Following Seas -- Preparing for the demo
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- Опубликовано: 5 июл 2024
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Hello - Apologies for the poorer video quality this time around. Bit of a murphy's law lately and I had a number of issues getting it out today.
It's been a few weeks. Things are moving though, I'm now fully registered for Steam Next fest, and barring disaster I expect the demo to be available this October.
I don't want to go over everything that will be included, but I intend for the demo to be a mix between a playable teaser and tutorial.
Expect full control over the caravel, and the ability to freely travel, trade, and explore three small islands.
Two of these have not been shown before, so I'll give a brief look at both.
The first island:
The Watcher is a huge tower, who's original purpose has been lost. It is now home to an isolationist people.
The player can trade here, purchasing goods sourced from the seas, and supplying everything else as the island has no airable land or material resources.
The second island:
Bathis Isle used to be a small settlement and storage site for shipping from a now collapsed Empire. The land is hostile, like most of the known world, but a small outpost remains to harvest the dried and preserved trees that cover the island.
This island also implements the first stage of what I'd call environment zones, where the nasty ash clouds will gradually build the closer you come to land, and visibility will become poor.
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Other changes include overhauled settings with more readable fonts. I've added numerous graphical options that allow the game to run much better on lower end systems. This particularly includes the ability to remove cloth collisions, and the overall accuracy of cloth physics. I don't recommend this unless framerate is too unstable on the target system, as cloth is a big aspect of the game, but it is definitely playable if you don't mind a lot more clipping in the rigging.
Dozens of code improvements, bug fixes, and small optimizations have been done as well, though there's not much to show visually in that respect. I've also added a number of items to the world that give snippets of lore. Lore and world building is something that I really enjoy. And while (at least at the start) Following Seas will not have a direct narrative, it does have a defined setting -- and one I hope players will enjoy learning about through environmental queues, notes, and other simple systems. 
Игры
I want it nooooow hahah!! Im so ready for the demo!!
I am really excited about this and will definitely be trying the demo in October! You're doing such a good job man, keep it up!
I love the lore behind these two locations (especially when i wasn't expecting any lore in the first place!), they're very original and intriguing, and i genuinely can't wait to see what you create next 😁
Thank you. :)
Can't wait for this game, looks like this could become pretty big in the future
Thank you. I would love for that to be true.
⛵...as he is casually capsizing.. :D Congrats on getting in to the next fest! 🎉
Can't wait 🙂
I was playing sailwind day dreaming of following seas on this day
Speaking of better lighting, would be great to have HDR support added. Would really love to see at least one square-rigger too...
Getting some Morrowind vibes from Bathis Isle, I dig it.
I knew it reminded me of something!😂 A lot of fond memories, though
Heard that from a few folks now. I've never got around to trying Morrowind, should really give it a go.
@@2eightnine It's great worldbuilding, even if the actual gameplay is a bit stiff by modern standards.
like 60 saludos from Argentina
Thank you! Cheers!
as did you setup the water inside the hull? that changes and moves like that? I assume this is a seperate water actor from the ocean?
This has been a difficult element. I've experimented with shader options, as well as particle mesh deformation, but the (visual) effects were either poor, or far too programmatically expensive.
Flooding is simulated primarily through script, so my aim is to have a decent level of simulation, but the visual side still needs work. So floodwater is tracked in terms of volume and rate, and this will effect the hull by both adding mass and decreasing metacentric height leading to reduced stability. The visual element is primarily based through particle effects, and once flooding has reached a sufficient level, water displacement ceases, allowing the ocean plane to intersect the hull. (Which is what is happening in the video.)
I'd like to implement something akin to Subnautica's visible flooding, but I suspect there's a reason the subs are seemingly static when inside. Mesh deforming based water effects are a mess if you try to get them working on a moving dynamic object like a ship.