Command Of The Sea - Naval WW2 Simulation - Development Log

The sound for gunfire, or explosions at all was actually a very difficult part. Cause when someone explodes nearby the Sound you hear is created by the shockwave that hits your eardrums.
So for a realistic sound volume of i.e. a nearby explosion with 180dB you would need speakers that output the same level of power as the explosion itself.
So in a game (or TV) extreme sound like explosions will always be a compromise, and the difference between ambient sounds and the explosion volume itself will never be enough. But I think we’ve found a good compromise. :)

We’ve also factored in the speed of sound. As most Guns fire their projectiles with Mach 2-3 you’ll always see the muzzle flash long before you hear it’s sound, or witness the projectile impact long before you hear the gun firing the projectile.

I just hope people will like this realistic approach, otherwise we’ll have to build in a “Hollywood” Audio-Preset soon or later :)

AWESOME :)

Tirpitz capsizing & sinking

We’ve created a little video showing our sinking (and capsizing) simulation for our ships. The scenery is located around Oscarsborg, nearby the historic sinking location of the German heavy cruiser Blücher.

That looks good!

Dang that’s incredible. Air bubbles flushing out where the actual leak in the hull is. WOW.
Love real physics.

Thanks, but unfortunately rather heavy on the GPU, otherwise we could make them way more realistic :)

It is impressive, but in a sort of naval architecture ship geek sort of way (which is fine by me!). I do wonder though how relevant it is to an actual wargame. Or, more accurately, whether such demanding fidelity will be practical when you have many ships in play, with a lot more variables (topography, smoke, fire, projectiles, aircraft, etc.) and a lot more stuff going on in general. And, most importantly, will it matter? To be blunt, as much as I love this, and really respect the artistry and craft that goes into it, I question whether it will enhance my enjoyment of a game that should be focused on naval combat; once the target is toast, I don’t anticipate lingering to watch it sink, not in a heated battle.

Yes you’re right, something like air bubbles is not important for gameplay. But I think little unimportant details like that add a lot to a game, when you randomly stumble across them while you’re playing. It makes the whole gameplay less uniform…

And in that case building & adding the air bubbles didn’t cost much time, maybe 1-2 days. Getting the whole ship to capsize or sink properly was way more time consuming :)

Will it be possible to break the keel of a ship?

Yeah that’s more of what I mean. I mean, I love what you are doing, and me, I’d probably just sit there and watch it sink, as I like that sort of stuff way too much. But I guess I’m struggling a bit to see the return on investment for stuff like this when you’re already trying to make a very complex and demanding naval warfare sim. But more power to you!

I can only answer “I hope so” :)
Breaking the keel (and therefore the whole ship) would require to to split the whole ship up into multiple meshes (parts). Technically that should be possible, but we’ve not planned it in for the next releases :)

Yes, I see your point, therefore I need to hold myself back every once in a while when I get lost in adding details :)

I’d like to say I love the little details of a game. It always gives me shivers when something no one has bothered to do or model before happens. Battle Brothers does this. You never need an HP bar or armor gauge because you can tell just by looking at your units how damaged they are. It’s an impressive thing being taken away from the numbers game.

Looking forward to seeing two ships trying to punch each other out :)

Oh also, will you have extreme weather included?

Yes, the weather was often very decisive in old school WW2 Battles before Radar cleared the sky, so we plan to put very much weight on that. But at the moment we only have flawless blue sky and some light fog due to humidity in the game. During the next months we put all our efforts onto a AI-Battleship (Battlecruiser) for the game, so we could finally have a basic seabattle.

Rebuilding Tirpitz with new Armor Plate Model, with realistic thickness

We’re actually rebuilding Tirpitz with new structures that reflect the true Armor/Steel plate thickness of the real Tirpitz, as our previous 3D Model “only” represented the outer shape of the ship.
At the same time we’re constantly testing it against the land based AI Artillery at Oscarsborg :)

Projectile Ricocheting SloMo

We’ve created a video to show some more details about the projectile impact simulation we’re using. Including some slow motion footage and some insights about our speed of sound implementation.
Hope you guys enjoy it!

Does it handle the effects of underwater near shorts? ISTR the pre-war IJN was very excited about the prospect of slipping below the armour belt and the surprising amplification of the explosion.

Not by now, but that’s definitely something we have on our list. Many ideas for too little time :)

Reminds me of an advanced version of the Combat Mission engine. I loved ricochets and such in that game, though I don’t think they were physically modeled, just an algorithm.