Expedition v0.1.8 Call For Playtesters

[Slash]

Hello everybody!

After one and a half month of development, the new version of "Expedition: The New World" is getting closer to release; this is a call for playtesters, if you are interested on trying out this version in order to assure its quality and request enhancements, just contact me!

Your critical feedback in this private version will be much appreciated, and will help make the public version as solid as it must be.

Check out some gameplay videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rpi397LosFs and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEGCwp4ffRY (Note: The current version has higher quality music already)

Following is a resumed list of changes in this new version:

* Graphics version, using an augmented 8x8 tileset made by Oryx
* Sailing has been completely rehashed, now you control your ships by rotating them, and the wind direction determines your speed.
* Combat system has been redone, now squads of units tackle each other during a Ranged, Mounted and Melee round. Units can be wounded or killed, depending on their resistance, weapons and armor.
* Storms now arise, grow and die in the middle of the ocean, destroying careless fleets.
* Native settlements now abound in the new world, with several different cultures, and they will respawn enemy expeditions when they are hostile. They can also be ransacked after the local population has been slaughtered.
* Weather, Wind direction, temperature and doldrums are simulated
* You can Chop forests for wood now
* Forests and mountains now block LOS, making exploration more interesting
* New tunes selection, including a remix by roguebard Jice


What is missing and will be implemented before the public v0.1.8
* In-game guides
* Documentation


Thank you!

[yodhe]

I am more than happy to play your game, and plunder all its good ideas for my own...

[jocke the beast]

Really nice videos. I like the design and "feeling" about this game.
Seems great!

[Fenrir]

Current Discoveries:

1. I encountered a dust storm out in the middle of the ocean, and it damaged my ships.
2. When an expedition is on land ,and a storm comes into the same tile as the ships, the ships disappear from sight, and the expedition treats the tile as open water, saying "You can't walk there." The ships reappear after the storm abates and function as normal. The same thing happens with settlements.

[Slash]

wow, the dust storm one is really weird! I can't think on one way that could happen... will check

[Fenrir]

Also, I'm no sailor, but why is reaching faster than running? Right now*, close reach is "fast" while broad reach and running are "slow".

EDIT: On return from the new world, I visited the king and queen and discovered that I am an 'e' when in their presence (ASCII version, of course.)

*"Right now" meaning "while the post was being composed".

[Slash]

Yeah, that's one of the mysteries of sailing going right into the wind is pretty slow, but you don't get the most of your sails by running with the wind either.... you get the best performance by reaching.

Now that I read about it again, I think I may have got one concept wrong (Close reach faster than beam and broad reach), I will have to check out my sources again (May be this simple fact will mess my calculations completely... *sigh*)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Points_of_sail

Also, you are an 'e' because you are an explorer, check the GFX version

[Slash]

http://slashie.net/mantis/view.php?id=1148
http://slashie.net/mantis/view.php?id=1149
http://slashie.net/mantis/view.php?id=1150

[Slash]

You were right Fenrir! I had the wrong concept wrong (I designed it based on data from modern racing sailboats it seems) thanks for pointing out!

[Bear]

What point of the wind is fastest depends on your boat. 

Old-style square-rigged ships and Chinese junks got good speed downwind, but a broad reach was slow going for them and what we'd call a close reach nowdays was just impossible.  Sloops, Ketches, and Yawls (basically boats with basic triangular sails on a near-horizontal boom and near-vertical mast) are fast in a broad reach or close reach, and the modern versions are even faster in a close reach.  Oceanic Lateen rigs (favored by islanders and some Asian cultures) develop more power on a broad reach than anything else, and just as much going downwind as anything else, but aren't quite as good in a close reach.

But in addition to considerations of rigging type, you have hull speed to deal with.  The bigger a boat is the more power it takes to move it at a given speed (but since it mounts proportionally bigger sails, that usually cancels out).  But the longer it is, the less it has to push uphill on its own bow wave to get anywhere.  The power requirements for going any faster get rapidly and  disproportionately large once a boat gets longer than the frequency of the size of the bow wave it raises.  So, even when a smaller boat may be faster in light winds, once the wind is going fast enough that the smaller boat reaches its hull speed, a larger boat will rapidly overtake it. 

And finally, you have the issue of displacement hulls vs. planing hulls, though that's not usually relevant to period ships.  If something moves fast enough that there is less energy spent lifting its own bulk out of the water than would be spent displacing the same amount of water, then it "planes", which means surfers (including wind-surfers) and small motorboats with big motors don't have to worry about their hull speed when they want to go fast. 

[Slash]

Interesting info as usual, thank you Bear!

I'll look into implementing those features for the ships.
* Hull shape/size
  * "Acceleration cost" bigger ships require some time to "take off" (reaching full speed)
  * Cargo capacity
  * Ability to transverse shallow waters
* Rigging
  * Points of sail impact on speed
  * Required sailors to handle the ship
  * Maneuverability
  * Including sail/mast shape and number of masts

[jim]

The power requirements for going any faster get rapidly and  disproportionately large once a boat gets longer than the frequency of the size of the bow wave it raises.  So, even when a smaller boat may be faster in light winds, once the wind is going fast enough that the smaller boat reaches its hull speed, a larger boat will rapidly overtake it.

Which makes for some pretty dramatic true-story chases. And the best part is, sometimes you would get the big boat catching up to the small boat just at the point where the heavy winds become a full-fledged storm, whence only madmen, greenhorns, or the vindictive would fire upon one another. It was close to Russian Roulette to fire on one another during storm swells.

Thank you so much for describing the vagaries of ship travel better than I was able, Bear. It's for reasons like this that I think the interface for travel will be one of the greatest challenges in designing Expedition (but ultimately may be the most enjoyable part thereof.)

[Slash]

RC2 has been released!

A new version is ready for the testing to continue;  this one comes more solid than RC1 yet without many fancy things on, as it's mostly a bugfixing version... Saving works now, and you should experience much less lost equipment

Thank you too for all the ideas you have suggested for the game, it's slowly shaping up as a great gameplay experience.

Changes log over RC1

- 0001165: [Bug Report] Settlement disappear
- 0001163: [Bug Report] Pops disappear when there is not enough space
- 0001156: [Bug Report] Food calculated incorrectly
- 0001148: [Bug Report] Ocean Dust Storm
- 0001138: [Request for Enhancement] Add the prompts to dialog boxes (Space to close)
- 0001152: [Bug Report] Leftover messages
- 0001149: [Bug Report] Storms hide ships and towns
- 0001168: [Bug Report] Stuck when trying to land on a colony
- 0001140: [Bug Report] There's a few items that suffer from off wording when purchasing supplies
- 0001134: [Bug Report] Fix grammatical mistake
- 0001150: [Bug Report] Check points of sail speeds
- 0001153: [Bug Report] Chariot typo
- 0001155: [Bug Report] End game crash
- 0001157: [Bug Report] Saving doesn't work
- 0001158: [Bug Report] Stepping off the map causes a crash.

[Trisk]

I'd love to try this fancy looking game out.

[Slash]

just do it