Build 14 A so far

[Le_Sigh]

okies downloaded it last night. Am very much enjoying the added complexity, the flags, and my the bermuda sloop is beautiful =)

few things though, when I get to land, it doesn't let me move, even going to my ship's cabin, I can't look around or move forward or backward or turn. not sure what causes this but reporting it as a bug.

the second is that my lil radar thing is gone, so I can't tell at a glance what my cannons are loaded with or how long till they're finished reloading. nor can I tell at a glance what my fire angle is or what my speed is.

next thing is navigation while in direct sail. there is no compass or anything so ya can't even use dead reconing to figure out where you are or where ya need to go.


my suggestion for future releases, is that you put longitude and latitude lines on the map. and make a sextant, log line and compass item. then when the sun is all the way up you can find out your relative lattitude to check on the map, the compass for obvious reasons, adn a log line to check your own speed. with these tools you can figure out a relative location on the map, and perhaps, like how the spy glass works, if you use these items it'll give you a location on the map with a lil bit of mild innacuracy factor.




also just a question for other players who've played this mod,. any tips on making money? I've never been good at that part of the game I was barely surviving in the original game, so tips would be great. tried to escort a merchant but I can't seem to get paid cause every time I go to land I can't move.

 

[morgan terror]

well, your suggestion actually hit the nail on the head considering your problem. you need a compass and other instruments to get the radar and compass. until you have a compass, here's a tip: the moon is always in the west, and the sun is always in the east. use that for your navigation.

note: you do not need to go to the worldmap anymore, you can simply sail directly to another island. check the map and the sun/moon for the approximate direction you need to go. this does take quite some time though, but you'll get there eventually. although there are some exceptions where the mod doesn't work properly, but these are rare.

as far as your walking problem, does this also happen when starting a new game?

a great method for making money is, when you have high luck, smuggling and treasure hunting. for the latter, talk to the NPC's to get a map. (note: some are fake, and you can only hunt for one treasure at a time. also, beware of some stiff resistance when you get there!) you could of course go dungeon looting, which is a very nice way to earn cash and items. pirate hunting is pretty handy as well. the get such a mission, go to a governor. if you can, board the ship as well and sell it if you want to for some extra money. doing quests is of course also very handy. note: the salary of your crew has been tripled since the stock game due to the excess of money players had.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

What do you mean with "doesn't let me move"? You press the forward/backwards keys and your character doesn't go anywhere? Try to reset the controls to default in the options menu, then reassign the controls to your preferred settings. See if it works after that. Please note: When you start the game, you are supposed to not be able to move until Malcolm comes to talk to you.

The RADAR is removed in Alpha 6. You now need to buy a compass from a shop and equip it to enable the display again. If you don't like this change, set DISPLAY_BATTLEINTERFACE to 1 in BuildSettings.h .

"make a sextant, log line and compass item."
Sextant and compass already added. Try to buy them from the traders. If you buy a sextant and a chronometer, you'll be able to see your current position on the map interface screen.

 

[Le_Sigh]

hahaha okies that's awesome.


you guys have done one hell ofa job with this game .

I'm having fun in my very beautiful bermuda sloop privateering french ships. You guys did a hell of a job with that sloop, it's very sleek and beautiful and very fast the way it should be. I'm impressed with the sails, but I'm most impressed with the smoke. Once I had my first battle, all I could say was "FINALLY some one, somewhere got the smoke right, the way it should be. No sailing game that I've ever played managed to get the smoke from cannons to look right. It's always been some lil puff that dissapeers within seconds. This stuff lingers though, and clouds your vision for a few seconds before being blown away. Just like it should.

Kudos to you gentlemen. After I saw what the sloop looks like and how she beiaves, I'll likely not obtain another ship unless I can snag one of them frigates I saw by Oxbay that looked like a late 18th early 19th century frigate, had a bell and everything.

oh and as for that lil problem with me not being able to move, I had to start a new game. had a similar issue later on when the quest froze, the lil guy wouldn't move and he wouldn't tell me what he needed to tell me so that I could move on, had to go back a save to get that to work.

