Oars / Flags animations ? 30fps motion…Maybe too much work
I’m gonna cleanup abit the Galleass model, got some details to align better, and also the frontal part of Zabra is not right in certains angles.
But for now, I’m doing War Hulk no Metal sprites.
Galleass recalibrate done. First stage of ship completed, all the recently done ships are polished and ready ingame. The entire Cruiser line, the Rower line, and the Gallleass !
Next, Greek-Fire Dromon like this one: https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcR3LbizEvXRtxzfnwQ5mlC8cdJbD8pZElzgPLHijCwghA&s=10
And just after that, finally the Flyut ! I already got 99% of the flyut design in my head, I just want to finish those lines up before and then move to that sweet flyut ship.
Once the new flyut hull is ready, I’m gonna switch onto hulls repolishing for the warships, double-frigates / man-o-war / indiaman / ship of the line / etc. And then, work on a water testing map, except if they release new ship in the meantime.
Now Working on the new Dromon to replace Dragon-Ship:
So while I was searching about the Dromon and the Fire-Ship, I learnt that the fire-ships we got ingame were meant, on the original concept, to represent Dromons. The oars were just dropped but after some observation I realized that yes, the hull shape of the entire fire-ship line is definitly Dromon hull based.
That makes my choice of changing the Dragon Ship to a Dromon design even more legit. I’ll just give this ultimate Dromon upgrade a waterlasting fire capability, like napalm, using khitan mounted treb projectile mechanics spawning fires areas.
Greek-Fire Dromon ready ingame, with the napalm tested and aprouved !
So after a very dissapointing discovery that it’s not possible to disable the self-blasting of demo ships, and also failed to give them conversion ability … I’m probably goina just use three boarding boats reskinned with civ-sail equivalent of demo ships and have them working as I’d wish them to, as fast pirate ships meant to board ennemy and capture.
In the meantime I wanna ask you about the Dhow. It’s a ship type that was proposed long ago, and I finally found a way to make, or at least i got the start of the idea. So the question I wanted to ask, how big should it be ? Should it be the size of a War galley or of a Galley to you guys ? Or even of a Fishing ship ?
I was thinking to put it on the demo-raft hull, as a replacement, so I could have sails variations and use it to represent multiple ships type, including the Cog, so a more galley-sized ship but tell me what you all think.
By the way if you wonder why I used african sails on the Dromon, it’s inspired from AoE4 model where the sails are kinda shaped like that. Goal is also to have every custom ship easily distinghuishable just by taking a look at them.
Those look weird on european ships.
That would depend on how many ships you have in that line,hulk and war hulk are the same ship with different sizes so id imagine the same for this ship.Junks are also like this they come in all sizes and shapes.
But they match the shape: 
That’s why I picked them, I think it’s better suiting them even with that “bizarreness”.
Single ship with single mast, replacing the Demo-Raft hull. (I probably won’t do Junk sadly due to unit number limitation, except if the next DLC adds enought new ships graphics file so I can add some)
Meanwhile, working on the Double-Frigate hull, an improvement of my Santa Ana model:
I’ve polished the front part to remove the Galleon ballista part, and added that windows cutting on the back to give it a more distinguishable look, other than that it’s one of my previous work. I will add animated sails once the hull improvement is done on all angles, featuring elite and non elite variant ready.
This ship is for the Dutch style ships, and the Dunkirk Privateer topic. But they can also be used as Spanish War Galleons I suppose.
I somehow found a way to drag-drop copy some layer folder from one Gimp file to another… I’m gonna gain 90% of worktime with that simple discovery !
Double-Frigate soon ready ingame !
Sail WIP, with the rear mast in Galleon riggind style to be distinguishable and more accurate:
And ingame version ready !
And here is the Elite variation:
While thinking about how to do the Dinkir Frigate I could not really find a way to do Elite vs Non Elite visual except if d do sail height distinguishment.
By giving only the Elite verison the double-layer sails, it would allow kind of an “era transition” logic in the sprites design too, but I want to have your opinion.
That would look like this, the difference between, let’s say castle age vs imperial age versions of ships, repsectivly representing 15th-16th century sail style for castle age and 17th-18th century sail style for imperial age.
Working on improvement of Zabra and Galeoncete hull, for then add the extra single stage sail > full-rigging style on both, with actual Galeoncete hull going to be used on tier 4 lembos unit, swaping Lanterna (which was just a flagship version of bastarda) to Galley-Frigate with the hull I made for the Galeoncete with oars.
I’m spreading the front part design to the Flyut, the Zabra, the Galeoncete hull (long Zabra version) to be fancier.
The reason I’m taking the Galeoncete (the one on the screenshot) hull to represent the Galley-Frigate is because the very famous one built by someone we know as a Pirate described it as a “longer hull frigate” design, as the Zabra will be the same design but with shorter hull, that makes sense to me.
