Demo Update

For those of you who remain interested, and have yet to try out the full game - I wanted to apologise for the lengthy period with no updates to the demo. Focus has been on stabilizing and updating the EA version of the game, but given that it's going to be the entry point for many - the demo shouldn't have gone so long without update.

That said -- I'm happy to announce that today the demo has been updated to feature all improvements, new content, and features present in the main game (that apply to the assets contained in the demo.)

Many bugfixes, stability improvements, and refinements have been made, along with a number of content additions.

The main added features include ship naming, persistent weather, player hands (in some cases), fast travel, time-passing, persistent mooring, and a new tool in the form of a matchlock. (functionality is limited in the demo -- but you can make it go bang.)

Note that due to the volume of changes, as well as the migration from Unity 2021.21.3 to 2022.3, any prior demo saves may not load successfully. Should any odd issues occur -- I would recommend clearing your settings file located at: C://Users/You/AppData/LocalLow/Whipstaff Games/Following Seas

Fixes

Slowly drifting cleats issue has been solved.

Fixed non-interactable book in junk on Watcher.

Fixed lights stuck on in some cases.

Fixed the Following Seas space program when attempting to fast travel while anchored.

Fixed numerous issues with load and save dialogs that could result in layered gamescenes.

Wind/Wave direction and intensity should no longer happen instantly in some cases. Overall weather and wind transitions should be far smoother, and take a bit longer to occur. (60 seconds vs 25). This should fix cases where heavily loaded ships would be instantly swamped if a storm occurs.

Fixed inverted longitude coordinates in map view for the mouse cursor.

Fixed inconsistent world scaling across various ships, resulting in significantly out of sync displayed coordinates vs observed.

Fixed numerous issues with giving and receiving payments.

Fixed spillover destination text on cargo manifest.

Fixed issue where cargo would state "too far from origin" when unloading.

Fixed issue where cargo would display error text when moving from one cargo space to another.

Removed heading indicator from cargo due to inaccuracy.

Corrected mixed units in task entry display.

Fixed handheld lantern getting gradually lower each time it is activated.

Fixed an issue where if a world recentering event occurred while repositioning the ship via the unstuck mode -- bad things could happen.

If player becomes displaced from their seat on the rowboat -- they should now correctly disengage the rowing controls and return to drowning.

Weather Vanes should now indicate apparent wind vs true wind.

Made several changes to static ship models in the world to reduce the chances of becoming stuck on them when colliding.

Made several changes to improve the stability of cloth particles during load-in.

Simplified calculation and display of money -- also resolving a number of inconsistent displays

Fixed inability to stop piloting rowboat in some cases.

Fixed fast travel dialog operating on reversed longitude.

Fixed several deprecated map objects being visible in world space on some ships.

Made several small edits to behavior of world recentering during ship loads.

Greatly increased stability of cloth during world recenter events. This should also reduce the chances of physics explosions during recenter events.

Fixed a display issue where various task systems would display the incorrect task origin when loading from a save.

Fixed an issue with the Caravels, and Padewakang where the ocean plane would be visible when in interior spaces during heavy weather.

Fixed a bug in which map marker data would be exponentially duplicated on save -- resulting in large save files and a laggy or unusable in game map. If you are affected by this -- save and reload which will clear the data.

Yet more changes to the caravel to try to address reports of 20,000 leagues cosplay. (I remain unable to replicate this, so any fixes are purely speculative.)

Fixed duplicate cargo ID's that would result in inconsistent product labels. (i.e. wooden goods could turn into dried fish.) If you currently have one of these tasks -- the fix will not apply -- but will not affect your ability to finish the task.

Fixed overlapping text on task interface.

Fixed an issue that would cause player rod fishing position to be calculated improperly, leaving the rod intersecting with the hull/other game objects.

Fixed several cases in which onscreen object prompts would still be visible after completing an operation.

Fixed cases where mouse cursor would become obscured behind points of interest in map view.

Fixed issue where some cargo crates could appear very bright.

Corrected an issue in which autosaves could occur when player not aboard ship -- resulting in potential floating point precision errors upon load.

Made numerous improvements to scripts to improve execution time, particularly during world recenter.

Added positional tracking and reset to wake particle emitters to *hopefully* prevent emitter drift over time as experienced by some users.

Fixed several bugs that would prevent task and cargo instantiation for loaded tasks and associated cargo.

Fixes player frequently dismounting the rowing position when in rowboats.

Fixed an issue where rapidly shifting between audio zones would cause audio to become stuck in one state until reload.

Fixed an issue where some ship assets would not be properly disposed for inactive ships, causing increased memory load.

Fixed map being unusable on ultrawide monitors.

Fixed map pan controls reversing on certain zoom levels on certain resolutions.

