• New Horizons on Maelstrom
    Maelstrom New Horizons


    Visit our website www.piratehorizons.com to quickly find download links for the newest versions of our New Horizons mods Beyond New Horizons and Maelstrom New Horizons!

Possible to make GoF Features Modular?

Hi,
I've finally made an account after following the CoaS Mods for some time. I am having issues with Stability and so here I am. This Post has turned out to be rather long so the rest of my posts will be more direct and slim. Also I'm sorry for the run-on sentences, 4am has me rambling to give my thoughts before I give in to sleep.

The GoF Experience is being for the most part destroyed by the CTD (Despite my limited hardware, it seems only the larger ship battling that CTD beyond a rare occasional crash). I don't say "later game" because I like the bigger ship style of gameplay and usually risk Bounty Hunters early so their stronger/bigger ships find me before I come across them randomly early in the game.

Since GoF includes Combined Mod 3.2 and then more content changes/additions ontop of that, could some of the features from GoF be modular and therefor able to apply ontop of a CoaS + Combined Mod 3.2 Install? (More stable it seems than GoF) Or Could the Textures/ Additional ships in GoF that Break the game's ability to run be left out? I understand textures can be turned down from high, to medium, to the hideous low but it seems the larger 40+ cannon ships are so custom textured that the game will run perfect if all but one are offscreen but even switching to low res and low textures, the game still seems to crash as if low, medium, high doesn't effect their complexity.

I don't intend to be disrespectful to the hard work that has been put into those components specifically, but I am unable to play if any ships above 30 cannons risks breaking the game when I am willing to sacrifice Advanced/Developed textures/Additional Ships for a more guaranteed Stable Gameplay and your guys awesome additions like
-Ship goods only, store goods only option
-Ship Improvement options
-Mods buttin in options
And More I am sorely missing in a CM 3.2 only install.

(Off Topic Thank you/ Rant -because this was supposed to be first but ended up too large-)
This is my first post and thread, and as such I want to Thank all of you for working so hard on improving and otherwise reinventing the CoaS and PotC games over these years since their Original releases. I find these two games revolutionary although the Genre doesn't draw enough on Mainstream resources. The original games being nearly unplayable due to bugs and development that larger and albeit more well-funded companies are capable. Your efforts better guarantee the concepts within these games grow into larger more polished products for our future gameplay experiences.

Instead of being forgotten like say the similar AMAZING concepts behind Universal Combat which will/are forgotten because its developer sucks at everything and sues everyone who tries to fix their mistakes. (Space sim game yes but being a Space Pirate is very viable and even incorporated into the original game such as having marines fight off illegal boardings on the different decks and literally shut down shuttles so they don't steal your fighters and run away with very valuable equipment).
 
Hi Davis Undead Causin

Welcome to the forum bud.:onya

I'm happy to announce that this trail of thourght has already been undertaken and as things stand we are currently reviewing the ships and removing many to reduce bugs and make the game more fun. We are also going to try and port over the features added to GOF one at a time to make sure they it there are no stability problems giving us the perfect chance to see all code at work and fixing or removing anything that doesn't work.

At the moment class 7 and 6 ships have been done with a lot of ships removed from class 6 and a few from class 7, the rough ships list is 57 ships in total over 110 ships less than in GOF 1.2. However this is only a rough ships list as there are more that will be added but keeping the list bellow 100 is the target. The classes to take the largest of hits will be the class 1, 2 and 3 because of reducing the amount of large ships to make the ones that are available ingame more unique and give the game a more realistic feeling since you wouldn't have seen man of wars etc in the caribbean very often, and when they was seen they didn't remain in the caribbean waters for long as most of the time they was simply passing through.

We might (and this is a might) release a additional addong which allows for all/more ships to be added if you wish to add them but are not included in the main mod or any future mods that are done, but could remain as additional addon ships for all future mod packs (if we keep going).

Since your more of a large ships kind of person i expect this might be a shock to you, but it was in talks a long time ago about replacing many ships rather than continuing to add more. We didn't listen to one another because we love our ships so much (the more shisp the better is what we said) that it got out of hand and now with over 150 ships ingame it leaves you looking at some ships and comparing them to other similar ships and saying well "why didn't we remove that one because its not as nice looking as the other ship thats similar to it". I have to be truthfull the only way i could get around the idea of removing ships was to remove all the ships leaving only the stock ships and then adding ships one class at a time and setting out a rough ships list which puts the key ships in place so i could get a sense for how many ships we are looking at, art minimum and a better idea of how many ships we could be looking at in the final ships list.

