ICS2 and You

Courtesy of the amazing work of Ms. Kandace Commons, we have managed to rework the old ICS1 into ICS2. This is good news for you, as explosives are now actually implemented, it works faster, and it's easier to deal with. Also included in this is a flag system that allows you to change your flag on the fly with a push of a button.

Here are some of the other exciting new features:

-Fewer listeners

-Better damage calculation methods

-Locational damage. There are now four areas of the ship that can be damaged(starboard, portside, bow, aft) if any of these receive 100% damage your ship will be destroyed

-Regeneration. Ships now regen hitpoints slowly, and there are also repair dock scripts which increase this

-Ramming damage based on speed and mass of ship as well as ram type

Take note that this latest version of ICS was entirely the work of Ms. Kandace Commans, thus if you have any questions or comments about ICS2 refer to her. Murakami Steamworks will not be directly involved with development of the system anymore but will still beta test new versions and share our insight. This also means that we will be concentrating our resources mostly on our ships, old and new.

Due to RL concerns we have not been as active as we would have liked, however now that summer break is here we will be updating all the old ships for ICS2, as well as touching up some bugs. We will be working on mostly non-historical ironclads from here on out, but we may rework some of the older models as we experiment with sculpties.

Here are some non-historical ships we started on. MSS Lavanco and MSS Tirano left to right.

Havok 4 and Flags, tweaks and awesomeness abound!

So, Linden Lab, makers of Second Life recently busted out a really special update, changing the physics backend to Havok 4. What does this mean to you, revenue (I meant customers!)?  Firstly, it means we will need to tweak all the ships to move correctly under the new setup.  As noticed, they go really fast now.  Secondly, flexi-prims can be attached to physical objects.  So what does that mean, mr. mechanic?  It means we will be adding totally awesome flexible flags to all our ships!  All the ships will be updated to have two flags, a larger top-flag, and beneath it, a pennant flag.  Each flag will have four choices of texture, choosable by hud, and editable by you, the user.  The top-flag is meant to indicate such things as what country you hail from, and whether you are at a state of combat.  The pennant will indicate things such as what system (ICS of course!) and other things, such as being AFk and the like.  Adding to the total awesomeness of this, we are adding in a number of other assorted tweaks and awesome fixes.  So keep those cannons thundering and ready yourself for the big 6.0 update!