Simsail goes 'Gold'
Community Forums/Showcase/Simsail goes 'Gold'
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| [EDIT] Playable demo is now available from the website - Let me know what you think. Direct Link :- http://www.wildebeestgames.com/simsaildemosetupv1.1.exe [/EDIT]  With the 'final' version of the game at the publishers I thought I'd better update the website. If you get a minute take a look, and check out the videos.. www.wildebeestgames.com I'd appreciate any comments / crits. cheers, Funky Frank |
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| Haven't check the vids yet, but the screenshots look great. |
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| This one always has looked nice, but it's hard to comment without being able to play a nice free demo version ;)... |
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| CONGRATS!! Frank... i'm directing a few people who are into this sorta thing to your site... good luck!!! --Mike |
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| Well Done Sir! RESPECT! :) I remember the videos a while ago, and they were fantastic then. Great to see it's now hitting the shelves! Great work! IPete2. |
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| After playing with Funky Frank's older projects I did not have any doubts about the outcome of this project. Excellent work as usual. When and where will it be available for purchase? BTW. Now that this one is behind you... will you take a longer break or perhaps turn to the train sim theme? Black 5 is still waiting to be finished. This time in Blitz, of course... ;-) Barney |
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| Slick! |
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| Looks REALLY good and professional! When can we have a demo? I would really like to try this... |
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| Thanks for the encouraging comments folks. Soon as I get the nod from the publisher I'll have a demo ready for download. You can always play the game on a simulator if you get chance to attend one of the simsation shows later this year. cheers, Funky Frank |
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| Looks real good! |
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| Simsail Land Yacht Racing Simulator demo now available.... I've uploaded a demo version onto the website :- www.wildebeestgames.com or here's a direct link (Warning! 25Mb):- www.wildebeestgames.com\simsaildemosetupv1.1.exe Any and all comments welcome! Many thanks for your time, Funky Frank |
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| This is a bit depressing :( 50+ downloads but not a single comment on the demo .... Either, it's pants and people are too polite to tell me (yeah right!) or the 25Mb size is putting people off. I'd really like to know if you've had the time to try this, or if you thought about it, and then thought, nahh not for me. Cheers, Funky Frank |
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| I downloaded a few days ago, but for me it was just not exciting enough. Played a few times and the others just flew off into the distance, whilst I never managed to complete a lap due to the complexities of tacking into the wind on the return leg. It might just be me but I never found any instructions either. Can you change the view? Being right behind the blokes head was a little low I felt. For some reason it all seemed very dark too, had to turn my monitor contrast right up. Apart from that, graphically I thought it was great. To sum up I think I fall into the "nahh not for me" category. BTW I feel the same way about "Water world". Without an engine racing, to me, is no fun. |
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| Frank, Fear not I'm downloading now. I'll play it for a short while and report back. IPete2. |
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| Geehawk: Thanks very much for taking the time. How can racing with an engine be fun ? It must be boring waiting in line for the petrol (sorry, UK joke there). There is a readme.txt file in the download - gives some basic info on key mapping, starting a quick race, etc. You can adjust the AI strength in the menus if they're proving a bit tough. Cheers, Funky Frank |
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| Ok, I'm gonna download it now and look at it and give you a brutally honest opinion. :-) Your link doesn't work in Mozilla. It's the spaces. Downloading with IE... |
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| Wow. That. Was. REALLY. Cool. :o) I played using the mouse, and once I sorted out how to move the sail in and out (mouse buttons) and change the view ('C' for camera, anyone?) - which took about halfway through the first lap - I was whizzing around at a great rate of knots. It's like a thinking man's go-kart! What won me over most though were the sound effects - and in particular, the sound of the tyres against the tarmac. Added greatly to the sensation of speed, and without that, a racing game has no chance. Multiplayer would be excellent (sequel?), but the AI is canny enough at high levels to give people a run for their money. Simple. Fun. Addictive. Where can I get it? :o) Back to play the demo. |
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| Cheers sswift - spaces removed from links and file renamed - point taken for the future.... Funky Frank |
