Included in Build Custom Pre-Defined Character Choices

[Pieter Boelen]

STILL TO DO:

- French Navy Officer: Jean-Baptiste du Casse in Golden Age of Piracy
- French non-navy character 1: Henri Caesar, Rebel in Napoleonic, TODO: Wish to make Port-au-Prince an independent colony at game start with appropriate flag
- French non-navy character 2: Milady de Winter, Agent in The Spanish Main, TODO: Model is currently a copy of "Daniell2"; would be nice to use a custom texture instead
- Spanish Navy Officer: Carrera de la Vega in Napoleonic
- Spanish non-navy character (optional): José Gaspar, Sailor in Revolutions
- Portuguese Navy Officer: Francisco de Almeida in Early Explorers
- Portuguese non-navy character: José Almeida, Corsair in Napoleonic
- American Navy Officer MAIN: John Paul Jones in Revolutions
- American Navy Officer (alternate): Josiah Peabody in Napoleonic, TODO: Should be OK, but would be nice to add some elements from the book it is based on
- American non-navy character 1: Jean Lafitte, French Agent in Napoleonic
- American non-navy character 2: Robert Fulton, Engineer in Napoleonic, TODO: Whatever needs to be done to make the steam frigates work better

Below some related quotes from earlier in this discussion:

As for characters for other nations, in the absence of anything better and since fictional characters are allowed, how about picking NPC's from any storyline and making them playable? Off the top of my head, for no reason other than that I've recently played "Bartolomeu o Portugues" and am now replaying "Assassin", Spain could get Enrique Padilla and Portugal could get Augusto Queiroz. Starting dates for both are between 1660 and 1665; Padilla gets "SP_Galeon50" named Gloriosa, Queiroz gets "PO_FastNavy" named A Faisca. Other data can be found in "PROGRAM\Storyline\Assassin\characters\init\TempQuest.c" and "PROGRAM\Storyline\Bartolomeu\characters\init\TempQuest.c" respectively.

Good thinking! Those two are already named in initModels.c anyway so that just requires adding a few more lines.
They're both navy characters, right?

I'm not sure about Padilla. Queiroz certainly is - that ship is the one which Bartolomeu is temporarily given for the "Hunter" chapter, with Queiroz becoming his first officer for the voyage. Padilla uses the galleon to get to Oranjestad and when he's supposed to collect Roxanne Lalliere, otherwise he generally appears on land, so he could be either army or navy. And looking at your stats above, you have more need of another army character than another navy character.

Something for you to read...
Amaro Rodriguez Felipe, alias Amaro Pargo
Jose Gaspar
Henri Caesar
The first two are Spanish pirates - the stories are highly apocryphal and contain no specific data about ships used, and the one about Amaro Pargo is written in somewhat irregular English that indicates it is not the author's first language. The story about Jose Gaspar is suitably colourful for a pirate character and puts his career between 1783 and 1821.

Henri Caesar was born to a slave family on Hispaniola, joined the revolution which saw the island become independent from France in 1804 (and, incidentally, plays merry havoc with our "Revolutions" and "Napoleonic" periods), then captured a Spanish ship in 1805 and pursued a successful pirate career until 1830. He'd probably count as French Rebel for game purposes and would therefore simultaneously give us a second French character, a second Rebel character and a second non-white character.

Anyone willing to set this up and save me the trouble of doing it? It is quite easy; explanation in initModels.c .
For navy characters with specific starting ships, NK.c might need to be updated as well, but that is purely optional.

If you have any character-specific wishes that are not currently supported by the Free Play scenarios, let me know so that we can figure something out.


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Original Opening Post:
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Another new idea I have just implemented:
When you select a character model in the Select Storyline interface, by default the scroll works for "Named" characters.
I have now added an extra "fame level" option there which is "Specific"; this will be the new default setting:

"Specific" is a character that has a storyline title and description set in initModels.c, but no actual storyline with quest content.
This just pre-defines various choices, but these can still be overridden by the player.
At the moment, there are only five choices here:
Master & Commander
The Buccaneer
Nelson's First Command
Tales of a Chevalier
Brave Black Flag

You will notice that these are the various extra storylines we have had before but that have been removed from the list.

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It is extremely easy to add more pre-defined characters to this default list.
So that is where you members come in! Which characters would you like to have added?

