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Strike Colors

A

Argos

Guest
I love this game and appreciate the work that has gone into modding it. So first off thanks.

But there are two things in the game that drive me nuts.

1. No ships ever "strike their colors" This was a common occurence in naval battles of the time period modeled here. I am so tired of closing to grappling distance in a 0.1 wind with a ship so incredibly crippled and crew-less that there is no hope but surrender. Some ships should simply strike colors at the sight of overwhelming odds with no possibility of escape. To add balance to this surrender, I would even suggest not letting me keep ships that surrender without a huge hit to my honor or don't let me keep them at all! It is preferable to chasing them for 20 minutes Beside if I want to keep it, I can always choose not to accept their surrender and then be forced to close to grapple distance. Even give them a battle bonus if they have offered surrender and I have refused.

2. Spinning ships. I am flabbergasted when a demasted ship continues to spin at the full speed of their maneuver rating when a mast has gone over the side. Taking a mast down not only eliminated speed but also any ability to maneuver as the mast was usually still connected to the ship with ropes. The ships should take a significant maneuver hit with each mast that goes down and if there are no masts, there should be ZERO movement other than wind drag or tide. But certainly no steerage!

Thanks for listening.
 
Ahoy Argos!
Well, to tell you the truth, COAS is more of a "good" graphics sailing simulator.
If you want more realism, then i could list a million more things that arent realistic. We have worked hard at creating the most realistic simulator we can, but as soon as we finish something, a new game comes out. If you want a "real" feel, then you need to buy POTC. In this game, ships do strike their colors. When they do so, you go up to the ship, only you (the captain) and your fighters board the ship, and you talk with the other captain. Here, you can either demand money and crew, take the captain as an officer, make the other captain your ally (and he keeps his ship), or simply kill them all and take the ship. If you decide to go for the money, you also get to plunder the ship.
As for the manouvering bit, you're right. In POTC the ship is more affected by the conditions. Like you said, the ship will not move if it loses to many sails, also if theship is going against the wind, not only will the ship stop going in that direction, but it will actually go in reverse. Bear in mind that any of these options can be toggled on and off to suit all kinds of players.
Even though COAS has supposedly "better" graphics, if you think about it, not all oceans are blue and pretty. Most of them are gray and depressing. This is mostly during the nighttime. If this game was 100% realistic, the ocean would look gray like 60% of the time. Like Pieter has said before, the game looks better in a "cartoony" blue than in a boring gray.
........ well, i hope i answered your questions.

P.S i dont know if you already did, but you should sign up. xD:
 
Ahoy Argos!
Well, to tell you the truth, COAS is more of a "good" graphics sailing simulator.
If you want more realism, then i could list a million more things that arent realistic. We have worked hard at creating the most realistic simulator we can, but as soon as we finish something, a new game comes out. If you want a "real" feel, then you need to buy POTC. In this game, ships do strike their colors. When they do so, you go up to the ship, only you (the captain) and your fighters board the ship, and you talk with the other captain. Here, you can either demand money and crew, take the captain as an officer, make the other captain your ally (and he keeps his ship), or simply kill them all and take the ship. If you decide to go for the money, you also get to plunder the ship.
As for the manouvering bit, you're right. In POTC the ship is more affected by the conditions. Like you said, the ship will not move if it loses to many sails, also if theship is going against the wind, not only will the ship stop going in that direction, but it will actually go in reverse. Bear in mind that any of these options can be toggled on and off to suit all kinds of players.
Even though COAS has supposedly "better" graphics, if you think about it, not all oceans are blue and pretty. Most of them are gray and depressing. This is mostly during the nighttime. If this game was 100% realistic, the ocean would look gray like 60% of the time. Like Pieter has said before, the game looks better in a "cartoony" blue than in a boring gray.
........ well, i hope i answered your questions.

P.S i dont know if you already did, but you should sign up. xD:

Why don't we take the experience to the next level and do what was done with PoTC to CoAS then having graphics and all thus even more? PoTC must be coming to its limit by now right? At least in as far as the engine will allow for the technology of a decade ago.
 
Ahoy Argos!
Well, to tell you the truth, COAS is more of a "good" graphics sailing simulator.
If you want more realism, then i could list a million more things that arent realistic. We have worked hard at creating the most realistic simulator we can, but as soon as we finish something, a new game comes out. If you want a "real" feel, then you need to buy POTC. In this game, ships do strike their colors. When they do so, you go up to the ship, only you (the captain) and your fighters board the ship, and you talk with the other captain. Here, you can either demand money and crew, take the captain as an officer, make the other captain your ally (and he keeps his ship), or simply kill them all and take the ship. If you decide to go for the money, you also get to plunder the ship.
As for the manouvering bit, you're right. In POTC the ship is more affected by the conditions. Like you said, the ship will not move if it loses to many sails, also if theship is going against the wind, not only will the ship stop going in that direction, but it will actually go in reverse. Bear in mind that any of these options can be toggled on and off to suit all kinds of players.
Even though COAS has supposedly "better" graphics, if you think about it, not all oceans are blue and pretty. Most of them are gray and depressing. This is mostly during the nighttime. If this game was 100% realistic, the ocean would look gray like 60% of the time. Like Pieter has said before, the game looks better in a "cartoony" blue than in a boring gray.
........ well, i hope i answered your questions.

