And updated version ready to be used ingame.
Next will be a real Galleass.
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Alright, finally I tested an idea that was supposed to be for a Xebec hull, but it’s not looking to a Xebec Hull so…
What type of ship you think could be relevant for this one:
The hull is a small one, shorter than the Fire-Ship, but longer than a Demo ship.
The reason why I’m hesitating about the latin-sail style of the Xebec is because it’s hiding the hull too much in my opinion as you con see on this screenshot:
Another reason is that, it’s looking a lot, with those sails, to the tier 2 galleass ship (just shorter hull, no oars, and the sides that are hidden by the sails currently)
So any suggestion is welcome.
I’ve tested the “sloop-of-war” approach, and it’s promising:
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To me this looks like a gally or cog type ship hull,might look better with the normal square sails,normal mean one sail not one atop the other.
I’m structuring my file a way I can easily activate / deactivate sails, but you’re right it’s looking cool with single-stage sails too.
But I got already enought medieval rigging (as in only one stage of sail) ships, this ship line will represent some golden age ships.
However, I can definitly provide many version of the ships for those interessed to have variants.
So finally here is what I picked for now:
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Here we go, it was long, but it’s done. I kept the arab sails because I think the galley-line style is more iconic using some full latin-riggin sails (and also because I’m lazzy ahaha).
I’ve put the two heavy galleass, one idle, one moving, next to the 4 galley type in iddle stance one the screenshot.
And bonus, audio record of those Heavy Galleass shooting in mortar style from their stern aft castle positions. (sound taken from “great bombard udh” mod)
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Looks great as always.
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Soon to be tested in a crash-test scenario. I’m still working on the concept, getting documentation on how to make things looking cool, but soon I’ll have one scenario playable.
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Been working on some colonial style walls today, not really ship related, but tied to the ship factory as it’s to represent cities in the caribbean / america.
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Porting the previous sloop-o-war hull improvement to the sleek frigate design, with sail walk/idle variations.
Will be the model for Arthemisia hero ship, while it’s non-elite version will be for the Trirem ship. Sloop-o-war will be on the Birem, and a smaller ship style on the Monorem, and not decided yet what to use on Themistocles, probably a variation of the sloop-o-war for it to look “epic”, maybe another attempt to do a xebec, or simply more sails on it.
Returning to the editing, got many ships to upgrade !
After abit of obervation, I decided to change abit the final design for the Sleek Frigate, I’ll recycle my bow design using carrack fore-castle for the next update of the Flyut, which will finally be as I wanted it to be.
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After hours of works on the hull and mast positioning, I decided that I will only use a double-sail layer on the front mast of the max-tier ship of this ship line. The goal is so the sail are different enought to be recognizable so the ship can be differencied from other ships, while keeping an overall design closer to vanilla / other custom ships.
So here is the finished hull design of the top-tier elite variant of the Sleek Frigate.
The front spanker will be the main component to recognize them, while the double-layer front-sails are to recognize the “elite” state of the ship.
More upgraded ships to come soon, and … Maybe a preview of the new Flyut design ?
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Looking good,is the mod out yet?
Not yet, I’m still working on assets for now, and also playing with mechanics all arround.
I got some pretty interesting mechanics ready, some already prepared in XS setup, but the mod will come probably first featured in a Francis Drake campaign.
I may eventually release a lighter version to play-test the naval ideas on a rpg-ish naval based scenario.
But for now, I’m still polishing my models before publishing anything. (I’ll publish the models before the mod itself, I mean the one with the gameplay)
I’m waiting abit more, cause I’m running out of ships object to reskin. If they’re adding a viking dlc, they’re definitly gonna add new ships so I’m looking forward for them !
Until that, I still got few ships to finish, and my culverin too. The next ship I’m gonna polish are the one to replace Birem, Monorem and Themistocles warship, which will be on the same ship line as the Frigate I just made.
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Here we go, the monorem-line replacement is close to completion, maybe some final details to be done, but the ship choices is this one, the top line of the screenshot:
Flyut next.
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I decided to keep this approach for the ships that I can animate so far, for two major reasons:
- Less work to do ( xD yes I’m a lazzy guy)
- Blend better with Vanilla ship style on the screen
I will still make some damn heavy sail pattern on few ships yet to be reworked, the Ship of the Line, while also including on this ship line design the two Battleships models done by Arin. Those SoL units will be on the antiquity galley line, as this unit line feature only one sprite per model so no animation of the sails (so I can do sail-heavy design more easily)
I’m gonna rework some of my galleon style models to use sails on the Leviathan, Alexander dlc Flagship, Catapult/Onager ships and also the Turtle-Ships that i’m finally gonna “sacrifice” due to the low amount of asian thematic things planned for my project. However, I hope the next dlc to be released will have new ship units so I can spare the Turtle Ships as I decided to spare the Longships because I need them for a stupid fantasy scenario idea about a ship going back through time fighting vikings. (yes, it’s Alestorm album inspired)
I choose to not use the chronicle siege-engine sprites to store more ship graphics because I want also to work on a RMS (Random-Map-Script) version of the project allowing to play with my gameplay ideas on online game outside of scripted scenarios so I need to avoid some strange behaiors by turning some land units into water sprites without heavy trigger based scenario.
