I am working on a small prototype game. It is just for educational purposes while I learn more about the engine. While trying to challenge myself, I started taking the built in templates and trying to make changes to them to see what I could come up with.
My latest endeavor was to take the twin stick shooter and change it from a floating vehicle to a boat on a river that has to shoot targets on both sides on land.
In a sense I ultimately cheated by creating a simple faux-water shader and having the boat hover just slightly above it and it worked.
Now I wanted to do it right. Not simulator-style but closer to realistic. I am not interested at this time to deal with buoyancy simulation but do want the boat to be inside the water ‘plane’ and create a small wake when it moves. Not sure if that would be a modification to the shader or if it would be a particle effect. In fact there are a lot of unanswered questions out there.
So I have found a fair amount of tutorials on shaders to make nice water and I found a very in-depth tutorial on buoyancy inside water. What I cannot find are better ways to put a boat vehicle on a plane or in a water volume and get it to move as well as create some sort of reasonable visual to show movement.
I am looking for ideas, suggestions, links or any other information that anyone might have to help accomplish this goal.
I figure eventually I will get it and would just release my results as a community project.
Any help is greatly appreciated.