Hello everyone, this is a post about the upcoming (maybe) video game currently in development called Titanic Honor and Glory. I didn't quite know which forum to place this in, there isn't a video game category so I decided "General" would suffice since by description says "..anything Titanic related". I was just curious about the sinking mechanics and how they would work in the game, what other people thought, and maybe toward the end ill complain about the game itself haha.
Id like to mention that this post wont be necessarily positive toward the game, specifically its development. Some fans instantly become enraged when they come across anyone who would dare critique the H&G team so I thought Id warn you ahead of time and tell you that I was a HUGE supporter of theirs and was one of the people who donated money to them.... TWICE! I was exactly where you are now 9 years ago and defended them adamantly for YEARS so please don't crucify me for my opinion, I am just frustrated. I'm just posting this for catharsis & discussion, I don't wish the project or the team ill, on the contrary I sincerely want them to succeed and for the project to be a smashing success- the work they have done is extraordinary! I'm not talking bad about them because I'm a jerk, I'm frustrated because I had such high hopes and I'm simply explaining why I lost that good will. Yes, that disclaimer is necessary- fan boys can be extremely toxic so I try to disarm them, if possible, before and after the triggering content.
SINKING PHYSICS - When they initially announced the project nearly a decade ago they said the game would have 2 basic modes; In both modes you could freely tour the entire ship but in one mode the ship would be sinking, the other mode would just be a stationary ship. This is what made me really excited for the game, I have always been curious about the flooding of the ship; Not just in a general sense of "water spilled over bulkheads via E-deck", but specifically which avenues the water took to get into different areas. Some people just have random arbitrary fascinations and one of mine happens to be sinking ships -yes, I am
THAT cool

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I was around 20 when the project was fist announced, I heard about it early on and I was somewhat ignorant/naive/overly optimistic about what computers (games,programs etc) were capable of. I truly believed it would be a game in which the water would accurately move and behave as it did during the sinking. I knew it wouldn't be perfect, but I thought it'd be accurate at least. As I have gotten older I have become more cynical, or as I call it: realistic. Now that I am a bit wiser, especially with computers, I have no idea how they're going to be able to portray the water mechanics in the game. I know many of you might tell me to simply watch their "Titanic sinking in real time" YouTube video (if you haven't seen it id highly recommend it) because they show interior shots of the flooding and to this I would reply that those aren't video clips of the game engine at work, those are animations, not game play footage.
I was wondering what some of your thoughts were on this, how do you think it could work, how would you do it? I don't think they're going to be able to somehow program accurate water physics into a game, I think the water movements will have to be pre animated. In order to accurately simulate sinking ships the Navy and cruise ship companies use elaborate computer programs that are expensive and require Einstein tier processing power and even then you're not getting pretty 3D environments and moving bodies of water in real time, you get a 2D profile of the ship with flooded areas shaded in blue with tons of data (text).
In the YT video I mentioned earlier they show exterior shots of the ship as she is sinking and at a few points you see the exterior water line hasn't risen over a certain wall meaning there should be water on one side but not the other, however the water line is equal on both sides despite there being no possible way for water to be where it is... this just shows that its a model of the Titanic and a static body of water, they animated the model ship moving downward at an angle into the water and it just clips though the walls. I really hope this isn't the route they take with the game itself, that would be so cheesy.
The work of animating the flooding would be grueling... it would of course need to be coordinated with the movement of the ship (as she listed and whatnot), it would need to be happening simultaneously in a lot of areas at once which would require a hefty GPU and CPU to handle.. IDK how they plan on handling this. Probably something like going into different areas puts you into a loading screen before you enter another zone so your PC isn't trying to do all of this at once. The demo they've put out so far is beautiful, I have a Nvidia GTX 2080 with an intel i7 8700K, for those of you who aren't tech savvy I'm saying I have a good gaming computer and the current demo gives my PC a workout; I cant imagine the entire ship, NPCs, water physics/animations etc all at once happening even on the best gaming PC available.
