Windward, a game inspired by Sid Meier's Pirates

Bumping for new features: capture the flag map (The Ring), map where you play El Diablo (Cloverleaf), a map where you build your own defenses (Frostbite), and more...

 

really great game lost 30 mins to it before i realised lol

 

Nice job! The art is spot on and the control is great.

About the gameplay, I'm probably just suck at it, or I'm doing it wrong somehow. I die A LOT. Move anywhere near enemies towers is close to a suicide.
But it is kind of fun, probably more fun if I figure how to not suck so much

 

You will have problems soloing a tower unless you play as a Frigate, or have Deflect 5/5 with Size matters 3/3. It's intentional -- each ship is stronger at certain tasks but weaker at others.

 

Awesome some
But,well I'm stuck here:S

 

Curious. When you place a dock, it repositions the ship automatically so you don't get stuck. I guess it didn't work for you for some reason.

 

Bumping this after adding a smooth fog of war. Does it make the game more interesting?

 

Oh yeah, added a tutorial as well. Accessible from the ship selection menu.

 

Finally a correct water implementation in unity. Right now water3 and water4 are buggy, undocumented and in many cases unusable.
They seem to be abandoned also.

I am looking forward for your water package. Please make it available soon.

 

Here you go: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/146431-Tasharen-Water-(water-from-Windward)

 

You are fast! Thanks. I will buy it when it is approved.

 

I just spent several hours playing. First of all, it looks great. Very polished, very well done. A few critiques:

At first I started with the middle sized ship, and died repeatedly, unable to accomplish anything. So I deleted that one and tried the large one. It was survivable but agonizingly slow to turn.

The first game with it was on the capture the flag (cargo) map. I was able to capture all the outer lighthouses and the two other docks as the enemy AI didn't seem to care about them. After capturing the top dock, my AI team members just kept respawning there and throwing themselves into the guard towers at the enemy dock, usually one at a time so they would die, never accomplishing much. I ended up trying to defend our cargo / dock / towers, which was agonizing because I couldn't even turn around in the bay without running into the wall, stopping and turning for 15+ seconds. That game took an hour to lose.

After that I was level 6 or something and was able to max out turn speed. So I played the same map, and could effectively guard our base without wanting to smash my face in with my keyboard. Same overall gameplay from the AI. That game took 70 minutes to lose.

I wanted to see if a change in tactics would help win. So instead of capturing all the exterior docks and everything I left them alone so my ships would run up the center like theirs, and hopefully the would be useful. I think that game took around 30 minutes to lose.

Tired of the capture the flag, I played the 4v4v4v4v4v4v4 map. That went pretty well, but it was quite frustrating being that the turning was so slow, and I couldn't identify which ships were the enemy and which were friendly until I was on top of them. So I wasn't sure how to engage any incoming ships, which made a lot of the combat feel more like luck than any general strategy. Won a game there, and then lost another, but it was close.

Then finally I played the construction map, and as the enemies here were pirates and their ships were identifiably different at a distance, I dominated and won in less than 15 minutes.

So in summary, Great game! Frigate turns way too slow to start out, and is just barely manageable with all the turn upgrades. Maybe make the base speed what it is with the upgrades now and then allow upgrades from there? That would have saved some yelling at my screen. Also, making the enemy ships visually different, or keeping their colored names visible whenever they are visible would make it a ton less frustrating. And the for some reason my teams AI was pretty useless on the capture the flag map, whereas the enemy teams would actually come in groups, and cause some damage.

Great job so far! Just a few tweaks imho.

 

Thank you for the feedback and for making me laugh with the comic touch of yours.

Hour-long games really do seem extreme, but how was the experience throughout? Azure Lagoon is generally the easiest map (and has the weakest towers), so it's a good starting map. Did you try the sloop? After playing a frigate you may feel like you're flying with one. Frigates are indeed very slow and bulky, but it's needed to balance their 28 cannons (14 on the brig, 8 on the sloop).

