<b><!--coloro:#FF0000--><span style="color:#FF0000"><!--/coloro-->WARNING:<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--></b> This is a VERY long post. Please DO read it though. I have some important points in there.
Hello all,
Now, on the dawn of Age of Pirates' release, it might be time for us to think about the future of our modding work for Pirates of the Caribbean. Will we all drop all our work and start playing AoP? Will we try and move our mods into AoP (provided that AoP is properly moddable)? Or will we keep trying to improve PotC as much as we can. Personally, I truly do not want to drop all our work and as long as there are still people modding and playing PotC, I want to be here as well, trying to do what I can to improve the game as well.
Over the years, we and other people have contributed to what is now known as "The Build mod". Build 12 is the most recent "official" release. However, since about 1,5 years after Build 12's release, we have worked on what is known as "The Post Build 12 mods". I have kept adding new stuff and trying to fix stuff, but we, so far, haven't made a stable Build 13. I think the time has come to finish a Build 13 as quickly as possible and continue our modding work in the Post Build 13 mods. I would suggest to take the old November release as a base and just add the most recent bugfixes to it. Then release it as Build 13 as quickly as possible. I suggest testing it for about a month before making the final release though. I will make this Build 13 version as soon as I possibly can and release it for testing.
As for the work on the Post Build 13 mods: So far, the Build mod has been a mod in which any new mod that is nice to have in the game was added, without the people who do the modding trying to acchieve a common goal. People just mod away and I add it together. This, of course, makes for quite a nice game (as evidenced by the Post Build 12 mods), but doesn't make it a very coherent whole. I want to suggest that we try and formulate a common goal (as suggested by Ron Losey). Then we could try and work together trying to make the required mods to acchieve that goal. Since yesterday, I have a lot of ideas for mods that would immerse the player more into the game and that would change the micro-management into macro-management (you still have to manage a bit, but not for every single character anymore). My idea is to make a to-do list of mods, then everybody who wants to can try and work on one of these mods. I will only add ideas to that list if the person who thinks it up actually has a slight idea of how to make it. This doesn't mean that this person nescessarily will make the mod, but it does mean that somebody has an idea of how to do it. I would also like to make all large mods into smaller mods that, when added together, make for a large mod. This will enable people with little modding experience or little time to mod to still contribute to the overal game in an important way. And because we will all be working together, the modders can help the modders-to-be to make some of the small sub-mods.
<!--coloro:#FF0000--><span style="color:#FF0000"><!--/coloro-->Begin new text --><!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->
My idea is to split up complicated mods into small parts that are reasonably easy to acchieve. Then even people who aren't good at modding can try and work on one of these small subparts. And when you add all those small parts together, you have a very impressive piece of work.
<!--coloro:#FF0000--><span style="color:#FF0000"><!--/coloro-->End new text <--<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->
When I have the time, I will make a list of ideas I have for the game and put them on my site. Then, when anybody wants to add anything, post it and I'll add it to the list as well, if it fits into the general goal we'll be trying to acchieve. If a mod is on the list, it doesn't mean it'll get done, but that list could make for a nice guideline of things that could be improved, so that people who don't know what to mod will be given some ideas to begin with, including some ideas on how to make them work.
So the main questions posed here are:
- Do you want PotC modding to continue? Are you interested in playing/modding PotC even eafter AoP is released? If you want to mod for AoP, would you allow the mods to be added to PotC as well (if that is at all possible)?
- Would you agree that a finished stable Build 13 would be better than keeping to work on the Post Build 12 mods without ever acchieving something final? And would you agree it's better to make a Build 13 version excluding some new mods than making a Build 13 version that is buggy?
- If you are a modder, do you want to participate in the PotC modding team that will try to pursue a common goal as described in the previous two paragraphs? Please note: If you want to help out, that doesn't mean you HAVE to do anything. It just means that we'll know who we can ask for help if we need it.
- If you are a gamer who doesn't want to mod, do you want to playtest the Post Build 13 mods we would be trying to make?
- If you are a gamer who would like to mod, would you like to learn modding by participating in this community project?
Please note: Individual mods would still be appreciated and will certainly be added into the Post Build 13 mods as well. The idea I propose is not meant to limit people's modding in any single way. It is only meant to give us a common goal. Hopefully, this will help us to use people's modding skills in a more efficient way and hopefully this will also help in getting people who want to learn modding to learn it by trying to make some of the sub-mods. If you do not wish to participate, you will not be excluded from PotC modding, of course. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/icon_mrgreen1.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="
" border="0" alt="icon_mrgreen1.gif" />
Please give your views on these matters. So far, no decisions have been made. I just propose something that I think might be a good idea. Feel free to completely disagree. I hope to spark some debate, after which we will have a clear view of the future for PotC modding ahead of us.
