WOTA: Wolves of the Atlantic (iPhone submarine simulation)

Update
9/2014

Improved IBL (real time), refractions and shaders.



Update:

12/2013 - Current visual state of the game (quality settings of iPhone 4S / iPod touch 5)





Old:

Some preview videos of my (upcoming) U-Boat simulation WOTA: Wolves of the Atlantic for the iPhone

Edit: new link
http://www.wolves-of-the-atlantic.com/wotau96-mobilesu.html

 

hey, that looks pretty cool. what's the gameplay going to consist of? I like the crew members walking around of the boat. I totally love the music. it matches perfectly. The only thing i can complain about it the cameras. just wish they were a bit smoother and had more animation/style. like maybe a camera that flies in a circle around the ship in an orbital style. what would really cool is a camera that starts far away, and then swoops down and flies right past the crew members. Think lord of the rings, the kind of camera views that just make the scene look epic. oh, one more idea for a camera that would look awesome for for your game, make an orbital camera, but make the camera really far away, but make the field of view angle really small. This way, the ship will rotate at a pretty normal speed, but the water behind it will be moving by really fast. That would make it look so epic and show the vastness of the ocean.

great work, cant wait to play it

 

It will be a normal submarine simulation - basically you start your career in 1939, you will be send out by the AI-BdU to patrol areas and try to sink as much ships as possible while you try to survive several missions till the war ends in 1945. Your decisions can change the orders you might get from the BdU during the patrol - your reports via radio with the HQ might lead to wolfpack attacks with other german (AI) submarines. When you (or one of the german AI submarines) are spotted by the enemy (or when the current code used for the enigma is cracked (you won't know if)) while you use the radio) then the enemy AI-HQ might act and change orders for some of the AI convoys, hunter groups airplanes. When the allied code is broken the BdU will have better knowledge about enemy convoys and send you to attack them. For the enemy you are not more or less important than any german AI submarine. So you can be the lucky U-Boat and might get a better chance to attack while they attack your AI comrade or vice versa.
Main Strategy of the AI-HQs, balance of power and technological improvements at a given time will be like it was in history. You won't be able to change the result of the war but during each patrol you and the AI has influence on what's going on. The game world is spanning the Atlantic ocean, baltic sea, north and mediterranean seas. you can see the area on the map waypoints video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=On5_jbmX0fU

Walking persons on ships are just for the eyecandy

All camera movents you saw in the video were done by touching the screen to steer the "flying camera" - this works extremely good, after some moments the feeling for this camera is as good that it allows you to keep the same speed as the ship you want to watch.
So all stutters were the result of the unity touch remote human steering.

You can see the fingers steering the cam in this movie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PX5vTykk7GA
(the iPhone was laying on the table in this video which is worse than holding it in the hand - normally you use the thumbs)

 

This game alone might be a reason to buy a Iphone

Question: Will you have dynamic campaigns ie. assigned random patrol sectors like SH3 or will every mission be scripted?

Love your work :wink:

 

Looks like it will be amazing. Thanks for the previews.

 

Looks awesome!

 

wow, that in game camera does look great. i didn't know it was player controlled.

that gameplay sounds really cool and involving. defiantly going to play it.

 

Looks nice...

 

Any update on this? I really dont want to buy Silent Hunter on iPod. I would like to buy your game

 

Yes an update
Still improving things...



Filmed from 3GS Screen:

Different Colors (C) by cheap webcam

And iPhone 3GS Screenshots:

 

Ocean shader optimized... I'm a shader noob - the old one was NOT a vertex shader... well, better don't ask how it worked before. Usually if something will not work then I'll take a hammer to make it work.

New vs Old Shader:

 

As a player of SH3 and SH5, I honestly prefer the more blue color of the older version than the new one, which looks like it would fit in a tropical scene, not the cold dreary North Atlantic

 

Actually I am pretty color blind. :-(
The final color settings for different weathers will be done with someone who assists me.

 

hey man,
mind sharing how you managed to pull off that water?
very impressive!

 

Thank you, procedural mesh - search for tessendorf on the forums...