 

[Nosie_old]

<img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/hi.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":gday" border="0" alt="hi.gif" /> Le,
Glad to see you enjoy yourself!
I've played this game for nearly 4 years
and still like it! It's the best Pirate game
around by a Mile!!! <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/me.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="" border="0" alt="me.gif" /> <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sailr.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="" border="0" alt="sailr.gif" />

 

[Le_Sigh]

Since I've been asked as to what is my favorite ship and all.

I'm really liking my Bermuda sloop, you can attack enemies much stronger than you, and as long as you keep the wind in your advantage, you can escape anything. Anything I ran into so far, I attacked a "small fleet" from dutch, and it was a damn line of frigates and ships of hte line, including a first rater. but I was able to get away, they only had time for a single broad side cause the thing is just so fast =D. I've so far been able to capture a class 3 27 gun ship (keep in mind that my sloop only has 10 guns) with it, using easyest lvl of difficulty and realistic sailing. used the speed and manueverability to my advantage. Kinda just sailed in where I had the weather gauge and was off it's port bow and fired a couple broad sides, it began to turn to be able to broad side me so I sailed away and out of range and then just repeated, keeping out of range, maneuvering to where I had the wind to my advantage and then came in and fired at it till finally it surrendered.

very cool how ya can do that in this game, use actual strategy, using the wind, weather, fog and such to your advantage, it's almost like being in master and commander <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wink.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="" border="0" alt="wink.gif" /> course that's just easyest level, but still pretty fun =)

 

[morgan terror]

hey, that's pretty impressive! i rarely use strategy like that. (although i am quite the manueverer and very skilled in boarding, although i say so myself) i mainly use my ship as a tank, absorbing damage, as i know it can take it. when i have a schooner or something smaller though, a mainly use my musquito tactic, just annoyingly buzzing around the enemy peppering him with anything i can fire at him. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/slap.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":slap" border="0" alt="slap.gif" />

one of the things that i'm most proud of doing is boarding a war galleon that was on my tail at a distance of 30 yards at least with a schooner MM, and no boarding skills whatsoever. boarding a ship from the rear is easy. from the front without ramming and going in the same direction, now that's another matter! especially when a single mistake can mean your doom, as you will unavoidably get broadsided by an amount of cannons that you'd best strive to avoid being fired upon. i can tell you one thing, and that's that it's horrendously difficult! you have to somehow slow down occasionally to get close enough to slowly drift alongside (slower than the war galleon, still in the same direction) and continuously avoiding him turning around and broadside you, after which you have to speed up a bit to get at the same speed, and having to remain at the same angle during this fidgeting with your sails. the avoiding of cannons is certainly the hardest.

note: war galleons can be 4 knots faster than regular galleons.

 

[Le_Sigh]

aye that is very impressive, I'm still getting the hang of the boarding thing, though some of my favorite tactics so far is sailing in under false colours, with my guns loaded with canister shot, and come up on a ship, most realistically one that's moored, and then raise up the union jack and then fire a broad side of buckshot and then boarding instantly afterwords, capture the boat, then escape before the harbor frigate arrives.

one thing that is really driving me nuts, is that you can't alt tab out of this game. I got one of those "windows" buttoms right next to control, I took on an entire convoy of dutch ships last night in my sloop, a lvl 4 xebec for escort and then a lvl 5 and 2 lvl 6s. I just harried them like you said like a mosquito, till they all surrendered and the xebec was sailing away, then while I was observing the xebec with my spy glass I accidentally pressed the windows button, went to desk top and of course then have to ctrl+alt+del to close the game cause when ya re open it it's just black <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sleep.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="-_-" border="0" alt="sleep.gif" /> so lost all my ships.

