Corsairs: The Curse of Fate (a Russian COAS mod)

[Croaker]

I just checked on the Curse of Fate website... Link Most of the features they are adding read like a wishlist of things I want so see.

Google seems to be doing a much better job translating this recently and there is some new content added from when I checked last. The page shows an the date updated was 05/09/09.

Background: Seven Winds is a modding group, much like Piratesahoy, but apparently based in Russia. They are developing a mod for COAS titled "Curse of Fate". They began development on this mod on 12/17/07, so no doubt they are quite a bit ahead of anything we are currently doing. Their forums projects release of this mod in late 09 or early 2010. They previously made a large mod pack for Corsairs 3 (Age of Pirates, Carribean Tales) titled "Winds of Freedom" Link, in which they make reference to borrowing content from "Build 12". (See bottom of page on previous link).

I would love to see the Mods from this site get in touch with this group and start collaborating/translating. They openly request aid in their forums on things such as Art or 3D modeling. I assume much of their code is ready to be translated. If Google works so well with their website, it should work just as well with e-mail correspondence or translation of the dialoge in their code, assuming that in entering such a collaboration, they would be willing to give us advanced access to their work. If that "Build 12", was actually content borrowed from Piratesahoy, then I see no reason for them to not want to collaborate.

The project director/site moderator appears to be Victor (Lugger) Chinas and he can be reached by clicking here. Link

 

[Pieter Boelen]

That's certainly interesting. I can think of no other explanation for that mention of "Build 12" than that it is indeed OUR Build 12.
I certainly wouldn't mind any collaboration with a Russian modding group;
it should be mutually beneficial, no?

 

[modernknight1]

I remember seeing a wish list link somewhere. I would love a collaborative effort. It would be cool if we could get even more ships from them if there are new ones. Really I wanted to use this post to throw my wishes out there for future COAS mods.

We now have most of the POTC Ships and characters.

Next I would like to see:

1) Even more historical ships!!! :will

2) COAS Historical or period mod like POTC with ships and character atire changing as time progressed. Locations would be under their historical factions flag for that time and alliances and enemies would be correct for each era. You would also be able to select the time you would like to start playing like the old Commodore version of Sid Meier's Pirates.

FOR SHIPS: 1500-1560: Caravels, Caravela Redonda, Caravela de Armada, Nao's, Pataches, Urcas, early northern Barks, Barca Pantafola, Great Barks, Carracks, Hulks, Galleys, Galleasses, small early Galleons and fishing ketches.

1560-1625: Still everything above. But now with Larger Galleons with more variance: (Light galleons, English Race built galleons, Flemish galleons, and Bigger beamier Spanish galleons with single and double rear balconies), Large Spanish and Flemish merchantmen and Warships with and without rams, Dutch Fluyts, Dutch jachts, early Dutch Pinnaces, early ketchs and bigger fishing boats.

1625-1660: Everything from above, but you would see very few of the caravel variants, naos and carracks now. Early Dutch and English East Indiamen (Batavia) - medium sized ships but fairly large for their time, The galleon variants styles would change to more enclosed balconies and additional modest exterior early baroque decoration - no more triangles, chevrons and striped textures giving way to plainer mono and dual paint schemes. Wood textures would change from darker browns and black to lighter brown/leather and yellower hues. Sails would be lighter colored more superior materiel with finer textures. With this we now have bigger warships (Galleons) with very distinctive national features. Larger pinnace. Larger Fluyts, Smacks, Hookers and Merchantmen. Early frigates would come around 1640. Even bigger Fluyts to include whaling and timber variants.

1660-1725: Everything from above, but you would no longer see any vessels from the first list. You would see the vessels of the second list less frequently. The third list is still in full effect, but now we Add to Early Brigantines, Larger state warships/galleons, yachts, boyers, larger middle period frigates, larger middle period East Indiamen/armed merchantmen/Escort mid sized warships(60 guns), early brigs, pinks, larger ketches. At the beginning of the period heavy baroque decoration would be in vogue and give way back to very modest decorative trimming and less prevalent statuary during the last decade of this time.

