Project Operation Trident Offical Development Log
 

August 19: We are almost ready to go public with some teaser in-game videos to not only excite you guys and keep us filled with steam, but to fill our team to maximum license capacities.

A fullblown cold-war era subsim set in a slightly alternate reality. Upgrades and tech/classes become available at the proper times and historic events happen but you will infact be at war with the USSR.

Initally only the US and USSR will be playable, later the UK and maybe a small nation, eventually any submarine toting nations will be included.

Until we get v0.12 (playable demo) out to see if its viable for kickstarter, any donations can go to paypal.me/OpTrident to anyone that wants to help the cause and you will get mention in the game credits, just leave a payment note.

This is now a dedicated URL so it wont get mixed in with my YouTube donations and I can distribute it among the team.

IndieDB Link

Old Stuff. Reserved for future.

So what is this game?
I started designing a WW2 u-boat simulator in my free time with Unity during 2012-14, at the time I was very new to programming and game design and just learning to take my AutoCAD skills to 3D modelling work.

I later decided there were too many WW2 sub-sims and decided to make an alternate reality cold-war subsim, heres and excerpt from my old code-bank that gives you a synopsis
A year after I posted that game idea I started a thread on the forums here with my progress and it got fairly far with interiors, characters, controllable subs, enemy AI, torpedos etc. but my team left to work on other projects and I mothballed it, we were very new with the very new and currently used game engine however, Unreal Engine 4, so it was a toy project.

That thread got a lot of attention and sat idle after I left it. A year almost to the day after I started that thread I got some new code for the ocean setup and started a new project and actually posted the downloadable game as I develop it, which you see here today. I will be continuing to post downloads of updates until I either give up or decide the game has financial potential.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Whats the release date and what platforms?
Release dates at this point with the indie game scene changing so much and my team consisting of just myself and freelancers if I get funding a solid release date for a beta version cant be given.
Operation Trident will be released on win32 & win64 first and then cooked for Mac and Linux afterwards. Linux may be a problem due to shader issues but it gets easier every month with Unreal Engine updates.


Whats the expected price
I've toyed with everything from a full 21.99 game to a 4.99 game with 1.99 DLC's. This isnt set in stone yet.

What Submarines/Countries/Technology will be available?
I will start with the US Pampantino class GUPPY conversion first and your second command will be the USS Nautilus. Then I will start the Russia campaign with a boat from the era that I can find enough info on. Technologies will be exactly as in real-life unless reference data isnt available then it will be guessed on or omitted.

At a later date either as an update or as a DLC depending on the pricing model other countries like the UK, Canada, Denmark etc. will be added.

Some surface boat missions will be available too.

Is this an arcade game (Silent Hunter 5) or extreme simulator game (Janes 688i)?
Initally it will be fairly arcade like to speed development but eventually difficulty levels will be added from Landlubber akin to Silent Hunter: Online all the way up to Sub-Nut akin to Janes 688i

How can I help?
If you have C++ or blueprint programming skills, modelling skills etc. and would like to help contact me at

Code:

---

info@optrident.com

---

Donations can be made via paypal at http://paypal.me/OpTrident and will receive mention in the credits with your payment note.

What about Kickstarter or GoFundMe?
If the reception is good as versions increment and its deemed financially viable a campaign may be started to fund the ability to pay for a small team

What cool features can I expect that I havnt seen before?
Import custom boat insignias, full PBR rendering, real-world scale, huge amounts of controllable boats and upgradable technologies, realism like nothing else, towed arrays, sound layers, the list goes on and on.

