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Very experimental

Martes

Martes

Privateer
Staff member
Storm Modder
Storm Modeller
Haa-hm.

liffey_u2.png liffey_u3.png liffey_u1.png
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Don't get any hopes up, though. I have no idea about how the bloody thing works.
 
I am astonished how good it looks, either, and with minimal effort.
I'll be running some experiments, and if anything works...
 
Sorted out the buoyancy settings, extracted the masts from the original and made first attempt at camera control - I can move it up and down now, exactly as it was in the main game.

liffey_u2_2.png liffey_u2_1.png​

While I think I grasped the whole architecture style here, there are two things I want to implement first (and this will keep me running in circles for the foreseeable future) - lowering a boat and switching to control it, and dropping an anchor.
 
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In preparation for the boat process, reimported some of the yards and sails (you need the yards to be fixed in certain position to raise the boat, move it outboard and then lower it into the water).
And you need to considerably slow down the ship.
(Funny that on many paintings where the ships appear to be thrashing at high speed, if you carefully look at the sails it would become apparent they are not moving at all, having at least one topsail backed against the wind!)
The model I used for the backed sail, wonder of wonders, was included in the AOS2 rigging set, which means they could have implemented this to some extent, but, apparently, did not. Anyway, the Liffey is heaving to:

liffey_u3_1.png liffey_u3_4.png
liffey_u3_5.png liffey_u3_2.png
liffey_u3_3.png
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The sailing rig is a wonderful, extremely complex and interconnected mechanical system.
 
Nice work, looks promising! I'm guessing that's the Ceto ocean for Unity?

Have you tried enabling MSAA to smooth out those edges?
 
Indeed, it's Ceto. I haven't touched any graphics settings yet, except making shadow display distances longer - I used a very narrow camera angle, so the camera is farther from the ship than usual. Looks more cinematic that way.

The ship, of course, is very crudely and manually assembled, and I will later use this setup to determine the format of the config files.
 
liffey_u_anchor.png

liffey_u_anchor_boat.png
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Boat can be launched and separated, and move a little (but transfer from the deck to the launch position still needs to be done).
Anchors have two positions (stowed and catted), and the next stage will be to actually drop it with the cable.
 
Pieter Boelen said:
Trying a new engine?
Click to expand...

Trying to try, I'd say. :) Nothing too serious and certainly no obligations. It feels mostly like I found a complex construction toy and playing with it.
I thought it interesting to make a small tech demo that will include things that I miss the most - anchors, boats, modular rigging and towing.
 
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Glued an extremely crude animation for dropping anchor for a given length of cable (it looks awful in process, but works for now):

liffey_anchor_underwater.png
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And began separating the rig to parts. It would be possible to strike a topgallant mast, for example:

liffey_str_topmast.png liffey_str_topmast1.png
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and shift almost any part of the rig. Because that's what this is all about.
 
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Pieter Boelen said:
You either "try or try not", I would say.
Click to expand...

Ah, Pieter, that doesn't work for me. The moment I feel serious about anything, it ends up dead. That's why I call all this experiments :) I just press buttons and observe what that does.

Pieter Boelen said:
Working is better than not working, if you ask me!
Click to expand...

It's all built of placeholders, but seems I fixed this particular issue. Mostly. I am not sure I can apply the same technique for general towing, though. Ah, well, I'll think of something.

Pieter Boelen said:
:shock :shock :shock
Click to expand...

It shouldn't have been that surprising? As far as I understand it's on a list of very basic operations.
 
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Martes said:
Ah, Pieter, that doesn't work for me. The moment I feel serious about anything, it ends up dead. That's why I call all this experiments :) I just press buttons and observe what that does.
Click to expand...
Whatever works for you. :doff

Martes said:
It shouldn't have been that surprising? As far as I understand it's on a list of very basic operations.
Click to expand...
I just meant it's cool. ;)
 
Normal rigging:

l_full_rig.png
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And storm configuration:

l_storm_rig.png
l_stor_rig_fore.png l_storm_rig_aft.png
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Topgallant masts lashed to the port side of the masts proper, topmasts lowered, main yards on deck, topsail yards on tops, flying jibboom stricken.

I will, in all probability, add staysails and maybe even studding sails at some point.

It's a lot of parts, and I am not completely sure about how to store them (i.e. to group each mast into a single model, and work with moving/disappearing meshes inside, or to treat each mesh as a separate model, haven't decided yet), but the on the bright side everything here has to be done only once, because for different ship sizes the set will be simply rescaled, and it would be possible to replace the low-detailed parts I use now with relative ease.
 
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Hi, There is one gentlemen I know who is a literal expert with using unity. He is one of the top members of the team completely reverse-engineering the game mechwarrior 3 and converting it over to unity.

His discord username is: Sake906#5814

I know he is pretty busy, but maybe he could help answer a few questions.
 
Thanks. It won't help, unfortunately, since while I figured out most of the Unity-side things, it's the sheer amount of mundane work that daunts me. In ideal conditions I'd be happy to find someone who would take (most) of the Unity programming while I continue with the ship collection. But that's quite unlikely to happen.
 
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