Hi Barretts_Privateer, I agree that it’s one of the best looking ships of the period That’s why last year I started building a prototype of the Prince de Neufchatel (sometimes I build very simple prototype models to get an impression, if a ship type would work for the game) and last week I added the last sails, so I can show how it looks. The prototype has only a hull, masts, sails and the necessary functional components for sailing i.e. no yards, rigging or visual details. Below you can see it sailing near the citadel of Calvi (Corsica).
Even if the the Prince de Neufchatel was built at the start of the War of 1812, it’s plausible that other (privateer) schooners existed before 1812. Therefore it can appear in the game in the Mediterranean Sea before 1812, but with low probability. In fact there were american ships already sailing in the Mediterranean Sea during the First Barbary War of 1801–1805 (example: schooner USS Enterprise)
What do you think?
Hi, I’ve noticed I haven’t posted any updates for more than a year, but the development is still alive. I’ve been working regularly on completing some of the core features needed for the simulation.
The most important development during this time has been the implementation of the crew’s movement. Previously the crew members would simply warp from position to position (e.g. from cannon to steering wheel). Now the crewmembers can now move within their own ship and also board the enemy ship for hand-to-hand combat
This was quite tricky and needed some experimentation: The navmesh agents didn’t work properly when moving on a navmesh attached to the ship’s rigidbody. The movement of the ship would cause the agents to drift slowly in the opposite direction to the ship’s movement. I tried to compensate the ship’s movement by applying an additional translation as the ship to each agent, but there was always a certain shaking and drifting of NPCs. Using the Navmesh functions without the agents allowed the correct movement/standing on the ship, but without collision avoidance, the NPCs would walk through each other.
At the end the most effective solution that I could find was detaching the navmesh from the ships and keeping at a fixed position. The agents are also detached from the models representing the NPCs and move. The target on the ship’s coordiante system is mapped to the navmesh and given to the agent. When the agetn moves, the position is mapped back to the ship’s coordinate system to update the NPCs position.
Below you can see in the editor how the navmesh is in a different (fixed) position than the ship (moving):
Finally I could implement the last core mechanic for this simulation: boats
In the age of sailing boats had an important role since ships powered by wind had some limitations. They could be used to tow the ship when there was no wind, for transport between ships and ports and for attacking enemy ships or ports.
During the Napoleonic Wars “cutting out actions” were very common: a ship would send its boats with armed sailors and marines to attack anchored ships (usually protected by the gun batteries of a port), preferably at night.
In many old screenshots you can see some boats on the decks of the ships. Now the player can deploy those boats and control directly (i.e. player boards the boat) or let an NPC officer control it. If marines are present on a boat they will use their muskets when the boat is close to an enemy ship, shooting at the enemy crew.
The perception of the NPC ships is simulated and affected by the amount of light (day/night), size of the ships to be spotted, weather (fog reduces the view range). Therefore in the simulation a small boat in the night can get very close to a enemy ship, before it’s spotted and enemy NPCs react.
The boarding from the enemy ship by the boat(s) still needs to be implemented (at the moment boarding works only between ships)
Thanks for the interest
Yes, I am working on a new video A bit different from the previous ones (which were more tests), more editing, a bit more variety.
But it may take some time yet: the cooling fan of my CPU died recently and with the hot summer, the CPU starts limiting quite soon and the frame-rate drops too much for capturing proper video. But this is a good excuse for a proper hardware update (which is taking too long to be available) Until now I was still working with a 10 year old CPU, which was starting to limit the project. So with newer hardware I should have more performance and I should be able to improve some aspects (e.g. increase the amount of ships and/or characters displayed).
Anyway the reduced performance is making me concentrate a bit more on refactoring of the code to reduce garbage collection or on implementing some unit-tests for the more complex NPC logic.
looks very cool, and perhaps if there was a cool story, or some ’ fictionalized ’ events, and one could make a bit of entertainment, and also the historical stuff . . .
Some sailing at night in bad weather. Weather plays an important role in the simulation (e.g. lower visibility, rougher seas, need to reduce the amount of sails) … after all the title already contains the word weather The sailing is a bit reckless to show some terrain i.e. no captain would get to so close to land or rocks and with such amount of sail in reality (several ships “were harmed” against the rock during the filming )
Uploading to youtube seems to reduce quality too much because of darkness/fog/rain (the text at the beginning and the last brighter shot look sharper … like my original local video) This is the best I could get after several uploads Need to consider it for future videos
Apart from the last video, I’ve been working in many other updates. The most important updates are related to world building.
Finally the area covered by the game map is defined and all the terrain “chunks” are imported. The target was covering the south of England (i.e the important naval bases of Portsmouth and Plymouth) and as much coast of Spain and France, which were the main enemies of the Royal Navy. The result is what you see in the picture below, showing the game map seen and used by the player for navigation. To keep the proportions the map covers also the north of Africa, which offers the possibility to include the barbary pirates and some more exotic ports.
For sure it feels like a huge area that needs to be populated with details i.e. assets (the terrain meshes are already there). The advantage is that around 55% is open sea (no effort) and only around 5% of the map area is land visible for the player (the terrain is only the coast, interior land cannot be visited).
Realistic sea depth is also already modelled. It’s based in real bathymetry data (2 sources to cover some gaps). This is a big change for gameplay. Before depth was always safe except your ship was close to land. Now it’s necessary to check the depth marking in the map (when zooming in) and/or let your crew to sound the depth (raycast the terrain below the keel for depth when requested by the player). In tests I’ve managed to ground ships several times when not paying attention
See the depth marks on the map below (grid of number on the map; zoom of the are around Portsmouth), this is similar to the real nautical charts. I want the map to look like the old nautical charts, but I think it still needs much work (it does the job but still looks rough)
That’s why last year I started building a prototype of the Prince de Neufchatel (sometimes I build very simple prototype models to get an impression, if a ship type would work for the game) and last week I added the last sails, so I can show how it looks. The prototype has only a hull, masts, sails and the necessary functional components for sailing i.e. no yards, rigging or visual details. Below you can see it sailing near the citadel of Calvi (Corsica).
(which is taking too long to be available) Until now I was still working with a 10 year old CPU, which was starting to limit the project. So with newer hardware I should have more performance and I should be able to improve some aspects (e.g. increase the amount of ships and/or characters displayed).
The sailing is a bit reckless to show some terrain i.e. no captain would get to so close to land or rocks and with such amount of sail in reality (several ships “were harmed” against the rock during the filming 
)
Need to consider it for future videos
