Mod Release Build 14 Beta 3 Progress

[Hylie Pistof]

@Hylie Pistof: Note that the ships generated around an island itself are not related to DirectSail or the Open Sea Mod.
Those are the Coast Raiders and, if I recall, there should generally always be six per island.
Nationalities can differ and by the time you arrive, some may have sunk.

I wondered about that. With all the talk of adding ships I was afraid it would become impossible to get in and out without a fight.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

The only things that have been done in the past year are:
1. DirectSail: Fix that allows the random ship selection to choose from ALL fleet types that the worldmap uses
2. DirectSail/Open Sea Mod: Some values changed on encounter frequency (if I recall)
3. WorldMap only: @Levis' work on making the ships depend on the island that you are near; this does NOT apply in 3D sailing mode (yet)

The only one I think that could be messing things up is #2 there.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Things that have changed for the worse:
1. Too many soldiers in the taverns. I can hardly move at all and when a fight breaks out I don't know who is what.
2. I did some running in the jungle and it seemed normal enough. Then went into the Bonaire caves and OMG!! There are people all over the place. I got into one fight where there were 7 of them at once. WAAAY too many and they seem to respawn every time I die, and I die a lot. Then went on a treasure quest and when we landed a full dozen pirates attacked us and we were cut down in seconds. Again waay to many. I don't know how to get that treasure now.

 

[sir_Grbac]

I don't know how to get that treasure now.

Grenade your way to the treasure?
go there at night with you and your officers carrying cursed coins?
Magicaly drag one or two cannons from your ship to shore and have a little target practice? (would be cool if implemented).

And thank ye DavyJack.

Now, if ya'll excuse me, Frenchies await.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

1. The taverns are a mess. I need to go in them to talk to smugglers and look for officers, but all I keep finding are guys calling me a spy and starting a fight even when I have good relations with that country.

2. I ran into a problem in the jungle. There was the group demanding a toll and some akelani with undead monkees wanting me hide all at the same time. It got a bit confusing.............

3. It's a small beach and they were on me too fast for anything to work. I will try again in 10 levels or so.

 

[salonikasurf]

I am very impressed by a great number of improvements in the game and compliment the efforts of all to date. However, I agree with Hylie regarding the gameplay issues.

Taverns seem to have too much atmosphere now - ships officers are much more rare and random fights occur often. There are issues with the number of new soldiers taking up places as well. In Tortuga the first time I went into the tavern to see Gibbs he had a soldier sitting in the same location as him and you could not talk to him. Had to leave and come back the next day to talk to him.

I find that encounters on the world map are much more aggressive - ships are spawned miles away and then race to attack you. Most, it turns out, are from friendly nations but, early in the game, you must stop to engage them. With friendlies you get the ship ahoy message and you can then can go back to the world map.

I am testing on the highest difficulty setting but even so encounters are severely stacked against you - just sailing into a port is annoying as the wind seems to often turn against the direction you want to go. I trick the game by sailing in a different direction to where I want to go when the hour weather change comes up so the game puts the wind in that direction.

The enemy ships in encounters seem to have magical powers as Hylie says. There has always been an element of this in the game from day 1 but it seems excessive at the moment particularly early in the game.

You really need to use cheats now to get anywhere in the early stages of the game otherwise you get killed most times you go to a tavern or enter the world map.

Using direct sail seems to work well and seems balanced as far as numbers of encounters goes. I am avoiding the world map now except for the long passages say Jamaica to Barbados etc.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Yes the taverns are too crowded for fighting. Also, it seems there are Captains there who want to duel you at sea! I have not taken them up on their offers.

The ships being spawned far away is to give you time to decide what to do and then do it.

The winds are much better once you get away from any land, but getting in and out of port can take game days.

The ships don't have magical powers, I am now convinced that it is just bad bad luck. And avoid Marigot early on if you can.

You do not have to cheat but the special weapons are far more effective than a sword or gun. Also planning your moves and treachery works well. If at all possible always try to get one of them off by himself and then attack. Oh, and as soon as you have three officers you want to keep go to Nevis and find the mystery house in the jungle.

You can decline those world map encounters if you want to.

 

[Levis]

The problem with overlapping should be fixed in the next update, also the worldmap should be a bit less agressive and lees people should mark you as a spie.

 

[salonikasurf]

Sounds great Levis - It does get easier the further you get into the game as you can defend yourself better with more experience/HP.
I will continue with the other side quests and standard storyline in Beta 3.2. I like the new config.exe as well.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Magicaly drag one or two cannons from your ship to shore and have a little target practice? (would be cool if implemented).

Have you tried the BuildingSet mod? You CAN do stuff like that!

Also, it seems there are Captains there who want to duel you at sea! I have not taken them up on their offers.