I also don’t want to aim for something I cannot reach, as the project itselfe is already big, that’s why I’ve not released anything yet.
It will requiere lot of balancing for the new naval units dynamics to be good and fun, as I want to really add an immersive layer to the naval fights based on historical records of what ships were used to.
For example, low-deck galley type, with latin sails, will have a very good manoeuverability, slow ranged fire-rate, and strong melee capability.
They’re going to be countered by the “Tall-Ships”, designed to resist their boarding style using the very low deck height by using some kind of “walling” on the ships so they are tall enought for the boarding parties to fail to board them. Those Tall ships wil lbe the first related to historical ships of the line, while not able to shoot by the siede due to game limitation, so their fire-rate will be faster to simulate the amount of guns.
Then the Full-Rigged ships will be capable of out-manoeuvering the Tall-Ships due to their sail mechanicsm type, frigates, corvettes, brigs, sloops etc, strong in ranged fight and good in boarding parties but not as fast as an oar-galley ship that will again become a threat due to the low-deck profile. I’m still searching how to balance them, to avoid some gaps on countering, by using some hidden damage / armor types and eventually combat-abilities / stingers.
Then the Warships will be some slow, bulky ship types meant to be floating fortresses like the famous Galleass from the Holy League, or the Man-o-War, bringing an intense fire-power to the battlefield, but lacking manoeurability so they will have hard time escaping raiding parties.They will of course also resist the low-deck-profile type ships boarding parties, due to their high-decks constructions.
And last but not least, the Ship of the Lines which will jusrt be sea monsters, meant to rain down hell on anything coming on their fire-range. Sadly, I can’t use the Hussite-Wagon behavior on them, which would be enought to simulate broadsides by having the unit not rotating to shoot the ennemy. I can use that on custom-scnearios but only 2 ships per player, meaing it’s not viable to use in scenario feature large battles. I wish I could set the unit behavior in the Combat-Ability to the Hussite combat logic, and I’m definitly gonna ask the devs to do so, but until that, the Ships of the Line will be probably my hardest nightmare to make. I mean, not the models, but the gameplay of them. I’ll have to study even more the naval history to pick what they will be good at, because the “ships of the line” were not really a ship type but more of “payload”. You could think of it like the German High Velocity 88mm guns during WW2, it was more of a doctrina rather than a class of vehicle using them.
And as a bonus, the Demo-Ship line will probably be reworked to be a very unique style of ship made to capture ennemy ships by using the Ratha “weapon-swap” mechanics and reskinning the chronciles incendiary ships with the same graphics as the demo-ships so I can allow two behavior on the ship. One beeing the regular ranged + melee hooks, and the “boarding” mode where you trade the ranged attack by a conversion capability (as both mechanics are on the same atributes, I can’t give both, the ranged attack beeing the Charged projectile). Of course you guessed it, this ship line is meant for Pirates, but not just nassau pirates. Some of you may know a crazy captain named Thomas Cochrane, and if you do, then you definitly know where I go with thise idea.
I know there is some boarding ships in the client, but they are, how to say, not reliable yet, they can cause crashes or immobilize targets forever upon capturing, and they use hardcoded mechanics so I won’t rely on them.
I’m also dropping abit the idea of “Fire-Ships” (not the fire ship line, the historical suicidal ship sets on fire) idea because I don’t see yet how to make them properly. If I do them using the Chronicles Incendiary-ships, I’ll have to sacrifice the swap-combat mechanics on the raider ships. As I really want to feature a capturing mechanics, because it’s that mechanics in VnV Drake mission that inspired the entire project, I have to decide whatever i’m gonna sacrifice, the burning ships or the capturing ships. However, if they add enought new ships with the next vanilla dlc and the next chronicle dlc, I may be able to provide both ships to the game.
I could of course bypass those limitations by doing a Datamod, but then it would be way harder for me to maintain it up-to-date, and also remember I’m a lazy guy (yes I know, a lazy guy that edits 3 thousands frames, I know I’m a living paradox). But also Datamods are kinda nightmare to use, you can’t disable them to prevent their content to alter your game, so sounds / icons are definitly an issue on them. You also have to select the correct damn datamod everytime you want to play something in skirmish mod…That sounds way too complexe for me, a Solo-player, so I can’t imagine Online-players liking what I don’t in the way to start a game.
