SoG Game Tracker App (windows)

[Aaron]

2/19/18 update:

Using Line ahead formation the fleet approaches:

Just kidding..

The sailing physics are shaping up nicely. I’m looking ahead into the next phase and that is damage to rigging. It was actually rare for ships to sink during battle. They would however strike when they have been immobilized or having the perception of that, such as losing critical support rigging. Also around 4ft of water in the hold seemed to trigger a strike as well from one of my reading resources.

Since the ship sails using my physics engine I can destroy rigging and masts and the ship will respond in accordance with the damaged sail plan, making tacking and wearing more risky, slowing speed, precluding changing the bracing angle, etc.

I got the mast designer started which automatically sprouts shrouds, deadeyes, rails and chains. I will work on the bowsprit and backstays this week.

The approach will be to spray the profile of the ship with shot and where the shot hits damages those components. The poor crew will also be placed amongst the decks and rigging and will likewise be damaged. If you as the captain stresses damaged components, further damage can occur and may even send broken spars and masts to the decks below disabling crew and guns in the process. Also, repairs could be made rather quickly by splicing ropes, etc so that will be interesting for repair priority.

[Aaron]

Progress update:

Working on mast tops: (2/21/18)


2/20/18:
I got some standing rigging placed out. The screen shot will look better once shading is added but that follows rigging. The hull shape is just a standin. I also need to add the keel shape up front.

Shown on the left is a section calculation for righting force when the ship heels over.

[Aaron]

Update: Got the gaff and boom and some prelim shading so it doesn't look so bad... still not right but headed there.. I may settle on an art style like the heavy oil paintings in the late 18th century with the really angry looking skies..



Tried a half attempt at a 74 gunner to see if the designer can pull it off.. I need to work on gun port variable angle placements next.

[Aaron]

Showing off Ocean Swell.. close the bottom gun ports...


Video: https://youtu.be/Mw5x2DDUH7E

[TexaS]

Much smaller vessels have less pitch than that. I would say that the ship moves too much even though the waves were very long.

[Aaron]

Much smaller vessels have less pitch than that. I would say that the ship moves too much even though the waves were very long.

I agree. I was just happy to get it working. I need to use real hull section volumes which I don’t have yet.

[Aaron]

Progress Update 3/4/2018:

I'm refocusing on the ship builder as it will be serving multiple purposes: those being visual of the ship, hydrodynamic inputs for how the ship performs, heel calculations, pitch, and then as home to the crew (Showing decks and what not while crew goes about their duties.)

Building a keel and then defining the section shapes in the body plan. (I plan to release this designer so others can help add ships to the cause):

[Aaron]

3/16/18 Update: Working on the ship designer and added more land to the existing maps. The designer breaks out the ship sections and calculates the center of buoyancy.

exploded sections:


ship plan showing shear plan with vertical sections and loaded waterline:


current state of maps:
adding north America:


adding Denmark, Africa, east, and Australia

[Aaron]

Update: Worked more on ship hull section calculations. The rightening arm calculation is edging closer to complete. Below is a 44 gun frigate stern end sections showing center of buoyancy changed with roll angle change. This has been the most complex piece so far of the ship physics.

Level: numbers are hull shape values and beam widths (still work in progress)


Rolled:

[Aaron]

For those watching progress - I’m working an outage, night shift 6 days a week - 12 hours for 30 days so progress will be nil for a month.

[TexaS]

I'm surprised you have updated at all since having your child.

We have patience. Take your time!

[Bligh]

As Jonas says you do not need to apologize to us. We are just grateful that you are doing the job in the first place.
Many thanks for all your work on this project.
Rob.

[Aaron]

4/8/18 Update: I’m midway through a plant outage but progress is still moving forward.

I finished the shear view section lines and am adding in the mast and shroud work into the designer. The displacement volume is now computed based upon the waterline angle and height. The half-breadth shape is calculated from the body/shear plan. The stem and stern extremes will need some attention next.



The Bow view is now working.


The gun decks will be next to lay out.
Later!

[Aaron]

(Apologies for the picture of a screen)

I focused on mast, rigging, and interiors before work this evening. All is work in progress.



Getting ready to place the guns...

[Aaron]

Update: Small gains here and there..

1. A lot of work on just export/import function to save ship design work.
2. Cannon placement now works. Cannons are placed automatically on the gun deck sloping. Gun ports are rendered at the barrel centerline. The port is angled to match deck slope but this wasn’t the case for all ships so will make this an option.
3. Need to add simplied cannon tackle so these can take damage and render cannon temporarily unavailable.
4. Will be adding shot lockers and powder lockers onto shear plan soon.
5. Need to render cannon in chaser configuration when setup as such. (Sideways)

[Aaron]

Resized masts based upon amidship breadth fractions. Worked on mast tops and stays.

[Bligh]

Looking the part Aaron.
Rob.

[Aaron]

Looking the part Aaron.
Rob.

Thank you sir!

