Following Seas 1.3 - Torque, trim, and Persistent Rigging

Apologies all for the lengthy wait since the last update. Some big under the hood changes that took a while to get into a playable state.

This update is the largest non-content update since launch, so there are a number of fixes, changes, with the primary focus on refining the sailing system to better represent multi-sail ships.

These changes revolve around the fact that previously, sail forces were calculated separately, but applied to the hull in a unified way. This would result in incorrect and unexpected behavior in some cases, particularly when the sail forces were opposed, or operating at significantly different levels of efficiency.

The aim of these changes is to alter sail forces not just on a per-sail basis, but also adding in the position of the sail and its effect on the hull relative to other sails.

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Sailing System Changes:

To help illustrate the new figures at work the following has been added to the debug info overlay:

Auto trim deg -

To reduce player workload and encourage leaving the helm during travel, Following Seas implements a limited auto-trimming system. (This system has always been in place, just not displayed on debug). This system will average your heading while under way and trim to +- 7 degrees to keep your heading steady.

Note that this can be overridden by rudder inputs, or any sailing conditions strong enough to induce strong yaw forces.

COG Offset -

This is an entirely new system that alters the point at which wind forces are applied to the hull.

How this works for a twin sailed ship like the caravel is as follows:

Mainsail performance is calculated as normal.

Mizzensail performance is calculated as normal unless its performance exceeds that of the mainsail. (i.e. the mainsail loses the wind or is reefed.), at which point the center of force upon the hull will move towards the mizzenmast by the magnitude of the difference in thrust between main and mizzensail. The result of this is that the mizzensail will induce significant yaw while it receives greater windforce than the mainsail.

For ships with three sails, this system functions similarly, with greater efficiency of the foresail drawing the center of force towards the bow, and the same towards the stern considering the mizzen sail.

Below are some example of how this is meant to function. Blue arrows indicate the direction of true wind. Green circle represents the averaged center of thrust between all sails. Text indicates the efficiency of each sail.

A ship with all sails balanced. (Consider that the user has correctly trimmed each sail). The green circle indicates the point at which averaged forces are applied to the hull, and the green arrow indicates the path of travel in this configuration. The blue arrow is the current angle of true wind, and the text indicates the current efficiency of each sail.

Steam post image Two examples of the same ship, but with unequal efficiency on different sails. (Consider that the user has correctly trimmed each sail). The green circle indicates the point at which averaged forces are applied to the hull, and the green arrow indicates the path of travel in this configuration. The blue arrow is the current angle of true wind, and the text indicates the current efficiency of each sail.

Steam post image A more complex example, showing both sail trim and rudder trim combining to result in forward travel.

Keel Effective Vel -

This system has always been present, but has been significantly updated for this change. Previously, this value represented the hullspeed through water (in m/s) where the keel gained its highest level of efficiency. At or above this speed, lateral drift and yaw reduced considerably due to hydrodynamic forces. Now, while these forces are still calculated, there is minimal effect upon yaw, so you will need to be more careful when setting your sails and trim, or excessive yaw may occur, particularly if some sails operate and a much greater efficiency than others.

These changes currently apply to the following ships:

Caravel

Longline Caravel

Xebec

Caelean Junk

Padewakang

The Dhow is not affected in any way as it has only a single sail, and thus no uneven force to apply. Greatship and Corsair Xebec are a bit more complex and are still in the works.

Other sailing changes:

In addition to above, a bug was found with the way overall sail power was applied, often resulting in better performance from smaller sails and reduced effectiveness of larger ones. This has been corrected. Note that this applies to all ships, including ones that have yet to be updated to the previously mentioned overhaul. You may encounter higher speeds on these ships.

Persistence -

While you now need to be more precise with your sailplan, you will no longer lose your effort every time you load (or the game crashes -- but let's pretend that never happens.) Most rigging components are now persistent, including rope placement, lengths, and tautness. Alongside the prior persistence to reefing -- the only major components that have yet to be added are the peak winches on gaff rigs, and brace line setup on square rigs. Persistent rigging may introduce some peculiar effects when saving extreme positions, so please keep me posted through bug reports. (On discord - I don't keep up with the steam forum.)

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Individual Ship Changes and Fixes:

Caravel:

Made minor model changes to the tutorial caravel.

Updated sailing model to account for variable torque and uneven efficiency.

Fixed bad behavior when attempting to over-shorten ropes.

Combined some of the larger texture sheets into a single texture to reduce the number of files in memory.

Improved stability of yards.

Longline Caravel:

Updated sailing model to account for variable torque and uneven efficiency.

Increased total sail thrust slightly to allow for better speed and acceleration.

Saettia:

Added missing cleat connections on Saettia foredeck.