The idea is also to give the lembos line it’s very own “full-rigging” upgrade version, will probably be available only for relevant civ groups, those that goes up to the 17th and 18th century.
In the same time I’m preparing the hulls for the Dunkirker and the Pinace, while my brain is also conceptualizing the new Xebec idea I got yesterday.
That leads the shipyard to a lot of ships soon to be ready, with only Xebec, Polacre, Sovereign of the Sea, Vasa, and the ship of the line models to do.
As some of you may know, the upcoming dlc will have few new ships inside, according to datamined infos, including at least two new viking design ships and one venician design ship. There also will be a new viking sailset, which I’m really excited about !
I’m probably gonna wait at least for the dlc announcement to drop before really diving into gameplay balancing logic, so to avoid loosing momentum I’m gonna try working on one thing I’ve started to think about last year …
I’m gonna turn two of the vanilla sails into some “age of sail” design type:
My idea on that is that I want to provide, in the gameplay experience, possibility to change the ship sail-plane, at least in the campaign, to provide wider ship range than the actual ships models limitations, without using datamod. Imperial age would represent the period where they went into Full-Rigging style, what we all know as the pirate era with fancy frigates and monstruous ship of the lines. The spanish-sail-plan is meant to represent the Discovery Age, with Magellan, Francis Drake, and Christopher Colombus timeframe, where ships relied more on less complexe mast-sail design, what we know as the “galleon era”. Caravels were also a thing in that era but Caravel style sail is a pain to provide. BUT I may think about making one on another sailset, 3 beeing the maximum I can modify without breaking the entire game design.
So stay tuned for soon to come images added to this post !
Dunkirker and Pinace WIP:
And ingame version:
Alright, let’s spread the new hull / sail upgrades on the Cruiser-line !
Flyut and Zabra hull and sail upgrade ready ingame.
Galeoncete upgrade and Brigantine WIP:
I also got Xebec and Polacre Hull in the work:
Cruiser Line upgrade completed, with few rework on who is what and how.
From left to right
I decided to change abit the upgrade line so I can provide this logic of line variation depending on the period represented:
Previously I had the Fregata on the Trirem, while Galeoncete and Full-Rigged Frigate were on themistocles and artemisia. I thought that providing straight vanilla upgrade logic and alternative hero upgrade logic was better visually wise, and trigger wise.
I’m gonna use the same logic with the Antiquity Galley line, that will represent Ships of the Line, to have kind of a double line design possibility.
I’m still not sure what I’m gonna use the Thirisadai for in the end, my instinct says it’s going to be a HMS Victory style ship, but my gameplay instinct says that a galleon killer is not a bulky 1st rate ship of the line but more of a 4th-5th rate war frigate like the Endeavour. I could also eventually do the USS Constitution on the THirisadai, as this was a damn warship and an iconic one.
Next is going to be the Polacre and Xebec new versions, and tier 4 rower ship design. Not yet decided if I go for a Lanterna flagship or if I go for a Galley-Frigate ship. I think that mixing 17th century ship design to be the top-tier unit of a 13th-15th century ship line is a mistake, but I’d love to have a galley-frigate in the roaster so maybe I’ll just prepare the model and wait for next dlc to add ships.
I’m also gonna dive if I can manage to give attack capability to merchant ships, transport ships, and fishing ships. If yes, then my ship rooaster for gameplay is going to be pretty interesting.
Now back to Polacre WIP !
Polacre newhull & sails WIP
Final polish of the Polacre new version:
Xebec newhull & sails WIP
Alright folks, I found enought unused graphic files in the datas to animated 4th, 3rd, 2nd and 1st rate sails. Only Xebec, Polacre and the two battleships sprites by Arin will have fixed sails, all my other custom ships will have animated sails !
Here we go, last batch of ship to upgrades before the final touch on some models.
The mighty Ships of the Line, here is the first test of a 1st/2nd Rate hull type. The First-Rate version will just have an higher deck on the top, using the same trick I used for the xebec, polacre, cruiser line. Simulating an upper-deck by just adding some components from the Catapult Galleon aft-castle barriers.
To easily distinguish them from others similar-hull style ships, this unit line will feature some “Stay” sails, the triangular one we see inbetween masts on 17th-18th century sailing ships of the line.
The main trick on this model is just making a base Galleon Hull patching of three sprites to make the central part “longer”, and then under it it’s some elite cannon galleon hulls placed the same way.
The frontal part is a combination of aft turtle-ship, trebuchet arm, carrack fore-castle and heavy demo ship aft-castle in opposite rotation.
The rear part is a combination of heavy demo ship aft-castls and rescaled elite cannon galleon aft-castle.
The hardest was to picture the idea in my mind, and finding the fight size pattern for all angles. I’ve reused technics I improved over and over on every new models, and with my recent finding of drag-drop copy layer on gimp, it’s just going insanly well !