If I want to feature some skirmish type gameplay, it has to be simple to download, to setup, and to use. That’s why I’m taking the XS / RMS arppoach, also because it’s in my scope of knowledge.
My final goal is not to do “another game in the game”, but more of a “expended playstyle centered on a topic I love, the naval warfare !”
We’re already speaking, with Christophoros (aka BasedTeuton), on some campaigns / scenarios arround my naval project, so stay tuned for pretty cool things to be done soon™. I got no ETA, it’s gonna be available when it’s ready to be played, but I will definitly need some players to test my mechanics, due to my lack of knowledge of the online-play style. The solo play-tests will be the first to come, because it’s the easiest for me to produce, scripted things using XS and Triggers with AI (the ingames AI, not generative AI) to make that fun to play. Once the solo playtests will be good enought I’ll work on a skirmish playtesting for players to play against each other / team play etc, and then the real content will come, campaigns etc.
Naval warfare is really one of my hobby, back in 2019 I worked on a standalone naval game on UE4, learnt a lot about water dynamics, ships and physics principles I definitly don’t understand. I don’t aim for a realistic naval gameplay, it’s impossible in AoE2, and it’s not the point of AoE2 either.
So that’s the current status of the project, with few hidden things that I’m keeping on the shadow, and I’m already excited to be able to finally share this entire ship works with you players !
And for now, I got more ships do do ! Flyut ship and a Frigate with oars are the next aim, with the early warships sail reworks on the list.
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Another upgrade on the tier 1 galley-line ships, aka the Galliott.
I’m gonna spread the fore castle design to the other galleys and then the Flyut.
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Finally I rolled back my idea to add a fore-castle to the galley, based on documentaries about ship designs, the Galley had no fore-castles.
So I decided to use them … Elsewhere.
I’m probablly gonna have to rework abit the aft-castle but it’s going to be for the frigates I made recently.
I’ve also picked names for the ships lines.
[Animated Sails] Rower Ships
- [T1] Galiot (Lembos)
- [T2] Galizabra (War Lembos)
- [T3] Bastarda (Heavy Lembos)
- [T4] Lanterna (Elite Lembos)
[Animated Sails] Cruiser Ships:
- [T1] Hoy (Monorem)
- [T2] Zabra (Birem)
- [T3] Galeoncete (Trirem)
- [T4] Brigantine (Themistoccles warhip)
- [T4] Frigate (Arthemisia warship)
[Animated Sails] Anti-Rower Ship:
- [T4] Galleass (Lou Chuan)
While listening to a documentary about Frigates evolutions, I decided to pick some ship types I made without knowing I made some, I’ll have to rework abit the models I got but they will be featured in some Dutch related warships.
[Animated Sails] Double Frigates:
- [T1] Dunkirker (Turtle Ship)
- [T2] Pinace (Elite Turtle Ship)
[Animated Sails] Man-o-War:
- [T1] Double Frigate (Catapult Ship)
- [T2] Man-o-War (Onager Ship)
I’ll have to do some special design for those, but it’s already in my head, just have to turn that into gimp modification of models I already got.
[Animated Sails] Delicate Frigate:
- [T4] Flagship (Leviathan)
- [T4] Vasa (Flagship of Nearchos)
[Animated Sails] Special Ship:
- [T4] Greek-Fire Dromon (Dragon ship)
[Animated Sails] Transport:
- [T2] Flyut (Antiquity transport ship)
[Fix Sails] Trader:
- [T2] Xebec (Junk)
- [T3] Polacre (Merchant Ship)
[Fix Sails] Fisher:
- [T1] Dhow (Antiquity Fishing Ship)
I’ll refresh my Ship of the Line models also in the process, and will incude a very noce battleship model made by another modder, Arin.
[Animated Sails] Ship of the Line:
- [T1] Fourth Rate (Thirisadai)
- [T1] Third Rate (Antiquity Galley)
- [T2] Second Rate (Antiquity War Galley)
- [T3] First Rate (Elite Galley)
[Fixed sails] Ship of the Line - Variant:
- [T3] Second Rate Battleship by Arin [2nd Rate] (Dionysius ship)
- [T3] Elite Battleship by Arin [1st Rate] (Polycritus ship)
Zabra Done !
Galeoncete WIP
Galeoncete Done !
Fullrig Frigate WIP
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Full-Rigged Frigate done, here a small capture of the recent ship updates.
I need to correct Galleass sail position and forecastle position before moving to the Flyut making.
Tell me your opinion about the Cruiser ship sail design. I decided to keep them vanilla like, while having still one multi-layered sail design for one hero ship because I wanted one (and she’s relevant with the stories I’m gonna cover)
I tested stays sails inbetween masts, but honnestly, it wasn’t looking nice so I disabled them in the final render.
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They look great cant think of anything to fix.