Mod Release Open Sea Mod and Realism Settings

[Hylie Pistof]

No. Jeff adjusted the hours to make voyages take a realistic amount of time. Longer hours makes it easier to make the longest runs without timing out. Something else changed the length of the hours and changing this value is a band-aid, not a cure.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Jeff increased the scale of the worldmap. That also allowed him to disable the "add a day each hour" code.
He also changed that timescale value from "5" to "15". As per the setting description: "how many seconds of gametime one second of realtime is at sea".
So that means he did speed up the timescale by a factor of 3. This has the effect of making voyages take three times longer,
with the side-effect of hours being three times shorter. And therefore any weather updates now occurring three times as quickly.
So that is why he also decreased all those weather values to compensate for that.

That is all the hour-related code that has been done. Nothing else changed the hour lengths.
But if the weather changes are still too pronounced, that can be fixed by reducing the other values further.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

I can't tell from watching the clock that there is any difference. It still speeds quite quickly compared to how it was a few months ago.

I also just got in a battle off Port Royale and it went quite well. The wind did not have a big impact on maneuvering and the pirates did try to stay out of range of the fort. My strategy was to lure them into range and it worked for one. The other one just sat out there waiting for us to go out and fight him. I had other priorities.

 

[Skyworm]

Arrr tooo bad.

With that OpenSeaFix I get an error when starting PotC.
Looks like that:

Runtime Error

Program: E:\PotC\Engine.exe

abnormal program termination

___________________________________

Error.txt

COMPILE ERROR - file: NK.c; line: 627
Invalid Expression
COMPILE ERROR - file: NK.c; line: 627
Invalid Expression
COMPILE ERROR - file: NK.c; line: 627
Invalid Expression
COMPILE ERROR - file: NK.c; line: 627
Invalid Expression
COMPILE ERROR - file: NK.c; line: 627
Invalid Expression
COMPILE ERROR - file: NK.c; line: 627
Invalid Expression
COMPILE ERROR - file: NK.c; line: 627
Invalid Expression
COMPILE ERROR - file: NK.c; line: 627
missed ')'

System.txt

Scanning modules\
Loading modules...
Loaded 0
Reset...
Initializing CORE...
Creating atoms space: 128
done
initializing complete
User Rised Exception
C:\PROJECTS\DRIVE_V2\ENGINE\SOURCES\Core.cpp line 526
fail to create program

The 3rd txt wasn't there.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Uhm.... Oops. Open PROGRAM\globals.c and add this all the way at the bottom:

#define PROMOTION_SHIPS        0        // Get an officer and a ship upon promotion to Captain rank

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Uh oh. Well at least it works for me....

I just got into another battle, this time on the open sea and the wind was not the deciding factor at all. While I can not see a difference on the clock the hours are longer. I was able to do a complete 360 in less than an hour!

 

[Pieter Boelen]

That does sound strange. But apparently it IS better than it was, so that's good. I'm considering it good enough for the public Beta 2.5 release then.
If it turns out further rebalancing is required, we can experiment with that after this release and include that for Beta 3.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

I just ran into something new. The crew wants articles. This has never happened before and has me concerned because it happens with only $1,000,000 piastres. That is a small amount for trading goods.
Will they mutiny if I refuse? Their morale seems to peak at 78 (excellent).

 

[Pieter Boelen]

That happened before as well; the only part that is new is the text message as per:

- Code Updates:
. Morale decrease because of too much money on board in Salary Mode explanation note added by Pieter Boelen

However, it seems this change Sulan's has reduced this effect to be not even noticeable at a "normal" reputation level:

> Mutiny as a result of much gold carried is now based on reputation and much less likely for a honest trader than for a pirate by Sulan

The original reason for having this added into the game at all was to encourage players to switch to Divide the Plunder mode when you've got a lot of money.
This partly also because it is harder to remain exceedingly wealthy when doing so, making the game more interesting.

I'm thinking perhaps we should make this effect more pronounced again. In fact, isn't Salary Mode supposed to give you a lower maximum morale than Divide the Plunder?
But on Salary Mode I AM getting perfectly brilliant morales without putting in much effect. So that sort-of defeats the purpose of Divide the Plunder, does it not?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

It just occurred to me, players using Open Sea Mod may have a hard time with the old island map being used in: http://www.piratesahoy.net/threads/build-14-beta-3-progress.20686
If so, open PROGRAM\INTERFACE\a_map.c and find:

    // stljeffbb Jan 15 2012 -->
    if(iRealismMode>1 || OPEN_SEA_MOD) {
        SetNodeUsing("MAP", false);
        SetNodeUsing("MAP_SCALED", true);
    }else{
        SetNodeUsing("MAP", true);
        SetNodeUsing("MAP_SCALED", false);
    }
    // stljeffbb Jan 15 2012 <--

Replace with:

        SetNodeUsing("MAP", true);
        SetNodeUsing("MAP_SCALED", false);

This will make the game always show the temporary place-holder version for the NEW Caribbean.
Not perfect, of course, but better than something completely wrong.

See attached for the file if you want it.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

After my DirectSailing South from Saint Martin to Martinique proved rather strange with me suddenly appearing right on top of the next island, I decided to try the Open Sea Mod.
So I sailed from Martinique to Guadeloupe, which is 118 nautical miles in real life. Did about 12 knots all the way (that RN_Corvette was nice and quick), so that should equal about 10 hours.
Departed around 12:00 and arrived around 19:00 the same day. Bit quick in the game compared to real life, but considering that Dominica isn't there, it seems quite fair enough.
And at least I was NOT reloaded right ON TOP of the next island!
I did again notice the worldmap position jumping right past Guadeloupe, but that fixed itself shortly after.

