What kind of ship is the Obra Dinn?

[Halkun]

So I beat the game and now I decided to get a little replay value out of it by doing an inventory of the rigging and seeing what’s missing and what needs to be replaced. It’s a little more than just the sails and the broken mizzenmast. On the bow, it’s really hard to see the bowsprit, but the sail configuration is a little confusing. It appears to have been rigged for one or two jibs. (It’s has a jibboom so, I assume two?) , but the bowsprit sports an athwart spar, which means it likely had a spritsail. That’s strange as it also has a dolphin striker. That infers that there was a jib and a spritsail, but that’s rare.

The masts seem to support a three sail configuration of a mainsail, topsail, and a topgallant on the foremast and mainmast There doesn't seem to be spars for royals, but the stays are rigged funny. This means I can’t say for sure there were stay sails The mizzen sail spar is gone, but was unceremoniously liberated by a guest, so that’s accounted for.

On the aft end the is a shredded spanker, the rigging is sparse there too.

So in the end it was appears to be, maybe a fluyt? That’s a dutch cargo ship that clould support a mast configuration like the Obra Dinn. The Obra Dinn has mizzen sail and not a lateen. Also fluyts tended to have a sprit-topsail, our ship is missing a boom for that.

Any sail-type people have any thoughts?

[Sammi79]

I'm gonna guess at 'East Indiaman' from the plot.

The sail configuration is a little odd but not specifically wrong.

There is barely enough standing rigging to support the masts and yards as they are, while we can assume a lot has been destroyed during the voyage, actually I just think accuracy in this sense was not required for the game. It's a very nice model ship to walk around, for the games sake it's certainly accurate enough.

[Korgor]

Nice - I know nothing about rigging and I thought it was an East Indiaman

[Sammi79]

Looking back through the devlog, the hull shape (and masts I guess) was modelled on HMS Leopard (I'm assuming the 1790 built 50 gun 4th rate ship of the line) though scaled down a little, 800 from 1100 ton displacement, 1 less deck and 16 guns though there are ports for 24.

Pretty much everything else is a bit of a collage of similar vessels from the time period, East Indiamen, small frigates, the Fluyt you mentioned etc. I think Mr Pope spent a good deal of energy trying to make it as realistic as he possibly could, and I think the end result is very acceptable. I'd even go so far as to say it's the most realistic 3D representation of an 18th century vessel available in the world of videogames that I've seen so far, while at the same time being completely fictional.

And from what I know about rigging he could have probably spent the entire development time thrice over just modelling that individual part of the ship it if absolute accuracy was the intent. It would also create a huge amount of visual clutter that would highlight the limitations of the 1-bit rendering.

It would be nice to hear from a sailor type who knew about this stuff in detail and see what they thought about the end result.

[Halkun]

The Amsterdam looks very close. It sports a lateen and no spanker. The Obra Dinn is also missing a bilge too, but I don't expect that to be a very interesting location. All in all. I could see a replica of this ship being built for real. (It will need a proper head moved to the lazarette. Who the heck poops in the officer's mess hall?)

[dukope]

Sammi's right, the basic structure of the ship is based on the HMS Leopard but I referenced many various sources for the interior layouts and details.

The rigging is a simplified amalgamation of the kinds described in the book "Seamanship" by Harland. It's an excellent book on the subject and provided lots of other inspiration for the Obra Dinn's design. The aft and waist davits, for example, were modeled on two separate designs from this book.

When I started on the project, I had no idea how much or how little the rigging needed to change for each flashback. My implementation on the art side allows for full articulation, which is the main reason why it's simplified from what you'd really need to sail the thing. In the end it turned out that the articulation was almost totally unneeded - the rigging is rarely much visible in flashbacks. The only place where the tech really pays off is in The Doom chapter.

[Halkun]

I just looked up the Leopard. That has some really nice refrences for 3d modeling! I can see why you shrunk it, as it has a crew of 350. Intrestingly, it has both a spanker and mizzen sail, but appares that they kept the mizzen sail reefed. It also has 3 jibs and a spritsail. Shame the Obra Dinn doesn't have a figurehead. (At least, not one I can see) That would of been cool. As it stands right now, the sail plan for the Obra Dinn isn't *impossable* by any strech of the imagination. Now that I've seen the reference, I can now infer the rigging. She an inner jib, outer jib, and spritsail on the bow, Foresail, fore top sail, and a fore topgallent on for the formast. Main sail, top sail on and topgallent on the main mast. Finally a reefed mizzen mailsail, mizzen top sail, and mizzen topgallent on the mizzen mast with a spanker at the stern. It also had three stay sails between the fore and main mast, and then two staysails between the main and mizzen.

The standing/running rigging would be tricky to figure out, It's a cool boat. I woudn't mind seeing one in a bottle :)

[Dat Zorro]

For me, who loves age of sail-games and judging from the size and stern, it's obviously an East Indiaman.

-Very large, with a flat deck and wide stern with two or more floors.
-Well armed for a merchant ship and can likely be turned into a ship-of-the-line with more guns (Which did happen in history)
-Can operate cost-effectively with small crews

To be frankly, I have no idea why the person who edited the game's entry on TVTropes assumes that it's most likely a fluyt.

[dukope]

IIRC (this was 3 years ago), some changes that make this an East Indiaman and not a straight up warship:

* The fore-aft spanning top deck. Gunships typically had an open waist.
* Way fewer guns. Gunships had guns of all sizes, everywhere.
* Too many cabins on the gundeck. These could be struck for conversion or in an emergency but a full-time warship would have the gundeck clearer and readier for action.

And as UAZ says, ships-of-the-line were tuned for more people, which meant you need more places to put them but then could support more complex rigging with more options for maneuvers. Likewise, the stern is a giveaway that the Obra Dinn is an East Indiaman and not the older almost-galleon-style fluyt.

[Wobblysauce]

Either way, it is a nice ship, and spent some time switching bodys and looking at the detail.