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Discussion NHR project

RockstarStanley

RockstarStanley

Landlubber
Hi all,

So I'm new here and a little late to the party, but I was wondering if there was still any interest in making a community open source game. Essentially NHR but without paid assets. I loved playing the original potc on Xbox and would be interested in attempting to recreate the game (plus mods) with the community in the Unreal Engine or Unity. From what I've gathered, this has already been attempted with the Hearts of Oak project and it didn't work out. Could we make it work now? Thoughts?
 
Hi @RockstarStanley, welcome!

This question has come up before in various forms, and the answer always comes down to how many people would be willing and able to contribute.
I still believe it's doable, but it's always going to be a huge undertaking that will need so much manpower to produce something even remotely similar to the original PotC.

Going open source may well be a good way to do this, but it does mean everything needs to be made from scratch (unlike NHR where the goal was to port over content from PotC and gradually replace it over time with custom assets). Everyone involved needs to be OK with their work (code, models, textures, audio, etc.) being freely available as part of the project on a public repository, and for artists in particular, this could be a deal-breaker.

The good news is that, at least for Unity, there are more good free assets and demos now that would serve as a good starting point. The Boat Attack demo has a good-looking water shader, buoyancy system and drivable boats (albeit motorized instead of sail-driven), so I'd recommend checking it out: Verasl/BoatAttack

My advice to anyone thinking of doing this would be to start tinkering in Unity or Unreal and see what you can do. Start a public GitHub repo so anyone can get involved and see how it goes. Even if it starts out as a disjointed mash-up of different tech demos and features, it will help you to figure out what's possible. Just know that it will take some serious time and dedication to get even the basic features implemented, such as sailing, ship battles, land exploration, combat, dialogue and so on.

I personally can't dedicate time to projects like this any more because of my job as an indie developer, but I will say that it's taken myself and two other devs just over two years* to develop Buccaneers! to a stage where it's starting to resemble a playable beta, and there's still a lot of work to do to polish it up. Pirate games are hard to make. :wp

*(It might have taken less time if we weren't developing for VR and non-VR simultaneously, but it's still a lot of work!)
 
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Hi all,

I´ll be really interested in restart Hearts of Oak project, if possible. I know it´s always difficult develop a new game from zero but i think it´s possible with a small but very aligned and coordinated team. It will took years, but the goal is not sell the game, it´s enjoy the trip, learn during it and have a technically updated age of sail game.

I have been working more than two years in a PC indie game project on Unity, two years ago (Seas of Honor). We were only two software developers, in fact, two Software Architects with more than ten years of experience on C# and we developed a enormous base of code to automatize things and make directly on code, not in Unity.

@Captain Murphy and @Flannery collaborated a bit with us on the ships models (the Queen Anne´s Revenge on Unity Asset Store from @Flannery was part of that collaboration). The game development stopped after that two years as we have problems to get more ship models and finally was abandoned. You can check a few screenshots on (Seas of Honor - Unity Connect). It had a very powerful campaign simulator to simulate all trading, cities, and fleets on sea and generate a procedural campaing map, all designed by us.

Now, after some time, i want to re-start development on Unity on a ships game. I was considering restart Seas of Honor, but, honestly, i´ll prefer collaborate on Hearts of Oak. I really loved the Sea Dogs saga (have played from the first one) and i think the project has more possibilities. On my full-time job i work as Software Architect and manage projects, so is something where i also can help if needed. The only thing i don´t have enough is time, only 10 hours per week? a bit more could be? But from my experience, with a clear goal, a clear roadmap and being hyped, the development can advance to reach great things.

@Armada i would like to know if it´s possible to join or talk about Hearts of Oak and the way to restart it, and if more people from PiratesAhoy is interested.

Thanks and regards
Valthaer / Hispanus
 
Hispanus said:
@Armada i would like to know if it´s possible to join or talk about Hearts of Oak and the way to restart it, and if more people from PiratesAhoy is interested.
Click to expand...
At the moment, the only active developers we've got around work on PotC: New Horizons.
It's mainly @Grey Roger, @Jack Rackham and sometimes @Bartolomeu o Portugues working on storylines.
@pedrwyth recently returned as well.

@Captain Murphy and @Flannery have been caught up with real life for quite some time now.
And @Armada is of course a professional Indie game developer these days, working on a commercial historical seafaring game:
Announcing Buccaneers!, a new Pirate Game from Skyward Digital
Not sure then who could be willing/available to work on this.

That being said, I would love to see it happen!
And so I sent a PM to them to see if we can at least get you a proper response. :doff
 
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