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| The music isn't bad, but it sounds very very muddy. The music doesn't pause when I tab out of the program. The main menu is bland. You need a better backdrop. I'm not liking the red color. I'd go for a blue. Red makes me angry! The graphics look skillfully done though. The trike looks very nice. The words "main menu" at the top of the main menu have the M and the U cut off halfway on the left and right respectively. Also the font is just plain white. The whole menu needs something. I'd make bugger buttons coming off the left side of the screen, of different lengths maybe. I'd look at some racing game menus for ideas. When I changed the resolution on the options menu it didn't tell me that the resolution change only affects the game itself and not the menus. Or maybe it just doesn't work, I don't know yet. I restarted the game and the menu looks the same. I would make the options screen appear on the right side of the screen and move the trike over to the left with a camera pan when changing menus. It would look more professional and wouldn't be confusing them the identical looking menu soddenly changes to appear longer when it's actually a different menu. I notice you still have the defualt Blitz icon on the EXE and title bar. The help button doesn't appear to work. Okay now to play! Graphics impress, but I don't like the arrow being drawin in front of the sail. Off the starting line all the other racers take off, and I'm left sitting there moving along at a snail's pace. I don't have any idea what to do. Can I move the sail into the wind? I don't know. Arrows appear to turn the vehicle. I find that by rocking back and forth I seem to gain speed or maybe I have just turned so the wind it behind me? I don't know. Oh I've just noticed that weird dial on the bottom of the screen is indicating wind direction. That's not very intutitive. It looks like water flowing. I've having a very difficult time controlling the vehicle. OR more specifically, I'm having a hard time actually catching the wind so I can actually go to each of the checkpoints. I still wonder if there's any way to turn the sail. I haven't found one. Annnd... I've given up. It's not fun getitng stuck on a hill and being unable to actually make the vehicle seem to go any way I turn. I don't know anything about using one of these things, but I assume that the sail is supposed to be perpendicular to the flow of the wind, but the way the bike is set up that appears to be impossible to achieve while still having the wheels turned in that direction. I'd say what you need to improve this game is twofold. 1. You need some kind of a help system to explain how to play the game as the player is playing it. Tell the player what they need to do on the screen at the start of the race so they can make the car go fast. 2. Cheat. Make a beginner, normal and expert mode. On beginner and normal mode give the vehicle some formwar dvelocity by default no matter which way the player is facing. Less on normal than beginner. Just enough so they can actually turn around and get off a hill if need be to get back on track. Also, cheat the wind. On the beginner and normal modes, make the wind blow towards the next goal, more or less, that way as long as the player points themselves in that direction they will move towards it. If you require the player to rock the controls back and forth to gain speed, then that can be added speed on top of that, so there'll still be some skill involved and you don't have to make the wind point in exactly the right direction. In short, the game is way too hard right now, and it's not hard in a fun way. It's hard not because the enemies are smart but because I can't move. Not being able to move kills the whole game. At least if I was getting my ass handed to me by more skilled enemy players then I would feel that it was my fault and not the game's that I'm doing badly, but this type of thing I blame the game developer for. I think the game is definitely salvageable. You might want to have some more stuff on the terrain though. I didn't get to drive around much so I didn't get to see if there were any trees or plants or buildings, or cars sitting around, but I'd advise adding those things. Just having a barren landscape might be realistic, and a salt flat might be okay for one level, but I think the player would want to see some more details, whatever those might be. Also I'd change that wind direction indicator. An arrow... a wind sock... Something other than what looks like flowing water. |
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| LineOf7s: Mouse control huh? Guess I'll try that. |
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| Plays a bit better with the mouse control, but even though LineOf7s says you can control the sail with the mouse, I'm not really getting any feedback when I try that and I'm not sure if I'm actually doing anything. I did make it around the track once, but I slowed down near the end of the first lap after I was booking for a while and I really don't know what caused me to or how to correct for it. Btw, I just noticed the shadows. Did you use my shadow system for those by chance, or are you using a towel system? I can't tell if that is a mesh terrain or a Blitz terrain you have there. I think it is a Blitz terrain which would mean you're not using my shadow system. |
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| oooooh we have a demo at last ! I'll leave you a comment, whenever it is that I stop playing it. |
