[Ships] Famous Ship You'd like to play

Added abit of distinction to the First-Rate model type, with frontal and aft flags for them to be “abit recognizable” ingame during gameplay. Also the mast count can help, but as the Second Rate model will have nearly similar rigging, well for now flags are my only choice.

Here you can see my four latest models: First-Rate, Elite First-Rate, Third-Rate, Elite-Third Rate.

Will do the Second-Rate tomorrow, and eventually work on the Fourth-Rate.

Things are coming very nice on my scenario editor, tons of ships, and lots of ideas in my head. Soon I’ll start working on the core gameplay of that project, and you’ll discover it once it’s released.

I think its a version of that.might be useful if you are planning a whole line of dhow ships.

I’m considering it, but I actually do not see how to make the Dhow hull type. Maybe mixing light demo ship and galley hull together. I’ll try that.

I’ve made a special “spanish galleon” like model, and also finalized First-Second-Third-Fourth rank battle ships.

Here are the previews, still not done with the Flyut, but I see the sun on the horizon, soontm









As battleships are basically very similar ships but with heavier loadout and different topspeed, their models are pretty similar. I’ve made few distinctive details, like flags counts, sails counts, etc so visually player will be able to recognize a minimum what ship it is before clicking on it. Those ships represent equivalent of “imperial age” toptier full searched ships so it makes sens they do not have as much variants as castle/feudal age ships logic.

I’m considering modifying at least on of the sailset available in the same to make them usable on other hulls, not totally sure about it, as without a datamod it’s very limited and then with a datamod no need to replace an existing set so the dilem is there. For now I’m still thinking about it, will probably choose that point after that damn flyut matter is solved.

I named the latest model I’ve made “revenge”, as a reference to blackbeard ship, but the model is closer to the disney movie ship model (which is a recycle of the black pearl) rather than the real revenge that was more of a frigate than a galleon. Codename won’t be real name ingame, it’s juste naming convention for my brain.

I plan to have ships occuring in the scenarios from few famous captain, the Scarborrow, the Revenge, the Wyda, and maybe even the HMS victory and a Flying Dutchman ? What about a ironclad steamer ? I’m pretty sure I can achieve that using blacksmith cheminee and smoke plus gimp masking method to make things metalics. Maybe I’ll dive on that when I’ll reach the us revolution timestamp in my scenarios, we’ll see. Main issue with a steamer ship is that I don’t have 16angles watermill models to exploit, but I might use some cart wheels, we’ll see at that moment.

Bonus ship preview, HMS Victory type ship:

I like this a lot.some images do feel a bit blurry.

Some are from the SMXworkshop, some are from Gimp, dark green background is smxworkshop while light green background is gimp so yeah it’s not as it look ingame.
For some reason, smxworkshop transform the shadow on prewview. But also some part of the models are upscaled / downscaled abit, so some part may be “less clean”. Maybe one day I’ll rework all pixel per pixel, but not today I’m too lazy for that.

I’m soon gonna start work on the real gameplay, here are some ideas I’m gonna use.


-Boarding Ship Logic-

Instead of using the actual boarding ships within the dataset, that would requieres a custom datamod for the scenario trigger to be able to target them, I’m gonna “fake” the mechanics using seven things:

  • Ghulam “frontal” area effect mechanic, so damage are only done in front of the shop that board the other.
  • Conversion Task, capturing a ship is just changing its team so conversion task.
  • Aura task, affecting only ennemy, on a small radius, multiplying their movement speed by 0.01 to make them “very slow”.
  • Ratha “switch weapon” mechanic, to swap from ranged attck and boarding melee attack, to represent cannon fight / boarding fight.
  • Looting task, granting gold on kill, or other resources, I can fitler what unit drop what.
  • Ram “speed-garrison”, those ship for the boarding mod will probably be some modified rams that will have their top speed increased by the amount of sailors carried.
  • Garisson task, allowing units to board those units, even if they are not able to from the start.