 

[morgan terror]

well, there's a very good and simple solution for that: try to get the button off somehow with something thin. it's fairly easy to do, and it doesn't (well, shouldn't) damage your keyboard in any way. besides, you'll likely not use the button anyway. a blunt knife should work, or the blunt side of one.

you do realise that the union jack is the american flag, do you? the pirate one is the jolly roger. 'hoist flag' in the 'return/enter' menu (the one that appears in the bottom left) hoists the jolly roger automatically, but anyone that sees you, except the pirates, will become hostile to you. when you go to the world map, your previous flag is hoisted again.

one of the more interesting things you can get is being followed by a hostile ship that's technically faster than you are, and that ship being the only one. i had this with a lugger VML while i was being followed by a bermuda sloop, which i couldn't take on at that time. i think he was carrying some cargo, cos i otherwise wouldn't have made it! by dumping nearly all i had overboard, i just managed to stay ahead of him by 0.3 knots. these situations are a lot different from the others and are surely an interesting experience. bit like the black pearl/interceptor kinda thing.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

The Bermuda Sloop was made by Captain Augast. If you like this ship, try the Lugger VML and British Frigate as well. And we also have the actual FILM version of the Black Pearl, made by Kazeite. Not to mention my favourite ship: The Spiegelretourschip made by Kazeite and Doober specially for me. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/icon_mrgreen1.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="" border="0" alt="icon_mrgreen1.gif" />

The cannon smoke are thanks to some HEAVY improvements done by Merciless Mark. It is really a MAJOR improvement over the original game.

I don't think you can actually use fog to your advantage. Fog is just annoying, because the enemy does know where you are, but you don't know where the enemy is. This might be something to still improve on with the mods. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/rolleyes.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="" border="0" alt="rolleyes.gif" />

About the windows button: Set the game to windowed with the Config program. That way, you CAN Alt+tab out of the game. And if you set your resolution to higher than your Windows resolution, the game will still operate in fullscreen. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/w00t.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="" border="0" alt="w00t.gif" />

BTW: How DARE you attack the Dutch??? <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/dev.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":d:" border="0" alt="dev.gif" />

 

[Le_Sigh]

Cause I got a letter of marque saying I should and they were targets of opportunity and my crew made me do it >.>

and yeah I did check out the british frigate, actually set up a character specifically with that ship and then created a new character for privateering. Very good start on that frigate, a lot more detail needs to go into it, like putting the cannons down on the lower deck like they're supposed to, and the helm and the pilot lights and such, he's off to a very very good start I think he prolly just wanted to get it done for the mod or something though, has a lot more to go to get her on par with his bermuda sloop, though she is beautiful the way she is already, but I hope he intends to build up on her. in fact ifhe likes I can get as many pictures of HMS Rose as I can, and send them to him.

thank you for your help with the alt tab issue, another suggestion I'd like to make for future releases of direct sail. is that ya make it so that you can save game on the high seas provided yer not being attacked or something, it's kinda a bummer to spend several hours traveling just to have your game crash to desktop just as the entrance to the harbor comes into sightt <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sleep.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="-_-" border="0" alt="sleep.gif" />

 

[morgan terror]

heh...the fog reminds me of a rather amusing thing that happened to me:

do you have ANY idea how scary it is when you know that there's a manowar 80 yards in front of you and you can't see it!? well, luckily it wasn't hostile, but i intended to board it as it was simply too good an oppurtunity to pass up! going from a frigate to a manowar is great, and doable. this was so easy that i simply couldn't resist, but it get's a hell of a lot more difficult when you can't see the damned thing. to make matters worse, it was night. the main issue was that it was attacking FDF, and i knew that if i ended up in the massive crossfire i wasn't going anywhere soon. well, i did manage, but it was absolutely nervewracking!

if the fog does indeed have to be functional, the ships on the radar need to be adjusted as well. that could lead to some interesting situations. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/icon_mrgreen1.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="" border="0" alt="icon_mrgreen1.gif" /> the player then could only see the enemy and fire at him from approx. 70 or 60 yards, and the other way round as well. one thing that you could do though is simply press fire all the time and wait until they simply fire, unless the range would be increased to the distance at which you can see the ship when there's fog.