So I'm just curious what some of you guys think about all that. Mainly I just want a game or simulator where I can see the flooding semi accurately... I know this is a tall order. I do have "Sinking Simulator" on Steam (its free!) but its only a 2D profile of a ship and the physics are pretty terrible!
But if I come across a genies lamp one day Id definitely wish for a magical game where I could see the sinking EXACTLY how it happened. I guess I should use that wish to make it so it never sank at all shouldn't I?.....so I guess Id wish for the Titanic to have never sank, and to just have a exact replica where I could explore it freely as it sank with the assurance I would be safe...wait, that's 2 wishes isn't it? Lets just move on....
Now this is what makes me a bit fussy about the entire thing.... they haven't even gotten to the sinking yet. Not even close. Its been nearly 9 years and they haven't finished the interior of the ship yet. When they initially started the project they had a little preview demonstration showcasing they had modelled the entire grand staircase within around a month (I may be off on that estimate) and I was impressed by how fast they were progressing so I donated. One month to do the Grand Staircase? Using that as a rough guide I figured they could model the entire ship in 2-3 years. Some time goes by, maybe 2 years and they ran another crowd funding campaign asking for donations and because of that initial confidence I had in them I donated again, an even larger amount because there was a lot of enthusiasm and confidence in the project.... but as time went on they seemed to stall over and over, despite raising their goal a few times. IDK how many fundraisers they did in total but they raised quite a bit of cash. Since then they have focused more and more on shameless promotion of models and other peoples products for commissions as well as YT videos for monetization. This is fine, if they need money I want them to have it, its just.....IDK.
They at one point took a trip to Southampton and researched what the city looked like in 1912 and programmed it into one of their demos. That's cool and all, but with how painfully slow the progress was I couldn't help but wonder why they weren't focusing on finishing the ship instead since it was what everyone paid for, crazy idea right?... Why not finish the ship first THEN work on cool extras like the historic city of Southampton. It took them a lot of time to dig up old street maps, photos and things of that nature then fully model buildings into the game. Now they plan on doing fully voiced NPCs, its a lot of work to model NPCs motions, their outfits, and voice acting.... They talk about there being a storyline to progress and follow as if it were Titanic: A Story Out of Time with missions and all. Again, that sounds awesome (not to me, but I could see how some would love it) but id like to just get the ship first. Its taking them nearly a decade to do the modeling of the ship (looking at their progress page the ship seems 50% done?), at this rate to do everything they want it'd take decades. By the time they make any significant amount of progress their engine will be obsolete and the team will be in their 70s... Let me put it this way... Triple AAA game studios with dozens of experienced game developers, cutting edge equipment, millions of dollars to work with struggle to put out games with NPCs and missions etc.
I'm almost 30 now (God I hate saying that, time is so cruel) and at this point I honestly doubt the game will ever be 'finished' (everything they have pitched). MAYBE we will one day see a fully modelled ship you can tour, but I am pessimistic about the sinking mode. If it does get finished I will be into my late 30s or older and my passion/interest in things like games will be drying up like a watering hole in the Sahara. I would appreciate if the guys making the game were more transparent about what is going on - address why its taking so long. I understand they don't know what certain areas of the ship look like but at this point in time if you don't know it means nobody knows - you're gonna have to wing it. I understand they're just guys working on a side project because its their passion, but the problem is they didn't pitch it that way. If they would've advertised the project as a handful of people who will only work on this project a couple hours a week and given accurate projections of how long it would take there's no way I, or anyone in their right mind, would've donated. In their update blogs and videos I get the impression these guys are better suited for politics, they manage to speak for 10 minutes without saying anything at all. Its like a big bowl of cereal, its a lot to chew on for 10 minutes but its all empty calories....no nutritional value, no substance.
