@@Bishiba92 he is talking abt how a sail works, it doesnt propel you because the wind pushes it, it does so because of pressure difference kinda like a wing on an airplane does
One thing that most games miss when simulating buoyancy is the extreme friction water causes in all directions of motion. Motion about a particular axis ie rotation is noticeably slower in real life. It makes objects seem like they move and pivot much too quickly for a given mass in a game and our eyes can spot it right away. Adding a resistance to rotation in all axes and some lag to vertical translations would make the ship react a bit more realistic.
Well, you could do it this way. Or you can use a 180 degree animation curve that works as a factor on the apparent wind force. 0 if sailing into wind. 0.1 if the wind is somewhat in front. 0.5 if from the side. 0.99 if angled from behind and 0.7 if directly behind.
I tackled this with my own project a few months ago and also went with a physics-based approach. I eventually got it working relatively well, but there are still certain situations where the boat starts moving backwards or where the forces start growing and don't stop so the boat just keeps accelerating...which is not ideal :P I need to revisit the whole thing at some point and hopefully solve that 😅 It seems like you did a good job avoiding that kind of unintentional behavior, good luck with the game!
Hey Tom, you wouldn't believe where I got the groundwork for the buoyancy from :D The acceleration problem I fixed by clamping the acceleration force to the ships max speed before applying it to the rigidbody. Also, most of the weird behaviour was fixed by giving the rigidbody a mass of around 100, so maybe this helps you, too :D
Haha well I'm glad my videos were of use :P I considered I might have to clamp some things-did you find a basis for that in how the real life physics work or was that something you added to stop crazy acceleration? Maybe I missed something when looking at the IRL sailing force calculations... If I remember correctly my boat has a mass of 500 so I don't think the issue is there 🤔
Yes, there is this thing called hull speed, which is considered to be the max speed a ship can go, but in reality it's the point of diminishing return, where you need to put a lot more energy in the forward momentum of the ship to get a little bit of a speed boost, so most designers stop there. I'm not quite sure anymore what is the cause of the hull speed, but I think it had something to do with the water that you're trying to displace in front of the ship. Then again, that's going to vary with different hull shapes and imperfections the craftsman caused. In the end I just researched the speed a similar ship to mine was able to reach and then calculated the acceleration per frame from that. So if a ship could go 15 knots and hour, I would calculate the speed in meters per second from that and multiply by delta time, to get the speed in meters per frame and clamp the overall acceleration before applying it to the rigidbody, just in case. tldr: research and math :D But there is a bit of wonky movement, when the ship is going fast and at the same time emerges from the water, then it starts to bounce around. I guess it's "physically accurate"; the only way I found to stop this is for the player to lower the velocity. Maybe this could be automated to avoid this behaviour
_"I'm not quite sure anymore what is the cause of the hull speed"_ I'd imagine it has something to do with the drag force the water exerts on the hull as the boat moves. I _do_ apply drag, but perhaps it's not enough, or maybe drag is only a part of what determines the hull speed 🤔 It could also be that when the boat gets some speed and "launches" off a wave crest, it leaves the water enough that the drag almost disappears and then 💩 just hits the fan :P Thanks for the detailed response, I definitely have to revisit this. I'll probably end up clamping something to be safe like you said even if there is a "real" way to get everything moving properly.
@tomweiland the hull speed, or wave speed, is caused by the bow wave the ship creates as it moves through the water. Once the wavelength is just over 1 boat length, it means that the boat is now trying to sail "uphill", up the backside of the crest caused by the front of the ship.
I think you should actually play Sailwind some more. That game does everything you are trying to do... and then some. Labelling it as "Lite, a more stylish arcade mode" when it comes to the sailing mechanics is just wrong. Sailwind is impressively accurate and a lot more complex than what I can make up from your project. Especially with all of the ship customisation and sail plans you can create as a player. Other than that, your project looks interesting!
Sail Wind as a more stylish arcade mode :D tbf with the video editing, this is a valid interpretation. But not done intentionally. As far as my game is concerned: I'm trying to make a fun mechanic first, although inspired by the real world. Sailing is part of the game, but it's not the whole game. There is a shared spotlight with other mechanics as well
Apart for Hydrofoil Generation, eSail and Sailaway, other sailing games/simulators sucks simply because devs don´t know the physics of sailing (and drifting, inertia, waves simulation braking vectors, ect). It is a complex matter and could be simpler and faster just asking some advice from a naval engineer.
Plus you have to make sure it's fun to play as well. At least in this game. So for that reason a couple of things like drifting or cargo weight aren't really part of the simulation. But I agree, you can go way deeper with a sailing sim
This might change too much of the game you have so far but if you move the camera to make it isometric and add a tilt shift effect I think your miniature style will really come out and look even more awesome thn it already does
That sounds awesome for a photo mode. Or cinematic camera mode like in rdr2. But I would make it in a birds eye view fashion, instead of truly isometric ^^
You're wolcome :D I have a degree in art and animation and the rest is just years and years of experiences. So yeah, it absolutely possible, you "just" have to commit to it
May I ask how far along you are with the finished product? Additionally, I have a couple of questions that you might have addressed in a previous video, which I may have forgotten about. First, will your ships include cannon combat? If so, have you considered how the AI will handle this? I've been thinking a lot about AI for normal sailing, and I believe I have a good approach, though I haven't started on it yet. However, I'm at a loss when it comes to combat AI due to my limited experience in AI programming. If you've put any thought into this, I'd love to hear your ideas. Perhaps we could discuss it further on Discord, or maybe you could make a video about it?
Currently the game is getting ported away from unity, cause of that whole runtime fee shot show. I'm currently working on a progress video for that. As for canons, combat and Ai: There aren't any concrete designs yet, for both gameplay or technical design. That's for after the port is done. At which point I'm more than happy to discuss that topic :D But it has to wait a while longer
@@byteslider understandable, I just spent the weekend setting up procedural delivery systems and how to interact with them. Still haven't implement the "complete delivery" feature, but shouldn't take more than an hour. But would be nice to discuss our games as the vision seems very similar
A very interesting idea. One thing I wonder is, if the sailing has these three settings will the game be essentially three different games? I would say having a balance of these three different sailing controls would be nice. It's your game though these are just my thoughts.
I was thinking the same thing. For me, having too many different settings, especially when so drastic, makes a game feel less "whole." It also takes away from the feeling of having a organically challenging experience in my opinion. I don't doubt he could still manage to get the game to feel right, though, just hope he at least considers combining these modes as you said.
I know what you're saying, on paper all these modes are very different and could make for a vastly different experiences. In reality though, it plays more like one gameplay mechanic with three different difficulty settings, easy, medium and hard. So you still need to sail, but the choice how much you want to focus on it is up to you ^^
This looks very cool! I don't know if I can help at all but if you have any more sailing questions I'd be happy to have a look, I am a Yachtmaster and worked in a sailing school for a few years though I never became a sailing instructor myself, I was a Powerboat instructor (RIB's, speedboats that sort of thing) just let me know how you'd like to communicate :)
Oh wow, that's great :D I still got some of the ships behavior to figure out, so I would just dm you on here in the future, if you don't mind. And then we can go from there
