A more constructive thread about the new ship models and stuff

[Ulviirala 431]

First off, I think an official statement whether or not the staff will consider making changes to the new ships or not, i.e. to the artwork and the mechanics. Because it's always good to hear that the thought and effort people put into hopefully constructive criticism and feedback will not be for naught.

Or if we have to live with everything forever with things like this:

The passenger position is still not working perfectly. The model moving when embarking as passenger has been fixed now, though passengers still are not in the world where they look like they are.

Even though right next to you as first passenger on the stern of a cog, you can not disembark to the tile that is right next to your position in the game world.

As well as having offset mouse picking for terrain tiles (compare mouse cursor position VS highlighted terrain tile):

(fixed with estimate of where the mouse cursor is/was)

These are obviously some sort of unintended behaviour that would be nice to get fixed. One could say, it's fairly low priority of things to fix. On the other hand one could say, it's a very half arsed release with no care about post-update fixes.

Talk to us about the scope of changes that you would consider possible, and changes that are out of the question, so we don't just blow crap out of our arse with a force so passionate, it will tear apart our pants, our hearts, and souls. Because:

[...] 

Other issues that are still left will be worked on as we go along of course!

My other thread did not really go into the direction I thought it would.

Let's try to keep our thoughts objective and constructive in this next try. Because I will try to approach the forum moderators about moderating, i.e. getting purely destructive posts removed by reporting them. Thank you for your understanding.

For many of us, ships are part of our daily Wurm lives. We look at them, we like to look at them, we like to show off in them, and we use them. Even though using them is the least of our time we spend on them, when we use them, we need them to work properly.

I can't help but also feel like they have been created years ago and not touched ever since, as others mentioned, and that it looked great on the screenshot. I like that the textures look very different from one another (corbita, cog, caravel), I feel like it distinguished them in style and type of ship. Though the textures are unarguably bad up close, even with unlimited texture size setting. Striking features that were once clunky and protruding boxes, have been replaced by illusion on the flat texture.

What irks me the most are the model sizes. All ships (corbita, cog, caravel) seem to be about 6 tiles in length, with the knarr as the 4 tiles long exception. If we want to believe the mystical side length of a tile (4 metres), we would say they're all about 4x6=24 metres in length.

And now I have to solely go on Wikipedia stuff, because proper research would probably take at least one regular workday worth of hours, that I'd rather not spend for naught. Right now I feel like I understand why people pay good money to hire consultants, people who are educated and very knowledgable in one area.

As far as Wikipedia goes, the caravel in Wurm is not even a caravel.

A caravel (Portuguese: caravela, IPA: [kÉɾÉˈvÉ›lÉ]) is a small, highly maneuverable sailing ship developed in the 15th century by the Portuguese...

Our caravel is not small, it is not maneuverable, it doesn't have any game mechanics that discerns it from the other ships other than cargo hold volume, and it was not developed by the Portuguese in the 15th century.

Our caravel is the biggest ship of the line, the hardest to create and to continue, has the most parts to attach, it's fast only in terrible weather, and it ought to be the pride of every ship owner.

Caravels supposedly are 15-18 metres (40-60 feet) in length on average, with a capacity of 40-50 tons. Their type of sails enabled them to go windward (catching wind, tacking, beating) much better than other types of sails and ships.

Wurm's caravel has a massive forecastle and its looks would rather fit that of a carrack.

The Portuguese carracks were usually very large ships for their time (often over 1000 tons)...

Cogs ranged from 15 to 25 metres (49-82ft) in length, and the largest cog ships could carry up to about 200 tons. Four times as much, as a caravel.

The wurm corbita from the Roman era had different names and shapes, depending on their exact origin, and also different sizes. One example I found would be 25m in length, with a capacity of 86 tons.

And the knarr... let's not even talk about that. We already know that it's rather a longship or karve which have similar construction styles.

Our beloved Knarr:

Looking over all these numbers, the difficulty and resources required in-game seem to be somewhat blown out of proportion and purely exist for Wurm logic. But it's not unreasonable to argue, that it makes sense that they're similar in size, depending on what real ship exactly they're based off on.

So much for the artsy part, but there's still some technical difficulties that disturb me. The access points of the ships are very very... very... very very very very close to the commander's position. Though I can't even seem to be able to open a sailboat when I'm commanding a wagon. The option to open is just not there. Where am I in the game world that this doesn't work?

Please make it again, so you can open and interact with a ship's cargo from a farther distance <--- puppy face. It also stands to reason if the new positions need tweaking, because passengers block your view greatly sometimes.

Since I seem to have lost my red line I was following, I want to finish this for now with an outrageous suggestion.

Develop a more in-depth system for sailing. Starting maybe sometime towards the end of the year or early next year, after taking your time to fix many long standing bugs... as announced *wink wink*.

Take the ships, add some more, balance them in abilities, resources, and skill required. Give them one or more specialised traits out of a big bag of things, that a ship should be good at. Give them pros and cons, reasons to own or use a specific type of ship.

inb4 PvP tears.

Feel free to add your thoughts on the models, textures, and mechanics, what is inherently wrong and should be improved upon, or added, and so on. And of course, feel free to criticise my own thoughts.

Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/ (images and stuff)

Edited May 23, 2015 by Ulviirala

[Ulviirala 431]

• Dredging and dragging
• Boat madness, "Looking over all these numbers, the difficulty and resources required in-game seem to be somewhat blown out of proportion and purely exist for Wurm logic.", rebalancing with new system at least?
• Sailboats
• (otherwise reserved space)

Edited May 29, 2015 by Ulviirala

[Sarcaticous 338]

I think you've covered the subject quite well Ulviirala. Congratulations on your success at keeping a cool head while getting it all down. I would personally like to see the ships retain their historical sizes but that's just my opinion.