Or would you, for example, be interested in setting up default settings for the following characters, including storyline description and title?
Sao Feng
James Norrington
Davy Jones
Will Turner
Cutler Beckett
Danielle Greene
Blackbeard

Mostly these are PotC movie characters that we have in the game, because I know many players like to play as them.
Plus one almost-main-character from the unmodded game. Danielle deserves to be a default custom setting as well.

So that is my minimum list of characters to be included in this new "Specific" list.
However, as I mentioned before, I'd very much welcome initiative from other members too.
Is there a specific character you would like to play as? If so, provide the details and we can add that character choice in the next update!

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As for how to do it, all that is needed is lines like these to be added for a certain character model in initModels.c:

  model.name = "Julian";
   model.lastname = "McAllister";
   model.storytitle =  "Brave Black Flag";
   model.storytext  =  "You have led a mutiny against your cruel captain who meant to kill a group of your countrymen taken as pirates. Now, on the run and marked as a traitor, you must decide what path to follow. Your actions have earned you the respect of the Brotherhood of Pirates. Will you join them under the brave black flag?";
   model.loadingScreen = "Character_BraveBlackFlag.tga";
   model.playertype = PLAYER_TYPE_REBEL;
   model.difficulty = DIFFICULTY_ADVENTURER;
   model.Flags.Pirate = 19;
   model.Flags.Personal = 30;
   model.ship = "BrigRoyal";
   model.shipname = "Defiance";
   model.date.hour = 13;
   model.date.min = 20;
   model.date.sec = 33;
   model.date.day = 14;
   model.date.month = 5;
   model.date.year = 1682;

Only "storytitle" and "storytext" are required for the character to show up in the list.
But you can add whichever other lines you want to make your character more unique and/or accurate.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Some fairly large improvements were made to the Select Storyline interface here:
http://www.piratesahoy.net/threads/build-14-beta-3-5-internal-wip-for-testing.24817

Please try the different settings on the "Free Play" storyline and see what effect they have!
I'd really quite like to know if this seems like an improvement over the Beta 3.4 state.

And again to all players: Please post suggestions for other characters to add to the Specific Characters List!
It would be good to have some nice variety there for players to choose from without having to set up their own ones.

 

[Grey Roger]

I'd like to see Francis Drake. Apart from being a famous pirate, or more accurately privateer (he did his raiding with the approval of the Crown and split the proceeds with the Crown, which is basically the definition of a privateer ), that would give us a specific character in the "Early Explorers" period.

Anyone who objects to yet another English character, feel free to suggest your own choices from other nations.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

If you have any starting settings for the guy, he can be added in no-time.

 

[Grey Roger]

He can if I can find a suitable existing model, or if I can adapt one to look more like the guy:

But if I'm going to do it, it will need to wait at least until I've finished the Dutch ships and possibly until I've done the rest...

 

[Pieter Boelen]

What we did for Horatio Nelson is to copy an existing model and just create a new portrait file.
And even that isn't necessary. A portrait is pretty, but the default one can be used as a placeholder.
That means that only a few lines of code are required to set up the character and it can always be made more fancy later.

But indeed, that would be yet another English character. Which is fine by me, but we should have some non-English characters to compensate.
For example, is there a French navy officer that could be set up that can then make use of your French ship progressions?
I am thinking it would be nice to have at least one navy character for each nation.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Or would you, for example, be interested in setting up default settings for the following characters, including storyline description and title?
Sao Feng
James Norrington
Davy Jones
Will Turner
Cutler Beckett
Danielle Greene
Blackbeard

Mostly these are PotC movie characters that we have in the game, because I know many players like to play as them.
Plus one almost-main-character from the unmodded game. Danielle deserves to be a default custom setting as well.

Since I want to get this show on the road, I've written some story descriptions for these myself.

Added the Beatrice and Blaze Devlin characters too, since those are famous "new game" choices as well.
Plus I had to compensate for removing the Devlin Opera storyline from the regular install.

For Hector Barbossa I have added a new player type, "Cursed", which basically tasks you with lifting the curse of Cortés.
Should be a nice challenge and adds a bit of variety compared to the other characters.