Altered position of bow splash to be more visible.

Significantly improved the turning torque on the Saettia.

Altered center of thrust to more closely align with the center of gravity.

Rebalanced sail thrust calculations on the Saettia, should accelerate more quickly, and have a slightly higher top speed.

Increased base sail forces of the Saettia by around 15%.

Increased mass of the longer trailing end of the yards to help prevent the yard from becoming stuck in a near-vertical alignment.

Updated sailing model to account for variable torque and uneven efficiency.

Padewakang:

Altered hull colliders on the Padewakang to reduce chances of getting stuck when traversing the stairs.

Fixed jittery and misaligned mooring ropes.

Updated sailing model to account for variable torque and uneven efficiency.

Reduced, but not eliminated, frequent physics explosions due to over-shortening ropes.

Overall increased the stability of the Tanja-rig, though it remains a bit problematic.

Caelean Junk:

Rebalanced the positional weight aboard the Caelean Junk to more closely match the center of gravity.

Increased forces applied to the Caelean Junk mainsail to better control rotation due to wind.

Updated sailing model to account for variable torque and uneven efficiency.

Xebec (Lateen version):

Applied more precise length enforcement to yardlines.

Updated sailing model to account for variable torque and uneven efficiency.

All Ships:

Added additional UI elements and functionality to the steering interface.

1. Auto Trim (T) - indicates the current state of the auto trim system. You can now toggle this on or off via the 'T' key.

2. Heading Drift - indicates the yaw of the hull in deg/s.

3. Rudder Angle - Current angle of rudder.

Rope UI has been updated to better indicate function.

Rope UI is now visible when looking at a controllable rope, even when not interacting with it, more clearly indicating that you can still adjust rope length while it is tied to a connection point.

Give your nose-pickers a break. You can now use the shift key to change rope lengths much more quickly.

Fixed an issue where incorrect rope lengths could be displayed in some conditions.

World/Player Changes:

Added additional details to some islands.

More tasks (can) be generated when interacting with a task table.

Quantity of goods in a given task are now generated (up to) your active ship's total capacity, making larger ships more profitable.

Overhauled player tool camera. Replaces the secondary tool camera with a shader-based solution. Benefits of this will vary based on your system, but as an example it gains me approximately 6-8fps on my development system. Additionally, lighting, shadows, and reflections should be much improved for all held tools.

Added a small light to the cargo manifest, so that it is always visible even in a dark hold.

Fixed the issue of strange brightness shifts when equipping certain tools.

Player tools now inherit reflection probes from their environment, which should result in much more natural lighting and shadow, particularly below decks or in dark environments.

Fixed partially obscured UI on the quadrant.

Fixed broken layered UI on the sun-compass.

Added better rain weather state with added audio and effects.

Fixed an issue that could cause weather audio to break under certain conditions.

Fixed most cases of weather effects clipping into the hull.

Added island scale LOD models to Weeping isle to somewhat reduce the goofy look when beyond detail spawn point.

Added some extended details to Tathun's Pit.

Implemented LOD's and colliders to Epitaphs.

Added a base NPC interface that allows for simpler and more granular control of NPC characters. This includes things like health and ragdoll physics. This also extends to creature entities, allowing slightly less rigid looking animation.

You can now kill (re-kill?) most epitaphs, though this is not persistent, as it's a reflection of systems currently under development. There is no consequence for doing so, (currently) but it might look funny.

Better align moving NPC's with terrain, and increase obstacle avoidance range. (Still needs plenty of work.)

Goats now ragdoll instead of relying on preset animations. I am not responsible for any Skyrim style corpse floppage that may occur.

Better aligned harvest prompts to dead fauna.

Firing the matchlock will now align hit calculation with the point the weapon fires instead of when the trigger is pulled. (Due to variable burn time from the wick.)

Spent some time with my old type-56 and recorded some new audio effects for the matchlock.

Reduced the intensity of matchlock particle effects, and altered their emission.

Added the option to disable sea-spray/water-fog effects. (Yes I heard you, you know who you are.)

Updated option panel to better categorize different settings.

Increased player's ability to traverse the hull during extreme heel, preventing jittery parentage problems.

Fixed flickering ocean plane when near ladders.

Made numerous improvements to weather lighting.

Fixed several instances of unnecessary scripts running in menus, causing exceptions.

Fixed an issue where some static decor items had scripts attached and could cause a small resource draw.

Known issues/Alerts

If you previously saved while in the Saettia or Caelean Junk, you might spawn in in unpredictable places, as the ship origin relative to their geometry has shifted.

In most ships upon loading a prior save, you may encounter strange states for your rigging. This should be resolved upon reconfiguring - and is due to the indexing of individual sails changing in this update.