 

[Le_Sigh]

I'm not sure but I'm of hte opinion that it does affect the accuracy of npc batteries and their ability to locate you. and yeah without the radar, you won't be able to find em either.

I had a similar issue I attacked a french convoy and it was escorted by a frigate, and the plan was to harass the merchants while just staying out of range of the frigate, a process that takes a long time and lots of maneuvering as ya really gotta try to break up the formation, lead the frigate away, then lead it around a big circle till yer inbetween it and the merchants and then chase em down again. the merchants tend to scatter so it's just a matter of picking the most ideal prize out of the bunch and leading the frigate away from it, well anyways, I did this, and I had made a couple surrender and then the weather changed and it was foggy. and I could see ships on the radar but I didn't know wich was wich, turned out the one I was tailing was the frigate >.> only saw it for a second through the fog then dissapeered again and I got the hell away from that thing <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wink.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="" border="0" alt="wink.gif" />

kinda sucked in the end, cause this whole process too so damn long that the weather changed again and there was a "sail ho!" and the area reloaded and all my captured prizes dissapeered. le sigh. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sleep.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="-_-" border="0" alt="sleep.gif" />

 

[morgan terror]

yeah, i hate that. there WAS a toggle made that the weather wouldn't change though, but i'm not sure how to toggle it, or if it was actually even finished.

in a situation like that, i usually just barge straight in the middle of the bunch, and fire in any direction i can, as often as i can, and as accurate as i can. great fun, and VERY smokey and spectacular! <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/icon_mrgreen1.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="" border="0" alt="icon_mrgreen1.gif" /> in other words, i usually use my ship, when it's a big one, as a tank. including running ships over. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile2.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=")" border="0" alt="smile2.gif" /> the skills you will likely need for something like this would be high accuracy and cannon skill, all the cannon and boarding abilities, and if you can, the navigation abilities as well. having professional ship defence helps a lot too, as your ship takes a serious beating. the reason why you need the navigation abilities is mainly because of the highly usefull quick-turnaround.

the result of doing the above can be bit awkward to handle, as all the (remaining <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/icon_wink.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="" border="0" alt="icon_wink.gif" /> ) ships scatter in all directions, likely surrendering along the way. i've taking out convoys of at least 6 ships this way with a single ship. (which is the regular fleet after a while when on the high seas)

oh: whatch out for a convoy named 'fleet' or something similar! those usually have at least 3 battleships with them and a whole bunch of other smaller ships. i can tell you one thing and that's that it's absolutely terrifying! i managed with my manowar, but only just. and that was just a small fleet! <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/piratesing.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="" border="0" alt="piratesing.gif" /> you only encounter them with a relation towards a nation of at least -300 though, so you will likely have nothing to worry about. (or -200, i'm not sure)

 

[Le_Sigh]

good to know =) yeah my lil sloop, while historically most accurate for a privateer in the 1700s and very useful as well as you an always get away, the down side is that you do a lot of running vs taking prizes I find I have the best chance of taking a big prize around an island, sneak in, raise our colours right when we're about to board fired a broad side of buckshot and then board righht away
then capture and get the hell out of dodge,

 

[morgan terror]

well, that is fun of course. but i think that a 'pirate designed fast schooner' would be a better choice for you. it's the fastest ship in the entire game and the biggest ship usable for your tactic. it's very well armed as well. although i think that the pirate designed schooner MM is more beautiful. that would certainly be my favorite ship, combined with black sails.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Inzane hasn't done any work on the Surprise for over a year, I think. Don't count on him doing any updates on her. However, Merciless Mark did make an update for her for which I now finally have the texture files, so I'll grab all files together and send them to Pirate_KK for inclusion in the new modpack update. The only bug is that the lighting is reversed on the new version, but there's nothing we can do about it. Merciless Mark, Kazeite and I all tried, but no luck for any of us.

Saving at sea is not supported by the game engine. We can't mod it in. It's a shame, but that's how it is. I would love to have that functionality though.

