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[ucupumar]

Note: This game still working title. Until we come up with some revelation name, let's just call it Warboat.

Hello there!

Warboat is 3D local multiplayer game where you play as some kind of gladiator using a rowboat and cannons. To win the game, you must sink your opponents. It plays up to 4 (four) players. This game inspired from multiplayer fun of Towerfall and awkward control of Surgeon Simulator (actually it's not that awkward to control this game, it's just a bit 'different' ).


Art isn't final, this game even doesn't have real concept art yet.

MOVEMENT
Warboat has unique control which you don't move your boat using analog or d-pad, but rather using shoulder button (if you're using controller) to row your boat. If you only row your left side, you will rotate to the left. But if you row both left and right, you will move forward, just like real life row boat.


For Xbox 360 controller, default button are:
LT - row forward left
RT - row forward right
LB - row backward left
RB - row backward right

ATTACK
To attack you can use your cannon or your paddle.


B - paddle attack left
X - paddle attack right


Y - shoot front
A - shoot back

Beware, the more power you shoot, the more feedback force you get and there's recharge time until you can shoot again. Cannon bullet will cause wave if hit water surface.

ALREADY IMPLEMENTED/HALF-IMPLEMENTED
It's been two month of development time. Implemented features including:
- Shallow Water Physics
- Buoyancy physics
- Simple water shader
- Basic game rule

ENGINE
After one year using Unity, we decided to use fully open source engine, Urho3D. It's like a clean version of Ogre3D, highly recommended if you're open source fans like us.

WHAT'S LEFT?
- 'Ready to share' playable demo
- Concept art
- Game modes

[dukope]

This looks like a lot of fun. I especially like the clear and direct mapping of the controls onto the character. Should be very easy to pick up and play - great for a 4-player local shooter.

One small suggestion is to add a trail effect to the cannons so their origin & path are a little clearer.

Warboat is the best possible name.

[Loop Gain]

Local multiplayer games with unconventional control schemes are always interesting! The rowing mechanic looks much more engaging then basic joystick controls ("go left", "go up", "go up-and-to-the-left", etc.) would be.

Out of curiosity, why did you decide to switch from Unity to Urho3D?

(Also, I second dukope's comment that Warboat - which, if I were you, I would CamelCase as WarBoat - is an excellent name.)

[ucupumar]

Woooow, thaanks dukope , I'm a fan of your works. Thanks for Loop Gain too. Yeah, I really hope this game will be fun for everyone but still harder to master.

One small suggestion is to add a trail effect to the cannons so their origin & path are a little clearer.

You're right, I'm still pretty much newbie at effects thingy, I will try to create one next time.

Out of curiosity, why did you decide to switch from Unity to Urho3D?

We are small team consisting only three people and tight budget. We couldn't afford Unity Pro license and we found a lot of limitation of Unity free version. In example, it couldn't let us to use RenderToTexture (RTT), it's important to create nice refraction effects on this game. The other reason is we are really long time fans of open source software. We are already using only open source tool for our pipeline (Blender & Gimp), why not the game engine too? And the last reason, Unity editor can't even run on Linux (our artist is using ArchLinux).

Thanks for suggestion about the name, I think we will really consider Warboat as the final name, either camelcase or not (maybe with camelcase ). I just think Warboat name is too generic, but what do I know?

[danieru]

Either way thank you for supporting open source 

Now this might be bike-shedding but I like the name Battleboats myself, it gives me a more Bumper-Kart feel. Warboat feels very serious, like WarThunder.

The gameplay does remind me of those RC pirate ships in the West Edmonton Mall which you could battle using their water cannons.

In any case the game looks fun!

[ucupumar]

@danieru, thanks for your reply. It's always my pleasure to support open source software. 

I'll consider 'Battleboats' too. Like you said, this game isn't serious at all.

For the gameplay, more stuff coming soon!

[ucupumar]

I want to show you how it looks like to play Warboat. I tested playing Warboat with 2 other developers, and here they are, the highlights of the match:

Note: Number on corner of the screen are player's life. It loses one when player got sink. Last player on arena won the match


At some point, cannon explosion can blow player away.


