High Seas | Wrapping It All Up - Devlog #8

[goalmwo]

Love the concept and how it looks so far! I see a few issues and a couple suggestions that i think would make the game awesome.

Issues

• Skeleton in tutorial floats
• Tree sometimes glitches when felled

Suggestions

• Add cool death animations for enemies, such as the skeleton falling apart to a pile of bones etc.
• Blueprint ships! Some people prefer action rather than building. State how much wood is needed for each blueprint so people can work towards new ships.
• A bit more of a helping hand after the tutorial. When going into the main game I would recommend adding a few “tips” at the bottom. Arrows to mark where to go. I had no clue you needed to chop trees to improve your ship!

[Infinite_Visions (RoKing)]

@goalmwo

• Blueprint ships! Some people prefer action rather than building. State how much wood is needed for each blueprint so people can work towards new ships.

I love this idea, adding it right now!

@goalmwo

• A bit more of a helping hand after the tutorial. When going into the main game I would recommend adding a few “tips” at the bottom. Arrows to mark where to go. I had no clue you needed to chop trees to improve your ship!

Agreed. From when I’ve played with people, they seem pretty overwhelmed/confused at first. Not a great first impression.

@goalmwo

• Skeleton in tutorial floats

Yeah, this is an ongoing bug I need to fix.

Thank you so much for your feedback!

[Infinite_Visions (RoKing)]

Ad CTR is struggling. I may have to make a few more

If anyone finds more bugs, I’d appreciate it if you let me know (either through the bug report feature in-game, or here). Thank you!

[Infinite_Visions (RoKing)]

@goalmwo

• Blueprint ships! Some people prefer action rather than building. State how much wood is needed for each blueprint so people can work towards new ships.

Done and done!

These can be bought for different amounts from a “Blueprints” tab in the build gui

92%, Yay!

[goalmwo]

Awesome! Can’t wait to see how this game panns out; i’ll be sure to play it more!

[Infinite_Visions (RoKing)]

Hey everyone, it’s been a hot moment. I’ve fixed a lot of the bugs found in this thread - big thanks to all of your help! Tutorial has been changed (you now don’t teleport out of the game, then back in. It throws you right into the experience). Several bug fixes, and more content has been added.

I’d really like your feedback on these improvements!

Ways to Improve My Game High Seas?

Hey everyone! We’ve had a marvelous Testing phase for my game High Seas (which you can read through in this Devlog). I’ve done a bit of test advertising for the game, and saw some good results. However, before putting more in, I want to make sure it is the best experience possible. I’m looking for any and all feedback pertaining to the game ~ any features, bugs, weird things you find, things you like and don’t like ~ you name it, I’d like feedback on it. I’m concerned about players not knowin…

[TheRedDye]

If you’re struggling to create a seamless, large scale ocean I would highly recommend checking out this useful post:

Custom Medium Physics (Open Source)

UPDATE: The project is open source now! About the project Lately, I have been working on a custom physics engine for simulating how parts behave in mediums such as air and water. It was quite hard to get it right, since I had to deal with problems like numerical instability, time synchronization and unit conversion (porting kilograms and meters to Roblox and vica versa). Eventually, I managed to solve these with some help from the forum and friends. I managed to put my calculations to the test…

I have tried the exact same water solution you have and found no way to absolve the “position” error when the character reloads, so this really helped. You’ll need to do some editing to achieve a desired look, but it has been an invaluable resource.

[Brickman808 (NonFunctionalProgram)]

@TheRedDye

You’ll need to do some editing to achieve a desired look, but it has been an invaluable resource.

I will have to agree on that. It was not initially made for sharing. At the time, I was considering to leave Roblox. So I decided to publish it anyway.

That being said, I have done some attempts to make an endless skinned mesh sea. I made two failed prototypes that are endless but not beautiful. My conclusion is that you should copy this sea as much as possible.

[Infinite_Visions (RoKing)]

@Brickman808

My conclusion is that you should copy this sea as much as possible.

Yeah, that sea is stunning. What I mainly lack is blender experience - I can’t have that good waves, because I don’t have that good of a mesh.

@TheRedDye

I have tried the exact same water solution you have and found no way to absolve the “position” error when the character reloads, so this really helped.

In a server script, I just tp the ocean back to the player (otherwise it unloads on the client, and this script errors).

Thanks for both of your feedback!

