Mod Release Open Sea Mod and Realism Settings

[stljeffbb]

Well, I got a return assignment so completed the circle. Grenada -Santiago-Grenada. I was able to buy a normal compass and a Jackass Bark, so thought this voyage would be a snap. Wrong again! It took 15 days with bad wind more often than not with the wind switching to hit

me head on no matter which way I turned. If I had been in a square sail ship I would not have made it.

Suggestions for V3:

Add a little bit more weather. The weather you start with is the weather you get all the way. The only way to change it is to go in and out of the world map.

Very slightly less floating goodies. They seem to be too common.

Is it possible to disable 30X time? The flickering sea only happens to me after I accidentally hit 30X time.

Hello Hylie Pistoff....thanks for the feedback! What I actually need to do is research the weather in the Caribbean! Should not be too hard with Wikipedia....I agree with the floating goodies and will adjust accordingly for v 0.3...and I think it will not be too hard to remove the 30x option, however, I also want to try to find out why the heck 30x seems slower than 10x in this iteration of Directsail (with Open Sea applied)....also, I agree I have also seen the flickering sea more often when speeding up time, but I'm not 100% sure it is directly correlated....will be doing more testing, and I plan on looking at those files Pieter Boelen mentioned to see if that fixes or reduces the problem...

Regards,

Jeff

 

[stljeffbb]

The Dreaded Flicker:

When I get it I just look high up in the sky - on the blue bit - and it goes for a while, but does come back later.
I would agree that it appears over time.
In my test I got to Martinique with no flicker but it started about a third of the way through my continued voyage to Guadeloupe.

Re the weather - I like it sunny as there are on average about 350 days of sunshine each year in the Caribbean - a nd when it rains, the showers are usually hard but short.

Re Mines and stuff and following slower companion ships - Mines are 'sneaky' (which I think they are meant to be). I have blown myself up by sailing over one I forgot I had laid during a battle.
Big Logs - In the pre-mod game I had occasion to lead a following ship around one, which I did successfully, but later on changing course due to preparing for a battle, I led him back over it.
I think these are things that the player must learn by experience.

Hello Short Jack Gold...hmm, I did not know you could blow yourself up on a mine you set....lol.....thanks for the infor on Caribbean weather...I've been down to the Keys once during January, and I actually ran into just a bit of rain, but it was like you said "hard but short"...that will help me as I further tweak the weather....

Regards,

Jeff

 

[Hylie Pistof]

I bought another ship, a Caravel Hermaphrodite, and noticed that the flickering sea is gone now. 1X or 30X made no difference.

 

[Grega]

Could the ships 3D view crew have an effect on the flickering?

 

[casinostrat]

Hey Guys I just want to say that this open sea mod is awesome, and it adds a whole new element to the game. I have been trying it out over the last few days. Playing the NH storyline I left Barbados in my little lugger bound for Sao Jorge, hauling a load of cargo to deliver to the merchant in town. Now normally when just starting a game I just get to sea as quickly as possible and try to outrun everybody since, with the old directsail feature in Iron Man mode, if you were careful and the wind was right you could get where you were going without too much trouble. Like a dummy I didn't repair my ship before setting out, since I like to keep the gold and repair once I get more esablished in the game. BAD IDEA. I was 1 day out from Barbados when I sighted a small group of pirate ships, and those guys chased me all the way to Sao Jorge. By the time I reached port my ship and sails were riddled and by the time I had repairs completed I made no money on hauling that cargo. Just wait till I get a frigate....I'm gonna find those guys and get some revenge! :ixi
This mod makes the game feel much bigger in my opinion, and opens up many cool situations while at sea. By the way, I didn't see any flickering water, but the free cam was enabled after I installed the mod, so I disabled it and now am having a great time sailing around the western side of the map. Great Mod Jeff! Keep up the good work!

 

[stljeffbb]

Hello everyone!

@ Hylie Pistoff.....hmm, I wonder if that ship you mention does not call to any of those files Pieter mentioned

@ Megla...I do not know..

@ casinostrat....very glad you like it and thanks for the kudos I'm just helping out where I can, and to me the ones who really deserve credit are CCC and Screwface (and others who I do not know of it seems) who figured out how to transpose the coordinates from the Worldmap and then use them as the basis for a calling system in the code of the Directsail mod that basically drew an "imaginary plane" to recognize where your ship is at on an open sea that was once....well....very static and had nothing (really) to do with the rest of the game....I tip my hat to those folks!



...BTW, It would be SO-O-O-O-O nice if all those gfx glitches were was the free cam mode being turned off

My baby boy is due to be born very soon, next Friday morning to be exact! I'm exicited and hoping fo a smooth delivery (well, as smooth as it can get as he is a "footling breach" thus forcing my wife to have a c-section), and while I certainly plan on being around here as mch as I can, I have to say I'm not certain how busy I will be...I am taking one week off of work, but as my wife tells me I'll be getting up every two hours to hand her the baby, so I might be one cranky sailor!

