What's New

The work this week has primarily focused on making the world more interesting to travel in. The work is far from completed, but it's well underway.

The first step was modelling ocean currents. These vary based on where in xenosea you are (roughly modelled after real world tradewinds). Your submarine, as well as decoys, cargo containers, divers and torpedoes are pushed by the ocean currents. This effect diminishes as you get close to the seafloor, so you can still salvage wrecks and dock without being pushed halfway across the ocean. But the "higher" you drive your sub the more the currents will push you. In practice testing the starter sub was pushed at about half of it's maximum speed in strong currents. This has ramifications on long ranged travel, as through careful navigating you can boost your speed significantly. Likewise you can avoid being slowed by a current if you hug the seafloor.

The "Current" view on worldgen test shows the strength and east/west directionality of currents. Green currents are eastwards, red currents are westward. Currents also push north and south, but that's hard to represent with just colors. Terrain height also has an effect, with high seafloor casting a "shadow" and reducing downstream currents.

The second step is introducing galeflows. These are systems of strong and turbulent waterflows that occasionally spawn and sweep across xenosea. These aren't currently represented in the detailed game simulation, but here you can see them in worldgen test as clouds. By default these storms will create random buffeting currents, but there will also be at least two different variants.

• Trophbloom: a Galeflow that starts in an area of high fertility and contains a lot of local autotrophs. These clog impeller inlets, reducing submarine thrust, and they reduce sound propagation through the area.
• Siltstorm - a Galeflow that starts in a sandy area can pick up a lot of the bottom sand and become a siltstorm. The sand particles bounce around creating ambient noise that can mask sonar contacts

What's Next

The immediate next step is to finish up the work on galeflows, including their in-game effects. I also want to show nearby currents and galeflows on the in-game map.

I might take a break, though, and introduce a new type of minisub for Hudson. Something smaller, and more along the lines of a strike fighter than the current Sparrow.