Notice the + and - buttons on either side of the ordered settings. Those allow you to order a speed to the knot.

As for formations, that's always rather annoying when a game doesn't handle those well. I'm thinking of making them like waypoints in some way.

And to be fair, in Cold Waters you could order depth to the nearest 50 feet and order a course. No waypoints, though.

Will the player also be able to click on one of the three 'Ordered' boxes and enter a specific value directly? Requiring a player to first click one of the speed buttons before making adjustments with more mouse clicks on '+/-' seems a bit much.

Even better would be to have 3 hotkeys that would call up data entry windows to allow the user to set a course/speed/depth without the need to constantly drag the mouse pointer back and forth around the map/interface just to click on a little box.

Was that capability added after the initial release? I remember taking forever and bobbing and swinging like a yo-yo while trying to hit a specific depth because I had to be painfully aware of the depth planes and rudder, instead of simply saying to the (imaginary) helmsman/depth officer, "Bring us to course 217 at 150 ft depth." :/\\!!

Actually that capability was in one of the very early builds back in late 2015, but at some point during development the entire sailing model was thrown out and rewritten.

thanks for your reply to me quite minor request - its just a cosmetic thing, but it can help the immersion nevertheless


rather than reflections on deep ocean water, in order for ships to look like they a there, then just shadows are needed (relative to the strength of the light from the sun etc)


how world of warships does it, is the best i have seen from games, but also Atlantic Fleet mobile version - the mobile version is better than the pc version in this regards


its not the case that a ship will have no reflections all the time, but when it does it is a much more diffuse and partial and darker reflection the deeper and more in motion the sea state is

Well the way planar reflections of this kind usually work is kind of a hack - you create a reflection camera, flip the image upside down and render it to a projected texture and you then use the surface normals to distort it. To get the proper effect you'd have to raytrace the reflections in realtime which seems prohibitively expensive. Pretty sure that World of Warships doesn't have realtime reflections, just a static cubemap which they can get away with because their environments are static.

thanks for that insight, though i am not au fait with games development techniques - i understood most of what you said but just at the end regarding what Warships may do -what do you mean by static environment and what is a static cubemap? - if this is some "hack" then do you mean that it is an easy way to go about it, or that it is really only something the world of warships environment could do?


ultimately i think that all such reflections could just be omited altogether and just have shadows still - unless the ships are going to be sitting it dead still water, reflections are not needed


but again this is no big deal really, secondary to the main development work.



one could though put together a real rogues gallery of attempts in games to depict the ocean - all the work that can go into games like Naval Action and cold waters and still the ocean looks like abig glass mirror floating in a vacuum

World of Warships uses photo-sourced panorama textures for its skies, which means the sky never changes as time or location changes in the game. So what they do then is use the same panorama texture for environment reflections, which is very fast as all you have to do is sample a 6-sided cubemap. I used the same technique when I did the water in Atlantic Fleet. The thing about reflections and why everybody makes their oceans very reflective simply boils down to 'because it looks better'.

ah thanks - well that explains alot, - i think at least though what has been done in Atlantic Fleet and Cold Waters is i think probably among the best that can be achieved so far, - it would be needless to put more work and demand into something such as the reflections, - i think i play Atlantic fleet on my phone every day and my phone is just some cheap supermarket nokia, but Atlantic Fleet looks and plays excellent on it - so i wouldnt want to have something like ocean reflections make it too demanding on a system.

Holy cow, talk about 'throwing the baby out with the bathwater'! :wah:

Such a shame, at least there are several valuable lessons to be learned from this episode.

This week's update is being postponed one day - so until tomorrow. Apologies for that. Will try to make it worth the wait.

WEEKLY UPDATE
 

A day and a good number of hours late - but I've been burning the midnight oil to try to get this out ASAP.

Hello again!

First things first, though - just a little catch-up, this week cruise missiles, helicopters and aviation facilities have gotten some touches, nothing quite ready to show off - but next week perhaps, now that I've got a workflow for videos, perhaps something with the Seasprite...

And about the video thing. First videos released of the game!

Awhile ago someone asked how the water looks in motion, and I said it looks even better than it does in still pictures - well now I finally get to show that off!

Sadly I don't think Youtube links embed here, but here's some links: [Edit: They do! Huzzah!]

The more interesting video with a ship sailing around - but a little preface, the strange black cubes with white outlines in the background are sort of calibration tools I've been using to make sure the ocean's actual wave heights line up with what the "Sea State" variable is. Also, the video capture didn't record my mouse, so you don't see me clicking buttons, but they aren't clicking themselves.

Whenever a new speed is ordered from the presets (all stop, ahead 1/3, ahead full, etc.) the ship's bell rings - that'll probably get removed with a bit more research on nautical tradition, since I don't think that's accurate? I also zoom the map in, lay a nav point, remove it, and click the buttons for auto-steer and auto-navigate.

