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Oxbay Game Start

Black Bart

Black Bart

Corsair
Storm Modder
After Jasons and Hooks comments about the weird timeing of the 'Escape from Oxbay' video, and my one weird experience(where it came during CCC's survial mod activation in the tavern room upstairs - before i had even put to sea!), and after having replayed the standard starting scenario(not stormy start) about 30 times in the last couple of weeks; I have a few suggestions we could talk about.

The first thing occured to me after playing around with the national flags during the start of the game. You know ts accepted good advice to change your flag to a french one before leaving Oxbay by sea? Trusty Malcolm may tell you the same himself(depending on the beta version or if your flag is set as british).

Well for a new player i'm thinking a portugese flag is the best one to raise before you leave. Everyone likes the portugese at game start(and for a good while into the game), except the Pirates of course. The problem with raising a french flag is that:

1. you might get sunk by any british ships that are in the location of Oxbay
2. you have to be very carefull when you arrive at Redmond!

Its a tircky manouvre really - you have to make sure you leave the mini-map sailing mode far enough from Redmond that they dont want to shoot you out the water - and your bearing that vital news for them! tricky especialy for someone new to the game maybe?

If you leave under the portugese flag no-one will bother you, except the Pirates. Its plain sailing all through the entry to Redmond and the subsequent quests of sailing to Falaise de Fleur? So why not get Malcolm to say:

"and before you set sail i would change the ships flag to fly the colours of portugal - everyone loves the portugese and that French Battle Fleet we saw coming this way may sink you otherwise"

something like that - i think it would be much easier for a new comer to the game? what do people think on that? We could even set the player up with the portugese flag flying - just in case they dont read malcolms advice?

And now the starting video. I think its better placed in 12.1(full) - as soon as you set sail(no needing to go into mini-map mode) it plays - so you know whats going on from that point. Now i can see that the way it 'teleports' you into the mini-map mode just outside Oxbay area might not be to everyones likeing - its not as exciting as sailing out the port as the french and british ships duke it out. So we could keep the player in the 3D mode after the video has played. Combined with the player flying the portugese flag they get the best of all worlds.

The video in a logical place(which only plays the once), and the chance to see any ship-shore action if that happens, and they remain safe to carry on the adventure under the 'neutral' flag of portugal?

what do people think?
 
I agree completely! First couple of times I played the game with build mods, I couldn't understand why I was getting blown out of the water soon as I set foot aboard ship. If I hadn't read about this in the forum I might've sent PotC to Davey Jones for the second and final time... <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/boom.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":boom" border="0" alt="boom.gif" />
 
A lot of changes have alread been made in this department. If you start the game as Nathaniel Nation (the red flaggy thing in the Choose Character screen), the French are friendly with you when you leave port and you are not blown out of the water. You don't even need to raise French/Portuguese colours. The French turn hostile after you enter the worldmap.

If you start the game as English, then when you leave port, the French flag is already automatically raised and you are, again, not blown out of the water immediately.

It is assumed that beginning players will not change their nation in the Choose Character interface and will thus not be attacked when leaving port.

As far as the playing of the invasion movie goes: Originally it did play when you'd leave port, but it was moved to the worldmap, because it looked strange otherwise: You'd see the movie of the attack and the player escaping and then you're put back in Oxbay port and you have to escape again. That's odd.

If you don't like the mod that enables you to fly different flags, set ENABLE_FLAGS off in BuildSettings.h. That should also restore the original leave Oxbay workings with the quest movie playing and then being on the worldmap already.

As far as the invasion movie playing at random: That is DEFNINITLY NOT intentional! <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/piratesing.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":shock" border="0" alt="piratesing.gif" />
 
I LOVE the mod that enables you to raise different flags - just for the record, i'd rather walk-the-plank than not have it <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/icon_mrgreen1.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":cheeky" border="0" alt="icon_mrgreen1.gif" />

Still some of your comments about flag types being raised for you already have surprised me.

1.The flag is set as the red(independant?) one(A.H?or A.I?) as game start default - if you do nothing to your flag before leaving Oxbay you WILL get attacked by the French under this flag. In the reputation screen where you can change your flag you will see the french regaurd for the red flag as being 'Hostile' as if you were british or a pirate at game start. I'm pretty sure this has been consistent for me in most of the beta builds(definately the more recent ones that i've mostly been testing)?

2. I'm pretty sure starting as English(chosing the flag in the char choice screen) also gets you attacked when you first leave Oxbay, unless you raise a french or portugese flag? I always keep either the neutral flag(red one) or a british one at game start - so thats why i'm fairly certain on this.

Thats why i made my comments about the portugese flag - as i'd been getting sunk a few times before i worked out what was going on.

I'll get back to confirm for sure a bit later when my next round of playtesting takes place. Still i am the guy who the 'earth-quake' effect only happend to when i first started with beta1 and more recently with the beta5 - all other times all the buildings stayed put! So well - maybe i'm jinxed with moded PotC <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/unsure.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":?" border="0" alt="unsure.gif" />


And yes the Video thing popping up all over the place is weird! Oh my report on not being able to speak to the govenor in Redmond right at game start i think was due to the video running during the 'survival mod' episode i mentined in the post above - hanger18 made that connection in the thread you moved. So that is what caused that issue.

Still i think the method closer to build12.1(full) that i mentioned might be a good all-win one?

1. Play the video only as soon as the player goes to sea for the first time(so during 3D) as in 12.1(full) - we know this was working fine.

2. Instead of being put outside of Oxbay on the mini-map as in 12.1(full) go back to the 3D and the player can just sail away in 3D, go to the mini-map whatever - so they experience some form of the escape drama(fort firing.british ship vs french shp etc).

3. This would entirely depend on the players flag being completely neutral to all sides of the conflict engulfing Oxbay at that time - thats why i thought of the portugese. If as you mentioned the Flag would be set as such automaticaly all the better.

Anyway whatever way it is done - something is wrong with the current video appearing like a mad banshee all over the place!

I'm off to play-test the pre-build and report back <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile.gif" />
 
Hmm. This is quite odd. I thought I had tested the flag-issues when starting a new game not too long ago. It was bugged in Beta 3, I think, but should have bene fixed in subsequent versions.

The Invasion video playing all over the place is a bug for sure. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/piratesing.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":shock" border="0" alt="piratesing.gif" />
 
Yes it might not be an problem in the last betas - by then i got the habity to generaly set my relations flag as portugese due to geting sunk by the oxbay fort in my ealrier games. Still as you say something is bugged with the video now.
 
There is one thing I do know was changed with videos. Pirate_KK has made some changes to the tutorial quests to make the work more properly. I tried to put those changes into the Beta, but for some reason it wouldn't work: You would keep being locked out of town. The only way Pirate_KK managed to fix it was by having the RunEndQuestMovie run twice. See quests_movie.c. Perhaps I should completely remove Pirate_KK'd rewrites from the Beta and only add it into Build 13.1. It DOES work properly in my Post Build 13 pack, strangely enough. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wacko.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":wacko:" border="0" alt="wacko.gif" />
 
Well my thoughts are not to worry about changing any of the betas right now, maybe just concentrate on what we do have, test each stage/beta and report the main common bugs and where they seemed to come in? You could keep rebuilding the betas over and over and still have issues if we dont know where the bugs are from exactly?

I'm actualy very positive finding the big bugs of recent beta testing not in the pre-build - you all know the bugs of the pre-build quite well, so in a worse case scenario we have that as a platform to add changes to to get to a cleaner beta stage/or release as build13?
 
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