Red player got unstable after getting hit and sank.


One of game's chaos moments.

There are still some issue:

• Camera still kind of messy, sometimes player got offscreen if moved fast enough
• Explosion and water splash still using temporary particles

[locknic]

Haha this looks fantastic. Seems like a cool little game I would play on my xbox when friends come over.

[Mesidin]

This game looks really neat. I love the unique controls! I look forward to your progress.

I had never heard of Urho3D. I'll have to check that out.

[ephoete]

Very nice concept and promising start. I believe it'll need a rather complex and frantic gameplay to hit the market though. !)

[ucupumar]

Thanks for all the comments!

Very nice concept and promising start. I believe it'll need a rather complex and frantic gameplay to hit the market though. !)

Yeah, you're right. It's still really early in development though, we haven't really touch art departement yet. 
And there's still minimal use of particles. I believe particle system can help to make this game more immersive and frantic.

[ucupumar]

Messed up with Urho particles. It still has a lot of limitation compared to Unity, but it works nevertheless.
I updated water splash particles and add some bubbles.

Still need moaar effects! 

[ucupumar]

While developing better particle effects, our art department has done some kind of mockup of swamp arena. It looks like this:

Our team still lacks of 2D concept art skill, so we go directly to Blender to create some concepts.
Warboat will consists of several arena with it's each own specialties. This swamp arena had small waterfall that will cause continuous waves around arena. We hope it will add more dynamics to the battlefield. It's still a concept, so maybe it will change in the future. 

[ndke]

Looks absolutely amazing, the mockup looks very good!
I want to play this, looks like this could be a ton of fun :D

[nanoboy]

  nice concept, can't wait for the next progress  

[ucupumar]

nice concept, can't wait for the next progress 

Looks absolutely amazing, the mockup looks very good!
I want to play this, looks like this could be a ton of fun :D

Thanks for the comments   


It's been almost a month since last update. Our country had long holiday and some other stuff happens.
Our team mostly still tweaking knob on prototypes, while art department haven't really get much progress. We admit we are still have a lot to learn. We are now taking pre-production more seriously. Our prototypes already playable anyway. Really planning next step will save a lot of time than jumping gun implementing something or create assets.

For the update, we've added a particle effect for bomb launching.


And some gameplay changes too, we think it's more fun to add reloads! Every time player launch a bomb, cannon will face upward. Cannon cannot be used until player manually reload. Here's the reload animations.


That's all we can show you this time.
Hopefully more stuff coming soon.
Cheers!

[oodavid]

I really want to see the water ripple underneath the cannonballs as they travel over the water. Looks fun

[ucupumar]

I really want to see the water ripple underneath the cannonballs as they travel over the water. Looks fun

Thanks for the comment. You can see the ripple effect on earlier post.
I really want to share some video, but probably next time.


Yet another month passed by without any single post.
We are still working on this, we promise you!  

We still polishing our prototype. First thing that got our attention is polishing first test arena.
This is our test arena before:

It looks boring and lacks of inviting aspects for new player to try our game.

So our artist are trying to concept our first test arena to some kind of swimming pool located on Chernobyl. (lol, wut?)
After searching some references, doing some modeling, splatting some textures, and importing all of them to Urho3D,
Here they are, the new test arena:


Another screenshot:


It's still not finished yet. But it's already better than before I guess.  
We are planning to use lightmap from new Blender cycles bake feature.
We'll share the progress soon.

[ucupumar]

Updates!  


Test arena render test using Blender cycles!

It tooks about 30 minutes to render on GTX 460.

We are still figuring it out to bake and use it as lightmap on Urho3D.
Lightmaps usually baked from the engine itself, like Unity or Unreal. So, it's little bit tricky to use imported lightmaps to the engine.
We'll share the details later as the progress goes on.

[VAMflax]

Wow! Game looks super fun, and the new environment and earlier mock up looks wicked!! :D

Good work!