More Beams!

Hi folks, Kyle here for some more much-needed updates!

Beams upon beams upon beams...

Springing forward from the last structural update a bit, work has been ongoing with beams, starting with B Deck and moving down and fore-aft. The color-coded blockout shown before was simply a guide, THESE are the real beams.

The beams from B to E Decks have been placed through the midships part of the hull, and more are being added. Each beam takes only a short amount of time, but there are well over 2,000 total. At the same time, the brackets that held those beams to the vertical frames are also being done. I started with midships since the hull curvature, beam length and bracket shape variation is way less here. Now, as I move fore and aft and lower down, things get more... fun.

Once the beams are all in place, I can start making deck plating (which will of course double as the ceiling for the decks below). Soon I'll also start making cuts to the beams for casing and other openings - right now they're uncut.

You can see the latest images in the above slideshow.

Plotting Structure...

Our resident nerd, Freddy, has been working on his own low-detail (for the most part so far) model which we've mentioned before. He's sort of our forward scout, investigating and figuring out various mysteries with our other researchers.

Lately, he's been figuring out the keelsons - basically, girders along the side of the hull to give it strength. He's also looking into the coal bunkers, especially the various oddities in the bunkers between Boiler Rooms 1 and 2.

Animations...

As you probably know by now, we have essentially a dedicated team whose sole job is to create the amazing visuals you've all been seeing over the last weeks, months, even years. It used to just be Jack, and it still is for the actual animating, but there are also several other people who help Jack with various other aspects, like fixing up, creating, or procuring models for use in animations, or research and other things. Of course, we also have our friend Mike Brady to thank for lending some stuff to use, like the port of Liverpool.

These animations have become an important part of THG. THG is not simply a model of the ship, or Honor and Glory, or Project 401, but the whole constellation of what we do to study Titanic, recreate the ship and her moments, and bring her history to life. While we could stand to have a bit more manpower on certain aspects of the game development side (and are continuing efforts behind the scenes to forward that goal), I don't think you'll find a bigger team of giant Titanic nerds anywhere else on earth. (Not that there aren't a bunch of other groups and individuals out there also doing work like this of course!)

We're glad these animations are so well-received, and we're forever grateful to Jack for his incredible work that somehow keeps improving all the time, and that we're able to provide the resources for him to bring history to life for you all.

Project 401...

Last but not least, there's Project 401, AKA The Elephant in the Room. We were hoping to have had something more substantial by around the anniversary, but sadly that couldn't happen.

Derek has been chipping away at the process of optimizing and improving as much as he can for initial levels. Primarily, fixing the messes I made back in the old days of shoveling somewhat unfinished models into the engine for various purposes, which included models from Sketchup, usually with no naming conventions or other things that would make the life of an Unreal developer easier. But it's not just a matter of organization, as this work makes things run better, too, and look better in places.

One of the things Derek's been doing in all this is making the materials situation less horrific. There were countless materials, often duplicate, sucking up resources and generally making life a nightmare. Mixed in with that were UV issues, which led to material issues. If a section o white-painted steel had its UVs tiled differently from another, for example, the solution was to just... make another material. Not good! (Thank you very much, me.) That's been a big part of what goes into THG proper - making things correctly so as to avoid this kind of mess. The above image shows part of the Boat Deck, one of the spaces being optimized. That part is done, as are other areas and spaces.

However, we don't have a huge engine team at the moment, so it's essentially just Derek doing this work, and he has his own actual business (building and repairing organs, those toot toot pianos for you young whipper-snappers) and a life to attend to. He's doing what he can to chip away at this, but it's taken longer than hoped, which was already longer than hoped.

So why not just release it in its less-polished Demo 401 form ASAP? Because we'd prefer to avoid mistakes of the past by not rushing out something incomplete or unfinished just to satisfy people. We get that this is taking a while (classic THG), we get that people want to have this YESTERDAY, but we have to do what we believe is right, and also what will lead to a better product that works better for more people, and also something that isn't a NIGHTMARE for our engine team to work with, be that Derek or anybody else we bring in to help.

That said, if this looks like it's going to take much longer still, we may at least start a phased release starting with the levels that are done, so that it doesn't take a ridiculous amount of time for people to be able to finally play Project 401. Then we can simply add the remaining levels as they're finished off. If we go this route, you folks will be the first to know.

In the meantime, we greatly appreciate your patience.