As far as I am concerned, PotC modding will live on and it will be better than ever! <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/danse1.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="
" border="0" alt="danse1.gif" />
<b>Example of my "submods" idea:</b>
- Hireable characters (weapon's officer, carpenter, doctor), who don't function as regular officer, but who will stay aboard the ship's decks. When you are aboard the ship, you can use their services, when you're on land, you can't use their services.
> The doctor would be able to heal crew members and officers when you are aboard the ship.
> The carpenter can accompany you on shore and can repair the ship, but will not participate in fights like regular officers.
> By talking to the weapon's officer, you can give gunpowder and ammo to all your officers (and possible land crew members) at once. This is taken from your ship's supply of gunpowder and bullets.
--> We would need two new goods: Gunpowder and bullets. Gunpowder is used in large quantities when firing cannons. When you give gunpowder [items] to the crew, the amount of gunpowder [good] will decrease. The same goes for bullets. This saves you the trouble of buying gunpowder and bullets one by one. You could then buy them in large quantities. If you are on land and somebody does run out of ammo, you can still buy it in seperately (and for a higher price) from item traders.
--> The weapon's officer would be able to reset the bladedamage counter for all officers and crewmembers when aboard the ship. This saves you a visit to the blacksmith's. However, your blades still might get damaged if you don't visit your ship every now and then and get your weapon's officer to fix it. So that replaces the micro-management (having to check everybody's blade over and over again and spending ages in blacksmiths) with macro-management (having to talk to the weapon's officer every now and then). Only when your blade wasn't fixed in time by the weapon's officer, will you have to repair it at a blacksmith's.
These ideas will:
1) Make the ship be more of your own movable home base.
2) Make the new officer types actually be very different from regular officers and lets them live up to their officer type's name.
3) Decrease the amount of micro-management without actually removing the features completely.
I hope you will find some merit in my ideas and I hope I will get some support in the ideas proposed above.
Hello all,
Now, on the dawn of Age of Pirates' release, it might be time for us to think about the future of our modding work for Pirates of the Caribbean. Will we all drop all our work and start playing AoP? Will we try and move our mods into AoP (provided that AoP is properly moddable)? Or will we keep trying to improve PotC as much as we can. Personally, I truly do not want to drop all our work and as long as there are still people modding and playing PotC, I want to be here as well, trying to do what I can to improve the game as well.
Over the years, we and other people have contributed to what is now known as "The Build mod". Build 12 is the most recent "official" release. However, since about 1,5 years after Build 12's release, we have worked on what is known as "The Post Build 12 mods". I have kept adding new stuff and trying to fix stuff, but we, so far, haven't made a stable Build 13. I think the time has come to finish a Build 13 as quickly as possible and continue our modding work in the Post Build 13 mods. I would suggest to take the old November release as a base and just add the most recent bugfixes to it. Then release it as Build 13 as quickly as possible. I suggest testing it for about a month before making the final release though. I will make this Build 13 version as soon as I possibly can and release it for testing.
As for the work on the Post Build 13 mods: So far, the Build mod has been a mod in which any new mod that is nice to have in the game was added, without the people who do the modding trying to acchieve a common goal. People just mod away and I add it together. This, of course, makes for quite a nice game (as evidenced by the Post Build 12 mods), but doesn't make it a very coherent whole. I want to suggest that we try and formulate a common goal (as suggested by Ron Losey). Then we could try and work together trying to make the required mods to acchieve that goal. Since yesterday, I have a lot of ideas for mods that would immerse the player more into the game and that would change the micro-management into macro-management (you still have to manage a bit, but not for every single character anymore). My idea is to make a to-do list of mods, then everybody who wants to can try and work on one of these mods. I will only add ideas to that list if the person who thinks it up actually has a slight idea of how to make it. This doesn't mean that this person nescessarily will make the mod, but it does mean that somebody has an idea of how to do it. I would also like to make all large mods into smaller mods that, when added together, make for a large mod. This will enable people with little modding experience or little time to mod to still contribute to the overal game in an important way. And because we will all be working together, the modders can help the modders-to-be to make some of the small sub-mods.
<!--coloro:#FF0000--><span style="color:#FF0000"><!--/coloro-->Begin new text --><!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->
My idea is to split up complicated mods into small parts that are reasonably easy to acchieve. Then even people who aren't good at modding can try and work on one of these small subparts. And when you add all those small parts together, you have a very impressive piece of work.