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| Wow. I seem to be having some luck with this that others aren't. I'm actually having to let the AI players have a lil head start so I can chase them down. :o) Quick tips (I'll give mouse controls since that's what I've been using and I've only just discovered there's a readme file with key mappings in it): As soon as you start, pull your sail in tight (left mouse). Go through the gate and turn right to face the next gate (you can see the big yellow circle with an arrow in it down the bottom of the hill, or you can just aim the red arrow in the reticule bottom-left toward north). Let your sail out so it's almost perpendicular with the wind direction (right mouse). Stay like that until you get through the gate. Once you're through that gate, it's easy. Pull your sail all the way in tight again. Depending on wind strength (obviously) you'll whizz along. You don't need to change the sail position again until you've gone through the next gate and the start/finish gate. By then you'll be going so fast that you'll likely tip over when you turn right, so bear that in mind as you approach the gate (ie take a different angle through it, or perhaps let your sail out a lil to slow you down a tad). There's only three gates on this course, so continue ad infinitum (or until you've gone around as many laps as you set). And yes, everything Mr Swift said about the menu is true, but I didn't mention it since it's 'gone gold' and is in essence a done deal. For the sequel though, a lil pizazz would be appropriate. From the readme.txt: For more detailed information please refer to the 'data\instructions\instructions.pdf' file stored in the games installation folder. Perhaps have that PDF file linked to the Help button? Or at least installed as a link in the start menu with the game. Having people read that would address the "WTF?! *MOVE* dammit!!" issues. Which are never fun. |
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| I see the Simsail device is set up with two carts, and the screens mention Player 1 and Player 2. Is it multiplayer? Does the full version of this have multiplayer? A sound effect when there's a collision (cart/cart, cart/barrel) would be nice too. :o) |
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| OK that's good. My thoughts. Physics excellent, especially turning into a roll. Graphically great, player models slightly low detail. Hands of driver a bit too low poly for cockpit view. Music dire, really really really not my taste at all and didn't seem fitting for a race game. Gameplay too easy. Won my second race (would have come second in the first (9 AI's) but AI Seven needs to die ...mkay). Third race I caught up with the backmarkers and even though I put some of the field on 100% I still won by over 30 seconds. Perhaps have an option to start Grand Prix fashion and make the player come through the field. Higher max AI count might also help. Longer races would be nice, was it just a demo limit? If it goes retail then online matchmaking might be quite cool, does the full version have multiplayer? I was using mouse, but I saw no mouse sensitivity control so high dpi mouse users may find it unuseable as it was quite sensitive to start with and my mouse is quite sucky really. Didn't try force feedback wheel (if your game has support I can try it out?) Not absolutely sure on this but I think on the menus when you expand an option it blocks other buttons and the menus do not compress if you click outside of the menu unless you select another menu option - thus blocking other buttons, which effects the ease of navigation in the menus. It might benefit from a more "event" feel with a qualifying, larger field, and longer race. Have other Blo-Karts circulating in the qualifying perhaps so it doesn't feel like other race games when you qualify alone and just cant wait to get to the race. It might work well for 20-30 lap races. I like endurance btw - did I mention I wanted longer races ... but only with a better AI, as it was no challenge. In short: Great game. Bad music. Great graphics. Please add Longer races, more AI's, tougher AI's, multiplayer and online server listings or centralised event server. Oh yes, and I absolutely refuse to race in any colour other than red because it goes faster... Can the player setup screen allow me to choose my colours? EDIT: Also the main menu would look a lot better if you added the game name logo to the top right. |
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| sswift: I really value your comments. In some sort of order, - Music is v. low quality to reduce download size. - Unsure how to pause music channel while tabbed out of program, will look into it. - Agreed menus need some work ! - Not sure about the game modes (beginner, etc) but am thinking of having a 'tutorial' level where there are pop-ups to better explain the idea of sailing. - I've tried different wind indicators on some testers and this one was favourite. In the full game the wind speed varies (as well as direction) and the arrow's animation reflects this. Agan might need to look at it some more. - Shadows: The terrain is a mesh with a home grown LOD implemented. The shadows are towel type, horribly inefficient and the cause of much heartache. Money is tight otherwise would have considered your system - although i have made large use of the texture package i purchased from you. Thanks for your time. LineOf7s: Glad you are doing OK, thanks for the quick heads up for people - should have done that myself i guess ! Come to think of it, when have i ever read a help file for a new game ?! The Simsail simulator uses two control devices connecdted to a single PC, so is Multiplayer in that respect. True LAN / Internet multiplayer is being worked on at the moment as an add-on. cheers, Funky Frank [EDIT} Missed your post Becky, crossed with each other : Cheers for trying it out (how do you find the time?). Race length is limited in the demo, no upper limit in the full game so endurance is an option. The AI have been toned down because people couldn't beat them - maybe i need to tone them up again! Had thought of a player customisation section for colours etc but ran out of time really. Also had the possibility of sponsorship from some clothing / hardware manufacturers for in game branding but again ran out of time. Looking forward to yur next torny! cheers Funky Frank [/EDIT] |
