[Ships] Famous Ship You'd like to play

[Ekarlath]

Hey everyone.

I’m currently working on a custom scenario featuring rpg style naval gameplay, and while doing that I’m working on custom graphics for it.

So actually I made kind of Corvet, Frigate and Man-o-War that are already well looking in the game. I’m planning to do Xebec and Genoese galley style ships, but I wanted to know what famous ship type you’d wish to see in a naval scenario featuring Piracy accross ages.

Here is a sneak peak at the current three mentioned ships:

My goal is to keep their visual look close to vanilla, rather than doing “realistic models”. I’m aware the name I took are not accurate for the sail plan used nor the hull type,I’m not making a naval accurate simulation conversion, just having fun with the game.

I’m gonna use the current available sails to represent some specific ships, the Xebec for example will use Triangular sail-set, Ketch will have “Not-accurate” sail shapes but recognizable enought for people to understand what they’re using.
One note, I’m not making 3d models, just doing image editing taking game file and combining them together, so actually shadows are wrong, but someday I’ll polish them.

So about the scenario project, idea is you play pirates ships through time, from Bronze Age Sea-People raiding over Egypt to Golden age of Pirates in Caribbean, with Ilyrian Piracy against rome, and Crusader fleets roaming on the sea etc, and of course, Vikings, we can’t do naval things without vikings.
The map I’m gonna use does not feature indian ocean / asian waters / pacific, so I’ll probably keep them for a second shot of my project, depending on how people likes it or not. But still, I may use some exotic ships for traders and narative so let me know what ship types you’d wish to see/play in a pirate dedicated scenario and I’ll try do my best to make them.

[Ekarlath]

Reaching Genoese Galley final design style, I share here Crovet and Frigate for you to see where I go with my ideas.

I plan to share them as standalone mods too once all I want to create is ready.

[Mahazona]

Great to see copy paste units making a comeback.

[Ekarlath]

Sadly it will only be for buildings and ships. Except for some units that share same animation skeleton, I already saw few that can be eventually mixed.

As in 2017, I’ve always loved combining game assets together, I’ll share some of my founds in the coming month.

Genoese Galley sprite done, going to do ingame tests.

[Ekarlath]

Crusade Cog and “Ketch” (more a Sloop infact) done.

Rest of ships I plan will be directly made via regular vanilla sail replacement instead of slp moded file.

But if anyone has specific ships they wish to see in a pirate style gameplay, let me know and I’ll see what I can do.

[Mahazona]

War junks would be interesting to see.

[Ekarlath]

Can you provide illustration for it ? My knowledge of junk type ship is lacky.

[Ekarlath]

So you said Junk ? Still a WIP but idea is there.

Also here are wew new models and variantes too.

Mano-War normal variant, as opposed to the already done elite variant:

Bermuda Sloop model:

And work begun on the Polacre / Xebec hull type, base idea is ready, just have to finish the work on it tomorrow and pick correct sails types.

[Mahazona]

@Ekarlath

Polacre / Xebec hull

I really like this model.

[Ekarlath]

Me too, I tested randomly combining rear of an heavy demo ship with a war galley, and that’s how it started. The way it extend the deck is pretty cool.

[Ekarlath]

Xebec model tends to be more complicated as I expected, as it’s a smaller version of the Polacre style shape, I’m searching ideas to make it look good.

For now, here are new models, first the Polacre

Then a basic Bark style (even if sails are wrong and hull too, it’s “kind of”)

And finally, early work on a long merchand ship style, will probably be a whaler ship, Brig hull type (also wrongly named, but it’s not important at that moment)

I’ll probably do variants with alternates aft shapes for both Bark and the Brig, in additions to the one shown above.

I’m also planning to do Ship of the Line First and Second rank models using Hussite-Wagon guns and Turtle-Ship guns for the broadsides on a Man-o-war/elite-man-o-war base hull type.

I’m still not sure about gun decks on broadsides, as a ship with them on the model would technically needs to have guns, while models without guns are more “generic” and can be used for multi purpose. Feel free to give me your thought about that specific matter.

Few variation idea on the brig hull type:

Finalized work on the Xebec type

[Ekarlath]

New models for today, some civilian ships.

Will be used to represent Whaler, “La Belle Poule” and “Le Gros Ventre” merchant type ships. The Whaler is going to be one of the many fishing ship upgrade type with fish gather nets.

“Le Gros Ventre” hull for the transport ship

“La Belle Poule” with rigging for the antiquity transport ship

And Whaler for fishing type ship

Gonna do few more models on the brig type hull for the elite versions with shiny quarterdecks.

I have about seven more slot to do other ship types models before I fill my graphics possibilities without using a datamod. I plan to do an intermediary fishing type ship, or making the nets animations not decided yet. A Fluyt ship is on the work, but nothing satisfying yet to show sadly.

