this a tactical decision for players as to rate of fire vs. quality of shots.

Medical Treatment: A minor suggestion. You might want to have that troops downed in combat have a chance of surviving, based off your ship's medical upgrades. Particularly if troops level up or are expensive to replace, this could be handy for reducing player attrition.


Aside from these random thoughts, I'll ask if you've heard of a series called Extra Credits. We find their advice useful with the Hearts of Oak project, and I think they are helpful to anyone interested in game development. They have many good episodes, though some will be more relevant to your game than others. The recent ones on viable minimum product they had recently are good for prototyping. Normally I'd link you to some more relevant examples, but I'm afraid I haven't slept in a while and will have to do that later. For now, here is an episode list and their youtube channel:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Extra_Credits_episodes#Post-Penny_Arcade_Episodes
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCODtTcd5M1JavPCOr_Uydg

I hope some of this feedback was helpful to you. I wish you luck with your project!

 

[Thagarr]

Thanks for your input mate, some good idea there!

 

[Whiskeybarrel Studios]

Oh, I've played Swords and Sandals! I really enjoyed the games, and Crusader. Your land battle demonstration looks quite good, and this project is looking to be excellent.

To offer some more usable feedback, I think it is a good idea between you and Thagarr about moving ships during battle. You could do some interesting things with the mechanics. I'll mention the ideas this brought to mind, in case any of them are helpful.

Mask, sorry for my delayed response - I was away overseas last week! Just wanted to thank you so much for taking the time to write such great and useful feedback. This game certainly has shades of "Crusader" with a lot more focus on exploration and trade - as well as of course the battles. I've been giving a lot of thought to the ship battle system over the break actually and am thinking of moving it to turn based , to incorporate feedback from yourself and Thagarr - I love the idea of moving closer, potentially boarding the enemy ship for a 'land' battle , maybe spending a turn trying to repair the craft and so on. The different cannon fire aspects would work really well in a turn based system.

Land battles also need a bit more strategising, I like that idea of potentially turning your ranged troops into either pistoliers or musketeers ( with different pros and cons ) - they could start out with pistols and then maybe trade them up for a damage boost (whilst sacrificing quick re-firing!)

The idea of adding gear to crew is a good one - I will likely make it 'squad' based as sailors die remarkably often in the game. So , any new heavy troops might start with +1 defence if you've upgraded the squad's armour etc. Certainly adds some tactical weight.

Yeah , love Extra Credits - watch their show often for advice - the Minimum Viable Product is some solid gold advice!

Hearts of Oak is an amazing, phenomenal project by the way - I totally am in awe of the depth of realism, authenticity and flavour you and the team are putting into it. The screenshots look so gorgeous too - textures on the boats, water reflecting in the late afternoon and so on. Definitely deserving of the many accolades that will be headed your way.

So just as an aside, in my holiday I write 14 pages of paper notes on various 'adventure scenarios' for the game - here's the first but I'll write a much longer update in a couple of days about them - maybe try and pick the community's collective creative might and see if there's any others I could add. These scenarios happen once per island and have 2 options, with a good/bad outcome for each. All in all there'll be about 100 or so of them plus another 50 'at sea' scenarios.

Scenario example:

In a jungle clearing two hours walk from the beach, you come across a squad of royal soldiers locked in combat with a native tribe. The blue skinned natives are flagging and will not last much longer. Children look on fearfully from wooden huts near the fray.

ATTACK THE SOLDIERS > (Good outcome ) Surprised and surrounded, the royal soldiers are soon bested. The grateful villagers offer your crew a delicious banquet of fresh fruit and meats. (+ Health and Morale)
(Bad outcome) The soldiers finish off the natives quickly, then turn their efforts on you. Bloodlust in their eyes, they advance. (A fight happens)

WAIT AND WATCH > (Good outcome) The soldiers round up the defeated villagers and march them off to the south in chains. Somewhat shamelessly, you go through the now deserted village and find some cheap trinkets and a pineapple.
(Bad outcome) The villagers seem to rally at the last moment. In the face of incredible odds, they soon turn back the soldiers and then charge at you, spears raised. ( A fight happens )

Cheers Oliver

 

[Thagarr]

Thanks mate, I agree mate, our dev team has done an incredible job with Hearts of Oak! They have far surpassed any concept that I had in my mind back when we first started talking about it a few years ago. I am even more excited for this project now then I was then!

I am glad you have found our input helpful Oliver! It has always been our goal to help make games better, that's why most of us started modding in the first place. I am really looking forward to playing your finished game too, it sounds like it will be quite a lot of fun!

I have been thinking a bit more about land and boss battles. One of the fun things to do in POTC and COAS is to take on forts by sitting off shore and destroying their cannon, then moving in to port landing troops and looting the town. Forts have longer cannon ranges though, and can use bombs which do a lot more damage, so that makes it a bit tricky! The landing consists of taking the fort with troops, this might be a good place for another boss battle as well as ship boarding. Capturing a town though should of course be much more difficult.

 

[Mask]

Sorry for taking a while to check back. It's not trouble, as I'd like to offer what little help I can with your project.

Note that the following might sound like I'm dictating, so please forgive me for that. It's how I best describe my thoughts and suggestions, unfortunately. Also, I'll ramble off a random list of thoughts as they come to me, so please forgive the haphazard reply.

For turn based with ships, there is something neat you could do: Crew Allocation. We're working it out for HoO, so you'll be able to control how many men are doing X or Y. With a turn based system, it's simply that much easier. Allocating more men tends to mean a better result, but you'll suffer in areas those men aren't present. For extra authenticity, you could make it that controlling fire is one of the most important parts of naval battles, as that tended to be the case for such conflicts.