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| post cross over Frank, not sure you've seen my comments. |
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| Similar to Ms Rose, try as I might I keep winning by at least 25 seconds in a three lap race with the entire 9-cart field on 100% and high agression. Toughen 'em up. And/or make us start at the very back of the field (which doesn't quite work since they all start in a line. Still...). Pretty please. :o) |
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| LineOf7s In the full game you get a course designer and in there you can specify the player start positions for any given course, so there's some scope for adjustment. Also try racing with the wind speed and 'gustiness' set to full, and then try them set to minimum, this gives very different challenges ! Funky Frank |
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| Okay. I reinstalled this again, found the instructions, and together with the tips above managed to complete a few laps. Still not winning anything, but I am getting round the course now. This would lead me to one big conclusion. Without decent in game instructions, hints, tips etc.. people like me will just give up and play something else. Having had some success now however, I do feel the urge to try and get better at it. Who knows. I might get good enough to actually notice the scenery, rather than just fighting to keep moving. Perhaps I'd better have another go at Water World now too ;-) |
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| Those settings are better Frank but unfortunately i'm getting better at it myself. Still winning by 30 seconds and laptimes now well under 1 minute. How about putting the AI toughness up but setting the default value to 20% or something ?  |
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| Becky - You're just showing off now :) I will adjust the AI levels tonight, and add another, longer, course to the demo (probably do it in the form of a patch). I've also realised I need a tutorial course, to better explain the controls / principles. Thanks to everybody for taking the time. Incidentally did anyone mess with the replay mode much ? Funky Frank |
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| I watched the start of my first race and it all seemed in order, got a nice camera angle of the start but I only watched a lap or so. Replay features are nice when something has just happened, but after the race you're sitting there watching the whole thing (or desperately scanning through) for that one moment so it's less appealing. I guess there's probably a key to press in runtime to activate it? |
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| Umm, there used to be a replay hot key but i took it out - perhaps i could re-instate it and have it work for say the last 30 secs of action ? Not that you don't have anything else to do (Waterworld, hint, hint) but try turning all the A.I. off and beating my best time of 0.37.96 for the demo course. Funky Frank |
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| well I was about to post my a piccie of my new best lap thinking I was really hot... but er 37s96 I guess I just cant compete with at the moment. What wind settings should I use for the fastest times? I've managed 52s76 so far with all the AI on and max wind. On the replay feature it is possible for the camera to appear below (or at least exactly on) the ground which results in nothingness in the lower half of the screen. As for Ww, i've already done a fair amount today :) |
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hmmm, first attempt I'll have another go but this time i'll try not to loose time and momentum hitting a turn marker. And yes, now I am just showing off ;) |
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| btw f10 grabs a screenshot in-game in case you didn't know (stores the image in '\data\captures') 37.03 it is then - looks like work is gioing to suffer this pm Funky Frank |
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Read em and weep 36.12 ..... .... give it your best shot. Funky Frank |
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Congratulations on the shortest lived lap record ever. EDIT: Like I said, first time I hit a barricade. PS: Yes, now I really am showing off. |
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....but still not the fastest - 31.73 ...now i really must get some work done... Funky Frank |
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| hmpf.... ok, i'll let that stand for 10 minutes then i'll have another go :) |
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The margins are getting smaller now... |
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| hey Becks... leave this game a lone for a second, and help me out down in General Discussions!!!! :) i got a question regarding your sailing sim... --Mike |
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| Wait your turn like everybody else! |
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| Frank, i've found that the AI's are actually harder with minimal wind rather than maximum (although i'm still winning). The weekest area for the AI seems to be high speed turns which they perform too tightly and loose too much mommentum on. |
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| I've reworked the AI, they are back to a harder strength as i had them originally. I'll upload the revised .exe to the website first thing tomorrow. You're right in that they lose too much momentum, the harder ai are better at cornering and adjust their sails faster to a more optimum angle. I struggle to win on 100% strength...... Cheers for your comments again, Funky Frank |
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| I still want to wear red :) Will the final game have a championship mode that works with multiplayer, scoring points for players and AI? |
