Game Reactor interview with Kim

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Niptium posted this link in another thread (thanks Niptium!) but I thought this was such an interesting interview and look at the game I thought we could discuss it here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFtGPBOUQtk

What are people's reactions to the game shown in the interview?

 

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Quoted from another thread (Historical East India Companies) where the post below was OT:

I most heartily disagree! the water in EIC looks like rolling logs, water does not behave this way! - and a consequense of this is you get huge ships of the line "bobbing" (spelling) up and down in the water like a small booey (spelling) in a perfect storm! - a side effect of this is that it'll ruin your broadsides completely, and I expect it to have a negative effect on handling aswell ...Feel free to correct me...

I think the issue is one of speed and wave size. The waves move too fast and consequently the ships roll and pitch and yaw too rapidly and to too great an extent. It looks cartoony. The physics of it however looks excellent.

The huge rolling sea we saw in the Games Reactor video interview was about a 2m swell, far too high a sea for ships of this era to engage in a battle.

While the game engine and sea look almost perfect to me in this regard I think the whole size of the sea swells should be toned down by at least 50% so the waves are smaller and the ships can at least shoot relatively straight, and all ship movements should be reduced by about 50% too. One thing that I noticed staight away was that the video was like an arcade game, ships turning around as though they were turbine driven and shortening sail within seconds.

I really hope that was the arcade setting!

 

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. . . The huge rolling sea we saw in the Games Reactor video interview was about a 2m swell, far too high a sea for ships of this era to engage in a battle.
. . .

2m is what about 6ft. 4-6 foot swells are pretty calm. I spent a week sailing on 135 foot, 500 ton, HMS Rose off of Nova Scotia about 9 years ago 4-6 foot swells did not seem to cause the amount of roll depicted. But was still there. When I was in the Navy and the seas got around 15 foot we did not have to work and at 40 you could go up to the protected portion of the fantail and listen for the screws to clear the water.

I would guess the physics model may need a little tuning.

Greg

 

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These were rugged ships, yes, and fair to good sea boats and could weather big storms but a frigate might have it's gunports only 6 feet from the waterline and the lowest gundeck of a three decker only 3 to 4 feet.

In a sea with 6 foot waves you'd be a brave (or desperate... or stupid) captain to open your ports and fight your ship...

While I liked the sea animation and texturing and the 1st person view was very nice and immersive I'd just prefer there to be smaller waves and for the big ships to roll and pitch much more slowly, not bob like corks.

But... we've only seen one video, it may have been a battle chosen for demo purposes to show off the big swells in the water animation. I really hope we get much calmer seas than that

 

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I would hazard to say 6 feet be a bit on shy side for a Frigate.

The people in the boat next to the Rose are at least 5 feet tall. Also granted she is sitting a bit high in the water, but only about a foot or two. Note the Rose became the HMS Surprise in "Master & Commander".

Greg.

 

[Polar Mongoose]

I wonder what speed setting the video was taken on. I agree that the waves look off. The size looks fine to me, but they are rolling by rather quickly, though perhaps the game was on a high speed setting to get lots of gun fire into a short clip.

 

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I would hazard to say 6 feet be a bit on shy side for a Frigate.

I would say in that photo the Rose is not fully loaded. I can go check up some books though if you want and measure some drawings.

Remember Wasa and Mary Rose both sank in fairly mild weather with open gun ports and overloading. And there are accounts of battles such as the Driots L'Homme versus Indefatigable and Amazon where the 74 could not open her lower gun deck ports because of high seas.

 

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In the picture the main whale is just touching the waterline. The main whale is the thicker band of planking that acts as a fender when other ships or boats came along side. When fully loaded the main whale was never more than halfway submerged at the waist. Many ships I see in other games sit too low in the water. There was a treasure trove of images of period paintings I found on the internet. If I can find it again I will post it. These paintings were created by looking at real sailing ships.

Greg.