Hello... my introduction :)

[mbowen89]

Hey everyone, I decided to join PiratesAhoy!

So here is my introduction....

My name is Michael, I'm 23, married, and live in Minnesota, USA. I'm an ASIC Design Engineer (application-specific integrated circuit). What does that mean...? Well let me explain. Where I work, my team helps make the main "chip" for hard drives. This chip has ARM processors, memory, and of course all the logic that runs everything. This logic is made up of "gates" (AND, OR, NOT, BUF) and registers (flip flops, latches, etc). All this stuff has to connect together and all the signals have to get where they are going on time. That's kind of what I do, help to make sure everything comes together smoothly and that the chip is going to function correctly. I mostly do a lot of scripting and using a Unix terminal all day.

Last October I decided I wanted to make an application for Android, so I installed Eclipse and the Android SDK and started learning Java (never used that language before), and started playing around. It's actually really cool to make apps for your own phone! I then started making a game (Tractor Pulling). I was going to make it 2D but decided to go all out and make it 3D. I started learning how to use Blender to create the 3D models, learned how to implement and use a 3D engine for Android, etc... So in about December I put it up on Google Play and actually was doing pretty well selling the game! I made a bunch of truck models and release another game (Truck Pulling), basically the same game only using trucks and semis instead of different tractors. It was an even bigger hit (I was #2 top paid app!!) for over a week and in top 5 nearly an entire month. Still boggles my mind. I didn't even think I knew what I was doing

So now I am using a program called Unity (http://unity3d.com/) which can build for PC, Mac, Android, iOS, and even more!! So I am remaking the game with this program and 3D engine so I can port to all these platforms, plus it's a lot more advanced and has a GUI, awesome things that I don't understand very well (shaders, etc, etc). It's really awesome.

I know that you guys are using Unreal to make the new game, I think it's probably a similar tool.

So now to pirates!

A while ago I remembered playing some type of pirate RPG on the Xbox, but couldn't remember the name. I tried searching for it but surely thought it wasn't Pirates of the Carribean (because I didn't remember it having anything to do with the movie). So when I finally realized it was that game, and then found out that there was a giant mod for it that had been developed over the years, I was pretty stoked. I (amazingly!!) found a copy of the used PC game that was in the UK on ebay and bought that... it's on its way now. So I am eagerly awaiting for it to arrive so I can install New Horizons. I have been reading through the forums and wiki and everything I can in anticipation, watching YouTube videos, etc.

It took me a while to understand the relationship between all these different pirate games, the mods available, etc. but I feel like I have a grasp on it now, somewhat. Seems like everything is kind of scattered around everywhere in bits and pieces.

I would love to work on the wiki honestly, once you guys get to know me.

So anyways, there's my rambling introduction. I hope to be a help to this community and look forward to getting to know everyone!

~Michael

 

[Hylie Pistof]

mate!

You are most welcome. Your skill set and motivation will fit in well here.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Welcome to the forum indeed! You'll be most welcome.

The original PotC game never did have much to do with the films. At all. With the modpack, now it does. And doesn't. Depends how you play it.
If you've got any specific questions on the games and modpacks, be sure to ask. We have tried making things fairly straightforward on our ModDB profiles, at least.

And of course any support you'd be interested in giving for our new-game-in-development "Hearts of Oak: Conquest of the Seas" would also be most interesting.

 

[mbowen89]

Thanks for the welcomes. I do have a few questions:

1. I've read that leveling your character is apparently a little off, as the melee skill doesn't increase very much or something. This is do to the fact that it was changed to level up as that skill is used, rather than allowing the player to choose what to level up when experience is gained or something? Trying to figure out which way I should set the option when starting the game.
2. It took me a while to understand the evolution of Sea Dogs to POTC to Age of Pirates to Age of Pirates City of Abandoned Ships. Is my understanding correct: that Sea Dogs and AoP are both the initial bugged out versions, and then POTC and COAS are the (somewhat) fixed up sequels? And then these two are used as the basis for creating the main mod packages?
3. Like I said, I went ahead and bought POTC to play New Horizons with. What's the main comparison points between POTC NH and COAS with whatever it's greatest mod pack is? Are they two different games for the most part? Or almost redundant? Would I want to buy and play COAS after player POTC NH? Or are all the islands and towns and quests the same?
4. As much as I would love to help with HoO:CotS, I'm a full time engineer, married, and have a baby coming, + make my own games for sale and partnered with a company even... so my hands are pretty full. However... I am sure that I would love to dabble around and help sometime when you guys are out of the beginning stages and have some specific needs laid out or something.