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| Becky: Red is not an option. Besides blue is faster. Championship is in the works, as is an on-line lap record / exchange of player courses type website. All: Version 1.1 of the demo is now up, if you have already downloaded version 1.0 then there is a small patch to take you to version 1.1. The AI is now much harder, so beginners might want to tone their strength down in the options menu. Thanks for taking the time. Funky Frank |
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| Well done Frank, now there's good news and bad news on the new demo: Under low wind the AI is now much tougher, i've done a few races and I still win, but I have to race to it rather than just sail out there by myself which is good. Under high wind I still catch the back of the field up and won by over a minute. I see two quick solutions to this: One is to change the menu description of wind level to also include a description of global difficulty setting: ie: (Low wind = hard / High wind = easy) etc. Another solution might be to give the AI's a simple acceleration/top speed boost based upon the wind factor, it wouldn't actually need much so hopefully wont be visible to the player that the AI is using cheat physics. There is one issue of concern though, and I cannot be 100% sure if i'm right or not. The new version appears to have a lower framerate. I didn't try it without any AI ( I used the full 9 AI slots ) but I did compare it to the old version under lowish graphics settings and it does seem to be a lower frame rate - but I cannot be completely sure, as there is no onscreen display i'm going by "feel". I'm using an AMD 2200+ Ghz processor, 512mb 133Mhz Ram and a GeForce 5200 graphics card. I previously ran 1280x1024 with 9 AI and high detail and also it wasn't silky slick I felt it was accepteable, this time I thought "hmmm, I need to cut back the detail setting". Maybe it's just the nights sleep which has made the difference. Suggestion for replay mode: Each "interval" award each blokart a point for position, 10pts for 1st down to 1pt for 10th. On an interval there is an overtake award 100*position points and add 99*position for the interval either side and so on. On an interval where there is a roll or impact with scenery add 250*position points and 249*position for the interval before and 248*position for the interval after and so on down to 1 point. For intervals where the blowkart is off the ground double the points awarded. Use these points to show which blowkart to follow when in replay mode and you've got yourself a televised race ;) |
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| Becky: Firstly, i really do appreciate you burning your time looking at this. Game speed wise - i'm stumped - the only code i've changed is to do with the AI, shouldn't have *any* impact on framerate (limited to 25fps btw). Not teaching you to suck eggs or anything, but have you got some AV running or some other package open today you didn't have yesterday ? If not i'll have to go back over the changes real carefully - it's a bit of a worry. A.I. - you must be superhuman! you can win a 3 lap race on the demo course by a clear minute ?! I'm stumped again, I can win but usually with a margin of 10 or 20s at the most. Replay mode idea is a good one, but i better fix the other stuff first i guess..... thanks again, Funky Frank |
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| Ive not tried this yet, but will do later. About the AI. When writing the AI for my racer (very tricky as if the car gets tweaked, the ai needs tweaking too), i found that where i failed to be able to get better than 5th, My other half quite simply trashed them. :) good thing about beta's. No idea about the framerate, unless Becky uses an LCD which happened to be cooler yesterday than today? |
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| Regarding the fps issue, it was ust a "feel" and I couldn't be sure - i''ve just had my first good nights sleep in a few days and that may be quite a big part of it. I tried running the two versions one after the other but of course by then the difference may have been psychosematic. A.I. - you must be superhuman! you can win a 3 lap race on the demo course by a clear minute ?! hehe, well I do race pro karts, sail a yacht, and program a sailing game in my rather abundant spare time... ;) I can't do that consistently though, first attempt was only 30 seconds margin - but you have to remember that was with maximum wind where the AI is weekest, on minimum wind I find it a challenge. As some of the advantage I gain is by not sailing directly at the next junction but in sailing across wind I wonder if the AI would benefit from a simple learning algorythm to emulate the players performance by a sort of replay method if it is better than theirs? Having said that, the inclusion of variable wind will completely despoil such a feature. Cheekily I might do a bit better if I could customise my joystick controls ;) I'm using Interface atm which lets me use my wheel but puts the sail control on a pedal, I think I might preffer it on a button because it's hard to keep the sail in position when going down wind. Selecting joystick didn't seem to give me any kind of sail control on my joystick drivers (seperate Y and Z axis for throttle/brake pedal and no buttons responded. I have a 9 button controller). The good news is I did find the slight wind a geniune challenge, I havn't done many races yet and i've got some coding of my own to do but the difficulty did seem about right to me under those wind conditions. I will let you know more when i've done more races. The thing about difficulty I think is important to remember, is