I am lazy and would request a settings toggle to automatically adjust the sail angles for me for optimal speed given my bearing.
I submitted this a few days ago, so glad to see it posted again. Fun game. Funner to think I am sinking people, not bots :)
One recommendation: make the boats not turn quite so fast. It allows you to outmaneuver other vessels by planning ahead or gaining speed ahead of time.
I still don't know much about sailing, but I have a lot of kitesurfing experience. Do boats really travel that slowly downwind? I assume that crosswind is faster, but downwind should still move at the speed of the wind.
I’m working on a couple PvP modes so you can run naval battles with real captains very soon :)
Thanks so much for submitting this earlier, we got a great boost!
Noted on the ship turn speeds, I’ve been playing around with larger ships having slower turn radii but I do want the naval combat to have more of a planning element (setup upwind, strafe run and fire, etc)
Let me look into the boat speeds in different wind conditions. I know beam reach/crosswind is faster than parachuting downwind but maybe my downwind speed is too slow now
I wanted it to feel natural for qwerty and arrow key controls, the space felt a little clunky with arrow keys.
Whichever you choose, please consider displaying the controls inside the game, at least during the setup screen, don't make the user search for controls in the wiki. :)
Also the hp bar below the minimap is a bit weird, would expect it the same as enemy ships above my ship, so i can see if i'm winning or losing a cannon exchange like in a rts game. Or at least someplace more convenient to quickly glance at nearer the center of the screen.
Very fun game by the way, well done! Scratches the nostalgia itch of 'Corsairs Gold' for me.
Space to fire makes more sense than shift to fire
Edit: Shift is a modifier key. Hold shift to go from lowercase -> capitals. In FPS games shift is walking -> running. In RTS games shift is "select one of these units -> select all of these units"
I know your game doesn't have to follow these rules, you can do whatever you want. However it's worth thinking about what "language" each key on the keyboard is speaking when you want to use it.
Though I’m worried it’s gonna be tougher for people to find the map and ship logs since space is a natural button to try and press early on
If it's only a few buttons anyway you can just show them somewhere as hints while the user isn't giving input or until they used then.
Eg just show a "m for Map\nspace to fire" until the user used each, hiding them each when the m/space is used respectively for that session (session storage so it shows up again if the user comes back later)