I’ve uploaded a new version. The performance is improved by round about 50-60%.
Hi jMonkeys,
The development on shipsWithCannons will be paused for a while, There are several reasons for that. Some are personal, some are the following:
- I’ve got very few response for the game and the most were not as good as I hoped. Most people told me that there’s too much missing like a single player mode or music. Especially the single player is something I don’t know how to realize. It would require a really strong AI 'cause of the complex moving system and I’m not really good in AI-Writing.
- I’ve started Pirate Hell (see the beta-contest-thread for more details) and I think this one is much more promising, because it has basic stuff like a single player, a not-that-stupid-AI and, the most important, it’s fun to play, even that it is in the earliest alpha-state.
- damn you, Skyrim…
If I have the time and resources, I’ll get back to shipsWithCannons.
greetz
ceiphren
Sad to hear that 
But anyways, good luck!
Sorry to hear that ceiphren. The game in its current state was still cool enough to make it to the showcase section though 
Best of luck with Pirate Hell. If it’s fun to play the prototype already, you’re probably on to something!
Skyrim is to blame for a lot of projects on hold! 
I commented on one of your videos and I think it looks very nice. The most important is to have fun coding it, and I guess like all projects the initial fun wears off after a while and it comes down to hard work really to complete something. I know I would possibly have continued tweaking the visuals with a controller for ship bobbing, some hit smoke effects, a bit more ambient light, etc, etc. These often get immediate visual “pleasure”.
But I guess it is important to get some good gameplay elements going as well. Unless you have someone to work with I think most projects come down to how you can minimise the amount of “assets” needed. Not knowing exactly what it is about, you could do some simple upgrade paths for each ships cannon power and “armor” as well as a “captain hit precision” where the ships captain will increase in level and hitting more precise and at longer distances. Then the ships get more soul and you will want to keep a good captains ship safe and have it prosper. When you enter home ports (perhaps you just click destination on a map) you can buy upgrades or train your captain/crew for gold that you earn for each enemy ship sunk. Simple gameplay mechanics on paper, but takes some effort coding, even if much of it is just “dialog boxes” with buy and train buttons. The same map used for navigation can also be used to travel to battles (in the shape of quests) with some approximate info about the amount of ships and difficulty level of their captains. Quests can be added randomly to the map and weighted in difficulty depending on your current level and perhaps you need to visit certain ports to get new quests. And if you want to add a little adventure element your battles can unlock pieces of a special treasure map or something.
If you want to attack it at a more planned stage, just jot down 5 points you want to complete for next iteration and as you go you just add new points to upcoming iterations. The idea is to try to burn tasks hopefully at the same rate or faster than you come up with new. Each iteration has a major milestone that can be demonstrated with a nice video and all. Those kinds of goals might motivate you as well. Seeing tasks done (also write down any task you do on the fly) often motivates and gives a sense of progress.
Now I only need to implement these ideas in my own project. Haha!
@johncl: yeah, some project management stuff would be great (sounds like ‘Scrum’ what you mentioned)
Currently I’m fully in pirateHell and the feedback I’ve got so far is waaaay better than with shipsWithCannons.
And thank god my Skyrim-issue is cooling down…
Any chance you’ll revive Ships With Cannons with some redesigns inspired by Pirate Hell incorporated into it?
Jep. I’ve reused many assets and code-lines in pirateHell.