Hey guys!

I'm working on a naval simulator as a hobby project in my spare time, and I wonder if there is an interest to get updates on the project here?

I've been working on it for a year and a half by myself with my amature programming and modelling skills, but with plenty of passion!
Take a look at the last video or read my threads at subsim and let me know if I should update you guys here aswell!

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=228033

There is also a simple prototype demo up on subsim, not really a game just a simple concept test.
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=236493

All the best!
/Bracer

Interesting it reminds me of the virtual dreadnought project from aways back. Good luck to you on this, and I'll follow along on subsim.

-Jenrick

Hey!
Yeah, the dreadnought project has been an inspiration for sure.
Wonder if they are still working on it?
See you on Subsim then!
Cheers

Interesting work Bracer, please keep posting updates to SimHQ's community
All the best to your project.

Cheers

Will do Trindade!
Thanks!

Cheers

Hey guys!

Here's a new shot of a Nelson-class battleship ingame!
Still a work in progress model, need some more superstructure and detailed textures.



Edit: P.S More updates here: https://www.patreon.com/battleshipcommand

Very cool. It must be fatiguing but a joy to see and be inside a virtual world you've created as it comes together. Thanks for the update. More Naval stuff around here is a good thing. Good luck with your project Bracer.

That looks great Bracer, I can't wait to be able to walk up and down a battleship, let alone control it!

Thanks guys! Yes, Coot, it's indeed slowly progressing when only working on it in my spare time.
But it is quite enjoyable in its current state, so even I as the developer get a kick out of sinking a few cruisers and tankers from 20km distance.

Keep up the good work Bracer!

I have set up a webpage for some more nerdy discussions regarding the technical aspects of the Scharnhorst class.
Welcome to join in and comment there if you have gameplay requests or want to talk battleships. It is not a forum, but you can comment on various blogposts to discuss.
https://battleshipcommand.wordpress.com/

I finally managed to add some smooth shading to the engine!
And a uboat!




Support the project at: https://www.patreon.com/battleshipcommand

Thanks Bracer, keep the updates coming, it's looking good!

They're some big guns!

Thanks Friday!
Indeed big guns, it's on the Nelson class.

Now I'm preparing to start modelling the main attraction, Scharnhorst!
I've managed to get my hands on some nice plans of both the interior and exterior (Big thanks to my supporters on Patreon and PayPal!!).
So I'm ready and excited about finally modelling my favourite ship!

A first test ingame with the new model in its current state!
She looks great even though she is unfinished and untextured:



Cannot wait to get the guns and controls working on the new model!

Nice job Bracer, keep the good work

Hi guys!
I've compiled a simple navigation trial/demo for my patreons and backers to test.

I thought you might be interested in seeing the tutorial video for it, it shows a little of the new model ingame, flak guns and a new water shader.

Here's a little update!
Pardon my english and the mumbling. If you have any questions about what I explain, please ask and I will clearify!



Cheers!

Hey!

Here's a few new screenshots!

Coming along nicely!

Just noticed, you're doing Gneisenau ATM, rather than Scharnhorst. And I suspect that by the time they had the taller foretop, both would have lost the cross-turret rangefinder on turret Anton, as had Bismarck by the time of her Atlantic sortie. Anyhow keep up the good work, Destroyer Command with better graphics and 11-inch guns is my idea of a good buy, when the time comes.

Thanks for the comments!

Well spotted 33lima! Yes, I used Gneisenau for the base model, while other parts are based on Scharnhorst.
I decided to go fictional and make it a third Scharnhorst class ship for various reasons.
But in any case the rangefinder on Anton should be removed, because this ship would have the same issues.

And beacuse of the lack of reference photos, sadly, the boiler room is actually based on Prinz Eugen from which I have more photos of the boiler room. 😀

A few screens from a session where I let a Town-class cruiser sink my ship.
Most of the shells seems to just bounce off the armor, but eventually she sinks me.

A few new screens!

Hey everyone!

I just released a small tech demo!


You can grab it at the Subsim forums here: https://www.subsim.com/radioroom/forumdisplay.php?f=319

Cheers

interesting - i will have to look for the pics of scharnhorst without the rangefinder for my art references. May i just ask what is the "foretop" referring to

If you look at the director control tower just ahead of the foremast, it has an oildrum-like extension that is not there in this early pic of Gneisenau...



...but is there in this later pic, which looks to have the director turned aft, possibly to protect the 'matress' radar antenna.



