Martes

In fact, it depends on three factors. First is the weather. The water is less and less transparent as the wind rises. Second is the presence of a sea bottom mesh and it's color. They do not appear on all maps, but here nice and not very deep sand is present. And third is somewhat connected to camera angle and wind direction. I tried once to make maps for this game, it's technically possible, just very inconvenient, because the terrain mesh should be separated from underwater mesh exactly at z=0, and if a single vertex from the land mesh or a single vertex of sea bottom mesh crosses this line, the scenario crashes on load. It is also somehow possible to place buildings, cities and forts (the game contains appropriate models) on the maps, but I did not go that far. Another relatively practical solution that I have seen on several maps included in the game is that the land mesh is regular, while the underwater mesh is simply a plane with painted features (and corresponding map zones as described below). The "path" object denotes the land collision edge that has to be separately created (and are particularly difficult to generate), "anchor" allows ships to drop anchor, and "shoal" can have limited depth set in scenario editor and thus strand ships that are deeper than this value. The sea, however, is done quite ingeniously, especially for so early engine (1999 or 2000, IIRC) - it is, in fact, a combination of two flat semi-transparent surfaces that have different textures running in different directions, creating a very convincing illusion of moving water. In general, I would love to introduce some accurate geographical scenery into the project, but, again, probably it's better (and easier) could be done in Unity. If only I had the time.

Black and white contour renders are especially beautiful

And sometimes, when the conditions permit, you can see the underwater parts of the hulls through the surface.

And a dynamic scenery at that. You can recreate various situations, you can even set them to fight and see what happens, it is a tactical simulation, after all. That's why I love it so much. They are alive inside there. If only I could control the camera lens angle here, the screenshots would be even more beautiful, but it would be easier to reimplement the whole game in Unity than find that bloody parameter in compiled C++ code of the original.

Sailing test for the flush-decked 74:

That would depend on level of readiness, but yes, they did exactly that. Plus one boat on the stern davits across the taffrail. Some links for reference. https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/rmgc-object-84945 Or two boats could be carried on the quarter davits if prepared for launch: https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/rmgc-object-84911 And I still think she rides too high in the water. The waterline should be probably around X mark (which is also very anachronistic, as those were introduced somewhere around the beginning of 20th century). But the renders are breathtaking!

The long spar-decked 74 also differs from the "frigate" by retaining the same head as the ship of the line, while on the "frigate" it is slightly shorter and does not have curved rails. Which one of the two is more powerful - it's a debatable question, but the frigate, having about 150 less crew is certainly more habitable

Thanks, I am really glad you like them. Hopefully I will convert the flush-decked version today or tomorrow and show her sailing as well. The Royal Navy had quite a lot of ships based on the Courageux, so making the Colossus as a base was a little bit of a cunning plan on my part (although I was completely unaware of the scale of the copying work that was going on in the Admiralty when I chose which 74-gun ship to make), I just have to maintain a list of precise transformations in case I have to correct something and reimport the change on all the derivative models.

A preliminary test of the Blake under sail:

As I already said, the completed hull of the Colossus presents a lot of interesting possibilities. Among other things, the hull can be stretched by inserting a parallel section in the middle, and the Colossus turns into the Blake class: Despite being almost 8 feet longer (180' instead of 172' 3"), it may be a little tricky to spot the difference - note the Blake has more space before and after the battery and an additional upper deck port. This model can represent practically any "long" 74, still smaller than 80-gunners and slimmer than the Temeraire-class ships. Another option, very slightly less historical, is to stretch the hull without the roundhouse, since I have it anyway, but this time the resulting ship would not be considered a frigate, but a full-fledged two-decker with armed spar deck, less only the upper tier of the cabins. The Royal Navy, if I recall correctly, had only one major ship of the line in this configuration, the Plantagenet, which was of a different design but very close in size (plus the St. Lawrence on the Great Lakes, but that's completely different story), so the model will have to do at least for now. The paint scheme is relatively unusual for Royal Navy and is closer to Danish or Russian ships, but it's not to say it was not used at all (at least it appears on a number of engravings) and it suits the design perfectly well.

Interesting, that on two versions of the image, the sail is of different size. On the graphical, first image, it's bottom is near where the lower, main staysail should end on the foremast, and it's upper end is closer to the main topmast, and on the painting from artuk it is more or less identical to the maintopmast staysail from the plans. Interesting, how effective it would be - both under the circumstances and in general.

It still looks larger on the first picture, but it is close and could have been possibly enlarged. Which corvette is the plan for, by the way?

