Mod Release Open Sea Mod and Realism Settings

[Grega]

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.

Could it not be made so that for island transitions you would get a prompt like for the world map in the vanilla game?

 

[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

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.

@ Hylie Pistoff...fair enough....what I was thinking is making the range so far to disengage that in effect Directsail is turned off.....this also partially explains the music glitch, I think....I can't remember exactly what I did with the code atm.....another concern I have with turning it off is, although I have not tested this yet, I worry about overshooting where an island would be by a long shot by slowly but surely running away from an opponent if able....this can take a long time....however, I will keep the toggle active for Directsail mode for future releases, and I simply will not use it as a personal preference....ah yes now I remember....I did change the distances back to default...I had them at 10000 yards (meters, whatever lol) for testing purposes...I still plan on tweaking those...

Thanks for the feedback

@ Megla.....I do not remember how the vanilla game handles it as it has been so long since I've played it! I do recall in the Build Mod we have a little land icon that gives us the option to hit (I think) the space bar to reach land...

@ Pieter Boelen...thanks for the direction concerning the floating goodies!

Jeff

 

[Grega]

@ Megla.....I do not remember how the vanilla game handles it as it has been so long since I've played it! I do recall in the Build Mod we have a little land icon that gives us the option to hit (I think) the space bar to reach land..

No. I mean when you are chasing a ship and you transition from island A to island B. Im asking if it would not be possible to make a prompt before doing so in order for direct sail not to interfere with ongoing battles near the zone boarders.

So basically instead of automatically loading the next island you would get an icon for the transition where you press the action key to trigger. Kind of like when boarding after you kill off all the enemies you are free to walk round until you hit the action key.

That should solve the issue of unexpected transitions in battles.

 

[Talisman]

You do get a log message in Direct Sail - saying you are approaching an island - but it happens quite a while before the island transition occurs - so it is possible for a player to forget to deactivate the direct sail mod by pressing 0 if you are fighting or chasing another ship.

If you had an icon for island transition - then you would probably have to have it for all Direct Sail Island transitions and not just the ones when you are chasing another ship.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Yes, there is a warning that you are approaching an island. Here is an example from today.

I was heading to Guadaloupe from Nevis on a treasure quest. I got the message "You are approaching Guadaloupe." Then at the "land ho!." message I spawned right next to a class 1 Heavy East Indiaman. I saw that the battle was drifting away from the island and disabled direct sail.

When that monster was finally sunk I enabled direct sail and suddenly found myself quite close to Nevis again.

 

[Grega]

You do get a log message in Direct Sail - saying you are approaching an island - but it happens quite a while before the island transition occurs - so it is possible for a player to forget to deactivate the direct sail mod by pressing 0 if you are fighting or chasing another ship.

If you had an icon for island transition - then you would probably have to have it for all Direct Sail Island transitions and not just the ones when you are chasing another ship.

I know you get a message. It was kinda my suggestion to put it there.

But not a lot of people know you can disable direct sail by pressing 0. So if you had an icon appear for the transition instead of automatically going you wouldnt have to worry about forgetting to disable or enable direct sail and you wouldnt have problems with battles ending due to you being the one to initiate the transition.

In addition since all those commands are blocked while you are in combat, you would also not be able to use direct sail transitions to escape combat if you were outnumbered.

 

[stljeffbb]

OK, I guess one goal (or idea) I have is to avoid "gamey" ways of exploiting the game....I do totally agree that it is a problem to have Directsail on when close to an island because it might be too easy to outrun an opponent and then catch the island, thus "in a gamey fashion" eliminating the threat...

One issue I see in having an "icon" to show us we are near an island is that in a prolongued battle we might go right past the icon's range....but I suppose that might not be a big deal....ok, another issue might be (I think this was mentioned) that it is a long distance from when you get the text warning in the upper left part of the screen and the point when you actually get to the island....having an icon might...MIGHT, be a bit too much of a hint...and using the text message might possibly be enough of a warning anyway, and this puts the onus on the player to remember "yes I'm close" and also have to deal with enemies breathing down one's neck...of course this is what "advanced sailing" is all about....

Lastly, we might be able to kill a couple birds with one stone here....in the documentation, CCC mentions "FreezeLayer" commnads that could enable ships to become persistent, in other words a new "sail ho" would not erase the currently visible ships....if we could figure this out, and if we get how often ships appear "correct", we could have enemies try to chase us all the way into port, AND have new ships "come to our rescue"....ha ha, or we could use new ships as a "pick" (as they say in basketball) to deter/confuse the enemy.

Regards,

Jeff

 

[Short Jack Gold]

Lastly, we might be able to kill a couple birds with one stone here....in the documentation, CCC mentions "FreezeLayer" commnads that could enable ships to become persistent, in other words a new "sail ho" would not erase the currently visible ships....if we could figure this out, and if we get how often ships appear "correct", we could have enemies try to chase us all the way into port, AND have new ships "come to our rescue"....ha ha, or we could use new ships as a "pick" (as they say in basketball) to deter/confuse the enemy.