Also the ship rates have been redone to balance the classes out more (this is based on amount of guns mounted on a ship that determines her class). So ships you would have been use to seeing in one class could very well be seen in the next class or for the odd ship a few classes higher, this will give classes 7, 6 and 5 a much more true feeling and class 4 will be more for your Lightly armoured Frigates and Corvette's with class 3 been more focused on the mighty Frigates and class 1 and 2 for the large warships. Another chance will be the amount of trade ship models ie Fluet's, Pinnace's etc that will be ingame. We had alot of these which in my oppinion reduced the uniqueness of them and ment you was looking more for a poticular trade ship than taking advantage and capturing the first one you saw for the extra space to use for trading goods yourself.

At the moment though the final ships for class 6 are been added ready for testing before moving onto class 5. Hopefully moving back to the more stable version will allow for a much better mod and allow for as many of the features we are so use to now from GOF 1.2 to be ported into the game and know they work 100%. Maybe this will also incorrage some modders/coders to show them selves and wish to help out in some way or other, the only problem we have right not (which on till we can sort out will make things very difficulty) is how we will pass the work to one another so that mod team are all fully up to date with the latest mod team version.
 
Thank you for the purposeful response, I'm glad these things are already in motion. I don't mind the reduction in Ships, especially if each one you encounter is more unique. As for the larger ships I won't miss them if they function unless the entire class is removed o_O.

As for Passing the changes along and such:
Maybe Sticky a Development Thread where only modders who work on the project have permission to post, and with each step they post the changes they have made to which files and what is next. That way the average poster can keep tabs on the changes and progress without distracting with opinion posts while modders have a central location to communicate, and it would also be easy to find since its stickied. Also having a list of files/mods that are 100% stable and safe so those who randomly decide to help know what not to change.

Personally I don't have modding knowledge for this game to be helpful like that :(
 
Well i'm happy to know you won't miss the ships because 77 ships have been removed although there are maybe another 6 to be added but its still going to be almost half the ships removed. There are still some large ships to do battle with but since there are fewer of them, it makes them all unique.

The ship rates have been changed as this gives the class 1, 2 and 3 the big ships and classes 4, 5, 6 and 7 have the less powerfull but more agile ships. Just making sure it all works now and need to start testing the ships before i can begin implementing each class of ships. Only the new ships to GOF 1.2 have been included all models and textuures for the other ships are from CMV3.2.

What i should have done is elliminated the ships that don't cause issues in GOF 1.2 and used the model and textures for them in this new version but that can be done another time when we know which ships (if any) need to be replaced or removed from the new mod.

I have implemented the mod options tab now and the mod switches are all there in working order, there is less of them because no surrender feature (that turned out to be bugged anyway) no skill mod switches etc. So its all back to basic of what we know works.

Passing files back and forth isn't a problem, it only becomes a problem when we want to upload textures that are (when 7 zipped) over 199MB's or more importantly wish to upload the intire mod for testing so we are all on the same page. This is where the FTP will be missed for us COAS modders, i was hopping that it would be made as only those selected to upload to the FTP would be allowed but its going to be closed so we have to find other means to pass our work around.

Oh BTW we already have a sub forum for modders to talk and passing stuff around, just its very much dead right now.:(

Anyway back to testing.:yes
 
One note of caution on "modular" though: Additional downloads are a genuine pain to work with because they have to be kept up-to-date as new modpack updates are made.
That's why, for the PotC Build Mod, we decided to do away with that altogether. Everything that's good goes into the Build Mod and that's the end of that.
 
I haven't got that far yet, but i have figured out how to port the menu screen into CMV3.2, the mod option tab, made the sea better looking. more waves and the sea isn't alway's the same thourght the whole day (even though in GOF 1.2 the sea did become more rougher as the day drew to a end, which is how i had set it) should have had it more rougher durring the day and calmer at night for GOF. Anyway work on ships speeds have has been done making it so no special ship can go above 14.5 knots (which was the fastest speed to ever be recored in the age of sail and was set by a French Corvette). The only exceptions to this would be some quest ships (Blue Bird, Quest Corvette etc) and for the special ships added (Black Pearl, The Flying Dutchmen, Qheen Anne's Revenge etc). All other ships have had there speeds lowered with Corvette's (depending on game generating ship) will have speeds of up to 14.5 knots but many couold have speeds at 13.0 knots.

Turn rates have been lowered again with the best turn rate now been 40.0, not 50.0, and most ships (inlcuding Schooner, Sloop etc) having turn rates in the high 30.0's and big war ships like the Battleship, MOW, even trade ships like the Galleon, Fluet etc having turn rates in the low 20.0's or slightly lower. These modifications are on the files with 77 ships removed though and not on the standard files you get with CMV3.2.