It won’t be perfect, but it will be enought, I hope, to represent piracy boarding.


-Broadside Battery Ship Logic-

So here I’m gonna do a funny trick, there is a cool unit in the game that absorbe damage passing over its hitbox, the Hussite Wagon. But the cool thing is not that, it’s how this unit attacks. It’s the only unit that can attack 360° without changing its rotation angle, so it can make a ship attacking with broadside guns, left-right-front-back facing ennemy. This will be used for the heavy gun loaded ships, Frigates and Battleships.
The main restriction here is that there is only the Hussite and the Elite Hussite Wagons able to fight like that, so two unit per player. For the player, I can use tricks with triggers to allow multiple variations of the same unit for the stats, but for the IA, it will be harder to allow them multiple battleship types.
My key idea for those ships is that they could fire either all at once for battle drilled crew or chaotic gun shots for non-battle-drilled crew, to “fake” the idea I’ll be using six things:

  • Kipchak “bulk volley”, the current parameter on the Hussite Wagon fires all at once.
  • Chukonu “sequence shot”, as it behaved originally, Hussite Wagon used to fire in a sequence.
  • Ratha “switch weapon” mechanic, to swap from all-gun “kipchak bulk” volley to gun-by-gun “chukonu sequence”, for crew able to fight in the two way, the all-gun will reload faster but may be doing more miss shots, while the gun-by-gun will be longer to reload but more accurate shots.
  • Scorpion Projectile “pass-through”, I have to test it, but I think I can give any projectile the same behavior as the scorpion one, by altering the attribute of the projectile rather than the unit firing it to have it passing through units in a line.
  • Castle/Forum “garrison projectile”, I have to test that too, but I think I can increase the number of secondary projectile shot by the unit garissoned inside.
  • Garison task, allowing those untis to transport sailors, will have to make tests to see how balance it corectly.

For a balance matter, I won’t give the heavy battle ships “100 gun” capability…Because they would be able to fight front, back, left, and right with all their 100 projectiles and it will not be good. In constrast to the boarding ship, which will have speed increase based on the sailors amount, this ship will have firepower increase based on the sailors amount.


-Fishing Ships Logic-

I plan to give the fishing a funny gameplay, using the oysters and others things, maybe shipwreck gathering, it’s still blurry in my mind but I’ll test ideas once I have them. Nothing realy huge to say about those ships, they will follow the basic fishing ships mechancis, maybe having ratha like swaping capability to have abit of combat capability, all depend if I can give those ships combat capability without swaping or not.


-Merchant Ship Logic-

Flyut, flyut, flyut… Basically, trading gameplay, will more be based on quests and economy than real gameplay mechancis, nothing very special to say about them for now.


-Raft Logic-

I’m gonna try one idea, when you ship sink, survivor will spawn on a raft and you’ll have to reach an island asap to survive and continue the fight. I’m not decided yet on how I’ll manage the food consumption, but it’s more gonna by trigger logic than gameplay logic. The idea is mainly to avoid the simple “oh you’re dead, defeat” and focus on the idea of, sometime risk are worth the try, while sometime you’ll have to restart from nothing cause you were too greedy.


-Treasure Logic-

I’m gonny try modifying resource like bush, gold, stone, to have them droping a chest that provide gold on pick up using let’s say villager. It’s more of a ground gameplay than a ship gameplay, but with oyster and fishing ship, it might be a ship logic too.


That’s bascially where I’m going too from now on, with sail color changing when you decide to become privateer for spain or france, and I’ll probably go silent for sometime as the ship models work is pretty done and now it’s gameplay and then releasing the mod.
Once the mod is released, I’ll probably start a new topic about the naval logic I’m gonna use on multiple scenarios with the same balancing ideas.

First scenario will take place in the Carribean, on a map that some may find familiar. (I’ve contacted the author to have authorization to reuse his work already ^^)

Just to share for the curious, here is what I’m doing with my “revenge” model.