1725-1825: Everything from the first three lists are gone. The ships in the fourth list less prevalent. Along with the fourth list you now have the final evolutions of Barks, Cat Barques, Brigantines, Sloops, Ketches, Brigs, Colliers, Packets, Large and small Merchantmen, Indiamen, Frigates, Razees, rated naval vessels, Ships of the Line, early clippers in the last decade. Paint textures start lighter and evolve back to dark trimed with light colors around 1795.

3) Flag mod like POTC with different types of flags and ensigns available/selectable for different masts.

4) Sailing mode allowing ships to reach destinations without going to map view and with random encounters available from sailing mode.

5) Additional Ship damage and refit mod: A whole slew of wrecked/abandoned ships placed around the docks at Bermuda like it would have been historically. What would be cool also is more detailed ships damage. You could have a refit/careen option in port and search for parts. If you had a sprung rudder or hinges or broken crosstimbers or spars you could search around in the wrecks and find what you needed before going to the shipwright.

6) Bronze guns: Lighter, more dependable, and with quicker rates of fire but 20 times more expensive.

7) Navigation mod: On hardest settings you would not be allowed to go to map view. You would use charts and period instruments(Astrolabe, sextants, early chronometers) almanacs and celestial bodies in correct positions to navigate.

8) Cats

9) Cooks officer character

10) More colonies and building types.

11) Fortress rubbling. I'd like to see walls collapse.

12) Fishing boats with nets and fishermen hauling their catches and fishmongers on shore. It should be an option to provision your ship with salted fish from the fish seller.

13) More unique and speacialized weapons and more standard weapons variety.

14) Turtles

15) Swamps

16) Animals: The anno series (especially 1503 has lots of simple animals) I'd love to see Large animals that might attack you in jungles and swamps: jaguars, pumas, and boas(giant boas/anacaondas). For that matter hey there's skeletons in the game, so why not Krakens and large whales that might stave in a hull and cause you to be adrift on a boat.

17) Better weather effects

18) Probably impossible to do with this game and ships, but.....gun ports opening/closing and guns running out animation!!!

Something to shoot for - Age of Pirates Seven: Everything that MK Wants, the search for Perfection

MK

 

[Thagarr]

Looks like those links are dead, or maybe just the server is down, but I wasn't able to get anywhere.

Good suggestions there MK! A lot of those are things I would like to see as well. I have always wanted an option to careen your ship and repair her yourself without having to use a shipyard, after all, that was a dangerous thing for a pirate to do!

I also really like your navigation ideas! For it to be accurate though, might take a major re-write of code. I don't think the celestial bodies are currently set with any kind of reference to real world astronomy. but then again, I never thought we would be able to get direct sail to work in POTC either.

Animals would be awesome! I think that would really help to make the game world feel more alive.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I recall reading in the Storm 2.8 engine feature list that the CoAS night sky IS accurate-ish.
Before you all go overboard on the navigation thing though, do you know how that actually works?
Because I do and it requires a book of (historical) data on celestial bodies, so where are you going to find that?
And then there's the calculations involved to obtain your position based on your celestial observations.
That's also not something easily done by even advanced gamers, I reckon.

For some of the above, why don't you go and play PotC instead?

 

[modernknight1]

Pieter, I don't want to go overboard at all. I'm looking at a "dumbed down" simplified process that has a realistic feel to it and gives the player a feeling of accomplishment when plotting courses and position. I am certain I do not have the training you do my friend. However, as an amateur sailor I do have my ASA certification and have taken the advanced navigation course. Also as a former Artillery officer I am a qualified surveyor and on several occasions layed and fired 155mm Howitzers on common survey using nothing but Polaris Kochab, what we call P2. The principles are similar in triangulating position and direction with minimal error.

I was looking at a really simple almanac that would be good enough for gameplay. If it's too hard and not fun, no one will want to do it. The instruments would allow a scoped view (just like the glasses) so that you could take your reading off the selected celestial body (most often the sun anyway) and then some sort of view that would show a close up of the value on the sextant. Then you could also get a chart view (just like the maps) but maybe you just see a penciled "X" that is accurate based on experience and how good your instruments are. You could also lay down a straight edge and plot a course and come back to that view and reference where you are on the chart. The fun thing would be that you could end up being way off and waste time and would rely on a combination of the above with dead reckoning based on rocks, land masses, etc. The almanacs, sextants or outdated astrolabes could also be additional items to find and for sale at trader stalls. There could be varying degrees of quality just as there is with the telescopes. A lot of work I know, but wouldn't it be cool.