[Infinite_Visions (RoKing)]

Huge update in the works! This update will include:

• Quest system
  
  Players can opt into quests, for gold, resources, and experience.
• Auto-shift lock when using swords. This helps mobile and computer users alike, for sword fighting.
• A bank, where you can store money, and loot money.
• Expandable map (which helps you when trying to navigate)
• A whole lotta bug fixes. Lots of the issues you have all reported will be fixed, yay!

The main goal of this update is to make the game easier to understand, give it more playability, and revive it.

[TheRedDye]

@Infinite_Visions

I don’t have that good of a mesh.

The mesh is actually just a really big subdivided square. It’s animated by looping through all the bones and applying some form of wave function or formula.

This is a great tutorial to get one up and running:

Making A Mesh Deformation Ocean

If you stumbled upon this, more likely than not, you want to create a deformable mesh ocean like a lot of these cutting edge games nowadays. Good news is that after days of my own searching an learning to no avail, I eventually figured it out and now I’ll share what my process was. Note: This tutorial only covers the setup, the mesh, and the basics to scripting the waves. If you want an in depth tutorial on the wave equation and scripting side of things, use this well written post. This is my …

[Infinite_Visions (RoKing)]

@TheRedDye

The mesh is actually just a really big subdivided square. It’s animated by looping through all the bones and applying some form of wave function or formula.

Yeah, I actually all ready utilize a skinned mesh ocean. What I mean by the good mesh is that good looking of one - the texture and level of detail for mine is terrible.

[Infinite_Visions (RoKing)]

Hey everyone, it’s been an interesting past few days. A lot of progress has been made. Introducing. . .

Quests!!!

Quests can be completed for exp, wood, or gold (a certain amount of exp is awarded every time you complete quests).

Using a nifty module I spent too long making, quests are easily generated. You get quests from NPCs, or from leveling up.

Improved Lighting/Skyboxes

@kalet14

(Also the graphics do need a bit of work on the skybox and atmosphere)

They needed a lot of work. Atmosphere can really make or break the game. Some before and after pictures:

Before

After

Better or worse? What can I do to improve the lighting?

Other Bug Fixes

@Dementomancer

again, don’t know if this was intentional, but i found an easy gold loophole as soon as i spawned

This too has been fixed. When you buy something from an NPC, their inventory is “cleared”, and it resets. Hurrah!

@goalmwo

• A bit more of a helping hand after the tutorial. When going into the main game I would recommend adding a few “tips” at the bottom. Arrows to mark where to go. I had no clue you needed to chop trees to improve your ship!

I scrapped the tutorial in its entirety (players wouldn’t stick through it). Now when you join, a cutscene plays. Then, you are prompted to do a few things from the quest gui. This hopefully shoves the players right into the action.

Guards can no longer attack other guards, or kill merchants. Guards now have better swinging - a bug where they wouldn’t fight back was occurring. This is now resolved.

[Crazedbrick1 (FreakyGlazedBrick1)]

@Infinite_Visions

Better or worse? What can I do to improve the lighting?

Worse. I’d suggest lowering the blur, using atmosphere, and raising the brightness a little.

@Infinite_Visions

A little bit better?

Looks a lot better!

[Infinite_Visions (RoKing)]

@Crazedbrick1

Worse

Thanks for being honest.

@Crazedbrick1

I’d suggest lowering the blur

Definitely a good idea. Probably need to lower the brightness though.

@Crazedbrick1

using atmosphere.

A script actually applies an atmosphere in-game, hopefully it looks a bit better.

[Infinite_Visions (RoKing)]

A little bit better? Decreased the diffusion a bit. The image is a little blurry, due to my snipping tool.

[Infinite_Visions (RoKing)]

In this update, there is now a spawning system. YOU decide where to spawn, which allows to you to accomplish your goals/meet up places/have a better time.

Please let me know any bugs you may find. Thank you!

Thank you all so much for your support in this project, it means the world to me😁

[Non_Fish (Fish)]

The UI feels a bit distracting. But I’m excited to see the full game when it launches.

[goalmwo]

Love the progress that has been made. UI looks great, and i’m loving the atmosphere and lighting now.
Adding starter quests rather than a tutorial was definitely the right idea!
Only thing I would say at this time is to improve the map. Maybe add an icon if it’s a merchant spawn rather than change colour.

[Infinite_Visions (RoKing)]

@Non_Fish

The UI feels a bit distracting.

@goalmwo

Only thing I would say at this time is to improve the map.

Yeah, I’m not the best at UI I’ll probably change it up, so the color scheme/images all fit together correctly. Thanks for your feedback!