For stealing the flag on The Ring map, I recommend picking up Deflect with Size Matters. It will flat out negate one of the towers' damage. But I generally don't recommend trying it with a frigate... Brig, or better yet -- a sloop -- would be much more suited to carry the flag.

Frigate is basically an investment for the patient. At level 75, a frigate has truly insane firepower, but getting there... can be painful.

I will definitely change it so that the ships will be more identifiable from a distance.

 

It only seemed that the capture the flag map was the one that took forever, and I could not win with the frigate. I didn't try the sloop, as you're only allowed one ship and I wanted to get as far as I could with the frigate (which I was able to get 18k / 9k xp at level 15 before I quit) I will check out the others another day. I understand that the frigate should be much slower to balance it's power, but it's aggravatingly slow to turn. That you need to have all the upgrades just to turn around in your base harbor was hugely frustrating. Even with all the upgrades it's a mild annoyance, but seems fair at that point. I guess what I am saying is that it seems to me that you have to spend the points in turn speed to make the frigate a viable option.

I am interested in trying out the other ships though.

 

Oh right, I totally forgot I put that limitation in there...

 

The ships should be much easier to identify from a distance now as there are a variety of different looking factions in the game. There is now also a day/night cycle, different climates, and a large procedural world for players to explore that will soon be populated with a variety of towns, pirates, and loot.



A few people have been trying to organize multiplayer games and set up an IRC chat (irc.freenode.net #windward), so if you've been looking for some PvP or coop action, now is as good time as any.

 

New update is great! Day/Night cycle looks really good. The ships being different colors now is amazingly helpful. Been playing the sloop now, it is very spritely. A lot more fun and less aggravating the frigate. Looking good

 

Wow amazing work on this, look really fun and love the graphics

 

Build 175 is a huge update, to say the least. I highly recommend downloading the stand-alone version, as certain features (IRC chat, multiplayer) don't function properly in the web player.

• New map: The Ghost Lake (4 vs 4, replaces Azure Lagoon)
• New map: The Short Straw (4 player co-op defense)
• New ship: Schooner (fastest ship available)
• Ships now have a character sheet and inventory
• You will now notice items occasionally dropping in combat
• Completing the match will now reward the player with a higher quality level-appropriate item
• Equipment now plays a major role in your ship's performance -- you can be weak, or uber, depending on what loot you have
• You can quickly swap between primary and secondary equipped ammunition with Space Bar (for example: damage and healing cannonballs)
• The way experience gets awarded has been redone. You now get awarded for participation, not for defeating enemies (so dying to El Diablo is now great exp!)
• New cannonballs that let you heal other ships
• New talents that help heal (replaces Deflect which has been removed)
• Variety of ammunition with different effects (against units, buildings, sails, etc)
• Damage and health re-balancing across all units
• Frigate now has a pair of cannons in front and two more in the rear, removing blind spots (and it turns faster)
• Brand new UI
• IRC chat and multiplayer lobby (stand-alone build required)
• You can now respecialize your talents at any time to test out different builds
• You can now keep an eye on the multiplayer games while playing in single player
• You can chat with others playing Windward via built-in IRC (they don't have to be in your game)
• You can chat with people playing Windward from any IRC client, making it easier to get some MP action going
• There is now brand-new music
• You can rebind your keys, customizing your controls

Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pB_aVZvbxpQ&feature=youtu.be

As always, it can be played here:

Web Player: http://www.tasharen.com/windward/
Windows: http://www.tasharen.com/windward/WindwardWin.zip
Mac OSX: http://www.tasharen.com/windward/WindwardOSX.zip

 

Looks perfect. I wish it is also available for iPad.

 

Healing cannonballs? I understand the tactical benefit, but i do feel they are kind of out of place in game.
Still a great game though, have had a lot of fun with it : )

 

I liked pirates. i wanted to start a project like this.. this is interesting.. i'll be following your progress

 

I was playing it on my Asus Transformer Infinity pad earlier.

