The negative aspects first: The looks of the buildings that this mod adds to the game are sometimes a bit odd. I am rather ignorant of modelling, only thanks to Ines Diaz' Tool could I cobble new building models together (from other model(part)s ), and often that shows through.
The buildings are superimposed on the original locationmodel so that they look sometimes out of place. The inhabitants must be completely motionless cause the building is sort of tied to them. And there is no collision detection: characters can walk right through the walls like ghosts.
All modellers are highly welcome to improve that, or to add their own buildings.
Anyone who is willing to overlook odd looks can enjoy following features:
Building Set: the 'settlement' gameplay feature
-----------------------------------------------
The Building Set mod enables you to build houses, fortifications and other architecture elements during the running game. Those buildings can be erected anywhere you like them, you only need an officer, planks, gold and some sailors. So you can build yourself a townmansion, jungle hideout, privateerport or fortress. All can be dismantled again(by you or by hostile action) and they perform a gameplay function: you can go into the buildings and talk the inhabitants(i.e. your tenants, workers and soldiers) to use their various services or take their money or the goods they produce. The attached BuildingSetPic.JPG file shows an example.
The screenshot shows the formerly empty Octopus Bay where Nathanial Hawk has recently built the new settlement "Hawk's Harbour". The town is a bit crammed cause I squeezed all buildingtypes into one screenshot. YOUR town will of course look better <img src="http://www.piratesahoy.com/forum/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/icon_wink.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="
" border="0" alt="icon_wink.gif" /> cause you can position each building where it suits you best.
[attachment=279:attachment]
Inhabitable buildings
..provide shelter and healing for you, and you can chat and hear rumours in there. Furthermore different buildingtypes offer various services:
-The farm to the right produces food for your crew or coffee for export, the palms behind it (which you planted) yield planks or ebony.
-Left of the farm is a simple house which pays rent. The marketstalls in front turn it into a store with the usual trading possibilities. The merchants in the marketstalls pay taxes to you.
-The mansion in the center houses "Madame Monique's etablissement for gentlemen's entertainment". There you can throw a party for your hands to lift their morale, or crimp sailors for your crew.
-The tower to the left is an 'observatory' which serves as your administration center. There you meet producers of SWAK weapons, wannabe officers, foreign diplomats, tributary planters or merchants with convoyquests.
Workshops
Around the observatory you can see three wooden workshop shacks(with Alan Smithee's blacksmith as foreman). As you built them all their goods and services are for free. There are four types of workshops:
-shipyards produce sails and repair your ship.
-rum distilleries
-cannonball foundries
-mines yield jewels or precious minerals (if your miners are lucky and well motivated)
So you can develop a self sustaining 'economy' that provides all you and your ship need. A very simple economic model determines your income from rents, taxes and workshops: every day a building accumulates a certain amount of money or goods. If you visit your building you can take the savings and stores away. But if you do that too often (i.e. treat your subjects badly) your reputation plummets. And that will in turn make your subjects unruly, decrease their productivity, trigger riots. You can increase reputation and productivity by being a benevolent ruler and lowering taxes.
As I said, rather simple, and the balance of amounts is probably not to everyones liking. But you can easily tweak that to your liking.
Fortifications
Buildings which can be armed with cannon that shoot deadly grenades at enemycharacters. You can erect fortifications to protect your settlement, and protection is really necessary: Your estate may be attacked by indians, rioting slaves, workers or doxies, conquistadores, mobs of depraved noblemen or fanatic monks... So you should make sure that you have enough fortifications at the right strategic positions.
You can also erect (field)fortifications anywhere in the game, whenever you want some enemies to be blasted away. E.g. you can sneak in a fort and position a cannon in some corner and then start the fight..
Devious minds can "build" mines, boxes boobytrapped with grenades which explode if ANYone steps on them.
You can see some cannon on the screenshot, behind the stockades beside the tradepost and in the stonefaced bastion left of the mansion.
The crenellated "keep" right of the mansion has an additional funtion: the keeper stores your money and items for you, and they are absolutely safe with him.
Building Set: the modding tool for mod newbies
---------------------------------------------
Apart from creating new buildings you can also easily create dialogs for their inhabitants: I added blank slots to the dialogs where you can insert your own texts with any texteditor. You can also tweak the amounts of money and goods that you can earn, the chances/risks of un/pleasant events etc. The inhabitants will even give you modding hints <img src="http://www.piratesahoy.com/forum/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="
" border="0" alt="smile.gif" />
Believe me, anyone who can work with an texteditor is able to mod at this level. And as you'll work in a single selfcontained file only you can't do much harm <img src="http://www.piratesahoy.com/forum/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wink.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="" border="0" alt="wink.gif" />
Building Set: the modding tool for changing the landscape
---------------------------------------------------------
Modders who would like to create locations that look different from the stock models can now add buildings and landscape elements(woods, rocks). As example what you can do I added some buildings to Oxbay port and the new suburbs of Oxbay and Greenford(now bugfree and really worth a visit <img src="http://www.piratesahoy.com/forum/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="" border="0" alt="smile.gif" /> ) Buildings can also be erected or destroyed as part of a quest (e.g. Frogs build a fort to blockade Oxbay and you must destroy it)
Each building requires only a single line of code. E.g. this command..
