Optimized water

[admin]

We have finished some experiments with water optimization and we able to achieve photographic quality AND increase FPS. 

This tech will be pushed into the builds within next 4 weeks together with other optimizations

 

Here is the result

 

HMS Victory sailing in calm waters.

 

 

 

 

[maturin]

Hot damn.

[Johny Reb]

Beautiful again. Now lets see the storms.

[Chunx]

I'll just take these into a private room for a few moments...

[Månis]

Wow. It looks really nice

[Ned Loe]

WOW! I can feel wind movement on the water. Amazing! This is a win!

 

I hope you will add option to zoom out like that. (Birdseye view)

[Evilghostdk5610]

nice cool

[BungeeLemming]

take the surprise and you have the opening scene from the movie "Master and Commander".

 

Maaan that looks epic!!

[Ned Loe]

Guys, I hope you will fix sails. They look plastic and do not move.

 

A. Add more textured ropes like seen on the image I added. 

B. Make animation, so they can move and give player a wind feel.

 

But, if you let players have custom sails, that will not be a problem.

 

I would also, add rain/storm (clouds) in the distance, that would be epic!

 

Great work!

 

 

 

 

[Mirones]

yeah i would like to see some bad weather too i'm kinda tired of all these nice weather pilots in Flight SIms because they cant find the enemy instandly.

and i would like to master a storm from time to time and use it in combat

[Clinch]

Wow this looks amazing! Dont forget guys, this is alpha(I reminded myself as well). Theres probably a bit of work to be done and some changes will be made. The devs probably want the game to look as good as possible but not tax the average video card too hard.

[dino1984]

First of all - it looks brilliant!

On the second hand - ropes are almost invisible so ship looks bit "empty". Is it sailing with open cannon ports? I understand that it is for testing purposes and in-game will be different (BTW: It would be great to see ports-opening animation in the begining of the battle)?

 

Additionally - It's Victory again I understand that it is for testing purposes and this is most demanding ship, but it would be nice to see some other ships (and I don't mean Constitution aswell).

[admin]

First of all - it looks brilliant!

On the second hand - ropes are almost invisible so ship looks bit "empty". Is it sailing with open cannon ports? I understand that it is for testing purposes and in-game will be different (BTW: It would be great to see ports-opening animation in the begining of the battle)?

 

ropes start fading away even at short distance. 

[admin]

Guys, I hope you will fix sails. They look plastic and do not move.

 

 

 

properly set up sails don't move in full wind. 

Sails are moving only when luffing or when not all ropes are connected.

 

tons of visual references + real sailing experience on our team. 

 

the particular case of luffing will be impossible to do with high quality ships and sea and crew during 25 v 25 battle with smoke.

Unless you want to dish out $3000 on a new video card which will also struggle.

 

so..

You have to pick one thing to look awesome (2 in the best case) - the rest must look mediocre to provide 20+FPS

• great hulls 
• great sails with movement and luffing 
• fully animated crew everywhere
• animated gunports, fluid rope, other moving parts (1000+ of gunports during large first rate battle)
• great looking ocean
• lots of thick and beautiful smoke
• awesome terrain with shore waves

we picked water and hulls. you can guys influence use to replace hulls and sails with something else.

[Marquiz]

First, skyboxes, lighting mood and waters looks very good. About ropes, maybe to preserve some preformance on lower spec computers, u can use alpha test ropes, (at least for main, thick ropes - yes i know this dosent looks good) , or add simple 3-side cilinders with normal map ,bake to make some curve shape. Without physic and animations, this dont take to much from preformance. Hard to estimate tri count on ropes for first rate ship but i think this cant be more like 2-3% of whole 3d model.

[Alex Connor]

How many LODs are being used for the ship models?

[Ned Loe]

 

You forgot to add it here too)

[Killick]

Is that an actual screenshot, Wind?! Amazing!!

Please, devs, please consider implementing the ability to walk on deck at some point.

[Samuel Adams]

Great job. I want to see some night battles. This looks great and would look awesome at night with cannons going off and starburst.

[maturin]

the particular case of luffing will be impossible to do with high quality ships and sea and crew during 25 v 25 battle with smoke.

 

I feel the need to speak out on behalf of luffing. It's important, even if you only see it animated on your own vessel.

 

Luffing sails visually (and audibly above all) tell a new player when he is doing something wrong. They tell you that you are losing power, slowing down. They tell you if your tacking sequence is done, that it's time to bring the fore yards around. If we want to drift with the current, luffing tells us that we are still stopped, without ever looking at the UI. I know that that is exactly what you want to do: make a game that is played through sensory experiences, not meters and gauges and buttons.

 

What I mean to say is that it is worth taking resources away from something else, in order to make the player's ship behave more lifelike. Smoke ultimately does nothing, but luffing is a built-in gameplay aid.

 

 

As for the recurring topic of sail movement, I agree with both sides. Properly set sails don't shake and wave all over the place, it is true. But the fact remains that the current sails look plastic and immobile. Consider the fact that Naval Action is a game, and has to overcome our sense of disbelief. Sometimes reality has to be overmodeled. If the sails gave the occasional swell or shiver (not at all GPU-intensive, I should hope), our brains could be tricked into treating the pixels as real canvas. No sail is properly set for all conditions, of course. There are always gusts and eddies that will affect the canvas. POTBS did this rather well, as I recall.

 

Some better sail textures would help too, with straining bunt lines and reef bands.