Hmmm... might be a bit off track here, but, when I was sailing from Barbados to Falaise de fleur, I got pounced on by three dirty big French ships.
Being in "player mode" I thought to myself - if I make a dash for Antigua I will be in English waters - so I sailed off in that direction.
They gave chase - and as the French do, lobbed a few cannon balls at me (suffered a bit of sail damage - but I had a needle and thread with me so no big deal).
It was getting close, then Approaching Antigua showed up, and the French veered off, so I was able to reset my course for Falaise de fleur and continue the quest. (Ta Da!)

Now it maybe that I was just traveling faster then the French, but it didn't seem like it (holes in sails show they were near) I don't know, so I post this just for information.
(or mis-information as the case may be)

 

[stljeffbb]

Lastly, we might be able to kill a couple birds with one stone here....in the documentation, CCC mentions "FreezeLayer" commnads that could enable ships to become persistent, in other words a new "sail ho" would not erase the currently visible ships....if we could figure this out, and if we get how often ships appear "correct", we could have enemies try to chase us all the way into port, AND have new ships "come to our rescue"....ha ha, or we could use new ships as a "pick" (as they say in basketball) to deter/confuse the enemy.

Hmmm... might be a bit off track here, but, when I was sailing from Barbados to Falaise de fleur, I got pounced on by three dirty big French ships.
Being in "player mode" I thought to myself - if I make a dash for Antigua I will be in English waters - so I sailed off in that direction.
They gave chase - and as the French do, lobbed a few cannon balls at me (suffered a bit of sail damage - but I had a needle and thread with me so no big deal).
It was getting close, then Approaching Antigua showed up, and the French veered off, so I was able to reset my course for Falaise de fleur and continue the quest. (Ta Da!)

Now it maybe that I was just traveling faster then the French, but it didn't seem like it (holes in sails show they were near) I don't know, so I post this just for information.
(or mis-information as the case may be)

@ Short Jack Gold....hmm, interesting. I have noticed this kind of behavior about three thimes that I recall...where a ship was giving me chase, and then broke off. Twice was in an island cell, so I attribitued it to being close to a fort....once I recall was on the open sea and I though it unusual....I am going to do some more tweaking of things (as I think I might know what causes this) and release a 0.3 in the near future, and thanks for the feedback!

....but, it looks like we (well, my wife is doing all the difficult work lol) are having a son today, so I might be gone for a while....keep on feeding-back and I will catch up soon!

Regards,

Jeff

 

[Grega]

Well the problem that spawned the need for a message in the first place was the flag change system. As in. If you changed the flag the entire island still thought of you as the old flag. Thats why there was a message so you could change the flags before the "land ho" so you wouldnt require to go back to the previous island and re enter he one you wanted with the changed flag.

As for the icon. The thing with the world map icon is that you dont see if if there is danger. So you couldnt use it for escaping.

But the problem of leaving the icon area did not occur to me. Though i guess thats fixable by making insanely large numbers for the effective distance ^^


And congrats on the happy occasion Jeff

 

[Pieter Boelen]

There IS some code in place by Screwface that could make AI ships decide to break off the chase and go do something else or pursue a different target.

 

[stljeffbb]

[quote name=%26%2339%3BPieter%2520Boelen%26%2339%3B timestamp='1328145450' post='417682']
There IS some code in place by Screwface that could make AI ships decide to break off the chase and go do something else or pursue a different target.


[/quote]

@ Pieter Boelen....yes, I do recall messing with something like that at one time...now I have to find where the heck that was and tweak it some more

...I have a son....mom and baby are doing well, but as you can imagine I have not gotten much sleep lately....I will get back to this as soon as I can, probably sometime next week when we get home from the hospital

Regards,

Jeff

 

[Grega]

Bare with me on the crappy edit job (and ignore the fact that there is a battle this is a random pic from google) ^^

http://img268.imageshack.us/img268/1866/potc.jpg

In any case i thought of something like this as a prompt. That way you can loose the message for the island all together. And since you only get a "land ho" icon as a prompt you still get the "unknown" factor in the game. Since you dont know what island you are going to or whats waiting for you there.

Whats more, you can use the code from the transition to the world map. As far as i recall (and correct me if im wrong and thats only in AOP) that function makes you loose any ships under your control, that are still in the battle area (there is a prompt asking you if you want to abandon ships that are still in combat). So if you run the ships under your control are lost if they are still engaged in battle (imagine them sunk). And since there is a sound that plays once you are able to go to the world map (when the icon appears), you can link it to to a "Land Ho!" sound. And maybe replace the icon with that showing an island instead. (icon is only there to show you that you are in fact close enough to an island to transition if you miss the sound prompt in this case, or it could be removed all together and the player is left with just the sound prompt)

Would something like that not add a bit more to the realism of the entire direct sail mod?

 

[Short Jack Gold]

...I have a son....mom and baby are doing well, but as you can imagine I have not gotten much sleep lately....I will get back to this as soon as I can, probably sometime next week when we get home from the hospital

Regards,

Jeff

CONGRATULATIONS !!!

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Welcome to parenthood! Kiss your life goodbye.