At the end of the day, I hope I really enjoy POTC NH and will then be wildly enthused to want to help with HoO: CotS!

You can check out my games here by the way: https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Michael+Bowen

Can someone give me a rundown of the main people who contribute to these mods/working on HoO/are on this forum/in charge of PA!? lol ...

 

[Pieter Boelen]

1. It has been reported that something weird happens with the fencing skill, but why I have no idea. You could set the Auto Skill System off before starting your game if you want.

2. Sea Dogs was the first game in the series and a pretty good game on its own merits, from what I understand, made better by Hosehead's Add-on. This was far before my time here though.
Pirates of the Caribbean was supposed to be the sequel to Sea Dogs until it was bought by Disney and re-purposed as a movie tie-in.
The original game was average but nothing amazing and somewhat rushed, but has been greatly expanded upon with the New Horizons modpack.

3. Age of Pirates and its sequel Age of Pirates 2: City of Abandoned Ships are completely new pirate games based on an updated version of PotC's game engine.
While PotC uses Storm 2.0, AoP uses Storm 2.5 and CoAS uses Storm 2.8 . Besides the similarity in game engine and coding and some reused texture and model files, they are different games altogether.
It is definitely recommended to try CoAS as well. It hasn't been as extensively modded by us as PotC has been, but it was a better game to begin with.
Never played it myself because I got stuck on PotC, but I've heard many good things about it and have tried to support CoAS modding at times as well.

There have been many people who have contributed to the modpacks over the years. I couldn't even begin to hope of covering them all.
I suppose the main people would be Keith (and William) who own and run this website, but are hardly ever active here anymore.
Of the Moderators, Thagarr has been here the longest and still remembers the Sea Dogs days from before, but never has been much involved in modding.
Armada joined a bit under 3 years ago (has it been that long?) and has helped a lot with PotC modding, especially on the subject of ship modeling and historical accuracy.
He has also been the main voice on the new HoO project.
Myself, I have been here for about 9 years and mainly got myself involved in PotC modding as well as PiratesAhoy! promotion
I took over (quite accidentally) from Nathan Kell as PotC modpack compiler when he left.

 

[mbowen89]

Ok, that helps a bit. So what do most people do then about the known melee skill issue? Play the game with auto skill and ignore that it gets messed up (obviously not enough to kill the game) or do they turn off the auto skill system?

How have you not played COAS at all when you obviously love PotC? A parallel would be a Star Wars fanatic that never watched the last movie or something, haha.

Also, (I haven't even played the game yet so maybe it will be obvious), but which way do the ship classes work? Is the greater the number the better the ship? Or is it inverse, where class 1 is best? What categorizes the class #?

Also, has it been decided for sure to use the Unreal Engine? Has Unity3D been thrown out completely? I'm in the middle of interviewing for a gaming company where I would be using Unity every day, so I would become quite handy with it. I already can do quite a bit with it. What's the quick down and dirty on how waves are simulated in Storm? Real-time mesh modification?

 

[Armada]

Ahoy and welcome!

Also, (I haven't even played the game yet so maybe it will be obvious), but which way do the ship classes work? Is the greater the number the better the ship? Or is it inverse, where class 1 is best? What categorizes the class #?

As of the latest version of New Horizons, the ships are organised into eight 'Tiers', with Tier 1 being the biggest, most powerful ships, and Tier 8 being very small vessels.
This system simply takes the maximum crew capacity of each ship into account, with certain limits corresponding to each Tier. Crew capacity roughly correlates with ship size, and larger ships require more skill to handle (the player's 'captain level' dictates whether they have sufficient skill to sail vessels of a certain Tier).
We decided this was the best way to classify both naval and merchant vessels under one roof, as opposed to our previous system which had different criteria for 'Naval', 'Merchant' and 'Balanced' ships.

Also, has it been decided for sure to use the Unreal Engine? Has Unity3D been thrown out completely? I'm in the middle of interviewing for a gaming company where I would be using Unity every day, so I would become quite handy with it. I already can do quite a bit with it. What's the quick down and dirty on how waves are simulated in Storm? Real-time mesh modification?

We seem to have settled on the UDK on the basis that it's the best engine available for free and suits our purposes. Unity did look promising, but we'd almost certainly need the paid Pro version for the project, and because we're not working with a budget (it's only volunteer work), that wouldn't be a suitable option.

As for how the Storm Engine simulates waves, I think it might be real-time mesh modification, but I'm not 100% sure. It's hard to tell, because we don't have access to the source code for PotC.

Armada joined a bit under 3 years ago (has it been that long?)

Indeed it has! How time flies when you're having fun...