Basically, I improved the model by adding a frontal part for it to look abit more like spanish ships.
And here is how I did it.
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  • Purple: rear of a turtle ship opposed rotation from the ship facing -1 angle to have the wanted angle
  • Cyan: rear of a turtle ship opposed rotation from the ship facing
  • Red: rear of an heavy demo ship opposed rotation from the ship facing, downscalled by 25%
  • Green: rear of an heavy demo ship downscalled by 25%
  • Blue: rear of an heavy demo ship
  • Yellow: Trebuchet arm from attack animation of opposed rotation from the ship facing, downscalled by 50%

This hull type is brute for the moment, I’ve not spent time to polish the decks overlaping for now but I plan to, you can still see the galleon frontal ballista if you pay attention, but can remove that by just duplicating the layer and delete unwanted part from the base hull.

I’ve also made a special layer for the whiteish anchor thing to be above the frontal hdemo “castle” and the turtle ship thing on the front.
But as you can see, my additive details have no shadows, that’s my method weakness cas it’s pure 2D work. With 3D model it would be possible to cast shadows. Doing models is easy, from a 2D base to a 3D model it’s not that hard, but then texturing it correctly to match AoE2 style is the hard part and is why I’ve choosen 2D working.

But I have to recognize I’m using gimp since long time so things that seems easy for me can be hard for someone else.
If any of you is curious about how I did one model or the, just ask and I’ll share with pleasure.


“Revenge” model rework to be more spanish galleon type


“Santa Ana” heavy spanish war galleon model type


“Victory” type flagship model


“Elite Victory” type flagship model


Semi Failed attempt of a fluyt, codename “fluyt-revenge” model type


“Kraken” hull type, with an AoE3 galleon vibe

“Viper” model type, this one will be a strong opponent to face

“Brigantine” model type, unaccurate hull, unaccurate sail, but the idea is there

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Carrack and Galleass would be some cool ships to see

Carrack is on my todolist, and Galeass too, do you have illustration to provide ? That will spare me time.

I will probably work on them when I’ll do the mediterranean crusader time mission, or when I got ideas for it, depends on the inspiration.

You already made a galleass model earlier,just modify it a bit.

Technically, I made a genoese “galley”, the galleas seems to have that round forecastle thing, and also three mast rather than two.

I got an idea about making the oars better using some ballista parts from the frontal weaponry of the galley-line ships so I’ll use that on the Galleass model to have a “bigger” ship, and also using other oars. Could serve to reskin galley and war galley on some scenario.

New model done for the Sleek Frigate, with an “early” type, as 17th century version, and normal / elite as 18th century version.



I will eventually do a ketch type sail combining afri rear sail with RoR fishing ship sail one day, but for now I’m not confident enought on the mast and rope models I’ll use to fill gaps in the rotation.

The gameplay logic is starting to take shape, still need more testing but some cool features are already on the paper.

Bonus ship type “Pearl”

Bonus preview “Ketch sail” type


Using Ceas sails and Meso sails combo, it’s a lot of work, but it’s viable, I’ll probably do that one day to have a set of ketch type sail, but sadly, without shadow.

Gonna take a break on the model making for now, but I still got ideas on my head, using inverted hulls for demo ship, heavy demo ship, galley, etc. But for now I got nearly all what I wanted, except the Schooner model and real Ketch model which both requieres the “Ketch-Sail” model. I’ll do the sails one day, but not now, it needs way too much work and I’m not in the mood for it yet.

But today, I have a bonus preview to show, let me know if you recognize it.


Currently working on a Schooner type hull and Ketch sails. The hull is ready, the sails are still in progress, but here is a preview.

The sails will also be used to make a real Ketch model after I’ve completed the sail set. But sadly, once more, no sahadow with those sails.

About the hull, it’s a combo of multiple assets:

  • frontal ram, from Dromon
  • base hull, demo ship
  • central part of the deck, fast-fire ship deck
  • aft-castle, heavy demo ship downscalled to 75% of original size
  • deck under the aft-castle, base section of the siege tower.