With the land battles, they're good as is, but a few more order phases for a turn-based feel would probably improve things. You may want to separate the three unit types into several squads.

Ranged units might be one squad, as most of the squad based tactics I can think of would work with a couple of order types and or wouldn't work without a bigger map. Example being, you can focus fire on one group of enemies, or you can spread your fire across several groups--so just have the options for fire at closest, and to select as many or as few enemies as you like. You'd also have the movement orders to back off, go forward, bunch up, and spread out. One tactic that is sort of impossible with the small map would be splitting up the unit, my favourite troll-worthy strategy (if the enemy pursues one group, the other shoots at them, etc.).

Light and heavy units will be controlled pretty much the same way. 2 or 3 squads each, allowing you to at least have a right and left flank to control, with possibly a centre. So long as there's enough room for each flank to operate without bumping into the other, you can have a lot of tactical depth (this is sort of the opposite of what I suggested last time, that troop engagement ranges need to be wider, so you'd need to strike a balance). Orders would be to go to a position, bunch up or spread out, attack a squad, and probably the options for cautious engagement vs. aggressive engagement. Cautious means your men will minimize losses, and back off if they're not winning--good for if they're there just to buy time. Aggressive means they'll get into the thick of it, so they or the enemy will be destroyed, quickly.
This allows for plenty of tactics, hitting an enemy's flank with all your troops and try to sweep them up, possibly having a small force cautious fend off the other flank as you do this, or even Battle of Cannae tactics where you envelope a force you allow to stab forward. And of course the plan of having men go forward to take out their ranged units.

Ranged Tactics thoughts: You may want some maps where your troops start outside of musket range, or allow you to set up troop deployment before the battle at the edge of musket range. This way, you can if you desire have stuff like ranged units at the front--allowing whatever comes first in the enemy formation to be shot at, and to give them a clearer shot (might want some kind of bonus for when there is no allies in the way, like a more constant rate of fire). It was a popular tactic to have ranged units start at the front for these reasons.

Defender Attacker: You may want some battles where the enemy is happy to sit and wait for you to come into range, or even to let you run, where they are true defenders. This is particularly likely to arise with forts. In such cases, the enemy may have cover, which gives them a defence bonus against ranged attacks while they stand by it. For forts, you may even need to carry ladders to the wall before you can attack them in melee.

Cannons: This is a bit much to suggest, but I'll mention it anyway. Sometimes in a battle, you might have a cannon on one or both sides. It takes the longest to load... but boy is it devastating. Most terrible damage, range, and morale effect, and can take out quite a few men. When an enemy cannon is involved, you'll want to do your best to take it out of commission fast, get ranged units close enough to pin it down with fire, or overrun it with infantry, and turn it against your enemies (if there was ever a level with multiple battles, capturing the cannon in one level could allow you to use it in the next).


Squad Gear: Potentially, you could have a few kits you build. Where you have a kit that automatically equips the squad with Hat A, Clothes C, Weapon Sword, Secondary Weapon Pistol, etc., so that it can quickly be assigned to a squad, and anyone added to that squad will automatically be equipped with that. Of course, in many cases, equipment was not uniform at all at sea... so you may need vaguer options if you did go with this "A pistol, one-handed melee weapon, a long firearm, a melee weapon of some sort, something that vaguely resembles a weapon if you tilt your head and squint a little, that one sword the other sailors will kill this guy for," that kind of thing.

Just having squad equipment levels may be better. You might even have it that you mightn't want your light guys to have high level armour, as that weighs them down. Or optional levels like a pistol upgrade for infantry that lets them take a shot or two, but is extra weight. You might even have it that your troops gear is random, but their equipment level increases the chances of them having solid gear (this could be cool, but players may not like it so it mightn't work out).


Random events are always good in a game, more or less. You will want some way for players to determine what to do, with some events. It could be an option to wait and examine the situation, which has the chance of your chances of success being lowered, or even a chance of the event ending before you act, but will give you an idea of your chances with each option. You could then get upgrades like spyglasses, experts, parrot spies or the like, who will help you work out your chances before and after waiting. That may not be necessary or even useful to this system, of course.

One thing I will suggest is that you consider having one event link to another, sometimes. Say, you take out the Empire Soldiers, and then the natives want to execute the survivors. You can decide whether to help the natives, get out of their before you're associated with the natives by the empire (or potentially even turned on after the soldiers), try to convince the natives not to ("this will make more soldiers come"), or even be adamant you will not let them do this (potentially starting a battle, where the few surviving empire soldiers help).

Now, that event I just described, it could also work as its own event. You come to an island, and find empire soldiers have been captured by some natives. This means you can get deeper events from the same work, just about--you will need to attach certain events to each other with a chance of one firing after the other, and you'll need to consider balance concerns where if too many fight events are triggered the player may be pressed (but so long as most events have a, "Run away!" option, that isn't too much of a concern).


That's my random idea pile for now. I hope some of it was useful. Again please forgive its clumsy format. You may want to copy it into a txt and space it out for clearer reading the way I lay it out.

 

[Whiskeybarrel Studios]

Mask , once again some brilliant suggestions - you really know your stuff! Sorry for the delayed response - been hard at work on this ( and client work, blergh!)

I've turned both the land battles and sea battles into turn based combat - I'll do a proper dev diary update soon with some game footage. Can be a challenge to develop and blog , as I've no doubt you guys well know with Hearts of Oak ( btw one of the best names for a seafaring game I've ever heard.)

Here's a quick image from the turn based combat anyway:

Cheers , appreciate it as always!

Oliver

 

[Mask]

The turn based land combat looks interesting. I'd need to see more to get a feel for what it's like. I did quite like your original land combat demo, and hope it carries over well to turn based battle.