Following Seas - Reefer Madness

So in this update I want to go over reefing. This is one of the features I've struggled with, as there's a lot of complexity to it.
The current system uses spring joints and a distance based series of modifiers for ropes and cloth particles. This works relatively well, but visually comes up short, and has some major issues with persistence and collisions when dealing with compressed meshes. For reference on the visual aspect, here's a brief clip of my reefing the sails on the xebec.
My new solution is much more script based, and digs into particle based manipulation of the cloth meshes. Visually I feel it's much cleaner, and better shows the act of progressively folding the big lateen sails. I've also added brailing lines to help with the visual side. The cloth does tend to bunch up excessively, but it's an iterative process, and I feel it's much improved over prior systems.

[@GypsyTinker2012]

Reefing looks great! Really impressive. Glad to also see triangular lateen sails. Interested to see if you can tack the boom.

[@2eightnine]

Thank you. If I'm understanding correctly yes, you can tack the boom. (Or at least you can rotate the boom around the mast to a degree). The amount of control isn't quite where I'd like yet, but the base is there. Essentially the boom is free to rotate, held in place by the rope at the fore and aft of the boom. The player can reposition these ropes freely, as well as control their length. At the same time the rotation of the sail is biased towards wind direction to simulate the drag of the sail, so a certain amount of rotation will happen.

[@jonathanvandermark5950]

Are there going to be oars as well as sails?

[@2eightnine]

There is a deployable rowboat than can be rowed -- but currently the larger ships are propelled by sails only. (or towed via kedging)

[@augustvonmackensen7499]

is the gay flag necessary man seriously.