Still, in our glorious age of instant communications (actually not really sarcasm....although some aspects are very intrusive and crappy, most of it is quite cool IMHO!), I should be able to check in fairly regularly...I do have more plans for the Open Sea mod...one of the key aspects will be weather tweaking, and another will be learning some code to make it link up with the "Iron Man Mode". I do want to learn about the real life weather in the Caribben and make it work here....I do need to learn about what Morgan Terror mentioned in that the weather changes with the season....I have not as of yet found that in the code....

This evening, as mentioned, I will be starting with a fresh installation on my laptop with just PotC, Build 14 2.1, and the Open Sea mod just to see how it goes....I'll report back from time to time with any updates and please keep the feedback coming so we can make this as good as it can be!

Jeff

EDIT: Alas, it seems that when I disable the free cam mode (from within the "Advanced options" settings) I still get the flickering....

 

[Hylie Pistof]

None of the ships I've sailed are on that list. Also, almost all of the textures on that list are in the main textures folder and are easy to find and copy into the "ships" folder.

I had a hard time with Hispaniola. I found the north and east sides ok, but just could not get to the southwest corner at all. Lateens and stays are a necessity.

Yes. Both free cam and cheatmode are now on by default and adversely affect the game IMO.

This mod doesn't need to be restricted to the Ironman mod, but it does need to be optional as it is more of a "simulation" mod than a "game" mod.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

We could make this mod into a separate Advanced Options menu toggle instead.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

That sounds good to me.

This mod is really hard on the square sail ships because while one is far out to sea the winds seem to be pretty random, when one gets close to an island they become quite perverse, and the square sailers can't tack fast enough and end up going backwards.

It is a vicious contest trying to outguess the wind. Also, I was surprised at how bad the Hoy is. I thought it was set up to be similar to the Lugger but I had to give up on it because it was going backwards more than forwards. My next square sail ship will probably be the Indiaman.

So far the Caravels are the rock stars and I'm very pleased with their performance. But even they can be sunk.

I left Curacao bound for Puerto Rico in bad weather, but the wind was blowing in the right direction. The 1st storm did lots of damage but we survived it ok. The 2nd storm last a long time and did a lot of damage. We were under 50% HP. The 3rd and 4th storms were short little affairs that did little.

The 5th storm was a twister storm and that one sunk me within sight of Puerto Rico. :j3

 

[stljeffbb]

That sounds good to me.

This mod is really hard on the square sail ships because while one is far out to sea the winds seem to be pretty random, when one gets close to an island they become quite perverse, and the square sailers can't tack fast enough and end up going backwards.

It is a vicious contest trying to outguess the wind. Also, I was surprised at how bad the Hoy is. I thought it was set up to be similar to the Lugger but I had to give up on it because it was going backwards more than forwards. My next square sail ship will probably be the Indiaman.

So far the Caravels are the rock stars and I'm very pleased with their performance. But even they can be sunk.

I left Curacao bound for Puerto Rico in bad weather, but the wind was blowing in the right direction. The 1st storm did lots of damage but we survived it ok. The 2nd storm last a long time and did a lot of damage. We were under 50% HP. The 3rd and 4th storms were short little affairs that did little.

The 5th storm was a twister storm and that one sunk me within sight of Puerto Rico. :j3

@ Hylie Pistoff and Pieter Boelen....yes that sounds good to me concerning making Open Sail an advanced option tab!

@ Hylie Pistoff....wow, five storms? I've not seen a single storm (except for one right out of port in the beginning of a game).....my strong guess is it has to do with when you sail maybe? My adventures have been limited to July, August, and the very first part of September....but isn't that hurricane season? I've not had the chance to sail yet with my "clean install"....

OK everyone....I've been attempting to do some research into historical ships logs from the 16th thru 19th centuries....I've found only two instances so far, and this one is the best in relation to our game:

http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/~jacktar/cmwlog.html

By my rough estimate, I only count three ship contacts in twenty days of sail, although this is out of Nova Scotia, not the Caribbean...here is the other one:

http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/texts/ship/log/12may/12may1781.html

I found this in the British Library online archives

I want to find more info, however, I have the feeling that one ship contact a day might be a lot.....

Moving to flotsam....I'm getting the feeling that ANY flotsam should be like "manna from heaven" and should happen very infrequently...like, the jewels on a packet ship or the indian raft (with goodies) should be almost once in a lifetime IMHO....

In the code, ship encounters and flotsam are linked...the DIRECTENCOUNTERCHANCE command in CCCDirectsail.c is a percentage of overall ship encounters....right now the DIRECTENCOUNTERCHANCE is 22% every 6.0 hours (ENCOUNTERBREAK) and therefore I take this to mean that 78% of the time will be flotsam...won;t be too hard to adjust, but if contacts are indeed sparse, then we might need to change ENCOUNTERBREAK to 24.0 (one a day), and then do something like flip the numbers so DIRECTENCOUNTERCHANCE will be about 80% and then flotsam will be 20%...or something like this....

Thoughts?

Jeff

 

[Hylie Pistof]

I'm in the 2nd year game time now and it must be hurricane season. I left port in what looked like light rain, but it turned into a twister storm. The 2nd storm was also a twister storm that left me with no sails at all. The Caravel floundered helplessly until she capsized.