Fixed game defaulting to minimum supported resolution on install. Should now default to current monitor resolution.

Fixed various methods through which tool animations could be interrupted, leading to various misalignments and other issues.

Fixed harvest prompts appearing while game is still alive.

Fixed a serious issue with longitude sync over larger distances.

Fixed reference points of landmarks/islands. Previously the positional reference varied between dead center, or various corners of the landmass, resulting in positions on the map being offset by up to a kilometer from where they should be. Now all landmarks are referenced from their center.

Significantly improved accuracy of observed latitude/longitude.

Fast travel will allow you to be much closer to land.

Adjusted scale of points of interest on map to more closely align with their proportional 'real world' size.

Fixed fast travel button becoming non-interactable after traveling, when attempting a second travel.

Fixed option panel confirm button being out of frame in gameplay when using ultrawide resolutions.

Fixed issue where inventory items could be equipped via hotkey while certain ui items were active, breaking functionality of the ui item.

Fixed serious issue that would regularly cause certain ships to freeze in place. (Note that this is a separate issue to cases where ships would lose all collision)

Fixed missing hotkey for new matchlock (7);

Fixed several additional cases that could cause steering functionality to become stuck after pressing the interaction key while steering and viewing another interactable object. This would lead to directional keys affecting steering even when off the ship, and break several other interactable components, particularly ladders. This affected all ships, but was most prominent on the gaff rigged caravel due to the proximity of many interactable components to the tiller.

Fixed issue where rapidly flipping between reef controllers and general interaction controllers (i.e. peak winches/gurdies/etc) could cause misidentification of what active object should be.

Fixed issue where object interaction UI would become stuck when jumping into fish-hold while holding a fish.

Changes

Added some super subtle graffiti to the Watcher junk to better indicate that it is not for sale.

Reduced default starting graphics options to hopefully cut down on initial performance issues/crashes on some systems. (Cloth collision off/Shadows and Sky medium)

This will not effect any existing installs or overwrite your current settings.

Added version output to main menu.

Made it much easier to access the cleat at the rear of the caravel -- and widened the egress point to better indicate that it is accessible.

Made several significant changes to how seaspray and wind splashes are generated. Now the effect and intensity is tied to an averaged value of both wave intensity and wind intensity. This should result in much less intense effects during calmer weather.

Added (yes I heard you) separate axis inversion controls for exterior camera.

Significantly modified the physics materials and collision calculations for all ships. This should result in less bizarre collision behavior in most cases, though I'd still advise against playing bumper boats.

The tweaks made to ship collider behavior should also result in less sticky traversal for the player, though not completely eliminated.

Made significant changes to world colliders, adding a new class of collision calculation that ignores players, but collides with ships. This allows ship collision with many world objects to be much simplified, and result in much lowered likelihood of the ship getting stuck in complex collision shapes, such as the pilings and planks of dock structures, instead viewing the whole dock assembly as a single object.

Increased the water displacement of the caravel pump(s) to make recovery easier.

Slightly decreased the flooding rate of over-deck flooding on the caravel to reduce likelihood of being swamped. (If your hatches are closed, otherwise it is radically higher)

Started a process to make navigation across the more crowded ship decks smoother. Currently this applies to the starting Caravel, and the Junk. While not complete, you should notice generally improved traversal on these ships, particularly around hatches and other raised deck surfaces upon which the player would frequently get stuck.

Split the reefing prompt into subtypes -- so that only relevant controls are displayed. i.e., battened sails will no longer display that they can be mirrored, as that is not a function relevant to them.

New wave dampening and hull clipping behavior. This is to address issues where ships, particularly the smaller ones, would often become partially submerged in heavy seas, resulting in erratic diving and generally glitchy behavior. This is due to internal wave dampeners beneath ship decks to improve the visuals aboard. Now orientations, velocities, and weather conditions are considered when applying these dampeners. This *should* result in more stable performance in heavy seas -- at the cost of occasional surface clipping of the water plane through the upper decks.

Shadow boxes beneath hatches to make the interior detail despawn less obvious.

Added visible error states to the text fields in the pass-time screen to better indicate when it stops due to insufficient resources.

Increased lifetime of weather rolls, excluding higher rarities of weather.

Significantly reduced the density of ash storms to hopefully improve performance.

Raised UI dialog for sun compass to prevent clipping on some resolutions.

reduced collider size for most bunks to prevent unintentional triggers

Moved forcepoints of rowboat sternward, and adjusted thrust slightly above the horizon to hopefully reduce the constant starting and stopping from the bow digging into wave troughs.

Wind direction is now more controlled. Rather than a full reroll on weather change -- the new wind direction must be within ~30 degrees of the previous direction to prevent radical shifts.

Weather conditions are now applied instantly on reload, instead of building over a period of time from the default weather.