Megla: Am I understanding you correctly that if you are in combat and leave the combat area you lose all of your ships? But that happens many times per battle as the ships turn this way and that into and with the wind.

 

[stljeffbb]

Welcome to parenthood! Kiss your life goodbye.





Megla: Am I understanding you correctly that if you are in combat and leave the combat area you lose all of your ships? But that happens many times per battle as the ships turn this way and that into and with the wind.

"Kiss your life goodbye."....ha ha....things have been different...lol

OK, I'm back at home and able to dig back in (a bit) to the mod....

If we use an icon I propose this one:

(taken from a screenshot while using ConverterTX)

This is the "land is close" icon one gets when sailing in the world map (upon activation, one is supposed to be near the island shown on the world map but on the sea; of course we have had a few issues with mixing directsail and worldmap sailing)....I assume there are some controllers that point to it at the proper time we can hijack and use...

....and thanks for the kudos concerning my son, everyone!

Regards,

Jeff

 

[Grega]

Megla: Am I understanding you correctly that if you are in combat and leave the combat area you lose all of your ships? But that happens many times per battle as the ships turn this way and that into and with the wind.

No. Leaving the combat area means returning to the world map when some of your ships are still engaged. Thats in the stock game already if i recall correctly.

Im saying since if the icon and manual transition between islands is put in, the same feature be used for any ships left in battle when you switch places.

Example: You have 4 ships in your fleet. Ships A, B, C and D

You are engaged in battle and decide the best course of action is to flee. Your ship A along with B and C escape the enemy while ship D is still engaged in combat with the enemy. The icon appears for the next island and you press the action button to go to that island. When the game loads you are left with ships A, B and C. Ship D was presumably sunk because it did not leave the combat area before you loaded the new island.

This would also open up a possible tactic of having a small cheap ship act as a vanguard for the valuable trade fleet. And if you need to escape have the small ship guard the rear (and sacrifice itself) while the rest of your ships flee.

As for engaged in combat. That is a radius round the enemy ship. Basically its the area where your ship icon is flashing red for combat.


@Jeff. Yes coupling that icon with a "Land Ho" shout sound seems like a perfect combo. You would be able to get rid of the text message if thats implemented and you gain the additional realism bonus of not really knowing what island you arrive at until you visit the town or guess by its shape.

 

[stljeffbb]

Megla: Am I understanding you correctly that if you are in combat and leave the combat area you lose all of your ships? But that happens many times per battle as the ships turn this way and that into and with the wind.

No. Leaving the combat area means returning to the world map when some of your ships are still engaged. Thats in the stock game already if i recall correctly.

Im saying since if the icon and manual transition between islands is put in, the same feature be used for any ships left in battle when you switch places.

Example: You have 4 ships in your fleet. Ships A, B, C and D

You are engaged in battle and decide the best course of action is to flee. Your ship A along with B and C escape the enemy while ship D is still engaged in combat with the enemy. The icon appears for the next island and you press the action button to go to that island. When the game loads you are left with ships A, B and C. Ship D was presumably sunk because it did not leave the combat area before you loaded the new island.

This would also open up a possible tactic of having a small cheap ship act as a vanguard for the valuable trade fleet. And if you need to escape have the small ship guard the rear (and sacrifice itself) while the rest of your ships flee.

As for engaged in combat. That is a radius round the enemy ship. Basically its the area where your ship icon is flashing red for combat.


@Jeff. Yes coupling that icon with a "Land Ho" shout sound seems like a perfect combo. You would be able to get rid of the text message if thats implemented and you gain the additional realism bonus of not really knowing what island you arrive at until you visit the town or guess by its shape.

@ Megla....OK, I think I get what you are saying....when we are close, the icon appears; use the "action" key (space bar usually) to get the "land ho" message, then, instead of the text message that says "Cuba in sight on the starboard bow", we could change that to "A landmass in sight on the starboard bow" to hide the identity of the island....ohh, THAT would make it hard! I like it....

The biggest problem I see with this method will be to have a smooth transaction between the open sea (which in reality is still being in an island cell of some sort) and the next island cell....it will be VERY easy for me to obscure the island name as I know right where that code is, and I'm rather sure the following changes will not have too much of an impact:

OLD CODE (in CCCdirectsail.c)

Traceandlog("Captain, " + FindIslandName(toislandname) + " in sight "

POSSIBLE NEW CODE

Traceandlog("Captain, a landmass is in sight "

The code will still recognize where you are, but (he he) the player will not....I love simple little changes like this that change everything!

Regards,

Jeff

 

[Grega]

Glad you like my idea.

Would it not be possible to ignore the distance and just take heading in to account.
You could edit the time calculation to be based on distance from island along with the time that is used now?
Those values should be accessible. We would only need a formula that would take already traveled distance (from the current island) and change it in to minutes.

 

[Adamski62]

Hi

Jeff......just tried the v 0.2 mod........slight problem, if you press Tab 3 times to alter view from 1st to 3rd person you now get an extra free cam view in the port you are nearest to, so maybe it won't be harder to know where you are unless you can sort the camera behaiour out.
Other than that.....keep up the good work.

Cheers
damski.