As an "added bonus", since there is now a Free Play option for "Cursed" to begin with,
that was a good excuse to disable the active Curse of Cortés in the Free Play storyline by default.
So while you will always be able to visit Isla de Muerta if you want to yourself, random coins won't curse you in the Free Play storyline.
That should help a fair bit with the several realistic characters that are available as well.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

As mentioned, I added a bunch of extra pre-defined characters in the latest version:
http://www.piratesahoy.net/threads/build-14-beta-3-5-internal-wip-for-testing.24817/
Please try the various starting options, especially in the Free Play storyline, and let me know how it works.

I do not intend to add more characters myself, but anyone wishing to add more or to improve on the existing ones, PLEASE DO SO!
Right now I don't think we have enough variety just yet. A lot of PotC characters, some British navy and then some extra ones.
But not many historical characters, which obviously would be cool to have as well.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

It appears that the "Marine" player type was not properly defined until now. Here is some placeholder code for characters_init.c:

    case PLAYER_TYPE_GUNNER:
       ch.shiplog.Entry.log0 = "Ten long years I have spent in the navy over hot, roaring cannon. I’m half deaf and my body is riddled with grape shot and splinters but I have saved my wages diligently and today I am the proud owner of my own ship. I have a solid crew under my command who respect my time in service and the scars I carry. My days of shattered ships and drowning men may not be over but at least I’ll be pointing those guns where I choose now.";
       GiveItem2Character(ch, "blade1");
       GiveItem2Character(ch, "pistol5+2");
       GiveItem2Character(ch, "powderbarrel");
       GiveItem2Character(ch, "ammobag");
     break;
    // This -->
     case PLAYER_TYPE_MARINE:
       ch.shiplog.Entry.log0 = "Once I was a marine in the navy, but I managed to save my salary until I could afford a way out. Investing this in a new ship seems like a great way of giving me the freedom I've always wished for. So now here I am, ready to set sail on my first venture!";
       GiveItem2Character(ch, "blade11");
       GiveItem2Character(ch, "pistol2");
     break;
    // This <--
     case PLAYER_TYPE_MERCHANT:
       ch.shiplog.Entry.log0 = "I've worked long and hard for this day but it has finally come. The captain has retired to life ashore and sold me his interest in the ship. My own vessel! She is in good shape thanks to my care as first mate these last several years and I know what she and her crew can manage. I have said my last ‘Aye, sir' while standing on this deck. Now she goes where I tell her. It's good to be the captain!";
       GiveItem2Character(ch, "blade1");
       GiveItem2Character(ch, "pistol1");
       GiveItem2Character(ch, "spyglass2");
       GiveItem2Character(ch, "compass2");
       GiveItem2Character(ch, "clock1");
     break;

But that is just something I came up with in five minutes and isn't very fun. So does anyone with a creative mind have a better logbook text and starting items to suggest for a former Marine?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Nation choices available in Select Storyline depend on the period of the currently selected year.
The default Free Play choices are set in the Golden Age of Piracy.
That means that America cannot be chosen as starting nation until you change the year to a date where the USA actually exist.
I can imagine not all players would think to do that and I'm not entirely sure how to handle that.

Of course you CAN select "Robert Fulton" as starting character straight away, who is the only American character available like that.

The simplest solution would be to set the default Free Play date somewhere in Revolutions or Napoleonic.
But I'm not sure if we should do that. Anyone got any suggestions?

 

[pedrwyth]

Just tweak the free play header description to add "you can even choose America after 1770" or some such text. It'has plenty of room for a bit more text

 

[Jack Rackham]

If you want help I can try to fix Francis Drake.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

If you want help I can try to fix Francis Drake.

Would be cool!

 

[Grey Roger]

Nation choices available in Select Storyline depend on the period of the currently selected year.
The default Free Play choices are set in the Golden Age of Piracy.
That means that America cannot be chosen as starting nation until you change the year to a date where the USA actually exist.
I can imagine not all players would think to do that and I'm not entirely sure how to handle that.

Of course you CAN select "Robert Fulton" as starting character straight away, who is the only American character available like that.

The simplest solution would be to set the default Free Play date somewhere in Revolutions or Napoleonic.
But I'm not sure if we should do that. Anyone got any suggestions?