Build_here(pchar, "mansion", "office", true);
..erects a mansion with office interior immediately in front of the player. This one..
Build_at("Oxbay_port", "forest", "distillery", 10.0, 2.8, 45.0, 0.2, LAI_GROUP_PLAYER);
..erects a 'building' at a certain position in a certain location.
I put examples of those functions into NK's fabulous console.c file so that you can experiment with it. All you have to do to create a new building is changing the variables and pressing F12 during the game.
To add buildings to a mod include one of those commands into any code, e.g. a quest or a dialog. Adding them to reinit.c will create those buildings upon reinitialization.
To create a new TYPE of building or landscape feature you only have to make a new item in items_init.c (Once you have found or made a fitting model)
Installation
------------
1. If you have the latest! version of Pieter Boelen's modpack installed:
1.1 Download BuildingSet.zip from the FTP server at Piratesahaoy.net
1.2 Unzip BuildingSet.zip into your Pirates of the Caribbean folder
Gamestart
---------
Pressing 'I' to reinit activates all buildingset functions. (Though I made a few minor improvements to the suburbs of Oxbay and Greenford that will only show up if you start a new game)
Hire an officer and order him to assemble a working party. He will explain how you can erect a building. The inhabitants of the new buildings will explain their functions and how you can tweak them.
Technical Details:
------------------
The Building Set does NOT change to the location model. All those "buildings" are actually items, of Gun_item_type or Blade_item_type. They appear in the game if they are being equiped/attached to characters, which will pose also as inhabitants (your loyal subjects )
Advantage of that seemingly weird method:
-buildings can be erected anytime anywhere
-they can also be destroyed, by dismantling or hostile attacks
-quests or other gameplayevents can create buildings, i.e. truly random locations could have an ever changing architecture
-buildings can perform gameplayfunctions by means of character AI
-you can modify or influence them by means of a dialogbased menu
-new buildingtypes can always be added just by defining a new item; new functions by editing AI or dialogs
Disadvantage:
-Buildings may look a bit out of place cause they are put "on top" of the locationmodel, especially on uneven ground
-"Inhabitants" must remain motionless cause the buildings are attached to them
IMHO the disadvantages are petty cosmetics compared to the opportunities this mod offers, gameplaywise as well as for creating new locations.
All functions for erecting or deleting buildings are in CCCFunctions.c, with comments that explain how this works. Changes to existing program files are marked with "// ccc building kit" . Additional program files have a header "// ccc building kit, new file". The filenames for the new models in the ammo and character folder all begin with 'B_...'.
The buildings are superimposed on the original locationmodel so that they look sometimes out of place. The inhabitants must be completely motionless cause the building is sort of tied to them. And there is no collision detection: characters can walk right through the walls like ghosts.
All modellers are highly welcome to improve that, or to add their own buildings.
Anyone who is willing to overlook odd looks can enjoy following features:
Building Set: the 'settlement' gameplay feature
-----------------------------------------------
The Building Set mod enables you to build houses, fortifications and other architecture elements during the running game. Those buildings can be erected anywhere you like them, you only need an officer, planks, gold and some sailors. So you can build yourself a townmansion, jungle hideout, privateerport or fortress. All can be dismantled again(by you or by hostile action) and they perform a gameplay function: you can go into the buildings and talk the inhabitants(i.e. your tenants, workers and soldiers) to use their various services or take their money or the goods they produce. The attached BuildingSetPic.JPG file shows an example.
The screenshot shows the formerly empty Octopus Bay where Nathanial Hawk has recently built the new settlement "Hawk's Harbour". The town is a bit crammed cause I squeezed all buildingtypes into one screenshot. YOUR town will of course look better <img src="http://www.piratesahoy.com/forum/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/icon_wink.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="
" border="0" alt="icon_wink.gif" /> cause you can position each building where it suits you best.[attachment=279:attachment]
Inhabitable buildings
..provide shelter and healing for you, and you can chat and hear rumours in there. Furthermore different buildingtypes offer various services:
-The farm to the right produces food for your crew or coffee for export, the palms behind it (which you planted) yield planks or ebony.
-Left of the farm is a simple house which pays rent. The marketstalls in front turn it into a store with the usual trading possibilities. The merchants in the marketstalls pay taxes to you.
-The mansion in the center houses "Madame Monique's etablissement for gentlemen's entertainment". There you can throw a party for your hands to lift their morale, or crimp sailors for your crew.
-The tower to the left is an 'observatory' which serves as your administration center. There you meet producers of SWAK weapons, wannabe officers, foreign diplomats, tributary planters or merchants with convoyquests.
Workshops
Around the observatory you can see three wooden workshop shacks(with Alan Smithee's blacksmith as foreman). As you built them all their goods and services are for free. There are four types of workshops:
-shipyards produce sails and repair your ship.
