He has heart in the right place but questionable methods
I guess nowadays anyone can support their skills with AI and make a game in weeks vs months so he should copy paste ur idea with his mechanics and see which one gets more popular. See who will win.
Always trying to find a balance of realism vs arcade feel on the gameplay. Let me know how you would handle sailing upwind/downwind instead, always love more suggestions!
At no point should you (nor would it be physically possible to) set the yards in the direction of the ship. At most during sailing they would be turned maybe 45 degrees which would correspond to "close hauled" at which point you may be able to reach about 60 degrees from the wind direction.
Thus, a simple linear function that would show the optimal angle of the yards as a function of the wind direction (0 = wind straight ahead, 180 = wind straight from behind) could be something like f(x) = -3/8 x + 67.5.
And as a slight visual cue, please show the mast when it would be visible before the sails as well. I found that I was often confused whether I had the yards sheeted all the way one way or the other way.
Also I think it would be clearer to show the yard position indicator as 0 degrees when the yards are squared, that is perpendicular to the ship. Then sheeted to the maximum would be 45 degrees either way from 0.
Thank you so much, that function is so simple! I’m going to be updating the sailing realism in a future patch and will be sure to update the sail turning constraints.
I do this to a certain extent for galleons on the Spanish map but should update the rest too
I’ve been building this since early May with active captains through the last month. I randomly noticed traffic from hacker news a few days ago, turns out somebody had linked tinywind in the comments there. Love to see other people in the space!
I’m also relatively new here so we’re learning on the fly. I’ve been heavily activate in pixel art subreddits early on for feedback and advice especially on the procedural generation. I’ve also found some great cheap pixel assets to get started from itch.io.
Good luck on your pixel adventures, love to see what you build!
I’m not a sailor at all my I just demo’d this for my dad who is. He had similar feedback
I need to sit down and do a sailing mechanics audit to find a good balance between arcade/realism, I think a beam reach is supposed to be faster than downwind. But my angle of attacks could be more accurate especially for upwind sailing?
Here’s currently how tinywind does it if anyone’s curious:
Have a look at these [1] polar diagrams for tall sailing ships. The radial distance from the center is the theoretical boat speed and the angle is the direction that the wind is hitting the boat, with zero on the nose and 180 from the stern. Each plotted line is the boat speed for a given wind speed. They show how the square-rigged ships can't sail upwind any closer than 55 degrees or so and are fastest on a broad reach (wind from just back of the side). You can also see how longer boats are generally faster, but a smaller boat with triangle sails ("Bermuda rigged") could easily get away from a big square-rigged ship by heading more upwind.
Interesting for reasons unrelated to TinyWind: What are the numbers on the left edge, boat speed in knots? Also, from what place and time is the technology on which these diagrams are based?
And what is this forum that unfortunately I can't read? Who made these diagrams?
This is really useful, thanks! I’ll be making a sailing realism pass next week and will try to update it to reflect the square rigging dynamics a little better
In irons should be a slightly negative number, since the wind drags the boat backwards at that point. Plus it will force the player to tack back and forth, which is a fun part of sailing. I bet A.I. can tell you the angle the sail ought to render at too (unless non-moving sail was part of the cartoon aesthetic)
I did that simply for arcadeyness and feel but I’m not married to it at all
Giving the ship a slight constant forward moment felt nice and forgiving when testing, and user still has to tack back and forth to get meaningful enough speed to strafe a ship. But I’m definitely open to sliding the realism scale here
Hi Tyler, realism and arcade-feel doesn’t have to be a binary thing.
My big effort has been finding tasteful compromises to keep a “real” feel but still simple enough to not be frustrating and put away the game. Hope this helps!
Good that was the point! I don’t engage with bad faith commenters seriously, especially when we have so many helpful comments in this thread, hope this helps!
Realism and arcade are not exclusive but I also would say that the headline saying “real wind physics” is misleading. I was disappointed to see that real they are not.
Totally heard, this game is still in early alpha and I’ve been updating the sailing dynamics week by week. This thread gave me a lot of valuable direction to push the realism more. Thanks for checking it out either way!
Hi Tyler this game is in early alpha, we’re still changing physics and simulation dynamics week by week. This is not a final state. Unfortunately you’re not able to have a nuanced conversation and provide actual feedback unlike everyone else in this thread. Hope you have a good day!
You aren’t interested in having a conversation, you’re just repeating the same dismissive thing over and over again and gaslighting people over what the word "real" means.
To be clear you’ve called me childish, gaslighting, a liar, and obnoxious for trying to seek advice in a thread :) this is the gut reaction of someone who is mentally unwell, hope you seek help for yourself
Neutral observer here. A reasonable reply would have been "Good point, maybe "real wind physics" wasn't the best headline" and move on with your day. Not everything has to bruise ones ego and turn into a sarcasm spiral.
If you notice this is how the conversation went with every single other person who wanted more realism. Instead Tyler decides to call it false advertising, gaslighting, etc. absolutely mental breakdown from him instead of actually giving feedback. He comes across like he’s 10 years old haha
What he doesn’t realize is this game is only a month old in active dev, no one is trying to dupe customers I’m trying to learn what I’m missing. Obviously I can make some changes to push realism on the wind physics, and this will be updated.