And finally, if I had a more general audience I'd probably have cut out the part from Sea State 7.5 to 9 and back to 7.5 - there's lots of clipping - but I trust this audience to understand it's a WIP, and Sea States 7.5-9 probably won't even appear in gameplay much, anyways, since that would indicate an exceptionally severe storm or even a hurricane. Very unusual.

But at any rate, I'm quite excited to show off the varying time of day and the ocean in its full animated splendor.

Video Link (video should embed here).

And here's the one centered on the calibration cubes - each are properly sized for their labels - "Sea State X limit" is the correct number of meters tall to indicate the maximum wave height for the ocean at Sea State X. Keep in mind Sea State X.1 will go over those (fencepost problem).

Video Link (video should embed here).

Enjoy.

A very interesting project! Looking forward for it and will be happy to buy it when it will be ready. Also happy that Soviet side will be playable.
Best wishes with development!

welcome aboard!
 

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Will Sea State play a great role in sensor detection or combat resolution such as sea-skimmers?

Aircraft operations? NWAC had aircraft actually crashing due to severe weather. :)

Thanks! And I'm looking forward to it, myself.

Well, I guess if NWAC did it I'll have to do it.

As of the moment, a high sea state already decreases the effective seeker range of cruise missiles.

So implementing a high sea state making it harder to detect the missiles themselves should be coming soon...

Aircraft handling will be a bit of a tougher one to implement, but it's definitely worth a shot.

I'll also have to experiment to see if the sea state already naturally decreases ships' max speed. I don't know if you noticed, but in the sailing video, the velocity indicator of the ship was bobbing around on the map - the waves actually push and pull on the ship. Theoretically, this should naturally create the speed reduction seen IRL by high seas. But it doesn't seem to be showing up on the speed dial - but that may be because of how it determines speed.

So, basically, I'll have to play with it.

...Wait, did I say something about cruise missiles?

Next update coming real soon here...

sea state looks superb! will there be included some splash and spray for when the ship crashes back into sea in the heavy conditions?

I'll definitely at least look into it. That's gotta be almost a requirement if I'm including sea states above 6 or 7.

WEEKLY UPDATE
 

Hello again everyone!

Not a day late this time, though a good number of hours. But if trends continue then I should be early on the next update... right?

Anyways, very close to the Spruance getting a highlight, but not quite yet without her AN/SPS-40 and AN/SPS-55 radars. Though finally, the placeholders for all her weapons are gone. You'll get plenty of good views in the two videos, as well.

https://i.postimg.cc/JGbNR0Sc/BW261.png

https://i.postimg.cc/dhw83vYM/BW262.png

Also, worked with the water mastermind and got the reflection shader updated to work beautifully. Reflections are clear on close ships, but become very scattered on distant ones. Here's a little demo I arranged with a lot of Spruance duplicates:

https://i.postimg.cc/MXf0rdDL/BW263.png

But you can also see it at various angles and distances in the following videos. Especially in the one with cruise missiles closing on the Azov.

First - showing some helicopter starts for the SH-2F Seasprite.

Video should embed over this text.

Starts with a focus on the helo (An SH-2F Seasprite), then resets and shows the helo start with the camera focused on the ship. Provides some beautiful views and a better feel of how this will look in-game in the finished product.

Improvements to water interaction are planned. Some stuttering from video recording software. May change workflow for recording these videos at some point to get better framerate.



And, cruise missiles. Please keep in mind the Harpoon model is just a placeholder graphic. The real one's gonna be pretty great, knowing the modelers.

Starts with some shots, camera follows one, then about halfway through it follows one all the way from launch to premature detonation.

They're set to get destroyed - as if they were shot down - just shy of the target, just since impact detonation hasn't been modeled yet. So the warhead isn't even going off.

Video should embed over this text.
[edit - slight change to the video]

As of yet, no way to launch them using the game's UI - or a number of things. But they're destroyable, can follow waypoints, and after their last waypoint "pop up" if that's enabled to a given altitude, acquire a target, and homes in.

I'd say it's pretty good progress for a week.

Though I probably won't be doing such a fancy update again for awhile. Just enjoying the new ability to put out videos, now.

Thanks for joining us!



Note on both videos: Music by Scott Buckley – www.scottbuckley.com.au, used under CC BY 4.0

Sounds very promising. I was also wondering if severe sea states might actually inhibit missile engagements due to the sea-skimmers hitting high waves.

Good to see the effect of sea state on speed. I urge some restraint on the number of calculations or updates. For example, if there is constant fluctuation in the sea state indicator due to constant revision of the final digit, then it can be more of a distraction than a help. i.e. if the state is 6.27 and the '.7' is forever an amorphous blur as it constantly goes up and down, then the precision really isn't helping the game. Is it really necessary to know sea state to that 100th level of precision?