-rum distilleries
-cannonball foundries
-mines yield jewels or precious minerals (if your miners are lucky and well motivated)
So you can develop a self sustaining 'economy' that provides all you and your ship need. A very simple economic model determines your income from rents, taxes and workshops: every day a building accumulates a certain amount of money or goods. If you visit your building you can take the savings and stores away. But if you do that too often (i.e. treat your subjects badly) your reputation plummets. And that will in turn make your subjects unruly, decrease their productivity, trigger riots. You can increase reputation and productivity by being a benevolent ruler and lowering taxes.
As I said, rather simple, and the balance of amounts is probably not to everyones liking. But you can easily tweak that to your liking.
Fortifications
Buildings which can be armed with cannon that shoot deadly grenades at enemycharacters. You can erect fortifications to protect your settlement, and protection is really necessary: Your estate may be attacked by indians, rioting slaves, workers or doxies, conquistadores, mobs of depraved noblemen or fanatic monks... So you should make sure that you have enough fortifications at the right strategic positions.
You can also erect (field)fortifications anywhere in the game, whenever you want some enemies to be blasted away. E.g. you can sneak in a fort and position a cannon in some corner and then start the fight..
Devious minds can "build" mines, boxes boobytrapped with grenades which explode if ANYone steps on them.
You can see some cannon on the screenshot, behind the stockades beside the tradepost and in the stonefaced bastion left of the mansion.
The crenellated "keep" right of the mansion has an additional funtion: the keeper stores your money and items for you, and they are absolutely safe with him.
Building Set: the modding tool for mod newbies
---------------------------------------------
Apart from creating new buildings you can also easily create dialogs for their inhabitants: I added blank slots to the dialogs where you can insert your own texts with any texteditor. You can also tweak the amounts of money and goods that you can earn, the chances/risks of un/pleasant events etc. The inhabitants will even give you modding hints <img src="http://www.piratesahoy.com/forum/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="
" border="0" alt="smile.gif" /> Believe me, anyone who can work with an texteditor is able to mod at this level. And as you'll work in a single selfcontained file only you can't do much harm <img src="http://www.piratesahoy.com/forum/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wink.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="
" border="0" alt="wink.gif" /> Building Set: the modding tool for changing the landscape
---------------------------------------------------------
Modders who would like to create locations that look different from the stock models can now add buildings and landscape elements(woods, rocks). As example what you can do I added some buildings to Oxbay port and the new suburbs of Oxbay and Greenford(now bugfree and really worth a visit <img src="http://www.piratesahoy.com/forum/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="
" border="0" alt="smile.gif" /> ) Buildings can also be erected or destroyed as part of a quest (e.g. Frogs build a fort to blockade Oxbay and you must destroy it)Each building requires only a single line of code. E.g. this command..
Build_here(pchar, "mansion", "office", true);
..erects a mansion with office interior immediately in front of the player. This one..
Build_at("Oxbay_port", "forest", "distillery", 10.0, 2.8, 45.0, 0.2, LAI_GROUP_PLAYER);
..erects a 'building' at a certain position in a certain location.
I put examples of those functions into NK's fabulous console.c file so that you can experiment with it. All you have to do to create a new building is changing the variables and pressing F12 during the game.
To add buildings to a mod include one of those commands into any code, e.g. a quest or a dialog. Adding them to reinit.c will create those buildings upon reinitialization.
To create a new TYPE of building or landscape feature you only have to make a new item in items_init.c (Once you have found or made a fitting model)
Installation
------------
1. If you have the latest! version of Pieter Boelen's modpack installed:
1.1 Download BuildingSet.zip from the FTP server at Piratesahaoy.net
1.2 Unzip BuildingSet.zip into your Pirates of the Caribbean folder
Gamestart
---------
Pressing 'I' to reinit activates all buildingset functions. (Though I made a few minor improvements to the suburbs of Oxbay and Greenford that will only show up if you start a new game)
Hire an officer and order him to assemble a working party. He will explain how you can erect a building. The inhabitants of the new buildings will explain their functions and how you can tweak them.
Technical Details:
------------------
The Building Set does NOT change to the location model. All those "buildings" are actually items, of Gun_item_type or Blade_item_type. They appear in the game if they are being equiped/attached to characters, which will pose also as inhabitants (your loyal subjects )
Advantage of that seemingly weird method:
-buildings can be erected anytime anywhere
-they can also be destroyed, by dismantling or hostile attacks
-quests or other gameplayevents can create buildings, i.e. truly random locations could have an ever changing architecture
-buildings can perform gameplayfunctions by means of character AI
-you can modify or influence them by means of a dialogbased menu
-new buildingtypes can always be added just by defining a new item; new functions by editing AI or dialogs
Disadvantage:
-Buildings may look a bit out of place cause they are put "on top" of the locationmodel, especially on uneven ground
-"Inhabitants" must remain motionless cause the buildings are attached to them
IMHO the disadvantages are petty cosmetics compared to the opportunities this mod offers, gameplaywise as well as for creating new locations.
All functions for erecting or deleting buildings are in CCCFunctions.c, with comments that explain how this works. Changes to existing program files are marked with "// ccc building kit" . Additional program files have a header "// ccc building kit, new file". The filenames for the new models in the ammo and character folder all begin with 'B_...'.
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