I looked up that much (L below), but isn't it about 1.5 to 2 times larger than the regular depiction of it? Or should it be written off to artist interpretation?

Beakhead, IIRC. And the wall behind it is the beakhead bulkhead. As each of them is actually a pair (see Intrepid again), you can divide each of them to two and spread them so they cover as much area as possible. Also their thickness is slightly less near the keel and can be slightly wider towards the wale. The French did not use this method, they had straight vertical pairs up to the hawse pieces at the time, so you can rely on the British sources at this place. One thing of note - the Constitution has her straight vertical pairs until the first gunport (as opposed the Intrepid that had them starting from the forward end of the second gunport of the lower deck), and you can, I think, safely follow that example and make at least two of the cant pairs actually straight. The rest of the hull until the last gunport should therefore be evenly distributed with pair-gap, pair-gap. Very small gaps. But yes, it already begins to look much better

Exactly, it's an enlarged spanker, not an enlarged jib as I thought initially.

Problem is this is about the only depiction I saw of such sail for the period, or I seriously missed something.

I understand it's not uncommon now, lots of large yachts seem to use something of a kind. But was it uncommon then?

It's kind of two times larger than regular main staysails, and is fixed not to the mainmast, but to main topmast.

The idea was to create a walkable and potentially interactive environment, getting as close to Hornblower experience as possible (which proved to be quite claustrophobic at places). But that would have required a completely new game development.

The original file was at Bonhams, I think, under the title "A frigate under tow down the Avon Gorge". But I can't find it now, not on the fly at least. A very similar image, though, is on ArtUK site: https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/the-avon-gorge-at-sunset-188005 And is attributed to Nicholas Pocock. However, when I look closely, it may be possible that the sail is not like a jib, but has a vertical cut forward and is additionally fixed to the foremast somewhere under the top. So it begs the question - whether this was a standard sail supplied to ships for such situations, to emulate fore-and-aft rig (and how effective it could have been?) or this is a local captain's initiative and improvisation?

Does anybody have any idea what the sail on the mainmast is? It looks like an oversized jib.

Seeing all the Indefatigable craze going on, I remembered I had an unfinished model of the ship I did back in 2017. It included quite a lot of details, but I couldn't get past the lower deck as I realized there is no way I would handle all the texturing even if I have most of the yet unplaced meshes at hand, and then moved to another game which had very different model requirements. But I thought I could still show it off. The strange grey cylinders are human-size for scale and comparison. And if anyone would want to give it a go, I can probably share the files.

Pair by pair, as each frame on your screenshot is in fact two frames combined together. Note about the cant frames forward. At that time it appears the standard was to use them up to the beakhead (Intrepid - and remember, your ship is +/- the size of a 64 with unarmed lower deck) Or the catheads, which is the same when the bow is round (Constitution) So I would suggest to rotate and compress the pairs depicted forward like this: It would not be 100% accurate (it can never be, we don't know the real parameters of the frames), but it will resemble real structure closely enough.

If Constitution is of any reference, it appears that she has a) cant frames, British style, combined with b) very densely positioned frame pairs, French style, but with almost no spaces between them And, again, if I remember correctly, the British considered Chesapeake "overbuilt for her size", meaning she had even more wood than a British frigate of similar size would be composed of. North America had no shortage of wood, but in several, especially early, cases it was just not seasoned enough and prone to rot. In short, I tend to think that the frames you have on the plans (if they have any connection to real structure _at all_, since they look as based on British "as taken" plan, and the British did not record the plan stations as correlated with actual frame positioning, rather simply measuring the shape of the ship at certain distances from the perpendiculars) represent pairs (i.e should be divided to two different, but adjacent structures), shown with pairs between them omitted for modelling purposes. Additionally, note that Harold Hahn himself writes in his book 'Ships of the American Revolution and their models' that his plans are highly stylised, primarily in intention to build models faster and for aesthetics. This leaves the question of hull ends. Because the spacing between the cant frames is also totally unrealistic and has to be, unfortunately, completely reworked - either referencing British contemporary models or (if you find it) a structure from Constitution. Also, note that Hahn's reconstruction has also economized on the transoms: comparing to both to British examples and the Constitution.

Just a little bit. But there is a manner of making framed models with omitting one or several of the frames each iteration, so it may be a little dangerous to fall for that and take that as the real structure. And it's best to notice early. Also, IIRC, the term "main frames" refers to the pairs of frames in British structures, and in that sense all the frames in French structure are "main". The single frames are called "filler frames". But the composition of the two frames in the pair is different. One would have a single floor extending to both sides, the other would look like your last screenshot. Although I am not sure you want to go that deep into the structure