My design goal was to stay “vanilla-ish” in the vibe, while beeing out-of-the-box on the ship type done. I’m pretty happy with the actual result, and you’ll see it by yourself in a near future with a naval warfare tutorial scenario. But before that, I’m gonna have to try one last idea to improve the Rower-Line (the galleys) by using some alternate angles of the sails to have those Lateen sails looking more Lateen like I did on the Xebec model. Basically instead of using sail angle 8 on ship angle 8, I use sail angle 9 on ship angle 8, creating a very cool visual trick resulting in a way more legit Lateen sail design.
Once I got those final upgrades done on the galley line I’ll have to just upgrade the T4 rower unit, either to be a Lanterna flagship galley type, or to push it into another type of ship, the Galley-Frigate, but I’m really not sure about this one.
And the last ships I’ll do will be the Sovereign of the Sea and the Vasa, some kind of fancier variant of the 1st Rate ship.
More screenshot to come later today.
Now with Sails, WIP
This one is pretty long to work on, won’t have new things to share today, will have tomorrow. (But what I already got is crazy, you’ll love the end result)
Base work done on the Flagship model, screened next to Arin Battleships model to compare size and overall looking:
I’m gonna now work on details, adding stay-sails, etc.
I also decided to change abit how this unit line will behave, isntead of making 3rd rate > 2nd rate > 1st rate, i’m gonna make it:
With alternative line:
And Leviathan will be the 1st rate “Capital Ship” using the model I’m making right now.
That way, the entire line will be usefull at some point in the gameplay, always representing a specific ship role, but just from different eras.
Thirisadai will be a Galley-Frigate, due to its vanilla design of galleon hunter, and historically the Galley-Frigate was the ultimate pirate ship design, so it makes sense to me to put this ship on it.
More soon™
As part of the design of the Ship of the Line, I made a little change on the Double-Frigate / Man-o-War units design, adding a frontal Spirit-Sail to make them more distinguishable from the Dunkirker / Pinace units.
This is also for those ships to be considered as “part of the ship of the line” type ships, without beeing in an upgrade-line logic so we can have kind of a line of ships in skirmisher style gameplay.
I also removed the frontal fancy thing from the Double-Frigate / Man-o-War units, to keep that specially for the Ship-of-the-Line units, and for the Flagship too.
As I’m very limited to what addition I can or cannot do to a model, cause I’m purely working in 2D scope, I can only rely on specifics details to allow players to easily recognize a ship class. But I’m also wanting to bring kind of that Age of Sail confusion about ships looking the same at some point, making compromise between immersiveness and gameplay ergonomicalness.
Gonna spread those upgrades towards ships affect, and then let’s work on the Stay-sails for the Ship of the Line models. After that I’ll do the Galley-Frigate to compelte my batch so far. I’m keeping the Dhow idea for later, waiting for the eventual viking DLC announcement to decide what I’m gonna really do with them.
Now back to work !
Ship hull looks great,taller than the rest so easy to identity.should have removed the 2 sails in front before the preview tho.
I got multiple ships using that hull design, and there are some angle rotation that makes them extremly difficult to distinguish, even to me who designed them. I’m not 100% decided about the frontal sails, but they are historically right, but I’m eventually going to change their size, espescially the Spirit one (the big in the front).
I still got another idea on how to make this specific two ships distinguishable without sails, using the aft parts of cannon galleon / elite cannon galleon on opposite rotation angle to place the white-blue square line on the fore-castle so I can remove the front sails on this specific ship eventually. As mentionned, the spirit sail is part of the Ship of the Line work so I’m testing them on the ship type I’m not 100% happy with.
That’s the design I’m trying to do so far: 
Polished version:
First-Rate Enhancing WIP:
First-Rate ready ingame with first design testing, dropping the Stay sails for now cause I wanted to test it ! I’m gonna do the other Ship fo the Line and then I’ll decide if I add the stay sails or not.
So here is a small showcase if what is possible by simply changing the Elite Hussite Wagon skin to one of a ship. I’ll definitly use that trick on custom missions, probably Trafalgar battle:
wont it look better if it fires in an arc like the CG?or is it not intended to fire like that?
It’s just a showcase testing with hussite wagon like projectile trajectory. Was more broadsideish than arc projectile.
What I plan to do is to provide some custom tech for the player, so he can switch his firing style in real time on such ships. The Ship of the Lines will be very special ships, kind of endgame ships, where it’s not really a rock-paper-cisor that determine who’s good against who but the way you use the ship itself.
The ballistic type shoot, cannon galleon like, will be for heavy damage shots, probably with a blast radius, while the straight in-line shoots will be scorpion like, passing-through for long-barrel dutch gun having high velocity capability and eventually armor stripping effect.