 

Yup, I know what you mean. If you are willing to look over the questionable alchemical lore though, it actually makes the combat a lot more fun.

 

Those healing bullets are sick...

 

hey nice game. its really fun to play this game. can you tell me more about the UI system you have used for this

 

Is that a serious question?

 

You may not know this, But Aren Mook developed the most usefull tool ever in UI development. When Unity 4.0 comes out i think a lot of devs will still use it instead of unity's new ui system. just google NGUI and it will tell you the rest

 

This looks awesome! Steam Greenlight?

 

Yeah, it's there: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=93552173&searchtext=

 

@john essy: Thanks! There's much I need to add to it still though. Windwad has been a good experience for me using NGUI in a medium to large scale project, so I'm seeing the things that would be "nice to have" but aren't present. You can expect to see those things make their way into NGUI in the near future.

 

ok after playing this game I have a few complaints.

• Movement - The ships move way too fast... Wind seems to have no factor in movement...
  
  
• Controls - Spacebar should be to shoot. I have no problem with the other controls you have set up but space should be to shoot.
  
• Tutorial - it was kinda confusing entering combat without proper instruction
  
• Weapons - Regular cannon balls are fine I dont see the need for healing ballls and what not... That isn't realistic or rational.. I would like other options such as the balls attatched with a chain the scatter shot and the option to shoot whatever yu could find such as forks n broken plates..

overall its a good game but not excellent... The graphics are amazing I have no complaint other that the ships could be a little bigger or the camera moved in some...

I think you should take alot more pointers from the above game.. Especially with the ship to ship combat

 

I love it. It's just a beautiful game.

I did encounter a bug that prevented me from playing the game.

When I completed the tutorial, I leveled up, and was shown the talent tree screen. After assigning the point, I cannot click accept or get out of this window. When I try to use other menus or minimise or go to settings etc, the other windows pop up behind the frozen talent window. I've tried everything.

this is the screenshot.

 

After restarting I tried to replicate this bug but I couldn't. It seems to be working fine for me now. I'm on a late 2011 macbook pro on your unity-web-player.


What a great game. If you want any audio advice let me know I would be glad to help

 

Hi @ArenMook,

great game, it is really fun and it is nice to see the aesthetics consistency, from the website to the menus and the game. If the primary goal of WindWard was to show what NGUI was capable of, I think you're pretty much done.

I have a question about the account/login system: have you made the system yourself or are you using a prebuilt one?

 

I made it myself. I'm picky that way...

 

I'm starting to learn and read about account/login systems, did you use a prebuilt one to start or some other resource?

 

Started from scratch.

 

I can't download the Mac version. The website says "not found"

 

I was just updating the page. Try now.

 

Unfortunately, It still doesn't work. I tried different browsers, but all I get is this:

'Not Found The requested URL /windward/WindwardMac.zip was not found on this server.'

 

Clear the cache. The file is called WindwardOSX.zip, not WindwardMac.zip.

 

That worked! Thanks

Will try it out.

 

Now available on Desura!

 

How do you achieve that effect where the terrain that isn't visible gets hidden by a black cloud? I'd like to attempt something similar, but I don't even know what you'd call that in order to search for how to do it?

 

Search for Tasharen Fog of War. It's on the Asset Store.

 

I downloaded the standalone version for Windows. I started it and the music is great. But I couldn't create an account. Why?

 

I just tried it via http://www.tasharen.com/windward/game.html and it worked fine. Why couldn't you create an account?

 

I downloaded the game and started it. There was an option inside the game for account creation. I had used that to create an account and it failed. It said "Unknown error, Sorry about that". Also the news content was unable to load. Maybe it is something with proxy that I need to use to connect to the internet? How do I set the game to use the proxy?

 

You can't play it through a proxy.