Finally switched to OGL ES 2.0

 

Looks very nice, buoyancy and water feels just right. Keep it coming.

 

Really pretty!

Can't wait to see more and hear about the game play!

Been waiting for a sub-sim like Rene Vidmer's U-Boat and U-Boat Operation Drumbeat for OS 9, super simple but really challenging.

Keep it up!

 

I'll release a kind of preview game ("WOTA: Seehund Type XXVIIb" about midget submarines) before I'll continue to work on the main game.

Made a completely new iOS water again which runs fine on 3GS (ca. 30 fps) and at 60fps on the iPad2:

 

Water looks great, look forward to playing this.

 

12/2013 - Current visual state of the game (quality settings of iPhone 4S / iPod touch 5)

 

looking terribly awesome

 

looks awesome! you can sell the water shader on the asset store as well!

 

Main Menu - Quality of iPod touch 5 gen, iPhone 4S, iPad2 etc.

 

Looks awesome!

 

boom

 

WooOOOW! That's cool!

 

The menu looks awersome! I'm about confused though, what's the difference between "Arcade missions" and "Play"?

 

"Arcade Mission" was just the old name of this version of WOTA, but hardcore sim fans doesn't like the word arcade at all so I've changed it to "U 96" now.

 

Fletcher Class Destroyer

 

Hi VIC20

Very very nice. good work

Norby

 

Hey, you really got the enviroment setup perfectly. It looks very awsome and realistic. Good work

 

Can you tell us more about the lighting? Did you bake ambient occlusion?

 

My ship shader has AO and spec map.

 

This is how it looks on the device (iPhone 4S)

 

Crew member WIP:

 

Please make an Android or PC version!! This would look awesome on my GalaxyS4!!

 

Been looking at this since the conversation in the ocean renderer thread i think, this is looking absolutely superb, above and beyond for a mobile effort (from what i know of mobile games) - No idea how you've done that with the ocean but then again you've been working on it a while, i'm still puzzling things out back at square one in dx11 land. Good work and if you do an android version i'll grab a copy out of respect for the ocean mastery, nevermind the fact you grabbed the lighting, tone, animation etc perfectly for the theme (Any pbr going on there?)

 

Some new stuff (I would say highly optimized) real time global illumination / IBL, refractions and some improvements to water rendering and improved horizon. Runs at 60 fps on iPad air, 60 fps on 5C (without refractions and with vertex specular), and high 40s on 4S (with a reduced IBL shader for ships without normal mapping).

My touch script still sux (or my fingers)… hard to get smooth camera movements.

 

Dynamic 2D clouds with improved lighting

 

beautiful stuff!

 

Think by far not as nice as your new clouds. But they won't work on mobile right?

 

yeah, no mobile support unfortunately. But then again, it looks like you have things pretty much handled here

 

Do you use ray marching for your clouds?

 

Thunderbolts

 

Wow those thunderbolts look real! How did you achieve this?

 

Keep up the good work, absolutely love video from 6th February, such perfect ocean and whole ship bouncing.

 

Similar scattering calculation (with a different exponent and different color) on the clouds like for the sun. Intensity of the scattering is synchronized to what the 12 frames animation of the bolt currently shows (which is just an overlay plane displaying the animation at a random or flipped width to save texture memory)

 

Another quick and dirty test. Terrible video compression. Added specular reflections of the thunderbolts to the water surface. Some kind of random environment setup. Please ignore the sub (direct light is too… well, direct (it currently ignores any cloud coverage)), ignore the activated lens flare, ignore the video quality (turn at least HD to get a bit rid of the compression artifacts), I've accidentally touched the GUI several times - also ignore that (except at the end where I did it on purpose but for no reason ;-)) - and yes, I also think the reflections are a bit too bright. …Have I already mentioned the bad video quality? The thunderbolt artworks itself needs an overhaul. And the scattering ruins the horizon a bit :-/

 

It's just getting better and better each new video.
This sim is the reason I upgraded to an iPhone6+ instead of the iPhone6.
Can't wait to play this in full 1080P with the extra grunt of the A8 processor and GPU.
Sure hope you can support the new devices.