<!--coloro:#FF0000--><span style="color:#FF0000"><!--/coloro-->End new text <--<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->
When I have the time, I will make a list of ideas I have for the game and put them on my site. Then, when anybody wants to add anything, post it and I'll add it to the list as well, if it fits into the general goal we'll be trying to acchieve. If a mod is on the list, it doesn't mean it'll get done, but that list could make for a nice guideline of things that could be improved, so that people who don't know what to mod will be given some ideas to begin with, including some ideas on how to make them work.
So the main questions posed here are:
- Do you want PotC modding to continue? Are you interested in playing/modding PotC even eafter AoP is released? If you want to mod for AoP, would you allow the mods to be added to PotC as well (if that is at all possible)?
- Would you agree that a finished stable Build 13 would be better than keeping to work on the Post Build 12 mods without ever acchieving something final? And would you agree it's better to make a Build 13 version excluding some new mods than making a Build 13 version that is buggy?
- If you are a modder, do you want to participate in the PotC modding team that will try to pursue a common goal as described in the previous two paragraphs? Please note: If you want to help out, that doesn't mean you HAVE to do anything. It just means that we'll know who we can ask for help if we need it.
- If you are a gamer who doesn't want to mod, do you want to playtest the Post Build 13 mods we would be trying to make?
- If you are a gamer who would like to mod, would you like to learn modding by participating in this community project?
Please note: Individual mods would still be appreciated and will certainly be added into the Post Build 13 mods as well. The idea I propose is not meant to limit people's modding in any single way. It is only meant to give us a common goal. Hopefully, this will help us to use people's modding skills in a more efficient way and hopefully this will also help in getting people who want to learn modding to learn it by trying to make some of the sub-mods. If you do not wish to participate, you will not be excluded from PotC modding, of course. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/icon_mrgreen1.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="
" border="0" alt="icon_mrgreen1.gif" />Please give your views on these matters. So far, no decisions have been made. I just propose something that I think might be a good idea. Feel free to completely disagree. I hope to spark some debate, after which we will have a clear view of the future for PotC modding ahead of us.
As far as I am concerned, PotC modding will live on and it will be better than ever! <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/danse1.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="
" border="0" alt="danse1.gif" /><b>Example of my "submods" idea:</b>
- Hireable characters (weapon's officer, carpenter, doctor), who don't function as regular officer, but who will stay aboard the ship's decks. When you are aboard the ship, you can use their services, when you're on land, you can't use their services.
> The doctor would be able to heal crew members and officers when you are aboard the ship.
> The carpenter can accompany you on shore and can repair the ship, but will not participate in fights like regular officers.
> By talking to the weapon's officer, you can give gunpowder and ammo to all your officers (and possible land crew members) at once. This is taken from your ship's supply of gunpowder and bullets.
--> We would need two new goods: Gunpowder and bullets. Gunpowder is used in large quantities when firing cannons. When you give gunpowder [items] to the crew, the amount of gunpowder [good] will decrease. The same goes for bullets. This saves you the trouble of buying gunpowder and bullets one by one. You could then buy them in large quantities. If you are on land and somebody does run out of ammo, you can still buy it in seperately (and for a higher price) from item traders.
--> The weapon's officer would be able to reset the bladedamage counter for all officers and crewmembers when aboard the ship. This saves you a visit to the blacksmith's. However, your blades still might get damaged if you don't visit your ship every now and then and get your weapon's officer to fix it. So that replaces the micro-management (having to check everybody's blade over and over again and spending ages in blacksmiths) with macro-management (having to talk to the weapon's officer every now and then). Only when your blade wasn't fixed in time by the weapon's officer, will you have to repair it at a blacksmith's.
These ideas will:
1) Make the ship be more of your own movable home base.
2) Make the new officer types actually be very different from regular officers and lets them live up to their officer type's name.
3) Decrease the amount of micro-management without actually removing the features completely.
I hope you will find some merit in my ideas and I hope I will get some support in the ideas proposed above.
)" border="0" alt="smile2.gif" /> I suggest, keeping the profile of post build 12 maybe for post build 13 for experiment, and test, but always put together a serious, new addition: the regular build.
" border="0" alt="bow.gif" />
" border="0" alt="modding.gif" />
" border="0" alt="par-ty.gif" />
" border="0" alt="buds.gif" /> 
" border="0" alt="wink.gif" /> ).
" border="0" alt="yes.gif" /> Coding is no secret magic science, it's a logical language that you can learn like you learned to manage this computer you are currently using. There are C+ tutorials, and there are PotC modding tutorials. Read them, start with simple changes to existing dialogs, and after some time you'll be able to do the mods you want. But you must learn it yourself, no one can "learn it to you" <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/dunno.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="
" border="0" alt="dunno.gif" />h
" border="0" alt="whistling.gif" /> <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="
" border="0" alt="biggrin.gif" />)idea1:but there is 1 thing i'm missing in the game
this was the thing i was missing <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="
