TinyWind: A pixel pirate sailing game with real wind physics (380k+ kms sailed)
tinywind.ioAwesome, great execution! This could become a really cool RL environment with a headless sim and procedural voyages. Factorio has something similar with the Factorio Learning Environment SDK.
This is awesome! To offer some constructive feedback: the wind direction could be clearer. More particles flowing across the waters! Especially when the direction is changing. Looking up at the wind teller is unintuitive, even for this old sailor who understands where it comes from. I also didn't always feel like it mattered which direction I angled my sails, only how much I angled them. Like I could angle them for a port wind when in reality I had a starboard wind, and I'd sail just fine.
In the other hand that made it easier, and it was already hard enough lol! I bet it's easier on desktop though...
Edit: you should add a race/regatta mode!
i'd suggest a big flag on the main mast of each ship so its super clear what direction wind you are sailing into :)
Thats a great idea actually! Will fit the style as well! Neat!
Great suggestions here! I already have a streaming type flag on the Spanish galleons I could repurpose for the main user ship for better wind clarity
Definitely want to make an effects pass soon to improve visual clarity of the wind sprites and other basic things like cannon fire, hits, etc
There's only a vague correlation between wind direction and sailing speed, but there's nothing real here. The mechanics of sailing upwind, downwind, or the cost of tacking are interesting mechanics that aren't explored here whatsoever. The dead angle on a ship with a square rig should be massive. This ship goes upwind like it has a motor.
Great! I feel well positioned to say this is great :) I’ve been hoping for something like this.
My ideal: slower, more real time, full maps based on actual locations, replay specific naval battles. Multiplayer (maybe it is?), realistic fog of war. I could go on
Edit: a few more. Sail trim is clunky and seems unresponsive or unclear how it maps to physics. Would be better to have trim on one side and steering on the other. Also to turn off tacking with tap. Steering too sensitive. The battles are great. (All on mobile)
Oh wow thanks for the great suggestions and kind words, glad you’re enjoying the game!
It’s funny, your ideal scenario is almost exactly what I have in mind for the first PvP map coming soon, a slower predetermined map with historic factions/safe zones and ofc lots of combat with bots or people
I can definitely revisit the trim and responsiveness. Buried in the settings in ship logs you can move the wheel to the other side, need to make that more accessible
Very cute and fun looking game, but I found it very difficult. Enemies have perfect aim, and I can't hit anything. I don't think you can even heal the ship unless you happen to stumble upon just the right treasure. Do you have a difficulty slider/setting? Maybe I missed it. It feels like I'm playing on the hardest mode.
EDIT: After playing around some more, yea it feels less like an action game and more like a "sailing around with nearly zero health" simulator.
Cute and fun like uncle Tom!
If you have real wind physics, might as well apply realism to turning as well, so that ships can't turn in place. Rudder should only work with applied speed.
Realistically, ships should tip over if you turn you broadside into the wind with full sails.
Beam reach is typically ideal, and the keel will keep the ship from overturning
The 2 game modes are free to play in browser. Come join our 245 active captains, I’d love any and all playtest feedback at this stage!
Super fun. How do I 'fire" though given spacebar brings up the map? Is the mouse the only option? How do I see the controls as I see the "s" key does something with the sails?
https://tinywind.io/wiki/briefing
Shift fires.
Lmk if space to fire and shift for map makes more sense
I wanted it to feel natural for qwerty and arrow key controls, the space felt a little clunky with arrow keys.
Shift has the problem of bringing up windows sticky keys dialog box if you tap it too fast. Spacebar was my instinct for fire key as well. For map it would be 'M'.
Whichever you choose, please consider displaying the controls inside the game, at least during the setup screen, don't make the user search for controls in the wiki. :)
Also the hp bar below the minimap is a bit weird, would expect it the same as enemy ships above my ship, so i can see if i'm winning or losing a cannon exchange like in a rts game. Or at least someplace more convenient to quickly glance at nearer the center of the screen.
Very fun game by the way, well done! Scratches the nostalgia itch of 'Corsairs Gold' for me.
> Shift has the problem of bringing up windows sticky keys dialog box if you tap it too fast.