P.S i dont know if you already did, but you should sign up. xD:


Thanks for the reply. I already own POTC and my dissatisfaction with that game's linear limitations led me to find you guys. Don't sell yourselves short, this mod is a way better game than POTC. I am not interested in a strict realism sim, I am interested in fun and engaging gameplay. I had run an online multiplayer gameworld for many years before most of today's pups were out of diapers. I have have followed this genre since its inception. Played the hell outta Sid Meier's Pirates on a PC that had less power than the calculator I now use. I have followed Akella since their inception because they finally did the genre justice with Sea Dogs (even considering their grasp of English) and then kinda sold out/monetized with POTC (kudos to them though).

The mod community here has taken this genre to the best sailing game ever developed in terms of the level of fun. But these two things seemed to me to be two big misses and seemingly minor code adjustments. (Well at least the maneuver hit would seem to be minor). The strike colors option seemed to be possible as an extension of the "discreet surrender" code already written for boarding, though the logic testing during the battle I grant you is more in depth. But it still seems to be there as many times smaller/weaker/more injured ships will simply cut and run. An additional calc there to test if they CAN outrun their opponent could trigger a discreet surrender type pop-up that strikes colors. It seems straightforward enough from a code standpoint, but I know enough to know it hardly ever is. Thanks again for your response though and thanks for a great game.
 
Argos,

I see your point and that is what we are trying to do with the CM mod and coming soon the GoF (Gentleman of Fortune) mod but alas WE ARE SHORT OF CODERS AND OTHER MODDERS TO ACCOMPLISH THE TASK.
icon_wink.gif


There is some hope that when the PoTC Build teem finishes Build 14 then they are going to work on CoAS with us. Hope and Pray!
keith.gif
 
also, dont forget that we have the source code, so this will help with the transition from POTC to COAS.

P.S: sorry if im being too obvious xD: but you do know that there is also a mod for POTC that has been worked on much more than COAS, right? I say this because i completely agree that the stock POTC was a very limited game. The ships looked like the textures were just glued on (well most of them) and the game was too easy. This was due to Disney (...no surprise there...) buying the game in time for the movie, resulting in an uncompleted game that was just put together in order to be playable (barely). Again, sorry if im just repeating information, but all the extra stuff i mentioned is from the mod, not the game. COAS is being worked on by a VERY small amount of people.
The work on POTC is almost like a loophole. Many great things are released in a stable version of the mod, but it has a few bugs. They are fixed, but someone comes up with another idea. The idea is added, which causes more bugs. This keeps on repeating until soon all the bugs build up and cause major bugs or dissfunctions. I am sure that in the near future, we will wrap up POTC in a clean, bug free way and be proud of it. Then we will begin to work hard on COAS, and the cycle repeats! xD:
 
Yeah I saw the POTC mods and think I even installed build 14 at some point, but once I found COAS I figured why would anyone continue to fool with POTC? It's engine is ancient, the world is so limiting because it is so small and the graphics and game are so limited comparably. So while I knew it was out there I guess I'm shocked to learn people still spend time modding it when there is a far better base world to start with in COAS. I guess people largely stick with what they know.

I looked at this code a bit. The stuff I'm looking for is in Sea_AI tasks and LAI_boarding. for the strike colors feature. It seems a task may need to be added to AI_tasks for AISurrender or something that uses some of the ransack functions defined in boarding.

I don't see maneuverability being affected anywhere in the damage stuff. So the question becomes once again for me, would I rather play the game or code it? Gah!
 
Good Discussion Mates,

What absolutely kills me is that the code to strike colors is actually in AOP1: Carribean Tales. It slays me why they didn't transfer that behavior over to AOP2: COAS. :shrug :modding

I think part of our future development needs to be not just the fusion of POTC and COAS mod work, but also bringing in some of the other older great features we lost from AOP1:

... like: ships striking colors, Bronze cannon, being able to choose which (iron or bronze) guns or which sails you wanted on your ships at the shipyards, being able to pay off a pursuer to let you go at sea. These were great features and I don't understand why they weren't pulled forward into COAS.

MK
 
I think I've seen ships strike their colors but its quite rare and usually you must have overwhelming odds for it to happen....which doesn't always happen :facepalm

MK is right too, there are some things from AoP that isn't in CoAS, such as being able to upgrade your hull and sails.
 
Hi, I didn't work on it for a week, I hope to get some time today to modify some files. For now you can upgrade hull and sails at shipyard (works but difference of speed isn't very good and I get an error.log) and if you want to surrender, enemy ship takes your money and you get only 3 seconds to go on the worldmap before the ship become enemy again.
 
I like the sound of this. can you surrender at any time in the battle like if after 30 or so minutes your loosing the battle can you strike your colours still?
 
Hi, sorry for not answering before but I got a job for two months (Truck driver) and didn't get time to work on the mod. I hope I'll finish it next two weeks (there's a full Error.log and I know Pieter doesn't like it ;) ), and if not I think I could put my files on FTP, then anybody who wants it can have a look and help me.

Philippe.
 
Hi,

bad news, I always get an error.log and I have a lot of work to do on it, and I'm not on my computer, so I had to put my files on Megaupload:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=TAAUMU7L

Good news, you can now change the color of your sails at the Shipyarder, for "only" 3000 pieces. And the files I put are for the combined mod you've done.

Philippe.
 
Nice work philippe, i have just made the changes compatable with GOF V1.0. :onya

Update:
After doing some testing i noticed some characters when boarding a ship do not have textures, this is most likely something i have messed up. The one thing i did notice is when you hit the upgrade tab in the shipyard the three imagies are blank which boxes, is that how it is at the moment or have i missed something because the upload didn't have any TGA files or edits made to pictures.Ini. :shrug
 
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