On the next attempt I went straight to the world map until I was well clear and had decent weather again.


Hehe, it's hard to believe that ship sailed past Boston and New York without sighting a single ship unless they were far off the coast. If tiny Bermuda had 70 ships sailing out of it, then the big ports should have had many more, but probably most of them were fishing boats.

I think the flotsam was added to break up the boredom of a long voyage, not for historical accuracy.

 

[Short Jack Gold]

I think the flotsam was added to break up the boredom of a long voyage, not for historical accuracy.

I agree with this statement. :urgh

I am finding that even short journeys take an hour of real time and that's a long time with "nothing to do".

Also I note that on a large ship with a low wind, by the time you have turned to pick up the "goodie" the hour changes and it is gone. (boo hoo!)

 

[stljeffbb]

@ Hylie Pistoff and Short Jack Gold....

Yes, most certainly it seems to me that flotsam was added to make the game "fun"....and this is what I wrestle with. It matters how "realistic" we want to go....if we want an open sea sailing experience that mimics (to the best of our ability) real life, then the long time in between flotsam and even ship encounters is probably warranted. However, if we are aiming for a mix of reality and fun, then another option might be to simply tone down the amount of flotsam (in other words, less cwt of stuff per flotsam encounter) one picks up in the ocean...I'm pretty sure I know where this is in the code, but I have not messed with it as of yet...also, there is a flotsam multiplier that basically (so it seems based on just looking at the code) uses your ship class as a multiplier (after a bit of subtraction....looks kind of like this: (8 - (your ship class) = Y) --> (Y * (base flotsam) = actual flotsam)...I can just comment this out to make the flotsam a steady level...there are other things that can be done here as well; the above is just a start...

I've had a bit harder time understanding how random fleets are generated when getting a "sail ho" on the open sea...I really want to make it so on occasion when these random encounters happen, some ships in the group are opposed to one another to cause a fight...at first, they might be sailing in a nice crisp line, but once the 'actors' know they are enemies, they will open up! This is my hope anyway....

@ Short Jack Gold....yes, I've lost goodies becasue of time expiration as well....very frustrating, especially when I sail almost right up to it, and then the wind changes....ugh! lol

Regards,

Jeff

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Make it as real as you want. The only things I always go for are the dismasted vessel and the native raft.

I discovered something. The combat range has been reduced from 500 yards to 100 yards. When the end-of-combat music first sounded off I thought that the pirate xebec had surrendered. :shoot:

But no, the fight continued to the death. :ixi

 

[stljeffbb]

Make it as real as you want. The only things I always go for are the dismasted vessel and the native raft.

I discovered something. The combat range has been reduced from 500 yards to 100 yards. When the end-of-combat music first sounded off I thought that the pirate xebec had surrendered. :shoot:

But no, the fight continued to the death. :ixi

Sorry, yes I have to fix that too!

Jeff

EDIT: OK, the gfx glitches are definitely not the ENB graphics...

 

[Pieter Boelen]

If you want to prevent a DirectSail update from messing anything up, disable DirectSail with the [0] key until you finished what you wanted, then turn it back on.

 

[stljeffbb]

If you want to prevent a DirectSail update from messing anything up, disable DirectSail with the [0] key until you finished what you wanted, then turn it back on.

Hello Pieter Boelen....so, if I hear you correctly, disabling Directsail will keep the floating goodies afloat indefinitely? I'm actually thinking of disabling the Directsail disable for the Open Sea mod (as I have the coordinates and mines) just to avoid "cheating"...I actually like the time decay to get the goody as it adds one more challenge!

OK, I'm now trying to wrap my brain around ship encounters....trying to figure out how to make it so that ships of different nations might show up on an encounter....the code looks rather clean in this regard....I just cannot add a different nationality....I will edit this post to show what I mean (as I'm at work)...either way, I think it will take some code creation to make it work, and I'm endeavoring to learn to do just that...

Jeff

 

[stljeffbb]

I'm now digging into CCCDirectsail.c and I've located the spot that creates ship encounters:

EDIT: New thread here

Jeff

 

[Hylie Pistof]

If you want to prevent a DirectSail update from messing anything up, disable DirectSail with the [0] key until you finished what you wanted, then turn it back on.

Hello Pieter Boelen....so, if I hear you correctly, disabling Directsail will keep the floating goodies afloat indefinitely? I'm actually thinking of disabling the Directsail disable for the Open Sea mod (as I have the coordinates and mines) just to avoid "cheating"...I actually like the time decay to get the goody as it adds one more challenge!

OK, I'm now trying to wrap my brain around ship encounters....trying to figure out how to make it so that ships of different nations might show up on an encounter....the code looks rather clean in this regard....I just cannot add a different nationality....I will edit this post to show what I mean (as I'm at work)...either way, I think it will take some code creation to make it work, and I'm endeavoring to learn to do just that...

Jeff

I'm not sure that disabling the directsail disable is a good idea. I use it during battles close to a boundary between islands and such so that the battle can come to a conclusion.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

No, floating goodies do expire after a set time, but this time can be made longer with float fTime in void Direct_AddGood in CCCdirectsail.c .
It does work for keeping ship encounters around though.