Powerboat VR News

This is a small update that now adds the island industry states to the save game.

Save games will also now store the current time of day. Old save games won't have this information so will load in with a default of midnight, but you can always use the "Game Settings" area to set your preferred time and then save your game to update it with the new time information.

This update adds a save game system which will save your location, your current boat and also your money so now you can explore the world without having to constantly restart at the same location each time - it does not currently save the industry states so any deliveries you make will be reset each time you start. I will add this information to the save game as soon as I can.

When starting a new game you will be given 2 choices "Normal" or "Free Play". Both are currently very similar with the main difference being a Free Play game cannot be saved.

"Normal" mode will be where the aim of the game is to run your own shipping company and earn money from delivering cargo & passengers and/or discovering hidden treasure.

"Free Play" mode is designed for those who just want to drive the boats around the map without worrying about money.

I should hopefully have the new boat "garage/dock" menu system working which will allow you to buy boats in a "Normal" game. This will replace the current "Swap Boat" area so that it will be possible to buy more than 1 of a certain boat e.g. you can buy multiple Bluefins. This will be useful as some boats will have configuration & upgrade options.

I will also be adding some other Company Management pages to the menu system such as recently completed orders, bank balance etc as well as the ability to name your company and choose a logo...

Other updates...

1. Minor tweaks to the Fury Extreme's physics.
2. Minor tweaks to the Sea Buzzard's physics.

This update adds a new page to the boat's MFD that displays the current and upcoming weather.

I've also added a visibility factor to the weather so that it will change between Good (5km), Moderate (around 2.5km) & Poor (around 1km) viewing distances.

I do have plans to add volumetric fog into the mix as well, but this is something I will return to a bit later once I've made some progress in other areas.

I think I have most of the technical parts to the game complete so most future updates will be based on finishing off the map, adding some starting options to the game and then saving the current game state.

Once these are complete I shall move the real world beta into the public release - yay!

Today's update adds dynamic and randomised cloud and sea conditions to the game.

Conditions will currently change every 5 minutes (for testing purposes) and should smoothly interpolate between different states. There is a CPU cost doing this in real-time as the wave spectrum has to be re-calculated for each change but it does run as a second thread so shouldn't impact performance too much.

Sea conditions are based on the "WMO sea state codes" while wind conditions are based on the "Beaufort Scale" and run from Calm all the way up to Phenomenal/Hurricane (14m+ waves!).

You still can't sink a ship but some smaller vessels may get swamped temporarily in big swells. Eventually water egress and bilge pumps will be modelled with the potential for a boat to sink in bad weather :)

Wind conditions are visible in how fast clouds move and roughly determine the state of the sea conditions. However, wind itself is always from the same direction and doesn't effect any of the boats directly just yet - I'll be updating that as soon as I can.

Next week I shall be adding a Weather Forecast screen to the MFD so that you will be able to see both the current and up coming weather and I shall also be adding a fully voiced weather report system that will work through the ships radio along the lines of a BBC Shipping Forecast.

Other Updates...

1. Clouds now cast shadows
2. Clouds now attenuate the Sun, Moon and Stars when they are behind them.
3. Shiny materials should no longer "glow" at night.

Fixes the 2D control overlay from appearing over the top of the start menu!