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Sea Power : Naval Combat in the Missile Age
Asid:
Dev-Update 7/24
Thu, 18 April 2024
Hello everyone,
Welcome to another Sea Power update. The weeks are just flying by at the moment, I swear it was only yesterday that I was writing the last one of these, but then a couple of rather busy weeks have happened since then.
GameStar Magazine have published an exclusive look at the game’s progress (Echtzeit-Schlachten mit Flugzeugträgern, Kampfjets & U-Booten - Sea Power lässt es krachen!)
It is in German but the English subtitles give a decent overview and there is a lot of footage to take a look at that you will not see elsewhere. In game related news the last two weeks have brought us more of the same, there is nothing really momentous to report apart from good steady progress on the game. And that late at night we sometimes sit and watch it going “this is really cool!”, we look forwards to when you get to see what we see.
In the coding team we are focusing on a few things in the next couple of weeks, primarily Campaign and AI. These are the two big job that need to get done before we can begin to go into the final stages pre-launch.
The campaign, as I am sure you have heard, shifted from being a turn based strategy system to something more akin to Cold Water’s real time mode (I have to say I aspire to reach the heady heights of what Falcon 4.0 managed, but that will be a big job, check out this interview with its creator (Interviewing the Falcon 4 Dynamic Campaign Creator, 25+ Years Later - A Retrospective):
We are setting up a system that is going to be globally flexible, which will allow you to create new campaigns as you please across theatres of operations of all sizes. You might have spotted some testing of the background civilian traffic system in the GameStar video, we are attempting to create a world that feels very much alive so that you can build your own stories.
AI is another monster, Ivan has taken the lead on this with Nils, between them they have been creating realistic doctrines and approaches to combat so that both enemy assets, and player assets that you are not directly controlling behave in a believable manner. This is a pretty massive thing for us to try and get right, we want the game to be a challenge, but not in the traditional RPG “Bullet Sponge” way. Enemy units will try and react to their surroundings to get the best of you, and you will definitely have to be careful to make sure that you do not suffer from an unexpected defeat.
Don’t worry though, there is still going to be the option to sail around in a custom mission blasting everything with the 16” Naval Guns on the Iowa though. That is pretty satisfying.
Outside of the core coding work more UI work is in development, obviously to support the campaign, but also to polish up tools that we have previously created. And to finalise systems that were still in development. Danill has been majoring on this, with overall art direction from Nils.
We are staying invested in improving resilience and performance too, Ben has been leading the way on this, fixing bugs, adding catch mechanisms to systems that fail to load due to background file errors, and generally making the overall systems work better. Ben has been leading the way on moving systems to the new Unity Jobs system, which allows us to truly take advantage of the performance of modern multi-cored machines.
Noah has really stepped up to the plate (a baseball reference slid in seamlessly, though I am not sure why Americans call rounders that and why it is quite so popular?) and is learning to modify the ini system to help Mek get some new airports set up, and has started writing the first of the tutorials based on his experience of learning the game.
The art team never sleep (it seems like it sometimes!) either, Mek and Ian have been touching up the environments, they are looking really cool, if I say so myself! Especially the autogen! Nils has been making even more brand new ship models too (there is another custom warship in progress) while leading the direction to try and keep us on task and coherent.
That concludes this week’s update, please have some screenshots!
Examples of the autogen system, showing off the emissive light system used at night. As Nils says “moody!”
Suddenly! A new airbase layout, we have had these almost ready to go for ages but now they are happening.
The new Snøgg class missile boat emerges from the shed to join the fleet.
Sometimes you get something slightly wrong, this aircraft has perfected the new amphibious fast taxi technique.
Asid:
Dev-Update 16/24
Thu, 5 September 2024
Hello Everyone, welcome to another Sea Power Dev Update. This week I join you from a suddenly autumnal UK as we gear up for September.
In a nod to summer being over Victor rejoins us from his holidays. The French really have that nailed down! Speaking for France I hope you are checking out the Paralympics, some astounding records have been broken, and a family friend of mine has picked up 3 medals so far.
One of our major focuses over the last few weeks has been finalising some exciting announcement plans with MicroProse. That kicked off this week so keep your eyes peeled over the coming weeks for the results of that! This has kept Nils, Mek, Martin and Aleksi (our fantastic music composer) amongst others really busy.
Speaking of Mek he really got his teeth into ports, two weeks ago we had 6 unique ports in two countries, those numbers are significantly higher and spread significantly further now! The ports are used by background data files to populate the world, spawn civilians, and generally make it so that the world of Sea Power feels more alive than you might have seen before.
Along similar lines Ivan and Danill have been digging their teeth into the campaign, really rationalising the stuff I started. They have the mission generation system kicking in and are going to link up with Victor for the mission finalisation and saving back to the campaign. A lot of work to do still but things are progressing.
