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Comment by tinywind | Hacker News Reader

I’m not a sailor at all my I just demo’d this for my dad who is. He had similar feedback

I need to sit down and do a sailing mechanics audit to find a good balance between arcade/realism, I think a beam reach is supposed to be faster than downwind. But my angle of attacks could be more accurate especially for upwind sailing?

Here’s currently how tinywind does it if anyone’s curious:

https://tinywind.io/wiki/sailing#point-of-sail

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Have a look at these [1] polar diagrams for tall sailing ships. The radial distance from the center is the theoretical boat speed and the angle is the direction that the wind is hitting the boat, with zero on the nose and 180 from the stern. Each plotted line is the boat speed for a given wind speed. They show how the square-rigged ships can't sail upwind any closer than 55 degrees or so and are fastest on a broad reach (wind from just back of the side). You can also see how longer boats are generally faster, but a smaller boat with triangle sails ("Bermuda rigged") could easily get away from a big square-rigged ship by heading more upwind.

[1] https://forum.zegluj.net/download/file.php?id=23628&mode=vie...

Interesting for reasons unrelated to TinyWind: What are the numbers on the left edge, boat speed in knots? Also, from what place and time is the technology on which these diagrams are based?

And what is this forum that unfortunately I can't read? Who made these diagrams?

This is really useful, thanks! I’ll be making a sailing realism pass next week and will try to update it to reflect the square rigging dynamics a little better

In irons should be a slightly negative number, since the wind drags the boat backwards at that point. Plus it will force the player to tack back and forth, which is a fun part of sailing. I bet A.I. can tell you the angle the sail ought to render at too (unless non-moving sail was part of the cartoon aesthetic)

I did that simply for arcadeyness and feel but I’m not married to it at all

Giving the ship a slight constant forward moment felt nice and forgiving when testing, and user still has to tack back and forth to get meaningful enough speed to strafe a ship. But I’m definitely open to sliding the realism scale here

I would advise not putting "real wind physics" in the headline when that is not a promise you can deliver on.

There's nothing wrong with arcade, but when you advertise "real physics" people like me are going to expect, well, "real physics".

Hi Tyler, realism and arcade-feel doesn’t have to be a binary thing.

My big effort has been finding tasteful compromises to keep a “real” feel but still simple enough to not be frustrating and put away the game. Hope this helps!

https://tinywind.io/wiki/sailing#point-of-sail

When you can sail. Square rigger directly into the wind, that’s 100% arcade.

You are of course free to make your game however you want, but false advertising doesn’t help anyone.

Actually thanks for the reminder! I’ll be adding “real wind physics” to my steam page, website header, and other marketing material. Thank you!

Ok, now go you’re just being obnoxious. This is childish behavior and unbecoming.

I hope you enjoy the bad reviews from people who expect something and don’t get it.

Hi Tyler this game is in early alpha, we’re still changing physics and simulation dynamics week by week. This is not a final state. Unfortunately you’re not able to have a nuanced conversation and provide actual feedback unlike everyone else in this thread. Hope you have a good day!

You aren’t interested in having a conversation, you’re just repeating the same dismissive thing over and over again and gaslighting people over what the word "real" means.

Realism and arcade are not exclusive but I also would say that the headline saying “real wind physics” is misleading. I was disappointed to see that real they are not.

Totally heard, this game is still in early alpha and I’ve been updating the sailing dynamics week by week. This thread gave me a lot of valuable direction to push the realism more. Thanks for checking it out either way!

"Hope this helps!" has to rank in the top 10 cortisol spiking phrases of all time.

Good that was the point! I don’t engage with bad faith commenters seriously, especially when we have so many helpful comments in this thread, hope this helps!

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