Working on them yards... arggggg. In the middle of adding the Lifts. Shading is not final, its just a fill in (pun intended) so I can judge things. Still have to taper the spars and such, just placing things here.



close up:


closer still: (captains quarters looking sparse...)

will be fun to see men walking about on this ship and going aloft...

The Captain: 'Lets get underway!'
Puzzled Looking Crew: 'but sir.. you ain't added the braces yet.. and th'r ain't no ratlines.. seems like we should wait ashore while you finish."
The Captain: "A dozen lashes for that man!"

The Captain: 'Bend the sails, haul on the braces, we have work to catch up on!'

[Aaron]

bent the sails on the yards. Some yard render overlap issues but it is good seeing canvas for once.



Also for a quick test of the designer to make other ships I spent 5 minutes on the HMS Victory based on a badly scanned, smudged and faded image.
This was only a test but it proved that ships can be designed rapidly. Obviously I do not have royals rendering yet,

[Dobbs]

bent the sails on the yards. Some yard render overlap issues but it is good seeing canvas for once.



Also for a quick test of the designer to make other ships I spent 5 minutes on the HMS Victory based on a badly scanned, smudged and faded image.
This was only a test but it proved that ships can be designed rapidly. Obviously I do not have royals rendering yet,

I see you have lines running from the mastheads to the tips on one side of the yards, but not the other. Why is that? It looks like you are trying to represent the line that controls the height of the yard on the mast, and for that, there should be one on each side.

[Aaron]

Those are the unfinished lifts. I have to remove the blocks on the upper yardarms and change the main yard up to use a sister block and attach to the block instead of the masthead. Once that it done I will mirror it on the other side,

Good eye.

[Aaron]

Finished the lifts and working on the clew lines. Various states of reefed sails shown for fore and mizzen.



No Canvas.. spars lowered to mastheads


Testing some mast damage.will need to address why spars and rigging loses center attachments...
It was still worth a test to see what I need to improve on for rigging damage.


better.. still need to reorder mast and sail layers to remove the strange spar overlap. Also need to sag the cordage appropriately. but time for bed.. working nights.

[Bligh]

Looking fine Aaron.
Rob.

[Aaron]

Looking fine Aaron.
Rob.

Thanks!

Working on sails of late.. getting them turned for running Large. Also have the rudder and the side ladder added.

Sails spotted off the larboard bow!


She's gaining on us..


Have a good evening.. headed off to my day job.

[Aaron]

Ratline work, bow head work and wales. Also playing with the look of folded sails.

[Aaron]

May 8th update: I’ve been working on node.js and socket.io to get a rudimentary server working. Planning to have a simple server working that moves ships around in real-time soon. Once that is working I will get interprocess comms going with my sailing physics engine. I have a steep learning curve at the moment so I’m working on simple processes.

[Bligh]

All I can say is bravo Aaron.
Bligh.

[Aaron]

All I can say is bravo Aaron.
Bligh.

Thanks it’s been a journey. I have a server that runs now and a client that connects. Currently the server is sending positional updates and the client moves the ship along and angles the yards. I have to add multiple ships and have the server update the appropriate clients. I am getting close to having a test webpage that you guys can try out.

[GloriosoXVIII]

Fantastic Aaron, I was missing evolution of the First App, that I use frequently, especially having the chance to add more ships and the bug of the auto selection, but I understand that you took a new branch of developing the server, I am really impressed.

Regards.

Pedro

[Aaron]

Fantastic Aaron, I was missing evolution of the First App, that I use frequently, especially having the chance to add more ships and the bug of the auto selection, but I understand that you took a new branch of developing the server, I am really impressed.

Regards.

Pedro

I’m glad you found the improvements helpful. This new evolution is an experiment on online multiplayer. I still have more to do for the original app but I want to tackle how online works out with my direction first.

[TexaS]

Aaron, I expect that you have found the drawings in National Maritime Museum, but here you can find more of Swedish ships:

https://digitaltmuseum.se/search/?q=...k,af,ritningar

[Aaron]

Aaron, I expect that you have found the drawings in National Maritime Museum, but here you can find more of Swedish ships:

https://digitaltmuseum.se/search/?q=...k,af,ritningar

Thanks for the resource. Indeed I found the NMM.

[Aaron]

some javascript update... heres some screens from a chrome browser showing some progress... the screen updates at 60 frames per second.

Showing some drone ships running set paths for test. Range arcs are for 300 yards I believe.


Zooming out with mouse wheel shows land. Circle is a 15 mile line of sight circle.


Firing both broadsides and front chasers which lands at the arcs for a test.


So what this is is client side code development in progress. I am getting some basic objects created and the view camera working properly and prelim level of detail coding. The next phase is to get a basic server sending the client updates. Once that is done I can add in the sailing physics and other stuff that I’ve developed along the way.

Zoom up showing ships. Row boats are drawn as separate objects here so they can be utilized. Yards can be rotated separate from base for animations.