An operator fixes this forever by turning off that "enable Sticky Keys" keyboard shortcut. I've not used Windows 11 or Windows 8, but in every other version that had the Sticky Keys feature, I remember there being a prominent "Don't enable Sticky Keys when you press <whatever> X times in quick succession" checkbox in the dialog that let you configure Sticky Keys and related accessibility things.
Over the years, I've seen so many videogame streamers get screwed over by the "Activate Sticky Keys??" dialog pop up that it became pretty clear that they were all keeping it in reserve for the entertainment value. Maybe regular folks get so flustered by it that they don't bother to read the system dialog that pops up.
Tab and M for map, WASD and arrows for controls, space to fire seems like a good compromise
I’ll be making this change!
Though I’m worried it’s gonna be tougher for people to find the map and ship logs since space is a natural button to try and press early on
As others mention, show the keys in the interface. It took me a while to discover accidentally, by pressing space, that I can trim the sails. You could make a graphical guide, showing a ship with arrows around, some arrows attached to the hull with keys responsible for turning the ship, some arrows attached to sails with keys responsible for trimming them. Yet another key by the cannons fire to show which key... umm... fires the cannons...
The whole thing should ideally have a quick modal with hotkeys when you first open it (and a small button to bring it up again if needed).
Modals are the worst ux in games.
If it's only a few buttons anyway you can just show them somewhere as hints while the user isn't giving input or until they used then.
Eg just show a "m for Map\nspace to fire" until the user used each, hiding them each when the m/space is used respectively for that session (session storage so it shows up again if the user comes back later)
Space to me means fire.
You can show the mini-map in a corner, right? Why do you need to toggle it, Slither has it shown at all times.
I agree minimap on corner is ideal, but it does make it easier in a way
Space was definitely what I pressed first to fire. Then enter. Then shift. Later I realized the menu has the key bindings in it.
I also tried using the space bar to fire, it took a bit of digging to realize it was the shift key, but space bar felt more natural for me.
My first instinct was space to fire FWIW (Also its giving me Age of Empire feels here!)
Space for fire, I kept hitting it reflexively.
Space to fire would be my preference as well.
Shift doesn't make sense as a main key almost at all tbh.
Space to fire makes more sense than shift to fire
Edit: Shift is a modifier key. Hold shift to go from lowercase -> capitals. In FPS games shift is walking -> running. In RTS games shift is "select one of these units -> select all of these units"
I know your game doesn't have to follow these rules, you can do whatever you want. However it's worth thinking about what "language" each key on the keyboard is speaking when you want to use it.
This actually makes a lot of sense to me. Never thought about shift being a modifier key from a UX perspective, I’ll likely make space to fire and move map to M because of this thread. Thanks guys!
This will make it a lot more intuitive to play
This is so awesome.
If you need help building a backend for it to be multiplayer, please email me and I'd love to team up (sssilver@gmail.com), I already have something that would help.
Is it multiplayer or am I playing against bots?
I submitted this a few days ago, so glad to see it posted again. Fun game. Funner to think I am sinking people, not bots :)
Both game modes are against enemy bot ships right now
I’m working on a couple PvP modes so you can run naval battles with real captains very soon :)
Thanks so much for submitting this earlier, we got a great boost!
sails perpendicular to the wind for full power? my sailing experience is dated, but that does not seem to be right to me. Don't they want a lower angle of attack? is this a specific of square sails? maybe I am not getting it in the docs
Still, very fun!
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:
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
This is a lot of fun! I’ve been wanting to learn how to make pixel games like this myself. Any tips, resources you’d recommend ?
the control layout is a bit awkward on mobile. i find myself wanting to adjust both heading and trim continuously, but both controls are on the right so i cant use both thumbs. then the buttons to fire/ board are fiddly. tbh almost gave up then tried with keyboard and saw how it was supposed to go.
In the settings menu you can move the rudder wheel to the left. I don't know why that's not the default.
Maybe I should make it the default? When I play on mobile I only use my right thumb almost never trimming sails and steering at the same time.
I totally get if people primarily play with two hands on mobile it makes sense to default wheel to the left
Did you get this idea from the barebones Sid Meiers Pirates battle clone that hit the frontpage a few days ago? :)
I don’t seem to be able to stop the boat by sailing straight into the wind.
heave to
Great one, love the astetics and gameplay.