I have been focused on UI updates, along with Ben, and also on aircraft, slowly bringing old and new systems to a good state that is pretty solid. Along the way we have updated a lot of infrastructure and got a few bugs smashed.
While we were all too busy to notice Ivan also managed to get mobile land units working. And then promptly managed to make them player controllable as well. I am not sure if that function will make it to release but I think it means that we can have moving convoys available as mission targets, which is really great news.
Then Nils got in on the act too, deciding that there really is no kill like overkill and added some custom modifications to this oil tanker. While we know it is pretty silly I think it hopefully showcases the flexibility of the vessel system and give you some ideas on the potential moddability (is that a word? Spellcheck says no) of the game.
That’s all for this week, hopefully we see you again soon in a few weeks time with lots of exciting updates!
Asid:
Sea Power Early Access Release
Mon, 16 September 2024
Hi Everyone,
You join us on an extremely exciting day! We are thrilled to end the speculation and confirm that Sea Power will be launching in Early Access this November (2024 if you have tried to block the year from your mind like me).
We really need to thank all of you for your incredible passion and support for what has become a massive project over the last few years. We know the wait has been longer than you anticipated, it’s been a long time coming for us too! Thank you for sticking with us and we can’t wait to get the game into your hands very soon!
To celebrate today’s announcement of the November 2024 release, we have partnered with the incredibly talented J.P. Ferré (after obsessively watching his DCS content) to prepare this all new ‘Release Announcement trailer’. All the footage is recorded in the game, and we hope after the little teaser last month it is a fun sneak peek of what’s around the corner.
Early Access Approach
Sea Power will be entering Early Access with a broad amount of content, namely:
• Over 20 Scenarios: Including both historical and fictional encounters
• Dynamic Campaign (Alpha): An evolving theatre-scale campaign that will grow throughout our Early Access development.
• Mission Editor: An intuitive and flexible tool to recreate any conflict of the 60’s to 80’s Cold War era around the entire globe.
• Massive Cold War Arsenal: over 150 naval units, more than 60 aircraft, 130 weapon systems, and 50 different ground objects
We thought long and hard about Early Access, but we hope that it will allow us to foster continuous improvement together with you in this amazing community, with regular development updates and community feedback shaping the games' future.
It would really support us if you could wishlist us on Steam and if you want more informal updates, come and join us on MicroProse’s official Discord. We tend to chat on a less formal basis there, and some of you might enjoy the nerdy places the history corner explores.
It’s been massively important for us to ensure a stable and content-rich experience from Day 1 of Early Access. We really hope that the Mission Editor in particular allows your creativity to go wild (Steam Workshop integration is a planned feature, we want you guys to share your missions!). You’ll be able to create your own ‘take’ on historical Cold War era encounters or simply recreate famous battles from beloved Hollywood blockbusters. One Ping Only Pleash Vashilly!
We will have a wide array of pre-made historical and fictional Scenarios to dive into this November, with an early ‘Alpha’ version of the Dynamic Campaign also available for early playtesting and ongoing feedback.
November Roadmap
On day 1 of Early Access launch, we are going to share a production roadmap which will outline upcoming features and content for the Early Access period. It will cover off both short-term, mid, and longer-range plans. Our ongoing development will incorporate your ongoing feedback, while driving towards our intended feature goals.
Game Recap for Newcomers - Dynamic Campaign, Strategic Depth, and Immersive Cold War Realism
For new players who have recently joined our community, we thought it useful to give a quick recap on the scope of Sea Power: Naval Combat in the Missile Age.
The game brings a mix of strategic and tactical depth in realistic naval engagements across multiple global theatres including the North Atlantic, Persian Gulf, Gulf of Tonkin and the Mediterranean. Players will control ships, submarines, and aircraft; balancing the needs of local tactical combat missions and strategic theatre-scale operations.
The game’s attention to detail and historical authenticity includes advanced ship and weapon physics, sensor modelling and dynamic weather systems, all combined with richly detailed 3D graphics that bring the Cold War atmosphere to life. The entire planet is your combat playground – so our hope is to provide you with a near-endlessly replayable experience for many
years to come.
Our small but super hard-working team have accumulated many years of naval simulation game experience. Our experience with designing the core gameplay of Cold Waters (and modding it until it very much broke!) has heavily influenced how seriously we take the quality and polish of Sea Power.
Get ready for an adrenaline-fueled Cold War experience and thanks for joining us on this journey!
The Triassic Team (Nils, Martin, Mek, Ivan, Daniell, Ben, Matt, Noah, Victor and Ian)
Asid:
Sea Power | Early Access Roadmap
Tue, 29 October 2024
Hello Again Everyone! It has been a busy few weeks for us at Triassic as we get closer and closer to the Early Access launch date of Sea Power: Naval Combat in the Missile Age. We hope that you have been enjoying the content that has been produced to date and that it is inspiring you to think about missions to create!
