Sailboat

[pab 10]

Hi arma fans,

Recently I discovered and tested how to manipulate winddirection in Arma2.

I posted this information on:

http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/setWind

I'm not a good modeller or scripter myself, but it would be a great if somebody could make a simple sailboat where you can make use of the wind. I have been looking for instance at the flag and the winddirection is affecting how the flag is behaving. It may be possible to make actual working sails.

The sailboat is really something for the civilians to use. Cannot see any military use of it, unless a MOD for the 17th century is due for release ;)

Any ideas on this are welcome!

- Pab -

[scars09 9]

to animate correct behaviour of the boom and the sail attached to it a getwind command would be needed.

[ceeeb 147]

There is such a command - wind.

Having recently tried some sailing, I think it could be quite hard to script anything like the real behaviour of the yatch & sails at different angles to the wind - it's a pretty complex activity.

[Aqu 0]

...

I'm not a good modeller or scripter myself, but it would be a great if somebody could make a simple sailboat where you can make use of the wind. I have been looking for instance at the flag and the winddirection is affecting how the flag is behaving. It may be possible to make actual working sails.

The sailboat is really something for the civilians to use. Cannot see any military use of it, unless a MOD for the 17th century is due for release ;)

Mmmm...someone's been spying me? ;) I have tryed/prototyped that a little bit.

I used a script to handle the sailing system. It automatically sets the sails to the best position and calculates (or estimates) how much it should push the boat and to what direction.

Basicly I just poke it forward and the game fights back trying to stop it. Unfortunately the game fluid dynamics are not so sophisticated so to make it behave nicely is another thing (e.g. I don't think the game handles drifting much at all). For example to make the boat swim deep enough (and not to bounce on the waves) I had to put lot of weight (into the keel mostly). That means turning the sail beam (or what it is called) sideways doesn't really change the attidude of the boat tilting to that side. That would require I move something heavier, like the ballast same time with the sails.

Yeah, I was thinking a pirate mod, but there are lot of problems to solve. 1) how to make it allow realistic walking on a _moving_ ship 2) how to make usable swords (in a realisticly looking way) - new animations and make AI understand it has to club the enemy with the thing 3) The 17th century military requires totally new AI tactics 4) Ride a horse? ...