I suspect the extension was to accommodate the radar operators for the later radar fit (Seetakt?). IIRC a hit here on Scharnhorst's similar foretop put her radar out of action at a critical point in the Battle of the North Cape.

This is Atlantic Fleet's Scharnhorst with the foretop director trained forward and (lower pic) to starboard with the main armament. It retains the rangefinder on turret Anton, which was at some point (as on Bismarck) removed and plated over as even with the 'Altlantic bows' fitted, these ships were fairly wet forward and spray inhibited the usefulness of that rangefinder. So I believe.

Hey!

I am currently improving the water, below you can see the result so far.
Finally I have some reflections on the water aswell, which makes a big difference since the actual skycolor is reflected in the water.

Some new FX in the works.

Here you can see a few more updates from the graphics department!

Wow, this looks incredible! Quite a few of my friends are into battleships, I'll be sure to share this with them.

Thanks!

I have made a new PR video!

Keep up the good work, that looks very interesting.
I have wanted a proper surface Combat sim in the WW2 era for a long time. Something more realistic than WoWs, and the only thing we got as naval Sims are U-Boot sims.

Problem is, I'm hopeless with Torps.........but hand me a naval gun and I can raise some hell!

Back when we tried to play SH3 my friends jokingly called me "Deck gun Wolf" due to an incident where I was so frustrated with the Torps, that I surfaced and shot up a few ships that way, and while doing that engaged in a gun battle with a Destroyer and Won!

We always joked that I should get the Bismarck and they would attach as a small U-Boot flotilla!

So they attack a convoy hook the Destroyers and I come steaming over the Horizon to blast them out of the water!

Or vice versa with Warhships......I bait them, lead them to the waiting U-boots and then we all sink them!

Thanks! I am glad you like it!
Currently my Patreons and supporters are testing the upcoming demo, so if there is no problems or too bad bugs, then you'll soon be able to try it.

Cheers

Hi everyone!

It is time for a new little demo to show you the progress of Battleship Command!
In this demo you can test your skills in handling a battleship in 5 different scenarios and get a feel for what I am working on.
It is still rather (mildly speaking) unpolished and will require some time to get used to for the user.
So do not expect a finished game, but rather a sneak peek into the hobby project of an amatuer programmer/battleship enthusiast

Be sure to check the manual on how to fire the guns at your target correctly!
Press F1 key for help while ingame.
There is no mission endings, simply press ESC when you are finished playing.
The M-key and the map is curretly disabled...

You can download it here: obsolete... Please wait for demo 3.0



Next I am going to work on adding:
-Friendly AI, for bigger battles and more strategy
-Mission editor
-Airplanes
-Damage management
-AI crew, helping you with guns/navigation/damage reports
-Terrain and a map view
-User interface


Cheers!

Hello Bracer, did a first test run of it, so far it's really fun, especially getting those guns on target and walking around on the Bridge and surroundings.

Figuring out the correct solution for the guns can be quite a challenge, with sometimes significant difference to the appearance in the stereoscopic rangefinder.
Also like that he faster you go the more the ship "rattles" and the overall pitch and yaw.
At what resolution is the demo running?

And is it just me, or is only the Top Rangefinder target stabilized? Could've turned off something by accident though.
Turning off the stabilizer on the Top one at maximum zoom was quite an experience.....

Hi Polarwolf!

I am happy to hear you had a good time!!
Yes, it's quite complex and the UI is unpolished, so it can be hard to figure out how it all works at the moment.
Did you check the manual? It is also rather thin at the moment.
I guess the most important thing to understand is that there is three gundirectors with a fire solution computer each.
So when you swap between the directors, you also swap computer.
Have you tried using the radar in the fire director? It helps alot in finding the distance to the target, but it's instead hard to find a pip sometimes.

The stabilizer should work on all the directors. Did you take any hits that might have damaged the stabilizer? But then all of them would have stopped working.

The demo is built around 1920x1080. Which resolution are you running? It should scale fairly good, I've tried on a laptop aswell.

Cheers!

Hey!

My GPU melted recently, so I had to use an old card which made it hard to work on the 3d world stuff for a while.
But now I have my new card installed so I can show some progress again.

I am testing different ways of implementing terrain.
And now I've found a nice way to render all of Europes land masses in a rough way.
Terrain will have very little purpose/priority in BCS but it's still nice to have.
Now I just need to sync it with the ingame map so I can start creating convoy routes in the north Atlantic.

Hey!

Here's a quick and temporary fix for those who gets an error message about the OceanShader on mission load. It removes the 3d waves, because the shader code was not accepted on Radeon cards. Atleast that's what I think is the problem.
Download the zip and extract the exe into the Battleship Command folder, and then launch the sim from the new exe.