 

[Hylie Pistof]

I complain the most about the melee system, so will comment about that.

You can avoid it by not using the auto skill system and assign skills manually as you level up.

I believe actions should have consequences and use the auto skill system. Your melee skill starts off increasing well but after a while it starts to slow down and eventually stops completely. By level 10 you are in trouble.
But! There are ways you can help yourself. Hire officers who are good fighters and hide behind them. That results in a high turnover rate for them. Speaking of officers, you will be wanting Fred Bob and Bartolomeu O Porteguese.
Pick your fights carefully. It helps to attack town guards and take their weapons as they are pretty weak and some of them have excellent swords. You NEED the best swords you can get your hands on and also the best armor. The Golden Cuirass becomes available at level 15.
Collect the grenades, stinkpot, poisoned throwing knife, ether bottle, and cobblestones. You WILL need them.
Find the Opium Den on Jamaica and get the tattoo's.
Talk to the townspeople. It helps your leadership and luck skills, and every once in a while you meet a teacher who will teach you about various skills. They do more to bring your melee skills up than anything else.
You will also find books. They are worth their weight in gold.
The last thing is to set up your controls efficiently. I got a boost when I moved the attack and block buttons from the keyboard to the mouse.

 

[mbowen89]

Sorry if these questions become obvious once player, or are in some readme file.

The tiers make sense... What determines your "captain level" which determines what ships you can use?
If you capture a ship, and you want to keep it you have to set a captain for it, correct? The captain just has to be one of your officers? Do they have a "captain level" that needs to match the tier of captured ship as well?

How man ships can you capture/buy and have with you at sea following you around? Is this something that a lot of people do? Or is it just a waste of money/crew/rations, etc?

Officers are just randomly found throughout the game, or they are special NPCs and theres only a limited amount of them. I guess I also wonder if there are NPCs that are randomly generated, or are they all hand created and placed somewhere?


Ok, I will keep the skills on auto, I agree that you should level up with whatever you are doing. I don't want to make the game feel broken though if I feel like I should win a fight decently easy but it feels impossible because my melee sucks or something.

I feel like I will probably just jump in the game and try out all the different controls and get a feeling for sailing etc, and then customize the controls to what I feel makes the most sense, if they don't feel normal already.

Thanks for all the info guys!

What about you Armada and Hylie, do you play both PotC AND CoAS?

 

[Post Captain]

Can someone give me a rundown of the main people who contribute to these mods/working on HoO/are on this forum/in charge of PA!? lol ...

PB neglected a few consistently highly active key people...
Modernknight1- working on the GoF Eras Mod as we speak. A history guy.
Hylie Pitsof, who you are already acquainted with- Does post modeling work to get new ships in game, fixes old ones, other modding stuff.
Captain Armstrong- Ship modeller, active in HoO.
Haereticus- HoO menu concepts, brainstorming, weapon modelling.
Mask- HoO brainstorming.

Unfortunately, Thagarr seems to have vanished recently.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

How have you not played COAS at all when you obviously love PotC? A parallel would be a Star Wars fanatic that never watched the last movie or something, haha.

Lack of time, really. I virtually never play PotC either; I just do modding work for it.

Also, (I haven't even played the game yet so maybe it will be obvious), but which way do the ship classes work? Is the greater the number the better the ship? Or is it inverse, where class 1 is best? What categorizes the class #??

Though it should be said that bigger ships aren't necessarily better, of course.

 

[Armada]

Sorry if these questions become obvious once player, or are in some readme file.

The tiers make sense... What determines your "captain level" which determines what ships you can use?
If you capture a ship, and you want to keep it you have to set a captain for it, correct? The captain just has to be one of your officers? Do they have a "captain level" that needs to match the tier of captured ship as well?

How man ships can you capture/buy and have with you at sea following you around? Is this something that a lot of people do? Or is it just a waste of money/crew/rations, etc?

I think the captain level just increases as the player gains experience and levels up their skills, but I'm not 100% sure how it works (i.e. how much XP it takes to increase the captain level).
It should also be noted that you can sail any ship, regardless of its Tier and your captain level, but if your ship's Tier is higher than your captain level (1 highest, 8 lowest), then you won't be able to sail that ship to its maximum efficiency. It will be more sluggish to handle overall, affecting things like the speed your sails are set, cannon reload time, top speed and manoeuvrability. This applies to the player and any officers you assign to captured prizes.
This restriction can be turned off in the Advanced Options menu.

You can have up to four ships in your fleet at once; one directly under your command, and three others either bought or captured, captained by officers of your choosing.
It can certainly be useful for large battles at sea, and for capturing a fort, but also for carrying more cargo and making higher profits as a merchant.
There are increased costs, of course, but it is up to the player to deal with this however they see fit.