Overall the new mod is getting there but before i continue i want to do some extensive testing on everything and making sure i haven't also brought with these changes more bugs, but before i do any testing on the modified version of CMV3.2 i need to look at how CMV3.2 played and get use to how often it would crash ie, every 2, 3, 4, etc hours. I do remember someone saying they had played CMV3.2 for over 6 hours once without a single crash.

This crash could have been brought on by a ship which can be tested and replaced with earlier models or later models and textures till we either find a working version of replace her with another model that proves to work 100%. i am focusing fully on stability as stated so anything that can't be fixed will be removed, and anything that causes stability issues will be removed in less it can be changed so that it also works 100% correctly without reducing tghe games stability.
 
Ok. I've been playing a CoaS + CM 3.2 only for the last week since GoF hasn't worked for me. Didn't have to work today so I've put in a few hours and really the only point it crashed is during Melee combat with Bounty Hunters when I dock. That has happened twice today, at the exact same point in my 'heavy swing' where it just freezes. No crashes after the hour long battle of 3x class 4 ships, 2x class 3, and 1x class 1 ship against my 1x class 4 stock corvette though which I am thankful for. With Gof, i would crash with my class 3 ship vs 1x class 4 and 1x class 5.

Thanks for the Updates! Sounds like your making quite a bit of progress with changes over the last couple days. Testing will understandably slow things down quite a bit but thoroughness will prevent those nasty bugs from destroying gameplay; fair trade off.
 
Thanks for reporting this because i am building my rank up (with some changes to CMV3.2 in place) because i want to test the stabilty out before implementing more things. I can see why some people have gone back to this version and to be honest i don't blame them, GOF 1.2 is so unstable it makes you want to scream in anger everything it crashes durring a naval battle. And as i found out in my GOF 1.2 testing earlier even if you don't have the dreaded crash happen you can be hit by heavy lag when etting ships sink after looting them. I don't recall anything happening like this for CMV3.2, and i already tested that and the ship that caused lag after been left to sink worked perfectly in CMV3.2 after i left her to sink (no lag or nothing).
 
No problem I'd like to help more but I have little modding knowledge, and even less for this game although a lot of the files seem to have a C+ similar syntax. Do you want information on when the game crashes anytime or just with the ships onscreen?
 
Any and all information is welcome bud, the more the better to be honest. Be it a big battle that went without error to a small 1 on 1 fight that ended with the game freezing or crashing, report anything you feel should be reported.;)

When i started modding this game i had never modded a single game in my intire life, no knowlage of the code or how to edit it. I don't claim to be qa pro or anything, but i get the ideas of what file(s) to search in if there is something i want to find. Its now been over 3 years since i started working on this game and i'm so happt that i didn't give up saying i can't do this or learn this. Its so rewarding when you get something in that you like or an idea that you wanted to implement but never could. For me it was RTBL and the new cannon/culverine calibures, ships and other settings to increase the realistic side of the game like the realistic weights, prices etc.

Give it a try, you might suprise yourself. Get winmerge and compare code from CMV3.2 to GOF 1.2 and see what has changed and then you can see how it was done, and you can also port over things you like from GOF.
 
I've learned a bit by just looking at the files and comparing changes in order to tweak the game a bit while I wait for the GoF overhaul.

As for crash reporting:
I've noticed a few tendencies about my crashes:
1)If I run the game with Higher Priority for processing, the game crashes faster. I only have 1gb of DDR RAM so this may suggest a memory leak/RAM clear error.

2) 90% of my crashes are reported as an error in the ship.dll file. I don't know anything about .dll files so nothing really to say here.

3)With the CM 3.2 install, I don't believe fleet size is too affected by my lack of RAM because I can be victorious in a choppy 8-9 ship battle, or get steamrolled from 3 ships to another 3 ships (all generally are class 5 to class 2 ships, with an average of class 4) without crash. While what invoked me to post night was a High Processor run against 3 class 4 ships, all the same; it crashes after I shuttle my spare class 6 and sail away about 30 seconds despite no lag or choppiness at all.
 
In GOF 1.2 i had a problem where durring a naval battle i tried to run and a few minutes later the game would crash, i couldn't understand why that happened and it was so frustrating. Because i alway's save i loaded the game up and tested running away from the pirates and again it would crash, so i tested this out on another pirate ship but this time over by Sain John's (previous test was at Port Royal). The game still crashed after a short while, so i don't know what is wrong there but its obviously some coding that been added or edited in some way.

With the new GOF 2.0 i haven't had a crash while sailing, however direct sail has not been introduced yet (this could be one of the problems for the game crashing in GOF 1.2).