that as a programmer we get to be pretty good at our games - but there's always some schmuk out there on the internet who can thrash us. I've found before that I can only deliver about 85-90% of the performance of other players around the internet, so that's generally how I guage my own single player difficulty settings. When I make a game, it has to beet me at the upper level. At the same time it is important not to put the game beyond reach of the 90% of players who wont come close to that difficulty, so a game has to start easy. Your lucky in this project the difficulty settings are very much up to the player, but in an arcade game or something then difficulty becomes more of a problem - as an easy start can make a game dull - in that situation it's important to very quickly start to ramp up the difficulty, most games fail in this respect and make their easy levels last too long which is dull. |
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| Becky: I had thought quite a bit about AI learning, but never really got serious about it. It certainly needs spicing up some though, they are a bit too dumb i think for anything other than a quick blast. Your 'cross wind' comment has got me interested though - any chance of a real quick diagram showing the line you take around the demo course - if you have the time obviously ? You like Geoff Crammond so i'm guessing you are / were 'into' driving games - i'm a huge fan of Live for Speed. The game AI in LFS are of the learning type and although pretty dense to start with, after substantial training can become a good challenge. They seem to choose slightly different lines each lap and remember when a certain combination improved their speed / laptime. It'd be nice to get a system somewhere near this. I don't suppose you are after huge numbers of AI in Ww but if you did, perhaps some sailing Ai would be useful, any thoughts ? cheers, Funky Frank |
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| Funky Frank, Tried it last night! Its awesome!!!! However, i did get the feeling that the wind did nothing for where i was going, and i somehow got lapped without knowing as i managed to keep up with them.. :/ Very neat work! |
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| Cheers Cygnus, Its possible you missed a waypoint somewhere, make sure you follow the red direction indicator, middle bottom of the screen. As far as the wind having little effect, well you can pretty much travel anywhere except directly into the wind, but as for how *fast* you go, that varies with your adjusted sail angle, which is the skillful bit ! Thanks for trying it out, Funky Frank |
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| Your 'cross wind' comment has got me interested though - any chance of a real quick diagram showing the line you take around the demo course - if you have the time obviously ? I'll try explaining my line first and see if that is easier. From the start line the first run is downwind - this is my weekest area and the line I take is mostly dependant upon how good the previous turn was and whether I can get the sail hanging out the left hand side. The sail can get stuck in irons which requires a quick turn to the right to flop it over, then ocassionally (partly due to control method and partly because of the nature of the game) I loose my hold on the sail being flat to the wind and end up crossed over. If the sail hangs out the right hand side I leave it there figuring 80% is better than 100% for a moment and 50% for the rest. Approaching the first turn I actively try to keep the sail flat to the wind as I gently turn, now we get to the first interesting bit. The next turn is about 20 degrees to the right of the wind. I therefore sail flat to the wind, aiming 20 degrees left of the turn. As I get past half way I start a gentle turn. This has the benefit of giving me better windage when I accelerate, getting me well out of the way of the other races and also giving me a gentler angle of attack for the bend ahead. As I start my turn, about half way down the strait, I am very very gently changing my angle of attack into the bend and by the time I reach it probably have about 40 degrees more shallow an angle to take the bend with than the AI's who sail up to it than turn. Unfortunately this narrows the gap for me to sail through and can result in a quick left/right flick to avoid hitting the turn obstacle which wastes the whole effort - but overall the risk is worth taking. As I said toward the last turn marker the angle I take is dependant upon my mommentum. If I have lost mommentum on turn 2 then I aim right of the finish turn. If I have done ok then I aim directly at the finish turn. This is because the wind is 20 degrees or so right of the turn marker so I accelerate faster keeping flat to the wind rather than sailing at the turn marker - but if I already have speed then I save myself more time by sailing directly at the finished line because it is a right hand turn and I want the turn to be as shallow as possible. As I get 1/3 to 1/2 way down the strait I tack left and start aiming left of the finish turn. My speed now will be extremely high even if I lost mommentum on the previous bend as accerating flat to the wind on this part of the course has a huge effect. Once i've tacked a little left I begin my turn. If I am going too fast I let my sail out before I reach the bend and i'll take a very wide exit, loosing a lot of time over distance but saving time via mommentum. If i'm lucky i'll get the sail position right and not loose too much time. If i'm able to turn shallow and head toward the second turn marker soon after rounding the finish turn then I will have made up about 5 seconds on the turn. You like Geoff Crammond so i'm guessing you are / were 'into' driving