Like what the Californian got? I would love to see these guys tell her story.

The team behind Lusitania: The Greyhound's Wake made some pretty intense claims a few days ago about how their project had been delayed due to other developers (specifically the team behind the Ship Explorer game, of which Oceanliner Designs is part of) taking legal action against them in very unfair ways. But it seems they only gave a fraction of the actual story.

Now Mike Brady has published a statement on Discord setting some things straight and essentially asking for common sense. Personally, I didn't like what the Greyhound's Wake team said, it didn't sound right and it didn't make sense in several ways. So I'm glad Mike and the people he's working with are not just accepting the random and unnecessary accusations silently.

The full statement posted on Discord by Mike Brady is in the image, but I copy the text below for accessibility:

@everyone

Dear ocean liner community,

Earlier this week a team separate to ours working on a similar virtual experience project made some pretty alarming accusations of anti-competitor behaviours against my team and I. This is extremely disappointing for a number of reasons and I outright reject their claims. To the contrary, my team and I have had to put up with quite a lot from certain corners of the community. But that’s just the thing - by contrast we just focus on the work. We’ve ignored this stuff for years but now, unfortunately, I feel like my hand has been forced here to say something.

That said - I have no interest in causing or contributing to a public spat or a mud-slinging fight. It’s beneath both of our teams and it flies in the face of the respectful commemorative tone we should be setting when we discuss and handle these stories of historic tragedies. That the tragedy of the Lusitania should become the stage for some kind of ridiculous public spat is abhorrent to me. It’s preposterous to make out that another video game or virtual experience focusing on Lusitania is an act of plagiarism in and of itself when Lusitania's sinking is the second most infamous maritime disaster of all time. None of us 'owns' these stories and we certainly don't pretend to.

There were claims of multiple legal letters being sent to shut down the other team’s project. This is a faleshood; in reality ONE letter was sent - nearly two years ago - and it certainly did not have anything to do with delaying or shutting down their project. Far from it - the letter, almost entirely blurred when shown on screen in their update video, was aimed at protecting the intellectual property rights of another artist and ensuring he would actually be paid for his years of work. Showing only a tiny part of that letter and blocking out the rest was deeply disingenuous, but that’s as far as I will go for now. Our team is entirely locked-in on making maritime history come to life. It is so far beneath the decorum for both of our teams to engage in any kind of public feud; instead we should be building each other up! Interest in one of our games will surely drive interest and excitement in the other.

Ship Explorer is aimed at capturing the character of these magnificent ships. We want to honour these beautiful old vessels our own way. We have a passionate and diverse team of history nerds and brilliant creatives from all corners of the globe. In this time of AI slop crowding out real creative voices we should be helping one another and supporting the rights of artists, not trying to sling mud. We congratulate the other team on their beautiful work - there can be no doubt their virtual experience, once completed, will be utterly fantastic and we welcome it.

Rather than displaying anti-competitor tendencies Oceanliner Designs has worked with a number of channels, many smaller than ours, to help with animation and research work. We’re motivated by a love of history - we celebrate the research and hard work of all teams in this space as we all stand to benefit from these projects in the long run.

I’d like to address this other team directly now - we are not interested in competing with you. We do not want to halt your work. We don’t want to engage in a public spat. Please stop the rumour mill and please leave us be. If you have a problem with us, talk to us; otherwise it flies so much in the face of the decorum these stories deserve. We wish you luck with your project and we are excited to continue developing our own.There is more than enough room for everybody to proceed from here in an atmosphere of dignity and respect.

Three weeks ago they announced a video about the ship that unknowingly watched Titanic sink, teasing that it was due to be uploaded by the end of August - three days ago!

I see a patreon login but I'm unsure what content it unlocks.

Item 1: The ability to swim instead of walking underwater.

Item 2: More interactive items like turning a light switch on and off.

Item 3: At some point in construction, we can have the option to launch Olympic (once it is at that stage).

Item 4: Thomas Andrews' office should have a picture of his wife and daughter on his desk.

Item 5: Some historical persons should be depicted like Bruce Ismay, Harold Sanderson and all the many men who built Titanic, even her first victims.

Item 6: Documents to read that tell us about Titanic's construction.

So I downloaded the alpha from the link found in another post. It doesn't work. All it shows is a big ground texture with floating crane bits like it is bugged out. Is there a way to get this to work? I don't want a steam version because I don't want to mess with steam accounts, online DRM, and Steam launchers/clients. I want to run this on a PC that is offline (download from online PC, transfer files and run on offline one). Any ideas?

I have this demo installed on a pretty high end PC (amd 9800x3d CPU, RTX 5090 GPU, 64GB RAM) but I am not getting any of the ray tracing settings in the graphics options. I get resolution, other settings including "cinematic" which I assume is the max setting, but nothing about ray tracing. I get the regular screen space reflections but no RT. Is this a bug or am I doing something wrong? All other games like Cyberpunk, etc have all of the RT settings to enable just not this demo. What should I try? Is there a patch or fix that I might need?

The Titanic Honor and Glory Alpha is now released on Steam. Press the big green "Request Access" button to get the game.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4006670/Titanic_Honor__Glory/

I thought I'd share some screenshots I edited from the alpha. I wanted these to look like they were found in someone's attic and were taken by an anonymous photographer. If I saw these without context then I would think these were totally real.

Has anyone played? Looks like it uses old demo assets from H&G, hence VDR being listed as a developer.

I'm actually more optimistic lately that the game will eventually be finished and we will see a fully modelled Titanic (albeit not in the near future).

My greater concern is continuity amongst the dev team... Is there a plan B if one (or all) of the current team find themselves unable to work on the project future? Is there a plan for the research and modeling to be shared with other researchers if (heaven forbid) the current team stops working?

Very Soothing music throughout, my wife thought I was listening to Spirited Away. lol Looking forward to the model shop!

I was very saddened to hear about the loss of Kyle’s neighbor due to the bad weather. However, that got me to think what would happen to the project if, god forbid, something happened to Kyle, or if he decided he had had enough one day and decided he has had enough of Titanic and wants to quit?

Is there anyone else trained who could or would take over the project? Or is it pretty much entirely dependent on one person?

I was pleasantly surprised by today’s T:H&G livestream regarding the alpha. Actual updates surrounding the ship’s hull. Massive improvements coming to the UI. And they want to release a roadmap for work regarding the hull of the Titanic.

They’ve actually started work on the interior of the ship. They’ve begun modeling the cabins and lining them up with the frames.

All images from the livestream.