Only confusing part is healing, I don't know my health or how much healing I need to be back to 80% or something close so I can get back into battle.
Also healing takes forever.
It looks like you can't just sit there and heal (or it takes an enormous amount of time to do so) without first taking over an island. So once you get hurt down to nothing, you need to sail around looking for castaways, which heal your ship.
Very cute aesthetic and reminiscent of Pirates!
I am lazy and would request a settings toggle to automatically adjust the sail angles for me for optimal speed given my bearing.
What a flattering comparison! I’ve gotten so many requests for an auto sail trim I might have to add it in, there definitely is a bit of learning curve to battling with the wind
a middle approach could be a trainer mode where you can say your desired direction of travel and the game gives you a suggestion of heading + trim. think like the driving line in racing sims, it doesn't brake for you but it helps you develop intuition of what to do when. a oldtimey map line drawn on the ocean to show where when to tack at what angle would be so nice. especially for the longer hops between islands.
Be interesting to see enemies take friendly fire, and possibly suppress fire if the shot on the player isn't clear?
As an Aubrey-Maturin lifelong re-reader, I cannot wait to play this.
Should there be sound? I think sounds would be essential for this.
Running on Linux Firefox.
There’s no sound/fx or music at the moment but we will be adding this soon!
A couple very kind redditors have reached out to develop in game tracks so stay tuned
It's definitely in dire need of some sound effects at least. Otherwise it's very neat :)
I used Hyperia (my terminal project) to let Antigravity take control. I think it's cheating now because it has infinite ammo.
Oh my, it wired up its own autopilot and is wrecking havoc now.
If you put sail adjust ments of the opposite side of the screen from the helm on mobile, its be easier to both at once.
Really cool! What did you use for the physics engine?
The boat seems to go faster with the sails on the wrong side (back winded), that doesn't make a ton of physical sense to me
I interpreted this as a visual bug with the sprites.
As a sailor, I love seeing ads or other random imagery of sailboats that's clearly photoshopped, with sails in nonsensical orientations or completely backwards with things like flags or hair blowing in the wind.
This brings back some memories! I used to play the Ancient Art of War at Sea on my dad's Mac Plus as a kid. Having never sailed, it was fun to learn about tacking while trying to broadside spanish galleons. Years later, I lied about my experience to convince a resort to let me check out a tiny catamaran. I made it back to shore!
One recommendation: make the boats not turn quite so fast. It allows you to outmaneuver other vessels by planning ahead or gaining speed ahead of time.
I still don't know much about sailing, but I have a lot of kitesurfing experience. Do boats really travel that slowly downwind? I assume that crosswind is faster, but downwind should still move at the speed of the wind.
I need to check out that game, I’ve sunk countless hours into the 2004 Sid Meiers games. Also lying to sail a catamaran successfully back to shore is such a pirate thing to do :) you’re ready for TinyWind
Noted on the ship turn speeds, I’ve been playing around with larger ships having slower turn radii but I do want the naval combat to have more of a planning element (setup upwind, strafe run and fire, etc)
Let me look into the boat speeds in different wind conditions. I know beam reach/crosswind is faster than parachuting downwind but maybe my downwind speed is too slow now
Some zig zag motions are required to maintain velocity and the combat is fun. I like it!
This is lovely. Well done.
Noice. What’s the stack?
Looks great! it's nice that you can immediately try it out
Totally agree!! It's great to be able to get engaged in the game instantly and not have to sign up right away.
Ty so much! Dropping new captains directly on the waters was some very useful early feedback I received
Should be multiplayer like worms io of old
Seriously it would be something seaworthy. Huge success viral probably
This is awesome!
Nice!
Feedback..
1. show keyboard mapping on the touch controls (for desktop / laptop users ideally)
2. Make wind indicator much bigger and centrally located
3. Make cannon cooldown much bigger and centrally located
Impressive. It loads so quickly! What was this made with?
This game is super fun. Thanks.
Pretty amazing, congratulations!
Very cool
Very cool, love it!
great game! well done.
I love it!
Excellent!
controls could be easier :D
nice one
Would be nice if cannons didn’t fire in directions that had no clear enemies.