They don't wanna address how long its taking. Why they keep mismanaging their budgets. Why there is a lack of progress reports. They kind of ignore all that and give us the run around, "we've been really busy..... we've had things come up...... were still looking for (more) investors..... but anyway, head over to our store and buy a 3D printed model of the Titanic. Watch our YT videos (so we can get that sweet ad revenue!). Buy the Trumpeter Titanic model from OUR website (so we can charge an additional 50$ commission).".
I know I'm coming off bitter, but at this point it seems like they've just been milking the project and topic for money via passive income. I will concede I have completely given up on checking in with their updates and whatever about a year now... maybe their vlogs and YT videos have improved, maybe they have become more transparent and forthcoming, maybe they've started getting more done, but I did check their progress page and it honestly seems like practically nothing has changed in over a year.
Like I said, if they were just honest with us.... Did you waste money and not handle your budget correctly? Did you even have a budget? Did you just lose motivation over time? Did you blow your money on drugs? Maybe one of your crew stole money and equipment then disappeared? If they were just forthcoming and real I would have so much more respect for them. But for years they really acted like things were going fine, always giving the impression that they were about to somehow break through a "barrier" and things were about to start going faster. I don't know how to quite articulate what I mean, but I don't mean to say they said that literally.
Like I said, maybe things have changed and they're now a lot better.....I hope they are, but I don't have the interest or patience to sit through anymore update videos just to get nothing. I did it religiously for the first 4-5 years, then occasionally would catch up for a couple years, now I'm burnt out. I always defended them, I remember other people saying EXACTLY what I am saying now and much more, people who were clearly knowledgeable with game development and PCs but id defend them as if they were infallible. Now here I am, a grumpy old man haha. I remember a lot of gossip about how the "lead" guy was quite toxic; Claims like he would bully "competition", got people who disagreed kicked off of certain message boards, harassed former team members, lied and backtracked about certain things...stuff like this.
I see a lot of people who have only recently heard about the game in their YT video comment section... their videos (particularly their "Titanic sinking in real time" videos) get millions upon millions of views - every anniversary of the sinking they milk the cash cow by posting a live stream of them giving commentary of the titanic sinking as they play the same video they played the year before (Titanic sinking in real time). All these people aren't aware how slow the project has progressed and they're all willing to support the project by purchasing products/donating/watching videos hoping to get an update (earning the team ad revenue each time they do), advertising the project attracting more people who will do the same. I'm just worried that this will continue and the team will keep making money without ever putting out the product they pitched almost a decade ago which means all of us (there were a lot of us who donated A LOT of money) basically got fu... screwed. At a certain point you gotta wonder what the motivation would be to actually make the game? To everyone who initially donated we were promised free copies when it came out.... that money was spent a decade ago... they're making a nice passive income stream right now so what incentive is there to actually crank the thing out?
A similar situation occurs with "Early Access" games. A developer runs out of money before they finished their game so they release an unfinished, or "Early Access", version at a reduced price for some quick income with the promise that they will use the money to finish work on the game. Well they end up selling a lot of copies because people assume the game will be finished eventually so they better buy it while its cheap. What happens is the developer makes a ton of money and suddenly loses the incentive to finish the game.... Suddenly they arent worried about covering cost. Sometimes its not that insidious though, sometimes its just bad fortune. Am I STILL rambling on? Holy........... I just looked up and saw this short story I have written and I have no clue why I wasted so much time writing this pointless post.
Im tempted to go back and erase some of it so I dont come off so neurotic but at the same time I dont want to waste all the time I spent writing all this crap.... Please, if anyone actually read all of this, dont hate me for being critical of H&G. I tried to be fair, I tried to explain my thought process as best I could. If you think im a jerk, explain why, I pride myself on how well I take criticism. Seriously, just ask anyone of my ex wives or former friends. Heck, even my parents will testify to that, we dont talk anymore though. Theyre all close minded bigots who lack vision but theyll tell you how open minded I am! .....im trying to be funny. .....im just gonna go.....