The great news on that is that Steam Workshop is integrated into the game already, and mission sharing will be possible on day one. With a little bit of creativity and some simple (ish) INI file edits you should be creating your own mission packs and linear story missions in no time!
With just two weeks left to go we thought that we should begin to introduce you to our roadmap. Here it is in all its glory:
As you can see we have a couple of biggies on our list for the near future! Save/Load is very much nearing final development and should be coming to you shortly after release. We are making sure that this is integrated into Steam?s Cloud Save system. Steam Workshop integration will be rolled out to kit-bash models too, with full model import coming later (this is more significant work on the loading side internally).
We will be continually refining and enhancing the AI, as requested in a few of the various online videos covering the game. Our plan is to update this as we go, especially to reduce the micro-management of aircraft that a number of people have commented on.
The big piece that a lot of you are wondering about is the dynamic campaign of course! We are implementing a flexible dynamic system, which will allow campaigns at almost any scale anywhere in the world. We are looking really heavily towards the way that the old MicroProse Classic, Falcon 4.0?s campaign worked for inspiration here.
As for more units, our art team continue to work their magic! These two units have gone into the development build in the last few weeks.
And this one is coming soon!
We look forward to seeing you playing our labour of love soon! See you in two weeks!
The Triassic Team (Nils, Martin, Mek, Ivan, Daniil, Ben, Matt, Noah, Victor and Ian)
Asid:
Sea Power | Upcoming launch tomorrow
Mon, 11 November 2024
Here are the times around the world
Hello Again Everyone, all 27,234 of you who have followed the game, only 19 places outside of the top 100 wishlists, can we make it? Fingers crossed that the Steam algorithm is benevolent and gives us a front page slot tomorrow!
Sea Power: Naval Combat in the Missile Age is scheduled to release into early access at 1000 UTC on the 12th November 2024, also available as an additional purchase on the first day will be the soundtrack. This has been lovingly put together by Aleksi Aubry-Carlson and Jonathan Figoli, sales of the soundtrack go direct to them, please show your support if you can!
As a thankyou from us, for your support the first two weeks after EA launch will have a 10% discount applied to the price (which will use Steam?s regional pricing feature). Please do remember that this is an Early Access game, it will not be perfect, it will break, but it will improve! We hope that you love exploring that along with us.
During Early Access we expect to release a regular weekly or bi-weekly update to the stable branch that you will have access to. Where we find more terminal bugs we will push updates more rapidly. You will find new bug reporting areas on Steam and Discord, please help us out by using them if you find something wrong!
As for what we have been up to in the last couple of weeks ? some things are not so obvious, like Mission Editor now supports localisation for whatever you might create without having to hand edit INI files (phew!). We have also added some really important background tooling, what we are calling ?virtual? INI files that allow us to create single databases of truth from multiple locations on disk controlled through a load order (see where this is going?).
There is a really good chance that Save/Load functionality will be going in properly in the next few days (well done Victor! You are smashing it!) so that should be available either on release or very shortly after. Saves in the default folder will be synced to Steam Cloud so you can keep track of them across multiple devices. On the subject of Steam Cloud we have also included a ?user? folder in the file system that will also be synced. This is so that you can share your own creations across multiple sessions and devices.
Localisation has been a massive piece of work too, we have been going through the game stripping out anything hardcoded that we find is still in there and redirecting it to the Language files in the system. Hopefully we haven?t missed any!
On the visual side tweaks and new additions continue, last week this Haze was only a model, now it is an ASW Hunter in game, adding to the threats the Soviets can provide!
New things continue too, Nils and I spent a nice couple of hours (it?s always at midnight for some reason!) looking at models and pictures of classic cruise ships. This is the Ivan Franko-class liner, a handsome ship I am sure you will agree!
Five of these ships were built by the Soviets and if you are a SCUBA diver and take a visit to New Zealand you can visit the 5th ship, the Mikhail Lermontov where she lies on the bottom in 38m of water after a baffling accident, check out this fascinating article. I might have to pay a visit after I finish my advanced decompression diving course.
Mek has reverted to type (sorry Mek you know it is true) and started making armed speedboats again, this one is pretty special, it?s the Polish design Project 664 "Wisla". It has a top speed of nearly 50 knots because it's a CODAG (Combined Diesel and Gas Turbine). I always love to include these images of the ships being worked on as it lets you see the process that our artists go through.
Also, some new ground assets by Mek, like MIM-23 Hawk, T-55 and ZSU-57-2 made their way into build. I hope that keeps your appetite whetted, see you all tomorrow when you have your hands on the game. Please try not to kill our bug reporting server!
The Triassic Team (Nils, Martin, Mek, Ivan, Daniil, Ben, Matt, Noah, Victor and Ian)
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