Contact us on skype @ blendertek, email at or private message us here or Nsomnia @ forums.unrealengine.com

New underwater FX holding depth
http://i.imgur.com/EtiyKOWl.jpg

Edit: I also drew a 4x8 subUV bubble grid for cavitation fx but its really cheesy looking like it belongs on a mobile game so I'll probably make a fresnel lens/refractive sphere and spawn that as a particle based on accelleration and such (anyone know of any research on cavitation?). Its cheesy but it adds that little bit more for now. In the meantime ill either spawn it from each blade at random times or spawn it from behind the sub and scale the bubbles way up and spawn it at random rates using a secondary spawning object that trails the boat.
http://i.imgur.com/ZjFGwpkl.png



-Added underwaterFX
-Surface = 'R' Hold Depth = 'F' Dive = 'V' emerg surf/dive to come
-Engine telegraph up/down changed to ins/del

Unfortuantly the diving controls override the manual tank venting/flooding and visa-versa so I'll have to come up with a better system I'll probably make the dive/hold depth/surface controls set the amount of water/air since thats how its done in real life. She doesnt come down/up perfectly straight which I could tweak but I think could be nice to have to manually tweak the trim every once in a while. Thoughts? Any input is going to have effect on the game.

We've got fish in the water. Its simple and only a mk14 with its 2 speeds and 2 ranges but its a start, not bad for a mornings work, being uploaded as I write this.

The further along I get in this little toy the more time I spend practicing my c++ and less time prototyping these systems.


Unless you guys want more of these simple setups sooner.. ARK got plaged because they blueprinted everythingb to get a full game out on time and it ran like crap (still does mostly) till they started recoding everything in real code.

http://i.imgur.com/3TXwVK5l.png

http://i.imgur.com/3TXwVK5.png - Full resolution

Re-modelled the structure of the control room and store room compartment this morning, the normals need some work to show up properly but its ready to start playing with different ideas to be able to control and "ride" the ship without actually possessing it (when the ship becomes the "player")

http://i.imgur.com/Ec9ZdHvl.png


Also got a basic mini-map working, just trying to get it to work without a landscape present, it will show the players position, enemy positions and areas of interest as-is but hopefully can be extended in the future for plotting without having to do any real serious coding. As a bonus it can be displayed on the dead reckoning table.


Lastly got SSR (sub surface reflections) and foam working at a basic level and cubemap reflections to enhance the quality of the water
http://i.imgur.com/dZ6jNpyl.png


Edit: Unfortuantly the minimap I brought in from an old project only works with landcapes, I know of a major game that was released mid last year that used ue4's landscape system for water but it involved some heavy engine source code editing that I dont want to get into right now. Going to try to make it work with the ocean tiles when I have free time.

Posting 0.08-preTechDemo as I write this. Wrote a helper function to find the current active camera whether its a periscope or external or ship camera and if that camera goes below water, enable the underwater post-process FX.


Was going to do torpedo impact and under keel magnetic (radial) damage but
its Saturday, sometime early next week we wil have tsuff to blow up.


Got a main menu mocked up really basic but it works with 4 campaigns ready to work on (USA, USSR, UK, Canada) so check it out let me know what you think.

Let me know how the performance is. Also it doesnt scale the main menu right now if your not running 1920x1080 resolution (I think) so sorry for anyone with weird resolutions.


Been doing a ton of c++ courses. I'm at the point where people reccomend to drop the standard library practice and start learning the Unreal Engine 4 API but I wanna take ita bit further sicne ocean simulation can be very very advanced.

http://i.imgur.com/I9ZTjVOl.png


Going to try to get a linux and mac version up too to bring my indieDB rank up again, PLEASE GIVE ME YOUR REQUESTS AND C&C

Its sunday feb 14ths so wont get much done but going to try to get the mk14 fish spawner to hit stuff and explode and import some ships to explode from my old project.

Edit: Actually going to get a clock/date and time compression going better today.

Edit2:

We have inital success
http://i.imgur.com/hWVoaXw.png

And formatted properly

http://i.imgur.com/l3clDn3.png

And time compression working (non physics compression yet just sun/moon movemenet and time scaling
http://i.imgur.com/jiRSDqfl.png
So 0x means 1 minute in real life is 0 in game, 1 = 1 and 3600x means 3600 game minutes to 1 real life minute. It needs some fixes to account for frames per second difference but thats game programming 101 so I'll be sure to add that once time compression becomes more useful.