I’m planning to rework my man-o-war and frigate line with formast using trebuchet arm so stay tune for more fancy details.

The scenario I’m gonna work on will be in the caribbean, if you want a specific type of ship to be in there that I’ve not already depicted, it’s time to say it before I fill my seven slots available.

[Mahazona]

Transport ship hull would look cool for a hulk if the back part is also put in front.

[Ekarlath]

Noted, will work on that. Crusader Hulk type ship is on my todolist but not specificly playable on the scenario I’ve mentionned, it will be on another one featuring mediteranean sea piracy during brone age / viking age / crusader era timeframe.

For now, my idea of using the heavy demo ship aft part in the fore part of the ship tend mode to a “junk style” hull shape, but with abit of fast-fire ship mixing, using its aft, it can result in a Forecastle type of european shape, it’s on the plane too.

[Ekarlath]

Added elite variant for two of the already done models on the brig type hull, and a small surprise not planned but the test I made led to a nice result so I made two “gunships”.

Elite Brig variations

Gunship

Elite Gunship

Gunship concept is that the caliber is smaller than the cannon galleon, and thips are meant for river navigation. The artillery may represent either mortar heavy caliber gun to besiege fortifications, or caronnade large caliber gun for close combat fighting. The ship will do less damage than a regular cannon galleon, but will move faster and projectiles will move faster (as they represent later period shiups, so guns are also better)

I may have found a way to do my Fluyt model, and probably also the biggest Ship of the Line models, stay tuned for more info about that coming later or another day.

[Ekarlath]

Still struggling on the Fluyt model, but found a pretty solid way to deal with the Ship of the Line model type.

Here is a preview of a 3rd rate type ship

For the cirous about how I achieved this. The spankers (triangles between masts) sails, I basically took the read navigation triangle sail from the previous rotation angle, and the previous previous rotation angles sails to fake the angles for this one.
The flags and poles on top of masts are frome the caravel.
And the frontal mast is just a trebuchet arm during its fire sequence.
Rear quarters is one normal canon galleon quarters, and under it the same but rescalled x1.25
And to avoid alien style shadows on the sails, I just removed the topsails shadows, it’s not perfect but it’s enought for me. One day maybe I’ll polish all this but for now I wanted to see how far I could go without spending hundred of hours working each model.

For the brig type model, I bascially used the fire ship hull, cutting it in the middle and combining with opposed rotation angle equally cutted half so I got the back from both angle, to have the light correctly rendering.

The wodden aft-castle style is bascially the heavy demo ship backpart, when I want it on the front, I just take opposed angle rotation of the heavy demo ship to transform from a rear to a front variation.

On the gunship, I used the base fire ship mirrored hull with a downscalled fore-part of the canon galeon downed to 800x800 starting from a layer of 1024x1024 I let you do the math if you want, I’m bad with math outside of using the calculator.

So coming next, what I’m doing on the Ship of the Line model type ported to the Brig type model to make some Sleek Frigates, and last will be the Fluyt, which might end up beeing just a “less mast” variation of the ship of the line model if I’m not able to find a way to deal it.

The turtle-ship broadside idea is not satisfying enought, so I’ll probably try for the final attempt the hussite wagon broadsides on the ship of the line onces the regular and elite versions are done. If the hussite wagon broadside is concluant, I’ll do a brig-type variation with guns, and probably all other models too will have a variation with guns, which could eventually be the “attack” graphic but I’ll be limited on the amount of ship I can represent that without datamod. A datamod is on the plan too, depending how well the gameplay is liked, but for now, I’m returning to Gimp to finalize the SotL.

A small preview of the 2nd rate first attemp using Hussite Waggon cannon as broadside:

[Mahazona]

These are coming out great.Are the hulls separate form the sails or are they all pasted together?

[Ekarlath]

Each ship is actually on a separated .xcf gimp file with angles and all element of the angle separated.
Each mast / sail / spanker are separated from each other in the file, even flags are separated.

I’m planning to do a Datamod version where sails are purely age2 ship-style driven with special sails rigging with one hull file, fire graphics, etc etc…

So I can easily provide hull separated variant too, it’s planned for mod release.

[Mahazona]

Indian pirate ship looks like a modified dhow.

Bawarij

[Ekarlath]

@Mahazona

Indian pirate ship looks like a modified dhow.

Looks abit like a Xebec to me, but I take note of that.

About current progression of models, First Rate are on the work, small preview:

I also may have found adecent way to do my Fluyt models, will try my idea after First Rates are done, and eventually Second rates.

I’m also working on the thing you’ve asked Mahazona, with the heavy demo ship aft used on the front, will probably be for spanish warship type, will show progress once I have something to viable.