SailMatch (My own sailing ship simulator)
To run the applet, read the notice below
The target of the game is to sail the boat from the two green markers (starting line) to the red ones (finish line) in the shorter time possible. In this preliminary version the path is very simple, it takes less then five minutes to travel from left to right and complete the game. Read below to get more informations about this project...
MAIN PANEL
The black line represents the sail, the gray one is the rudder.
CONTROLS
- left/right arrows: rudder control
- up/down arrows: ease or haul the main sail
- Mouse Wheel up/down or PageUp/PageDown: zoom in/out
- A: auto sail on/off. Triggering this help will lead to a lower score
- V: vectors on/off. Triggering this help will lead to a lower score
- ESC: stop the simulation
VECTORS
- Blue: true wind
- Cyan: apparent wind
These ones are drawn only after V key has been pressed:
- Yellow: sail force
- Magenta: boat speed (where the boat is directed, which is not necessary where the boat is pointing)
MAP
The small box on the left-bottom side is the map of the race fields. Objects are presented as follows:
- Green dots: start line markers
- red dots: finish line markers
- black dot: human boat
- gray dot: IA boat
- yellow line: human boat to finish line direction
Furthermore, this page uses pop-up windows to save and show results, so these should be enabled in the browser options.
Currently the simulation engine implements the following:
- apparent wind vector
- sail force (resistance and lift) generated according to the "angle of attack"
- sail can be ease or haul and "follows the wind" if eased
- rudder lift force
- water resistance opposes to hull according to its speed
- race time is stored online and the top10 visible to all users
More features needs to be added... here are some in random order:
GENERAL
- better GUI
- complex paths to sail through
- online multiplayer ??
- different difficulty levels and appropriate score system
- instruments panel (compass, speed vectors,etc)
- remove mistakes of this translation......
SIMULATION ENGINE
- variable wind (both speed and direction)
- better water/hull interaction (the current model is simple and probably not physically correct
- eased sail rotation applied according to brace of forces. Currently a linear rotation is applied
- collision detection and boat-to-boat interaction
- better IA
- "3d effects" like sail effectiveness reduced by boat inclination and other stuff
BUGS TO BE CORRECTED...
- some unmanaged exceptions occour here and there, sometime... somewhere...
Of course I'm open to suggestions...