[Bligh]

I can only stand back and admire your programming skills Aaron.
This is really starting to look like a first rate production.
Rob.

[Aaron]

I can only stand back and admire your programming skills Aaron.
This is really starting to look like a first rate production.
Rob.

I can only claim to dabble in programming, I'm not even an 'able' crewman.

BTW, i got some crew to load up on boats and set off from the ship today. Next is to get them back on or to board other ships.

[Bligh]

Nevertheless, Aaron it gets more impressive by the day. You will be building in the amount of sea time and effect of Barnacles on the bottom before long!
Rob.

[Aaron]

I tried a capture program called snagit to record some video. It caused some video blurring on quick zoom changes and it didn't capture at 60fps but at least some motion was captured. Here I was testing some boat launch and recovery code plus some cannon shots at the end.

https://youtu.be/OEVatj18Y5U

[Aaron]

update: It's been awhile since last update but the programming hasn't stopped. I'm building up the world on the client side and I added the start of a fort. I've got the camera, zoom, slide working pretty well on the browser. I'm now working in a few ports as stopping points and large scale map functions like plotting courses and such. It's getting closer to being 'sea' worthy for a trial.

Start of a fort:




West Indies:

[Aaron]

update: 6/18/18

With busy weekends (father's day, etc) I couldn't dive into any of the heavy remaining tasks but I've been tweaking the look of the land/sea and I've since added hill sides. Towns are next to place down as these will be the hub of coming/going out to sea for ships. I'm going for historical layout obviously but not to the point of stalling progress.

Current coast in game:


Example from google maps to show accuracy.


Hill and fort example, for testing before placing the real ones.


here you can see HMS Diamond Rock.

[Bligh]

You are really getting things in place now Aaron. it is enthralling to see how you are fleshing things out.
For a non programmer I am really enjoying your demonstrations.
Rob.

[Aaron]

Thanks! One thing I am noticing is the land changes from 17th century to now. Lots of filled in areas now where it was water before.

[Bligh]

Yes it is fascinating to see just how much reclamation has been achieved and how much silting up has taken place in 200 years Aaron.
Rob.

[Aaron]

Update 7/14/18: I managed to get all of the sailing physics code I wrote in the original C# translated over to JavaScript. I think it will be better in the long run than trying to build a link between the two programs. It is even running at 60 frames per second without optimization so that is very good news. I’m in the middle of setting up crude controls so I can sail the darn thing.. at slow speeds the rudder doesn’t answer so I have to get the yards, jibs and driver working together.

I added the beginnings of simple graphics for a Quay for ship loading activities.

Short term plans are to translate the mast and yards code I did in C# so the ships rigging can be wrecked and shredded in real time on the client side.

Progress is slow and steady but it continues..

[Bligh]

Good to hear your progress Aaron.
Please keep us informed.
Rob.

[Aaron]

On my lunch break, went out for a cruise in a frigate in the West Indies. The black line is the apparent wind direction (wind was 30 kts out of the east), the grey near vertical line pointing upwards off the page is the ship's velocity vector (not exactly the bow heading as leeway was around 6 degrees, the bow was pointing more windward).

I was close-hauled west of Martinique heading east to Fort Saint Louis. The large radius circle represents 15 miles (extreme spotting distance for other ships), the smaller inside circle is a mile (long cannon range).


I made several tacks back and forth, beating against the wind and was feeling confident until I approached the anchorage NE of the Fort which presented a lee shore.

I underestimated the momentum of the ship and just backed the sails in time and came close to running aground, but with no speed the ship lost rudder steerage way and the wind pushed the ship westward.. in a panic i let the sheets fly but I had already started drifting leeward and into the shore I went.. it didn't help that I had no anchors aboard...



The captain may have been distracted, combing the beach with the scope. The sailing aspect of the program is getting to be a fun little challenge. I need to add in the current model soon.

[Bligh]

This is starting to look challenging Aaron, but it will undoubtedly teach us how to not sail a ship. It is easy when you read the theory, but I doubt if I could pass my Lieutenants exam.
Rob.

[Aaron]

8.29.18
Working on jib and driver.. kinda neat seeing the ship yaw about. Wish I had more to show but this is a busy month. As before black line is apparent wind (true is out of the east), gray is ship velocity direction, white dots are past positions. Cheers.



Coming about.. in stays. jib hasn't been handed over to other side.


On new tack..

[Aaron]

8.30.18 - Visuals on Studding Sails are in the works. The sail masking code is now in development. This should make sail choices and bracing angles interesting. Following that it will be sail/yard strengths vs wind.

[TexaS]

The spanker is in kind of weird angles, but perhaps I'm misunderstanding from where the ship is coming and going and to where it's tacking.

[Aaron]

The spanker is in kind of weird angles, but perhaps I'm misunderstanding from where the ship is coming and going and to where it's tacking.

It’s not easily moved yet, need to bind angle to a key. Thanks for looking into it.