Age of Sail fans?

[smithcorp]

All the Patrick O'Brian fans - this is upcoming - Naval Action - http://www.navalaction.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[r8response]

Was only reading about this yesterday after being mentioned in at article at Rock, Paper, Shotgun.


The naval combat in Assassin's Creed 4 whilst simplistic, has piqued my interest in naval combat from around that era.

[Shonky]

As soon as I saw the animated gif I thought AC4, and since playing that I always thought there was huge potential for someone to come in and do something like this.

[smithcorp]

It looks bloody good, doesn't it?

[smithcorp]

Well, a bit of an update. I got into the testing of this game in a small way. Mid last year they tested the combat. You could fight against other ships and progress from a small fore and aft rigged cutter to 100-gun triple-deckers. Nice simple controls, beautiful water and ships, slow-paced but not too slow sailing and fighting mechanics, weather etc. Really showing potential.

Just a few weeks ago they started testing the Open World. This is where you sail around the Caribbean singly or in fleets, fighting pirates or other nations, sinking or capturing merchant shipping, earning gold that you can spend on ship upgrades or additional ships. I had my first run in it last night. Its looking fantastic. The play area is a massive swathe of the Caribbean, USA and Central America with ports, cities etc and populated by AI and players. The map is scaled down and movement is accelerated until you get into a combat instance, but it can take 5 hours real time to sail across parts of the map. You have to navigate for real - work out a bearing on a separate map and try to sail to it, using a compass rose and taking account of the need to sail on reaches depending on wind direction.

There's a day/night cycle, weather and the ports are lit up at night. It's quite beautiful.

I spawned in English Harbour in Antigua, sailed north along the coast to St Johns, then headed west to Basseterre, sailed around it, saw a couple of distant battles, then tried to navigate back home. Almost missed Antigua, but beat back south to English Harbour to finish for the night. On the trip back to English Harbour I saw numerous trading snows and brigs (which you can click on and "hail" to find out who they are and whether they are hostile to you, at which point you can choose to attack, or run away), and then had a Victory class warship come up from astern, looking incredible with all sails set.

I'll post some screenshots tonight.

smith

[Durrie]

This sounds (and looks) fantastic. I'm right in the middle of the Aubrey and Maturin series (Currently at the Ionian Mission) and am facinated by it.

Having recently finished the Fortune of War, it would be nice if the Age of Sail would let you near Boston harbour to fight the Shannon against the Chesapeak.

Thanks for this Smiffy, I'll look forward to you posting the screenies.

[smithcorp]

Durrie - you can apparently get in on the testing by emailing the devs directly. From Reddit:

For now purchases are still closed, but you can email the devs and ask to buy a key (worked for me).

Might take a week or more for them to get back to you, but it seems to be a viable option. It is quite Aubrey-Maturin-esque. You can use many of the real tactics of the time - stern chase, raking, neutralising your sails so can hang off the quarter of someone and blast them etc.

[DexterPunk]

This is definitely relevant to my interests.

[smithcorp]

Here's a video from last year showing some of the combat, use of different projectiles (chain shot etc)



And here's a more recent video:

[smithcorp]

Okay, here's some screens of my first short foray into Open World (there's low-res and high def screens - I only found the key for HD screens after I'd finished, so these are low res.). Note that when not in combat, graphics for the ships are simplified and they zoom around on top of the water. They also don't display national flags and pennants. The 'screendoor' effect in some shots is caused by looking through sails, which get sort of transparent.



Showing the interface. Chat window top left, can be resized, move around. It's better bottom left. Top left for some reason blocks other ship info. Bottom right is compass and info on the ship and crew, speed etc (21 knots - the Lynx flies on a broad reach). That's Antigua in the background. Low framerates in the accelerated parts of OW, but combat frames are much better with high quality graphics.




Rounding the northern end of Antigua with the 'looking through sails' effect









Sun going down north side of Basseterre





Night sky and sails

Can't wait to get on tonight. The Lynx is 'free' in the sense you can get sunk and it costs nothing to replace, so you can take on anything, get some experience without losing anything.

[Woodee]

This looks like my kind of pace!

I might wait until after my computer upgrade though!

[Durrie]

Thanks for posting the shots Smiffy. I might just have to send a grovelling e-mail to the devs like the scrub I am.

How're your sheprical geometry and sextant skills?

Ah! I've just watched the video of the more recent battle footage....As it turns out, I've watched quite a few of these videos by the usual YouTubers in the space over the past couple of months. I hadn't put two and two together, the look and feel of the .gif in your OP seemed to be so much different to the gameplay in the videos. I'd have to say, the look and feel of the .gif gives a much more sophisticated feel about the game than the battle footage.

[DarrenM]

Looks promising. Season 2 of Black Sails is making me want a good pirate game. Thought about getting Windward on steam, which seems a bit like the old Sid Meyer Pirates game, but I might hold off for this instead.