Hi there.
It's been a while since the last update. So, here we go.
Ship Management Menu
Menu to manage ship wellbeing and performances
Inventory UI
Well, we need a basic inventory management, where we can see the items that a ship currently have, as well as being able to drag those item into ballistic menu.
Ballistic UI
Among features of Bad Pirates are, each side of a ship will have a different ballistic inventory management, and ballistic setup.
Ballistic Setup
Ballistic setup is basically the cannons configuration you may have, and ammunition choice, as a ballistic strategy is usually affected by reload timing, cannon range efficiency and so on. later you'll be able to configure different ammunition usage, switch setup anytime by 1-10 hotkeys and many other things yet to be figured out. this is to encourage tactical gameplay by unlimited preferences. I was thinking about having something up to gun powder configuration for each cannons, some kind of boost to penetration power, while sacrificing accuracy. but well, this will require another item usage, called gunpowder. Just wondering if it might complicate the gameplay.
Crew Design And Structure
So, this is the first time I actually gone through a thorough design on our crew management feature. One of the main core of the gameplay is crew management, and how they affect performance of the ship. So a crew will have their own class, with each class have specific skills that contributes to performance of the ship. For example :
Basic class
A sailor class, they'll have skills such as :
- ship handling
- repair
- gunnery
Class specific like :
A navigator class, will have a skills such as :
- sail master (improves ship acceleration_rate, and general sailing speed)
- steering (improves turn_rate)
- cartography (island discovery, and so on)
A doctor, will have skills such as :
- first aid (improves crews general healing rate)
- medicine expert (improves medicine usage efficiency)
then we'll have chef, fisherman, shipsmith, cannoneer, tactician, and countless of classes if you want. in fact, a generic class design is probably underway, to give more way for a custom crew class. I was thinking about having a school or trainer to
Crew collective statuses
So, a ship will have crew collective related statuses like health, energy (as having an individual statuses may decrease game performance at one point, and managing them all having hundreds of them later will be cumbersome to gameplay.) such statuses will affect the ship performance at one point, so it's best to have them at the full when approaching a skirmish. and this is where doctor or chef come to play.
Crew skill rates database
so, while i was at it, i managed to develop a simple web app feature to manage the database (remember the web app that i mentioned in the previous update?)
Summary
The ship management ui development is kinda slow for me, as UI design and look is totally not my forte. I am looking forward to developing a standardized dialogue mechanic later (and modal dialog, of course). This will hopefully open more development path such as story system, trading, crew dialogue, npc interaction and many others.
The ballistic design is yet to be finalized, as right now it's depending on range value of a cannon to determine the gameplay strategy (at 3 degree angle). But so far, it's all working as intended.
There're many other features I would like to share which is being actively drafted such as :
- fame system (honor / notoriety)
- end game design
- monouver (or skills in other games)
But I'll keep that for later maybe, and until next time. ;)
