The Pirate Ship — Galleon Combat, Cannons That Inherit Ship Roll

What this is

You stand on the deck of a galleon at golden hour. Tapered hull, raised quarterdeck and forecastle, two-tier railings, gunports, mast with main + topsail (vertex-billowed with ragged tatters on bottom), shrouds, crow's nest, an animated Jolly Roger flag with skull. The ship rolls in real Gerstner waves — height sampled at 4 hull points each frame drives ship pitch/roll. WASD walks the deck. E at a cannon snaps you to gunner position. Click fires — iron ball spawns at the muzzle with 60 m/s velocity, gravity applies, you must lead the enemy schooner through the wave swell. Cannons are PARENTED to the ship, so the roll inherits to barrel angle automatically. 8 cannons per side. 8-second reload. Three NPC crew with tricorn hats walk the deck shouting.

Why this is mind-blowing

Black Sails-style ship combat in 1721 lines from one paragraph. The cannon-roll inheritance trick is genuinely clever — by parenting cannons to the rolling ship you get correct ballistics for free. The same scene graph you use for rendering does the physics.

First-person pirate ship combat. You stand on the deck of a galleon — wooden planks, mast, sails, cannons along both sides, wheel at back. Real Gerstner waves around the ship — the ship visibly rolls with the swell. Enemy schooner at 150m firing back. Cannons fire iron balls in a real arc. The ship's roll affects cannon barrel angle. Crew shouts orders. Boarding action when ships meet.

What I learned shipping it

Parenting cannons to the ship (so they inherit the ship's roll automatically) is the elegant solution. Don't compute roll separately for each cannon — let the scene graph do it.

Sampling Gerstner wave heights at 4 hull points each frame and lerping ship pitch/roll from the differences gives you a galleon that ACTUALLY rocks. The math is the gameplay.

Vertex-billowed sails with a ragged tatter shader on the bottom edge sell pirate-ship aesthetic in 30 lines of GLSL.