"Golden Age" remains the best default starting period for other reasons. Presumably it got that name because it was a good time to be a pirate, which is probably what most people who have picked up a game called "Pirates of the Caribbean" will want to do. It also has a good variety of ship designs, whereas many of those in "Revolutions" and "Napoleonic" are just variants on a theme of "frigate".

And then, when the player has gained confidence enough to try a new game with altered settings, he may find that when he raises the date far enough he gets another nation to play with - cool!

Robert Fulton is an oddball anyway. If you want a proper American character suitable for this game, anyone want to try setting up John Paul Jones?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

True, that. I put in @pedrwyth's suggestion, which is a nice and VERY simple solution to let people know that the option does exist.

Robert Fulton is an oddball anyway.

Definitely! We needed someone for that, but I'm hoping for some people to set up some more sensible starting characters.

If you want a proper American character suitable for this game, anyone want to try setting up John Paul Jones?

I'd certainly welcome it! Would be a good character to start with.
It can be done simple with some lines of code in initModels.c; a custom portrait file is optional, though would admittedly look quite nice.

 

[Grey Roger]

Francis Drake is going to be tricky. Spain owns pretty well everything in the "Early Explorers" Caribbean, including the pirate bases! The only exceptions are a couple of places owned by Portugal, who are also hostile to England due to the Iberian Union. Does England have a guest ambassador anywhere?

I was going to ask how you go about setting up a starting character with a LoM, but that won't matter if there's nowhere for Drake to cash in his relation points and get promotions!

Also, how do you set up a starting position for a free play character? Preferably at a beach since all ports are hostile.

Playing this is going to be tricky. The only way you'll be able to trade is by sneaking into port and hoping the storekeeper doesn't recognise you, at least until you've earned "Hero" reputation... The same applies for any Dutch characters in "Early Explorers", though French can get away with trading in Portuguese ports.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Francis Drake is going to be tricky. Spain owns pretty well everything in the "Early Explorers" Caribbean, including the pirate bases! The only exceptions are a couple of places owned by Portugal, who are also hostile to England due to the Iberian Union. Does England have a guest ambassador anywhere?

Antigua is still English, if I recall.

There is a Dutch guest Ambassador at Antigua in Early Explorers, if I recall.
And a Portuguese one as Grenada in the last (two?) periods.

I was going to ask how you go about setting up a starting character with a LoM, but that won't matter if there's nowhere for Drake to cash in his relation points and get promotions!

If you start as Naval Officer, then you get a LoM and a promotion. But that isn't what we want here, is it?
You could add a character exception in StartStoryline.c so only Francis Drake gets a LoM at game start.
Alternatively, make the "Corsair" player type always start with a LoM of his chosen nation. I think that should work from the switch in PROGRAM\Characters\characters_init.c .

Have a look at the JoinNavy function in NK.s which probably contains a line to give a LoM to a character.
If not, that line should also be at the end of the Hornblower quests_reaction.c as he finally gets his LoM there, unlocking further promotions through general play.

Also, how do you set up a starting position for a free play character? Preferably at a beach since all ports are hostile.

The starting location is default for each nation.
To override that default setting, you need to edit StartStoryline.c and also PROGRAM\INTERFACE\select_storyline.c to make that display properly.

Playing this is going to be tricky. The only way you'll be able to trade is by sneaking into port and hoping the storekeeper doesn't recognise you, at least until you've earned "Hero" reputation... The same applies for any Dutch characters in "Early Explorers", though French can get away with trading in Portuguese ports.

Nothing wrong with a good challenge!

 

[Grey Roger]

Antigua is still English, if I recall.

There is a Dutch guest Ambassador at Antigua in Early Explorers, if I recall.
And a Portuguese one as Grenada in the last (two?) periods.

The Portuguese one at Grenada in late periods certainly exists, I saw him while I was playing as Hornblower.

But Antigua shouldn't even exist in "Early Explorers"! It wasn't colonised (by white men, anyway) until 1632, almost half way through our "Spanish Main" period. In fact, I'd noticed a few lines such as "period.Islands.Aruba.disable = true" in "Periods.c" and was considering doing it to Antigua.

If you start as Naval Officer, then you get a LoM and a promotion. But that isn't what we want here, is it?