Wind direction is now more reliably retained on save/reload.

When unloading cargo, crates relevant to the selected task will be highlighted, to make it clearer which crates should be targeted for unloading -- especially useful when transporting multiple groups of the same type of cargo, as individual crates are still bound to their originating task ID.

Altered the cargo hologram to be less visually cluttered, and better stand out in its surroundings.

Performed a migration from Unity 2021.3.11 to 2022.3.62f3. It is my hope that this will not be noticed in most cases - but due to significant backend changes on an engine level, it's likely there are some issues I have yet to encounter.

Made a number of small changes to post processing, particularly SSAO, to try to reduce the fuzzy jittery look on moving objects.

Improved the draw distance of most grass types.

Increased both mass and buoyancy to attempt to improve rowboat handling.

Note that rowboats are still pretty unpleasant to use. I'm working on it -- the water system doesn't scale well to very small hulls

Altered some ship scripts to reduce unnecessary method calls.

Mooring ropes are now persistent.

Save structures for some data points improved to reduce filesize and complexity.

Reworked compound ship zones to better support concave shapes. (i.e. stepped shapes such as on the Caelean Junk). This will also reduce cases where exterior spaces retain interior audio.

Player can no longer use the lantern (or any other tools) underwater...

Allow the user to zoom out considerably further on the map interface.

Improved pan and zoom functionality to keep reference position synced more predictably.

The star cubemap seems to consistently be out by approximately +0.81 degrees, I've added a compensation to the quadrant to account for this, which should result in more accurate readings across the whole map. I have tested the observed vs programmatic latitude positioning at approximately midnight across the full map range, with accuracy now being within 0.1 degree.

New Content

Added brief tips to the loading screen to cover some of the most common FAQ.

Added Ship Reset Mode ->

Consider this in progress, and a bandaide solution for the time being.

If your ship gets stuck, or collides in a disastrous fashion, there is a new keybinding to toggle ship reset. (p by default)

Pressing this will allow you to move the ship to a safe location (indicated by a colored bounding box).

You can do this from both inside the ship, where it will switch to an external view, or outside the ship, which will allow you to reposition from the player's camera perspective.

Added a Pass Time function to all ships.

This can be accessed from the main bunk in each ship. Consider to be in a trial stage at this point.

Currently how this operates is that beginning the 'pass time' function will increase the passage of time by a significant amount, but still allow you to observe the conditions without direct control of your ship. This also means that weather will change rapidly as well, both by very roughly 60x.

Much like fast travel, provision function basically as a currency to facilitate this, though the costs are low.

Added a centering function to wheels and whipstaffs. Holding your forward axis mapped key/button will return the wheel to center.

Added a ui prompt to steering interfaces to make controls clearer.

Flowback water effects added to the scuppers of ships with low freeboard.

External camera height may now be controlled via the additional control axis. (Triggers on most controllers, or e/r on keyboard.)

Task Abandonment, and debts.

Tasks can now be abandoned. You are not penalized for goods you have yet to load, (or have unloaded at origin port), but you do receive a penalty for any undelivered cargo aboard at the time the task is abandoned. The value of this cargo will be taken on a debt to the originating port. All future payments of currency will be used to clear your debt before being paid out to you.

Abandon tasks via the 'tasks' menu within the ship's book.

Ship naming!

Consider this system a work in progress, but all ships can now be persistently named. To do this, you will find a model ship in the cabin/berth of all ships. Interacting with this will bring up an interface with which you can name your ship. Currently only a single font/color is available, and only the English alphabet, but I do plan to add additional capabilities over time.

In most cases you can name your ship anything within the character level (generally around 30, but less on the very small ships.) -- I would just ask to limit dispersion of names that would be considered offensive, through video or screenshots. The text is generally not sanitized. (But no you can't put sql injection into it.)

Saving the game after naming your ship will save the given text to your ship until you move to another ship. If you return to a prior ship you will need to name once again, as ship data is only persistent for your active vessel.

Player tools now includes a matchlock. Implementation is partial at this point. Some islands have goats which can be shot for provisions, but currently no powder/shot is needed, and the weapon has no effect on other objects. Controls are mostly standard fps. Left click will cock the gun, or fire (while aimed) if already cocked. Right click will aim. 'r' will reload. (Bring a snack it'll take a while.)

Lantern has added effects and various physics changes.

Some reworks to the quadrant to improve positioning. (I'm aware of the clipping issue with the angle needle, working on it.)

Player now has hands while using some tools. Implementation of this will continue over time. My animation skills aren't super strong, so it's a bit stiff, but hopefully improves the sense of presence in the game.

Currently there are two hand options -- which can be selected to your preference from the option panel. There will likely be more in the future.

Note that upon changing selected hands - you will need to reload or load from the menu for the change to take effect.