This is for the public version:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/bnn2j0ly1vi6wc4/BattleshipCommand_LightHotFix.zip?dl=0

Supporter version:
https://www.patreon.com/battleshipcommand

Let me know if it works! And I'll get to work on adding back the waves for Radeon cards.
Sorry about the inconvenience.

The ingame map is finally in sync with the terrain and I started to create a mission with randomly spawned ships randomly chosing between hundreds of routes.
Time to switch on the radars and hunt tonage until the fuel bunkers are dry...

Time compression has taken some time to implement since there is so many things affected by it.
All the AI's movements needs to be compressed, all the Scharnhorst boiler and turbine actions as well as the steering and calculations of headings towards waypoints.
A big problem was that when compressing time, the ship was steering too hard and the violent rudder action prevented the ships to gain a straight and steady course.
But it looks like I've solved those issues now!
The terrain generation is not very pretty at the moment.
But what a joy to be able to take a trip through the channel!

Time for a new video of the current progress!
A new demo is in the final stages.



Cheers!

Looking good Bracer, how in depth is the damage model, will I damage important parts of the ships with good hits?

Thanks Friday!
The damage model is not yet where I want it. But for now it is fairly advanced for the player ship, but not for the AI ships.
A simple explanation is that the AI takes random damage, and the hits does not affect their systems. Yet.
But the player ship can have alot of systems affected depending on where you get hit.
The guns start to move slower, and reload slower when they take damage.
Flooding happens in the compartment that got hit if armour is penetrated or broken.
Boilers, turbines and shafts can get hit, which affect speed.
Travel with a damaged shaft and your turbine will start to take damage.
Rudder can get damaged and can get locked or have reduced turnangle.

This system still needs some work and later be extended to the AI ships.

Thanks for the update Bracer, I hope the project goes well for you, I've been wanting something like this since playing Destroyer command all those years ago.

Hey!
It's been quite a procedure to port the project to Unity, but well worth the time invested. Here's a trailer showing off the new graphical features of Battleship Command!

Hey!
Look! I finally took the time to record some gameplay!
Alot is still wip, but it gives a general hint of where this project is heading.
Enjoy!

Coming along nicely!

Hey everyone!
Finally time for a little update.
I have been hard at work with the ai and various controlls for the ship.
More importantly I've reached some big milestones regarding time compression, handling abstractions of ai ships and a custom mission editor.
The time compression allows for having missions set over large distances, large distances means many ships needs to be simulated.
That's why I have implemented a way to simulate ships far away in an abstract manner, cheaply, so that I can have hundreds of ships travelling the Atlantic.
With this done, I could start on my mission editor. And you can see I've been busy playing with it.
And here's a long gameplay video for y'all:


https://youtu.be/4aM4ZvZUhGY

Cheers!

This is looking very good. You've come a long way since your original post back in 2018 considering it's a 'hobby project'.

Thanks!
Yes, it has been a looong process to get to this stage.
It really took off as I changed engine to Unity a year back.
So we will see, maybe it's about time to take it out of hobby state soon :-)
Cheers!

Sorry, I cannot manage to make the video embedded...
Don't know why it doesn't work this time.

The embedding function is no longer working/broken, it just leaves a link which is fine.

Just stumbled onto this thread.

Watched the video, and it's brilliant! Luv the fact that one can wander round on deck to various parts of the ship.

Gonna watch this development with great interest.

Hi everyone!

During early autumn I decided to tackle my old system for terrain generation which was rather slow and low resolution.
Instead of using Unitys built in terrains for rendering my heightdata I am now generating custom meshes where
I much easier can add some procedural noice to increase the terrain detail as well as higher resolution procedural textures.

The visuals, like the shader and textures still needs some love...
And also some variations in the different climate zones would be needed.

I also took the chance to develop a tree generation system for the new terrain. It's all very fast and
you can travel without any hickups at high time compression from Norway through the English channel down to Morocco.
With the new terrain generator in place, it's time to move on the another big project; getting the secondary guns working.
First step was to improve the models.
This is the SK C/28 guns in C/34 twin turrets. There was four of this twin turrets and four in single turrets.
This type of turret was developed from a cruiser turret, and for economic reasons they used the back plates from the old turrets.
Problem was that the new type of turret had different layout, so the door hatch in the back plate couldn't be used.
So they bolted it shut, placed a ladder on top of it and let the crew enter via the emergency roof hatch instead!

Cheers!

Looks great!