Ship Game Questions

Hello all. I recently got drunk and posted about my ambition to make a ship building game. Having sobered up and realised that the project was beyond the scope of my ability, I’ve decided to start with the basics and I’d like to ask a few questions to help me out in my quest to build what amounts to a World of Warships ripoff.

Now, a quick disclaimer - my computer is currently down, so some of the questions I ask are going to sound completely stupid because I can’t actually access UE4 to answer them myself. That being said, here’s what I’m trying to do:

Firstly, before my computer died, I had a basic ship hull with a camera setup, and now I’d like to make an ocean for it to float on. My current version is 4.26, which as far as I’m aware now has built in water.

The first questions I’d like to ask are related to how to implement the ocean into the world. I’ve seen a few videos in my smartphone, and the best method appears to be to spawn water planes around the player and have them instance a number of times into the distance with decreasing LODs to save computing power.

First question is (and this is why I posted the disclaimer) does UE4.26 have water planes that I can use for this purpose, or am I better off simply adding a geometric plane mesh and setting up the material myself?

I’ll ask more questions as I get further into the project and share updates. Thank you for any and all answers.

Same as my other answer bud.

Get your PC working and smash your head into it until you get something going.

Try the community ocean project, if it still runs. Avoid .26 like the plague that it is. Literally just start with .27 preview. No point in waiting for an official release here.

Water is complex.
It needs a lot more than just putting in a plane mesh.
And in future versions tessellations is Also going away, so you need to start thinking about your own thing based on other stuff.

The community ocean project will likely also have to completely be changed.

Regardless, if you are just starting out, forget water.
Work on easier things.

OR, study up. Flow maps, distance fields, tessellation alternatives, instancing, LOD geometry reduction, gerstner waves, physics and CPP ocean management.
It’s literally a neverending list of things you’ll need to have a full understanding of.
(Takes about 3 months plus).

And because of tessellation going the way of dinosaurs you’ll have a much harder time making this relevant to future engine versions… or performant.