AS far as POTC goes. I LOVE POTC! :will I play Build 13 a couple of times a week. I guess the answer is going to sound like it's coming from a fickle impatient little kindergarten kid, but the fact is I just really enjoy the cleaner graphics of DirectX 9 and the individual player interface controls on COAS better. There's no doubt that POTC has tons more depth, but my ADHD visual attention span just sucks me into COAS more immersively. I know, not a very good answer, but there it is. :?

MK

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Did you ever get round to trying Build 14 Alpha 10? If not, I would recommend it.
Yes, CoAS does look somewhat better, but at least as far as I'm concerned,
there's quite a few things that I find to look better in PotC instead.
There's something about the style in CoAS that doesn't impress me much,
not to mention that the town models are very dull compared to the PotC ones.

In PotC, if you buy a sextant and chronometer, you will see your ship's position on the ingame archipelago map.
That approaches celestial navigation in a VERY basic kind of way.
No player actions required and the position IS always accurate,
but then you don't really need your position anyway, as long as your course is in the right direction with DirectSail.

I don't expect that anything resembling real celestial navigation could be done in any Storm-based game really.
It would certainly require a DirectSail mode, otherwise there'd be no point. But additionally to that,
without ocean currents (which there aren't), there's no inaccuracies involved in dead reckoning,
making celestial navigation quite useless. And then you run into the whole "the map is too small" thing.

But theoretically, if it would be possible to:
1. Measure vertical angles in the game (with an enhanced spyglass view?)
2. Have a recognisable celestial sky
3. Have an accompanying almanac
Then celestial navigation might be possible.

This would be complicated to say the least. One further issue that springs to mind is that real
and accurate latitude/longitude coordinates would have to be introduced into the game also.

 

[SuperChango]

I like where this is going... keep it coming !!!

 

[Pieter Boelen]

As far as I'm concerned, it's not going anywhere. I'm just brainstorming on what'd be required,
but there's rather a lot of things I mentioned for which I don't quite see a workable solution.

 

[modernknight1]

I tried build 14 but could never get it to work even when I manually ran the run me bat. Like I already mentioned my childlike ADHd attention span caused me to take the path of least resistance. I already had a GREAT game going in Build 13 and am having a lot of fun with it, so I wanted to play through with this character and timeline for a while before trying Build 14 again. I also just figured you guys would have all the little clunky bugs worked out of the installation by the time I'm ready to take the plunge next time.

I totally agree about the dull towns in COAS. I would really like to see the better variety/additional depth POTC's backdrops offer in COAS.

Agree also on the difficulty/complexity of implementing game tasks from a navigational aspect that would influence game play in a fun (feeling of accomplishment) way. I do like your theoretical observations though on what might be possible.

The first part of starting any project/endeavor is brainstorming and talking about ideas. One never knows who may be reading or taking notes and it seems like this forum is THE place for Age of Sail simulation. I know modders are busy and have their own lives. Likely as not they won't have the time or desire to take on many of the ideas we throw around. But the good side of that is that it forces less capable modders and wanna be modders like me to learn stuff otherwise they would have no interest in tackling.

I'd also add that I have noticed several threads/posts from our Russian friends on the development side and can only hope they are taking notes concerning what we, the largest, most dedicated segment of their consumer/fan base want, in the development of future offerings in the Sea Dogs pedigree. Holy crap this site is free marketing research and survey central for those guys and they would be stupid not to be watching us.

I still say this would be ubercool no matter what venue it was to appear in. By gosh I would have fun doing it!

MK

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I really wished we had a clear overview of all Russian game releases and mods in existence.
As an outsider, it is SOOO confusing!

 

[fjx]

I really wished we had a clear overview of all Russian game releases and mods in existence.
As an outsider, it is SOOO confusing!

Well, corsairs-harbour.ru provides a list of the most important ones (sadly in Russian only), but I don't think even Russians themselves know all the mods in existence.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Well, corsairs-harbour.ru provides a list of the most important ones (sadly in Russian only)

If anyone would care enough, we could stick up an English summary somewhere here, no?

but I don't think even Russians themselves know all the mods in existence.

Quite possibly.