Next up: Try to sail from Havana to Aruba. Departure on April 5th, at 12:00. Should take a few days.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Next up: Try to sail from Havana to Aruba. Departure on April 5th, at 12:00. Should take a few days.

Arrival on April 5th, 23:15. Total sailing time 11:15 hours. Not even half a day!
Converting that to a real-life speed, my ship would have done about 100 knots. But I was averaging less than 10.
Seems the world isn't quite big enough yet! Should be around 10 times bigger!

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Well, it turns out that somehow the code to initialize the Open Sea Mod IS getting called. But then it turns out to be not initialized after all. Uh, wha???

 

[Pieter Boelen]

STUPID GAME CODE! So now I moved the Open Sea Mod initialization from "Load New Game" to every single location and sea reload in the game!
That seems to make it behave itself for REAL. Havana to Jamaica now took me until April 6th, 18:00. That's more like it!

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Fix included here: http://www.piratesahoy.net/threads/build-14-beta-3-progress.20686/page-9#post-455363
Well, that was evil!

 

[Hylie Pistof]

You had an extremely fast ship and extremely good luck. I just did the Grenada to Curacao run in a very good ship with darn good winds and it took about 3 1/2 days anchor to anchor. It could just as easily have taken 7 days. This is with the base WIP 10.

 

[Skyworm]

Cheers,

sorry for resurrecting an old thread but ...

... since I was just sailing from Cayman to Cuba, and spendingreal time hours for just getting to some beach at Cuba from sighting it ... I'd like to modify the time scale a bit.

Jeff shortened the game hour by 3 times to enlarge the map, as Pieter wrote somewhere above.
But this also means wind changes happen 3 times as often. Resulting in the direct sailor having to adjust course of his ship 3 times as often.

Whith luck, this feels well ... but with bad luck, it's just horrible. At the mentioned voyage from Cayman to Cuba, it felt like spending half of the real time 2 hours with adjusting course to new wind driection.

So basically - I like to have the unmodified, normal game hour back. I want to set my course and then sail straight and true for some time, and then adjust course again. Tacking does'nt make any sense I wind changes again before I sailed just a few hndred yards in one direction. And it deeply cuts into immersion, cause from anything I have read about the age of sail - be it fictional like Patrick O'Brian, or historical ... I always find descriptions of encounters without any notice to significant wind changes during the encopunter, so real wind on open seas seems to be a fairly stable and reliable thing.
I remember a scene at O'Brian, where Jack Aubrey tacked about a whole night to get into a more favourable position at the morning. This is only possible with wind to be expected reliable over the night and let's say the following morning. No ppoint of tacking into an upwind position to an enemy, when upwind is about to change a dozen times while doing.

So where would I start looking?
I found that TimeScale thing in Internalsettings.h, but I don't want to change that. Want to change it specifically for the open seas mod. Any idea where I may find that?

Great thanks.

 

[Skyworm]

Arr, found it myself ... he who reads is clearly at an advantage ... !

Pieter just explained it on the previous page ...

PROGRAM\NK.c it is.

Will try somethng out now.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Yes the winds are evil close to land. Always have been. I just furl all sails and wait a day or three until the random factor Pieter built in a while back forces the wind into a direction that allows forward movement.

This wasn't a problem back when POTC was an arcade game but now it is a problem. I don't think it is fixable as I believe it is hard coded into the Storm engine.

 

[Skyworm]

Cheers,

well it's not only near Islands this way. There it's just especially annoying.

See, I really like direct sailing, and I really like iron man mode. But the one and most annoying thing there is frequent wind changes. I played my fair share of Age of sails games, and I don't remember it bing such annoying anywhere else.

I like the idea of beeing dependant of the wind, its strength and directioon, for this is what make sailing different from having a motor boat. So I want to deal with the wind in an age of sails game, for sure.
This is why I don't like our world map travel in PotC ... for it completeley takes the wind out of calculation. This way, it doesn't feel like age of sails, for ship steering is really only wasd in the world map.
Direct sailing is preferred ... but the frequent wind changes spoil my immersion.

I think Sid Meyer had the best approach to it. I I remember correctly, there was sort of world map travel, not unlike ours here, but with wind.
Also, I think in his caribbean, wind was much more constant than it is here. I remember there was a major wind direction ... not sure about that but I think it was from west to east. And additionally, in some areas wind was in most of any cases blowing from one specific direction. This could be different, but it was rare.
This way, wind was much more predictable than it was here. When I decided to sail from A to be, I knew in advance if that would most likele be fine sailing downwind or tacking against. And in say 90% of all cases this expactation was true.
So one had to deal with wind, but it was much more predictable.

In my opinion, this added a lot to immersion.

Back to the subject, I just rest TIMESCALAR_SEA to 5, and it already feels better.

Of course this will also effect travel time between islands ... but I think this is not that terrible. I am sailing between 20 minutes and more than an hour real time to get from one island to the next, and it really feels like a long voyage with that. Nothing compared to the less than 2 minutes in world map travel. It feels real enough to give me a feel of distance, regardless what the calendar may tell.

Will do further testing with that.

Also, I wonder if there would be any way of making storms more likely to happen in direct sailing. That's the one and only thing I really miss since I stopped using the world map ...