Pre-pre-alpha: Windracer

A game where you design and build your own yacht, and sail it competitively.

Note: current available downloads let you build the hull only, although the ability to add sails, and a fully-working simulator (that can capsize the boat if the wind is too strong, etc) should be uploaded soon(ish) - depending upon how my other projects are going (and how much time I have to spare for this one!).

The last stable milestone-build is available for you to try - it lets you edit, load, save hull cross-sections, and even lets you float them to see how well they float/sink. There’s also a Simulator app included in the JAR file - you’ll have to invoke it manually if interested with:

java -cp [the windracer.jar file name] net.tmachine.windracer.bin.BoatSimulator

Note: the simulator is useless unless you have already built and saved a hull to load into it! The most important control is “start simulation” which will start a lengthy pre-calculation routine, and then finally simulate the floating boat, trying to reach equilibrium.

The simulator is losing repaint() requests at the moment, so you sometimes have to hit “refresh Cog” or some other button that “forces” a repaint to get it to repaint once the precalcs are done…so it isn’t included in the instructions, and I’m only mentioning it here. The precalcs are also very inaccurate (about plus or minus 15%!) to get the speed decent; with some of the complex hulls we have for testing, precalcs can easily take 10-20 minutes on a 1Ghz PC.

When the speed problems are improved / worked-around, I’ll post another note.

Doh! URL:

http://grexengine.com/sections/people/adam/