[Ulviirala 431]

I have just noticed, you don't see the mouse cursor in the first spoiler frame, I have now shop'd a red cross to where the mouse cursor was actually at. Or "fixed!".

I also realise that there will be a lot of people who will only read like two paragraphs or so saying, that overhauling sailing is completely useless and a waste of development time. It would be a really big feature for a big update, that's why I thought development should start only after many smaller and important things are fixed, as sailing isn't strictly "broken" right now, and thus don't need "fixing".

Edited May 23, 2015 by Ulviirala

[Fraeya 341]

I absolutely love the collision on boats, not beaching them when you are afk sailing across xanadu, the models however I'm really not keen on most of them.

 

The sailboat and rowboat look great, the knarr however is far too thin, more like a canoe with a sail. The corbita texture looks far too cartoony and round and the the cog far too cartoony, I don't mind the caravel but as Uviirala says it's not exactly a caravel historically speaking.

 

Loading to and from the larger boats also needs serious work, it seems the pickup distance was lowered so hunting in a corbita is out of the question it's almost impossible to pick up corpses while sailing it. 

 

I cannot speak for the other large ships but I imagine they are the same

[Mordraug 2,542]

Good start flipping the sail on the knarr to the right direction, could REALLY use a 30-45° twist though.

 

Another thing I've noticed on pretty much every sail, tied to the hull instead of having a boom (beam across the bottom) on the sailboat, try to picture swiveling them as you turn into or away from the wind ..ouch... (I know, animations don't swivel but immersion.. ouch too).

 

Assembling sailboats with triangular sails, one would think of this:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bd/Parts_of_sailboat.jpg

 

Square sail, here's a reference for what I think was the aim.  Some differences in the rigging once again.

http://www.engvig.com/pics/Rein-sail-SuisunBay_225x193-wtext_90.jpg

 

 

As for the "knarr" aka longboat.....  before we could sit I can kinda see the semi-parallel sail but now that we can sit,.... well... 

Google up "viking longboat" and other than a diagram or two, and a tiiiiny portion of images of those with wind to the *side*... 

http://www.historysourced.co.uk/media/catalog/product/cache/10/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/H/1/H191176_AK0333.jpg

(basically).  I picked this picture out specifically because of the slightly higher sail to keep wurmian visibility alive.

 

The other large ships can't say I've studied them in detail, always been a knarr man.. arr!!!!

[Tzaasi 12]

It took some time for me to put my finger on what seemed wrong with the cog and caravel. Other than the weird modeling and poop colored wood that is. Standing next to them, the scale of the portholes, cannon ports and doorways are way too small.. they look like they should be crewed by Lilliputians.

[Pandalet 1,848]

I have no real issue with the RL names being used for something a bit different in-game, or for a lack of historical accuracy.  Wurm isn't meant to be real, (insert "cos dragons" argument here), so although I can see how the pedantic might be irked by effective recycling of ship names, I don't think that's a huge problem.  I don't really like the new skins, as they're a bit cartoony, and just don't fit (cannon, etc), but again, that's a lesser gripe.

 

I do find the sizes problematic - the row boat and sail boat seem about right, but all the others just feel too small.  I guess that's a convenience thing, though, somewhat down to the limitations - it's already really awkward to load anything other than a knarr, so I guess a wider model would just make that even worse.  Perhaps the positioning and reach bugs could be sorted out before any more model changes?

 

The things that really bug me are the sail on the knarr, and the way the sails on the caravel are always at full pull, even when the boat is moored.  I keep expecting untended boats to suddenly skew around and crash into the nearest land because some idiot left thier sails up after dropping anchor.

[Mordraug 2,542]

*Shameless bump due to running low on bleach for eyes*

[Ulviirala 431]

I will assume that it takes a bit of time for discussion and all, before forming an official statement. Wouldn't want anybody on their own running their mouth, being misunderstood as promises or something. It's easy enough for us to make demands and point fingers at things we think need looking at.

Edited May 27, 2015 by Ulviirala

[Mordraug 2,542]

Bump's more about people adding ideas.  So far so good, this thread.

 

Hooray for free bump again! ;-P   Previous thread has its value, derail and all as it has plenty of screenshots to point out what went so horribly.. horribly wrong.

 

That said.... New rowing boat's nice and all, but bringing back the old one would be nice so that we can shake the old "sailboat is a rowing boat with a mast" effect.  Dimensions would be more fitting to the passenger maximums too, and old rowing boat did shine for its minimalist "less is more" look.

Edited May 27, 2015 by Mordraug

[Torgrim 403]

Put someone who actually knows what he/she is doing on the job of making new ship models and textures. Should solve this issue. 

 

As it is now it can't stay, I don't like boats any more. We need more roads!

[Mordraug 2,542]

No need to go that expensive, I'm sure some basic googling would show a few nautical forums online where we and/or devs can check with more knowledgeable people for stuff like "do these ropes make sense?".

[Torgrim 403]

I don't think it is that important to get things to make sense as long as it looks good  What I meant was someone who is good at 3D graphics design.

[Jaz 2,666]

Just had to load a few crates to a caravel. Took a lot of time, needed 3 toons as commander simply was too far to anywhere. 3rd passenger could load, jumping after each crate into the water to select next crate then back on and load from select bar. Ridiculous.

[Jaz 2,666]

Just realized the knarr model is mirrored now so the sails are forward from now on... thanks!!!

[Kianga 219]

Yes, just needs someone now to change the text about the position of the steeringrudder in the wiki - its not starboard anymore   Clever change.

[Mordraug 2,542]

Aaaaand /BUMP