I’ve also used a dark mask to make the added parts look less artificial. Next hull will be based on the same logic with an alternate deck using another ship deck, with base hull from the Galley. I’ll probably combine the Galley with the Demo Raft deck to make the next “ketch” type hull.


Three days of working and nine attempt, but finally, here is the result for the Ketch Sails on the Schonner hull type.


I’ve tested the idea of using galley hull for the ketch, the frontal ballista create too much trouble for the result it would achieve, so I’ve decided to upscale by 25% the base schooner for it to be bigger, and kept the base scale to make the Schooner-Ketch type hull.


And here is a preview of them ingame


(They are on the Battering Ram and Capped Ram, that’s why the preview is on grass instead of water)

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And here is another new ship on the previous models base hull, the Snow type.

I’m probably done for models at this point, will do new one when I got ideas coming, and I plan to polish the first post of this topic to showcase all models in it with spoilers sections etc.


Bonus Previews of things I’ve also been working on

Chained Shot:

Giant Bombard:


Arquebusier:

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If you plan to make units why not try something simple like re coloring certain parts of a unit to look different.copy pasting thousands of frames is no easy task.

Because copy pasting parts of unit above other is way easier than recoloring ahaha.

And yes, that’s also why the arquebusier is a side project, very long term project, will work slowly on it and one day I’ll publish it ready.

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No concret new models, just some hulls put under vanilla ships, such as transport ship, fast-fire ship, trade cog that you can eventually recognize on those showcase:



You can recognize unique ships with their sails, basically when the sail pattern is not the same as the vanilla of that same team color, it’s a unique model.
I got actually a total of approximatly 35 unique models, and few vanilla hull modified models that have changing sails depending on the civ.

I’ve started to work on the models > units > balance schematic while the map is going well, thanks to the original author of the map I’m using.

Once more I’m gonna go abit silent here as I’m not working on new models for now, but when I’ll do new ships I’ll post here for sure. I plan to do polish update of all models I’ve made through time but for now I’m on the gameplay design phase.

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Hey, today, while I’m preparing to try another attempt of making a “Fluyt” type hull, I’m putting there a poll about what you’d prefer to have in the futur modpack I’m planning. It’s not gonna be a Datamod, purely a graphical/audio/scenario/ui mod with at least one custom scenario (maybe a second for the tutorial) centered on, you guessed it, honey bees…Wait, Piracy !

So here is what I’m bringing to you, actually I have about 35 unique ship models, but about 1/3 is “early” ships (16th) where the 2/3 left is basically the same ships but in two version, normal and elite version (with wood/gold trims as the canon galleon and elite cannon galleon features in the game). Many units I’ve used have idle / walk / attack graphics available, attack usually include a sound so I won’t really alter them, but walk could be use to, let’s say, double the amount of sprites availables.
For example if I put a Firgate ship on the Lembos Idle, I can put a Cutter ship on the Lembos walk. But going that way, outside of a scenario including triggers / XS scripts, well when you start moving you’ll see weird things happenning. On long term I’ll publish all my work on multiples mods, unique ship reskin, pack ships, etc, but for the start I’m gonna only go for one modpack about my scenario.

So the question here is more for the other modders than for the players, but players can also answer as well because infact, the two options makes the total amount of ships available differente. So give me your opinion on what you think would be the best. (remember also that more total sprites mean also more sail pattern possible, so then in gameplay, more options available)

  • Less total ships in the modpack, idle/walk/attack animations ready to be used without trigger/XS edit outside of my scenario.
  • More total ships in the modpack, idle animation ready, wlak & attack used for altennative sprites (refit / elite( but requiering trigger/XS edit of units to become fully operational outside of my scenario.
0 voters

And now, time to go to my new Flyut attempt.


So finally I made a satisfaying enought fluyt style model, not perfect, but better than my other attempt