games - i'm a huge fan of Live for Speed I'm a huge race fan, it's in my blood. My family have a line of racing drivers so I suppose you could say i'm a bit like the girl from the new Herbie film - except she's prettier and i'm not reliant on a magic car... ;) I like racing games generally, my favourites are those which allow me to do an "event" rather than a quick race. I like to qualify, I like to feel the atmosphere of a race weekend, I like to tweek setup and I dont like doing laps as the only car on the track so other vehicles have to be out in qualifying - infact finding an empty bit of track should be half of the art of qualifying. I like races that are long enough to have strategy, so if I scale the race length back to 30% distance and i'm doing a Formula One game I still want to have to make pitstops - so I like it when tyre wear and fuel rate are also scaled back to 30% to match the race length. I think doing an AI for a driving game is much easier than a sailing game because driving games feature static conditions from lap to lap. Sailing games are reliant on the wind which is changeable... You can teach the computer to sail better to the wind or sail better for the track - but making it do both is a real challenge. I have never ever written a "cheat" AI, my AI's always use the same physics functions as my players but in this instance I would be tempted to cheat and just give them a speed boost. I don't suppose you are after huge numbers of AI in Ww but if you did, perhaps some sailing Ai would be useful, any thoughts ? My current AI is broken, when it worked it was very crude indeed and not capable of racing. I do plan on putting an AI in of sorts - I have a plan for WW only a handful of players are aware of, a racing and simulator game isn't the final destination of the project - it's simply a handy stepping stone ;). I dont think I could write a shared AI though, the way I program is very ungeneric and specifically optimised to the task at hand. I dont generally write "library" functions and I rarely use libraried functions of other people either - only if I cannot figure something out for myself do I do that. Which is why my sails work very differently to yours ;)... |
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| Becky: Thanks very much. Your racing line seems not too different to where i have been gradually progressing - although i have been reluctant to move too far from a 'head to the next waypoint' mentality - i can see how taking a longer but faster line works. Remind me to never challenge you to a real life land yachting race. As regards 'cheat' AI i see no point, since its not a fair match-up, the AI in Simsail have the same physics / acceleration / mass properties as the player, and can only control their yacht throught the same channels i.e. steering and sheet rope. Grand Prix Legends, whilst being a milestone game, annoyed me occasionally because the AI players had slimmed down physics (in an effort to make the game play at a reasonable speed on the PC's of the time i believe) and had the effect of giving them a visible advantage in certain situations (after a spin for example). This has made me more determined than ever to create some more intelligent AI for the computer racers - which will enable them to be competitive, even on a course they've never sailed before. Many thanks for your help, I'll try and beat you with the next generation of Simsail AI ....... oh and btw i wasn't aware you were intending to use WW as a stepping stone to world domination, but i won't tell anyone if you don't (as long as I can be president). Funky Frank |
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| Sure you can be president *boggle*... It's not as if anyone other than Empress Rebecca with have any political power no matter what title they dream up for themselves... ;) I think in a real land yachting race you'd probably win though as I probably lack the arm strength to hold the sail on a strong wind, I might have a few traditionally male past times as interests but i'm not butch ! lol. I didn't like Grand Prix Legends at first, it took me a long time to figure out that the default setups where so badly screwed up that the reason I kept crashing was because the car literally was undriveable, they'd even set the cars up with toe out which was just rediculous. Once I realised the default setups had been botched and changed them I found the game more controllable, but by then games where appearing with force feedback and it just didn't have any. It's the same reason I went off Geoff Cramond's Formula One Grand Prix games which did have FF support but where so badly written configuring the controller took 8 weeks of persistent tinkering and was still undriveable and felt about as realistic as a Spectrum game. For the most part I am with you when it comes to AI, when you are at the very limit of performance the difference between a good AI and a bad AI really shows up, getting a wee bit more acceleration down or achieving slightly more mommentum through a bend and you have a chance to pull an overtake out of the hat - but that level of competetiveness requires a longer race, it's why real Grand Prix run for 70 odd laps and not 15 like lesser formula's. Are you sure that's where you want to take SimSail? I think to achieve that sort of level of competetiveness requires the AI to learn from the player, pre-programmed decision weighting can never hope to recreate the same feel. Not only does a learning AI help set the difficulty level and negates exploitation of unseeable circuit nuances by having the AI's use the same exploits, but most importantly it gives all players the experience of racing at the very top level even if they're - to put it politely - aweful. |
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