If I recall, those should only show up if you use the Crewmembers On Shore feature. Unless @Levis changed that behaviour?

I find that encounters on the world map are much more aggressive - ships are spawned miles away and then race to attack you. Most, it turns out, are from friendly nations but, early in the game, you must stop to engage them. With friendlies you get the ship ahoy message and you can then can go back to the world map.

Indeed I noticed some weird effect with friendly WorldMap ships as well.
I hope @Levis will be able to fix it, because it was forcing me to go to 3D sailing mode for no reason whatsoever.

The enemy ships in encounters seem to have magical powers as Hylie says. There has always been an element of this in the game from day 1 but it seems excessive at the moment particularly early in the game.

Do you mean "magical powers" related to ship stats? I'm pretty sure those weren't changed.

....lees people should mark you as a spie.

Is that the "traitor" function? But that should only happen if you turned hostile next to otherwise friendly ships.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Early in the game you can land at a friendly port and go to the tavern, and be called out to a duel at sea and also be called a spy which starts a bar fight. All without ever touching your flag.

 

[Levis]

I just added a dialog file to those sailors but it seems I should have added other dialog files. I disabled the smuggler agent now also. So they have only the enc_walker dialog. thats the same as random citizens.

Place this file in:
POTC\PROGRAM\LandEncounters

About the worldmap encounters. I think its because friendly ships are also created as military ships and they start to go after you. I could disable those. Let me check for that for a moment.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

I have always had the option to not engage those friendly fleets so they are just an annoyance.

 

[Levis]

Place this file in:
POTC\PROGRAM\Encounters

it should only generate following ships now for neutral and emeny nations. For friendly they aren't generated anymore.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

 

[Levis]

Those are my last fixes for today I think.
I hope @Pieter Boelen can make a nice WIP version again for us now .
I've seen many complains about the wind direction so that will be another side project which I want to tackle this week.
What I was thinking:
Storms are formed at a low pressure area, so if we have storms on set coördinates (which change every day) these determing how the wind goes, cause the wind goes to the center of the storm (its more complex normally but this should be enough).
So if I make a system where each day the storm locations are updated (there can be 1 or more storms, sometimes a storm can go away) and have the storms on the worldmap appear only at those spots what would be nice already. If the wind direction is also updated by vectoring the different storms and seeing how far they are away then I think that would give for a better wind direction. Even the weather could be changed to that system. The closer you are to a storm the more chance you have on bad weather.
Does that sound logical?

 

[Hylie Pistof]

That sounds logical but the experience is that whatever direction your ship is pointing is the direction the wind is coming from when close to an island. This will eventually break up and randomize but it often takes days before one can move at all.

It is not fun just sitting there waiting for the wind to change for 10-30 minutes real time.

 

[Levis]

That sounds logical but the experience is that whatever direction your ship is pointing is the direction the wind is coming from when close to an island. This will eventually break up and randomize but it often takes days before one can move at all.

It is not fun just sitting there waiting for the wind to change for 10-30 minutes real time.

Thats why I propose to change it .

 

[Pieter Boelen]

it should only generate following ships now for neutral and emeny nations. For friendly they aren't generated anymore.

Even for Neutral? They wouldn't be hostile either, would they?

Also on this code section:

    case WDM_ETYPE_FOLLOW:       // war ship
       //Only generate war ships with neutral and enemys
       if(GetNationRelation2MainCharacter(GetMainCharacter())<2)
       {
         bReturn = GenerateMapEncounter_War(iNearIslandNation, iEncounter1, GetMainCharacterIndex());
       }
     break;

Should there not be an "else" there? Or is the game code nicely forgiving here?

I've seen many complains about the wind direction so that will be another side project which I want to tackle this week.
What I was thinking:
Storms are formed at a low pressure area, so if we have storms on set coördinates (which change every day) these determing how the wind goes, cause the wind goes to the center of the storm (its more complex normally but this should be enough).
So if I make a system where each day the storm locations are updated (there can be 1 or more storms, sometimes a storm can go away) and have the storms on the worldmap appear only at those spots what would be nice already. If the wind direction is also updated by vectoring the different storms and seeing how far they are away then I think that would give for a better wind direction. Even the weather could be changed to that system. The closer you are to a storm the more chance you have on bad weather.
Does that sound logical?

I still have ZERO clue why any such thing should happen; as far as I'm aware, your ship's heading has nothing to do with the wind direction generation.

In any case, what you describe sounds pretty perfect to me!
Especially if you can incorporate the actual Caribbean trade winds for when there are no storms present.
Those would also go a long way in preventing the wind direction from being too random and inconvenient.

 

[Levis]

I left neutral in cause I tought you might want to have encounters with them. if you think that shouldn't be the case chance the 2 into a 1 in the if statement. and it doesn't need and else.