Heres a question. (Really would like input on this project!)
Should time compression only affect the clock/sun and things like speed of ship and resource depletion or should it affect physics and rendering too like in SH



More notes:
Time compression up = +
Time compression down = ]
Time compression 0 (pause) = Backspace

Changed it so that you can right click to get the mouse cursor then right click to get view control back just like in SH

Made a nice little engine telegraph, gonna create a simpiler version later and I made some buttons for tabs (crew mgmt, engine control, resources etc.) as well as some arrows to allow you to close/open every peice of the user interface (drag and drop at one point too!)


http://i.imgur.com/xuRKDJCl.png


Another question. Should I keep prototyping small bits of the game everyday (nearly) like this to get a very playable game ASAP or should I work on coding the simulation parts (ocean, explosions, flooding etc) that will really make it shine as a simulator.


Packaging, cooking, and uploading the new version now.

Had the physics setup go wonky on me so I rewrote alot of the ocean code for buoyancy and going to compile and merge it together and start fresh with a bit higher quality in mind but using what I have so far as a reference. I was building off an old boat not using inheritance or any other real OOP techniques for prototyping so I'm going to "build for the future"

Next update later this week.

Figured out the physics bug, going to lead to just a small inconvience to me rather than any real troubles but still going to rewrite everything nice and clean.

Found my old GUI compass setup which with a little bit of modification can be adapted to a ship and with a simple texture rotator shader setup can be displayed on the gyro compass mesh inside the control room.

Imported a bunch of explosion/impact/fire/fx/sounds today as well as plug-and-play AI and enemy spawning areas to get some action going.

http://i.imgur.com/01GVOMF.png

Spent the day simulating the 38d81/8 torque curve to a realistic enough level to give room for tech trees and variables (and engine nerds) but at the same time fun enough to control.

The heart of it is taking the current telegraph value (-3 to 4 inclusive) times the current number of engine turning the prop shafts (0-4) and squaring it, then multiplying that by the drag curve based on speed and torque curve based on RPM. Feels very realistic and will allow overpowering for just that little bit more power this way due to adding drag and torque curves this time plus using non-linearity in the way power output is calculated (squaring for example)

1.1-5.4-11-20 knots at ahead slow to ahead flank.

I'm also just using a basic tiny modifier for surfaced vs submerged speed.

Have the forward and aft port/stbd ballst and trim tanks setup, going to get around to setting them up for your basic operations then manual control tomorrow

Spent the entire morning remodelling the forward torpedo tubes because the muzzle door and tubes were not setup properly with non functional shutter doors.

Now the shutter doors will open/close as needed and there will be controls for power and manual opening of the shutter doors and muzzle door. Does anyone have more deatils on how this works? I'm gonna post in the general forum but I assume since the door is attached with a hinge to the muzzle door when the muzzle door swings inwards the shutter comes with it at the hinged part but it also is on a rail so it slides the 21" for the torpeo tube inwards too, or were the tubes angled outwards and the shutter doors simply hinged at both ends with a folding hinged part at the end?

http://i.imgur.com/81vsaqu.png

You can see the shutter (red) and muzzle door/tube (orange)

http://i.imgur.com/81vsaqu.png

The shutter animations took me all morning and I still havnt got a working solution, I shoud've spent it doing something more productive oh well.

Dont think I'll get much/anything else done today and the weekend will proibably be slow but I found some great deatils on hte Balao class

http://maritime.org/doc/fleetsub/chap4.htm#4A

regarding the tanks and how much water they hold plus their locations so I'm going to simulate their locations exactly and see how she handles as well as make up a formula/do the math for pumping water/air into/out of the tanks for that many many tons of water. Should be easy knowing the weight of water per cubic cm

Decided to do some more core game work tonight for a couple hours since no one has helped me get the animation constraints figured out for the shutters.

Heres the different levels and the experiance points required to reach them. What do you think about the curve?

http://i.imgur.com/x7fgFWK.png