There is a memory leak, however i can't fix that and wouldn't know where to start. But yes more memory is needed, 1 GB for GOF 1.2 is very low, because of the more intensive textures. I suggest at least 4GB's, that way your system can run without using shared memory that is been used on both the system and the game.
 
Currently I've been playing just CM 3.2 with no GoF; And I've rarely if ever had a crash anywhere besides while walking near a port of a city or during direct sail.

I did notice the GoF textures are pretty intense although the game seemed to run fine until the top three classes of ships began to appear and I snagged one for myself. From then on, since a class 4 or 3 was on screen the whole time the game became more choppy. But I also have 2.5gb of page file that helps a tiny bit. This IS an old PC that seems to run the game perfectly smooth on medium sea detail and no vegetation ( that is, CM 3.2) but crashes sometimes with no warning still. Upgrading RAM for this particularly dated system is capped at 2gb I believe due to only 2 modules, and that would be 2x OneGb DRAM sticks(DDR 400). At about $57 for just the 2 gigs it seems too pricey for outdated hardware.

I have a save just before the encounter where the same model but x3 class-four ships attack me. After trying again, I sank the closest, demasted the middle ship, and then cranked up the time compression to demast the third, farthest ship. The first two volleys both demasted half and then half again, and the third finished the remaining sails but it immediately crashed. I'll play around some more and see what specifically I can get to crash. I'm not sure why the farthest ship was the fastest to demast unless the crew skill went up since it took so long to sink the first ship. I remember seeing a thread once about masts falling that crash the game though, not sure if that was just caused by an improper install however.
 
So ships in GOF caused the game to crash when they was demasted, the same is for CMV3.2. Although i never experienced a crash durring a naval battle in CMV3.2 it didn't mean that some ships didn't cause the demast issue. All the ships i have kept in GOF 2.0 are the models from GOF 1.2, however i will be testing the demasting of ships soon (when i get a better ship) and then replacing the models that crash with those from CMV3.2 and testing them models out again to see what happens. If they still cause issue's then i will replace the models with a new ship and see. Once i know all the ships work perfectly i know the base version of GOF 2.0 can be released on ModDB and any patches that are released will be beta versions then. At the moment i have included some key features from GOF 1.2 (like the surrender feature) but these are also also been tested out. The one feature i want to add is direct sail from GOF 1.2. But i won't be adding that for a whil;e and haven't even looked into how it was implemented.

But its good to know that CMV3.2 is proving to be very stable, at least we know should GOF 2.0 prove to be very unstable for reasons we can't explain, we can move back to CMV3.2 and work from that version and test the changes out on that version and find what ever was causing the issue's in GOF2.0 and fix them to make GOF 2.0 more stable.
 
Well I dislike moving back steps but the crash seems more likely to do with sinking ships. After another attempt at the encounter I demasted and boarded all three ships without a crash. I had the game running with High priority for processing and there was low wind speed so it took quite awhile. The main difference is I did not sink any ships.. In other words:
1) The crash seems more likely to be related to already sinking ships. I base this on your experience and the difference in my brief re-plays.
2) I purposely demasted and also became demasted in the final run and there were no crashes. I however did not attempt it with time compression, and once again I did not sink any ships.

As a side note, all three ships were Class 4 Mermaid Greif's, and this ship has the cannon glitch where you can unload cannons for an unlimited amount of cannons.

I'll have to be a bit more vigilant with crashes and have decided to save every half hour so that I have a better chance of being able to re-create crashes to see if there is a trigger or not. Thanks for your dedication to getting GoF functioning well!

As it stands now I'll continue to keep playing CM 3.2 until you release a GoF version you feel needs testing.
 
I've put in a couple more hours and have gotten 2 more crashes. Fact is the ship Mermaid Grief is involved in battle with both crashes so I believe that is the primary cause now, as I see this ship and know to save. Also, the game seems to send them after me frequently so I'm beginning to think it is the primary source of my crashes.

This last crash was just as the first front mass was destroyed; CTD.
 
I've already released a GOF version bud, GOF 2.0 beta thats all up and ready for testing. As it stands i haven't had any crashes yet but its early day's and i have removed almost half the ships from the game and one of those ships is your friend "Mermaid Grief". You can download GOF 2.0 and its latest patch from here. http://www.piratesahoy.net/threads/gentlemen-of-fortune-2-0-beta.19345/

Its is very much a testing version though and i can't garantee it will be perfect and no CTD's will happen. But its proving so far to be very stable, although i had some lag last night for some reason which i can't explain. I thourght it was a ship model so i replaced them and the textures and the game was still laggy. But i have only experienced the lag issue's twice now in the space of 3 day's of some 4 to 6 hours testing per day.
 
Back
Top