What about you Armada and Hylie, do you play both PotC AND CoAS?

Personally, I haven't had enough interest in that game to try it yet. While it has better graphics than PotC, I don't like the art style that some of the characters and ships use.
The existing mods for CoAS don't have all the realistic features and sheer quantity of new content that New Horizons offers for PotC either, but MK's Eras mod looks set to vastly improve on the realism and diversity of content soon.
On top of all that, it's not exactly easy to get hold of the game these days.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

PB neglected a few consistently highly active key people...

Just to clarify on that, I mentioned only the recently active Admins and Moderators and didn't leave you and the others out of my post for any other reason than that.

 

[mbowen89]

Personally, I haven't had enough interest in that game to try it yet. While it has better graphics than PotC, I don't like the art style that some of the characters and ships use.
The existing mods for CoAS don't have all the realistic features and sheer quantity of new content that New Horizons offers for PotC either, but MK's Eras mod looks set to vastly improve on the realism and diversity of content soon.
On top of all that, it's not exactly easy to get hold of the game these days.

What do you mean? It's easily found right here: http://www.amazon.com/Age-Pirates-2-Abandoned-Ships-Pc/dp/B002AK6U8E

I amazingly happened to find my copy of PotC (still on its way) on eBay, and it's a UK version, so it's coming by Royal Mail Airmail (sweet!). lol... I wonder if they can just parachute it over my house?

Not in a negative way at all, but I guess it just surprises me that many of you haven't and don't plan on playing CoAS when it's the other big pirate game, and you guys are, uh, pirate fanatics you know!

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Back when CoAS was being released, they made it EXTREMELY difficult to actually buy it (ridiculously so, actually), so I never bothered.
Doesn't mean I don't HAVE it though. Can't really spare the time and effort to give it a try though. Just use the files for reference.

 

[mbowen89]

What takes up all your free time Pieter? Trolling the interwebs?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Actually, I haven't been doing that much lately. Messed around with my music collection for the past few weeks.
Can't really afford to do much computering anymore these days; my wrist has started to complain, the past few months especially.
And I don't really have the enthusiasm I used to have. Not overly surprising, considering I've been at it for 9 years (longer if you add my previous efforts on Virtual Sailor).
Long time indeed... Time for something new. Preferably something involving a... social life...?
NAAAAAH!!! Maybe not...

 

[mbowen89]

I thought I saw you work on a cruise ship or something? How often are you doing that? Do you have a laptop you can do stuff on? Do you work 8hr shifts and have free time everyday when doing that? Explain yourself!

 

[Pieter Boelen]

At the moment I'm on leave, but I work as officer with Holland America Line for 8 months each year.
End of April I should be returning to the Prinsendam. I worked on the Maasdam and Zuiderdam before.
I do have a laptop with me when I go there, but the internet is slow and intermittent in the best cases.
Usually we have 2 x 4 hour shifts, but we've got additional work to that resulting in working days between 10-12 hours.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

About COAS, I have played it. I think of COAS and POTC as Jaguar and Porsche. They both introduced cars at about the same time and the Jaguar XKE was the world beater and the Porsche was very average. But the Jaguar was never developed while the Porsche was improved year after year until it became the world beater. COAS is the Jaguar and POTC is the Porsche as it is currently better than COAS. Modern Knight is diligently working to correct that situation and I hope he succeeds.
I can not get any immersion in COAS while POTC feels very real to me. Methinks it is mostly the sky that does it, with the clouds racing by at hurricane speed, the bright part of the sky being over here and the dark part being over there with the sun, and the moon rising in the South and setting in the North.

About the rankings in POTC, the first thing to do is visit a Governor and buy a Letter of Marque. That starts your military career with that nation. As you advance in rank better ships will become available in the shipyards. Or you can just go out and capture them. The problem with this is that you top out at tier 3 ships, so I turn realistic stuff off in "options" so I can get the top ships. For instance I now have the French Flagship La Courrone sitting in berth. I bought her in a shipyard.
You can have a total of 4 ships in your fleet and the better your officers are the better they sail their ships, just like you. I sail with 3, leaving one slot open for prizes.
I find the midsize ships to be the best overall. The smaller ships get hammered in battles and the largest ships are really too big for the economy and one spends his time scrounging for food and gunpowder in the naval ships and sailing around with half full holds in the merchant ships.

About your question about the Unity engine, that was the first thing discussed last summer when this project was begun. I was initially for the Unity engine until someone found that it does not do sea water well. According to my alleged memory.........