<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I'm not sure but I'm of hte opinion that it does affect the accuracy of npc batteries and their ability to locate you. and yeah without the radar, you won't be able to find em either.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->Might be true. I never noticed it, but I never paid attention to it either. There's a lot of functionality in this game that even I don't know about. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/whistling.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="" border="0" alt="whistling.gif" />

<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->kinda sucked in the end, cause this whole process too so damn long that the weather changed again and there was a "sail ho!" and the area reloaded and all my captured prizes dissapeered. le sigh.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->Good news. If use use Build 14 Alpha 6, you can press the K-button during such a fight, which will turn off the DirectSail updates. That way you can be certain that your prizes won't disappear. Once you're done, press K again to re-enable the DirectSail functionality.

 

[Le_Sigh]

awesome about the ship. it's too bad I don't have modeling skills I'd update the thing myself, I know exactly what i'd do with it. but as much as I would like to see Surprise have as much detail as the Bermuda Sloop, it's not worth spending $200 on an apropriate modeling program that I probabally won't be able to use unless I take courses for it and spend another year learning how to do it. for that money and time I could probabally hire a professional to make an amazing one.

oh and you guys wanna hear an in game ghost ship story?

get this, here I was in my privateer character, moored off redmond at night in the Sea Bunny, my Bermuda Sloop (I was actually just sitting there studying the model as I'm making a lego version >.>) all of a sudden I hear cannon fire, and cannons hitting the water off my starboard bow. I rush forward and lo and behold, there is a first class war ship right in the entrance of hte harbor, and it was sailing spanish colours. Now how in the hell it go there i don't know, I never heard the fort fire her guns and she sure as hell wasn't firing them now. And when i say a first class ship, I'm not talking about no battleship. this was a tripple deck first rate man of war on the scale of HMS Victory sitting right in the middle of the harbor firing at me iwth her bow chasers. I couldn't get past her without risk of being broad sided, so I did the only thing I could do, I weighed anchor and moved m ship to her blind spot and began firing at her with my four guns. She didn't turn, so she didn't fire back, and after my third salvo, she surrendered. If things weren't spooky already, here a first rate ship just surrendered to my sloop. Still, who could pass this opportunity up? So I sailed along side, heaved to and boarded her. The deck was in disarray with burning embers and smoke everywehre and torn rigging strewn about the deck. Nowone was in site, except the captain. I aproached him my hand on the hilt of my sword. and I spoke to him. He said nothing but I heard a voice (it was a log message) and it said "No use talking to the dead. I suppose your name is Hamlet" Alarmed by this, I drew my sword and attacked the captain. None of m blows did a single bit of damage, and I tried to escape, and then i discovered, Icouldn't leave. (space bar did nothing, I had to reload my last save) >.>


my question is, what the hell happened? I know about the boarding bug, but was that actually a ghost ship or something? is that programmed or what teh hell was that all about?

 

[Merciless Mark]

<!--quoteo(post=186386:date=Mar 27 2007, 01:47 AM:name=Pieter Boelen)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Pieter Boelen @ Mar 27 2007, 01:47 AM) [snapback]186386[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->
Inzane hasn't done any work on the Surprise for over a year, I think. Don't count on him doing any updates on her. However, Merciless Mark did make an update for her for which I now finally have the texture files, so I'll grab all files together and send them to Pirate_KK for inclusion in the new modpack update. The only bug is that the lighting is reversed on the new version, but there's nothing we can do about it. Merciless Mark, Kazeite and I all tried, but no luck for any of us.
<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

We probally could get the lighting to work properly, but the problem here is to do it will probally require Maya with its plugin. unfortunatley, Maya isnt anything i have or can afford in the near future <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/whistling.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="" border="0" alt="whistling.gif" />

 

[morgan terror]

heretic has maya 7, if that helps.

i think that your ghost ship was just a case of all the possible bugs at once. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/dunno.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="" border="0" alt="dunno.gif" /> i do know how to trigger a rather fun bug which gave me a manowar MM for some reason. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile2.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=")" border="0" alt="smile2.gif" />