No, Francis Drake was not a naval officer. He was the very definition of a privateer, operating with the covert approval of the Queen and sharing the loot with her. During the battle against the Armada he went and helped himself to a rich Spanish galleon, which didn't do much good to the rest of the English fleet as they'd been following his lantern until he extinguished it for the attack.

You could add a character exception in StartStoryline.c so only Francis Drake gets a LoM at game start.
Alternatively, make the "Corsair" player type always start with a LoM of his chosen nation. I think that should work from the switch in PROGRAM\Characters\characters_init.c .

That could work. In the "Bartolomeu" story, when you say you're curious as to what brought Roxanne Lalliere to become a pirate, she says "I'm not a pirate, I am a corsair. I have a letter of marque of the French authorities". So at least in PoTC a corsair is more likely a privateer than an outright pirate. Besides, if there are both player types "Corsair" and "Pirate" then we may as well make some distinction between them.

The starting location is default for each nation.
To override that default setting, you need to edit StartStoryline.c and also PROGRAM\INTERFACE\select_storyline.c to make that display properly.

Looking in "StartStoryline.c", there's already provision for the "Rebel" character type to start at Nevis Pirate Settlement, which is as good a place as any for Drake to start as well - the settlement is Spanish in "Early Explorers" but at least it doesn't have a fort. So I'm thinking, change

if(CharPlayerType == PLAYER_TYPE_REBEL)

to

if(CharPlayerType == PLAYER_TYPE_REBEL || GetMySimpleName(PChar) == "Francis Drake")

 

[Pieter Boelen]

But Antigua shouldn't even exist in "Early Explorers"! It wasn't colonised (by white men, anyway) until 1632, almost half way through our "Spanish Main" period. In fact, I'd noticed a few lines such as "period.Islands.Aruba.disable = true" in "Periods.c" and was considering doing it to Antigua.

You could do that. Probably the main reason why I didn't is because otherwise the English would have nowhere to go.
They don't even have any allies with an island, so there is no place for an ambassador to go either.
For reference, the ambassadors are put in place somewhere in Periods.c if I recall. They're called "emissary" in the code, I think.

That could work. In the "Bartolomeu" story, when you say you're curious as to what brought Roxanne Lalliere to become a pirate, she says "I'm not a pirate, I am a corsair. I have a letter of marque of the French authorities". So at least in PoTC a corsair is more likely a privateer than an outright pirate. Besides, if there are both player types "Corsair" and "Pirate" then we may as well make some distinction between them.

There isn't a real "Pirate" player type right now. But we DO have a lot of them so I wouldn't want to add any new types unless we really need to.
In fact, some of them might not be very popular so we could replace one if necessary too.
Anyway, have a look through the list and hopefully something appropriate springs to mind.

Looking in "StartStoryline.c", there's already provision for the "Rebel" character type to start at Nevis Pirate Settlement, which is as good a place as any for Drake to start as well - the settlement is Spanish in "Early Explorers" but at least it doesn't have a fort. So I'm thinking, change

if(CharPlayerType == PLAYER_TYPE_REBEL)

to

if(CharPlayerType == PLAYER_TYPE_REBEL || GetMySimpleName(PChar) == "Francis Drake")

That's probably the solution that requires the least amount of changes to the code.

 

[Grey Roger]

You could do that. Probably the main reason why I didn't is because otherwise the English would have nowhere to go.
They don't even have any allies with an island, so there is no place for an ambassador to go either.
For reference, the ambassadors are put in place somewhere in Periods.c if I recall. They're called "emissary" in the code, I think.

Perhaps put Nevis Pirate Settlement back to being Pirate, and make Pirates friendly (or at least neutral) to England and Holland. Then put the English and Dutch emissaries (and tailors) there. At that point in time, the pirates probably were mostly English and possibly Dutch privateers. More to the point, it gives the English and Dutch emissaries somewhere to go that doesn't look like a major English stronghold at a time when England had no major strongholds west of Cornwall.

Otherwise those of us who don't think Antigua was colonised in the 16th century can just avoid it.

There isn't a real "Pirate" player type right now. But we DO have a lot of them so I wouldn't want to add any new types unless we really need to.

Perhaps "Corsair", if that exists as a player type, could double up as privateer and pirate. If you choose any regular nation then you're a privateer with a LoM for that nation. If you choose "Pirate" or "Personal" nation then you're a pirate and have no LoM.