Sim:WTF

"Every successful video game is eventually reduced to an acronym in the popular lexicon."

—Tony Lovell

<video id="z6JRQauZvis" height="373" width="640" desc="Demo, August 2016" frame="true"/> With the Fleet will be a massively-multiplayer naval simulation with a first-person perspective set in the period 1890-1925. It is under active development and is currently in a demonstrable prototype form.

What is the Status?

I can demonstrate multiple player- and AI-actuated sailors walking the deck of a destroyer, using the equipment on board and conversing via VOIP and speech recognition. Some of its particulars:

• A global game running on a continuous basis is possible.
• A super-scalable architecture: large battles with multiple players aboard each ship
• Speech is foremost: voice-over-IP and expressive speech recognition are built in
• Runs on Windows and Mac OS, initially

Anyone who feels they might be able to contribute artwork, coding, or other expertise are welcome to inquire to join a playtest.

Design Principles

My design tenets repudiate those of pretty much every other naval game.

• each player is a sailor, not a ship
• you have a role – some players command others
• you see from your sailor's eyes, not from a voyeuristic ship-orbiting camera
• there will no neon "HUDs" overlaying the screen
• you will feel like you belong to a "band of brothers"
• you will learn something
• the pace will be slow – the action will be momentous
• submarines and aircraft are ancillary to the real fun

See Also

• Developer's Blog
• Youtube Playlist of Development videos
• Videos of Fleet Action Imminent, the "prequel"
• Slack for people developing Naval sims on Unity3D