Welcome to another edition of our Hearts of Oak progress articles!
Each week*, we will bring you a summary of the latest development news, including work-in-progress screenshots and in-game footage, along with a more in-depth look at featured content.
Following the recent announcement of our switch to the Unity engine, we have some details to share regarding donations, as well as the latest information on our development progress.
Fundraising
Due to the Unity Pro licensing and many available add-ons, we have started to accept donations to reduce the costs for our developers.
Even a single Unity Pro license that we need for improved functionality and graphics costs USD1500.
We have already raised the first 1500 dollars through an internal round of donations within in our own team, but that's only the beginning.
If you would like to contribute as well, you can do so through Paypal using the Donate button on HeartsOfOakGame.com.
We are publicly listing the latest status, including proper credit to those who donated, here on our forum.
We are currently looking into the feasibility of added perks for those who donate.
These may range from having your name used in the game to receiving a "Hearts of Oak" t-shirt.
Anything that we decide on will be retroactively provided to everyone who donated before to ensure that nobody is missing out.
All releases of the game will remain completely free as this is and always will be a fully non-commercial project.
None of our developers get any of this money for personal use as 100% will be used to further the development itself.
In other words, these donations are completely voluntary and nobody is required to make any unless they want to.
However, all contributions will be much appreciated and we promise to put them to the best use that we possibly can!
Engine Development
- Ship proxies
This video explains how a ship's collision detection is handled, and how that affects the character's movement on board.
- Ship buoyancy
Here we show how the ships react to the waves, and how different mass values affect this movement.
- Ship firing points
The 'firing points' are our solution to gun placement on ships.
They provide an intelligent system for determining the maximum gun size a ship can accept at each gunport, eventually allowing the player to create custom batteries, even within the same decks.
These points also work with the gunport lids, so guns can be run out or stowed with the lids opening and closing accordingly.
Top Contributors
Below are the latest members of our development team to be recognised with our Top Contributor award in recent weeks:
RobinPC - For his continued contributions to our project, especially to terrain development, and his willingness to learn and improve.
Dario - For his dedication to laying the foundation on the quest writing effort and his willingness to do whatever needs to be done to help move this forward.
Mask - For his valuable work on establishing the formatting of the quests, as well as developing methods for working together on writing multi-branched stories.
Their contributions have been invaluable to the game's development, and we hope to give out more of these awards soon!
That's it for this week's progress; we'll have more updates for you soon!
Don't know what the Hearts of Oak project is? Take a look at our Frequently Asked Questions for more information.
*Please note that while we're aiming to post a new article each week, we can't always manage this, but we will post articles as regularly as we can!
Thanks for the various videos detailing the development of the game -- always entertaining.
When this is out, I'd be gald to help translating it into Spanish.
Great! We've had a few other people offer to do the same thing, so when the time comes we'd be glad to have your help.
Good. I have a 1832 Naval Dictionary (both Spanish and English-Spanish) that I'd like to put to good use ;)
I don't know if the Camera you are using to fly through is the final 'camera', but to fix that clipping issue when you are colliding with the objects, (like when you can see right through a mesh) change the near clip plane to 0.1, I believe default is 0.3 and changing it that incremental amount will make a world of difference!
Thanks a lot for your exciting development videos! Every time I look forward to the news about the game) And if you need a help in translation of the game into the Russian language, I will try to help any way I can!))