Fixed Renaming the Difficulty Levels

[Grey Roger]

Some additional corrections for your enjoyment:

- "Adventurer" difficulty renamed to "Buccaneer" by me

Hornblower has asked me to register his complaint about that. He's happy enough to be called an adventurer, but he's certainly not a buccaneer. Free-play characters with military backgrounds who make their living hunting down buccaneers are likely to be similarly upset.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Hornblower has asked me to register his complaint about that. He's happy enough to be called an adventurer, but he's certainly not a buccaneer. Free-play characters with military backgrounds who make their living hunting down buccaneers are likely to be similarly upset.

It was suggested by @Talisman and we discussed it for a while in public, trying to come up with something else.

Main point was that "Adventurer" was both a difficulty level AND a career choice in Select Storyline, which is ambiguous.
If you can think of an alternate solution that tackles that situation, I'm all ears.

But if you're concerned about Naval Officers being affected by this, how about the "Corsair" career choice?
That one is technically "Privateer" unless you select PIRATE as nation.
If we're going to change stuff again, I'd rather like to change that too. But in what way?
I'm open for suggestions.

 

[Grey Roger]

It was suggested by @Talisman and we discussed it for a while in public, trying to come up with something else.

Main point was that "Adventurer" was both a difficulty level AND a career choice in Select Storyline, which is ambiguous.
If you can think of an alternate solution that tackles that situation, I'm all ears.

Perhaps change the career "Adventurer" to "Treasure Hunter"?

But if you're concerned about Naval Officers being affected by this, how about the "Corsair" career choice?
That one is technically "Privateer" unless you select PIRATE as nation.

Correct, a corsair is a privateer, at least if linked to a nation. If you try to make corsair a pirate by default, Roxanne Lalliere will probably take her revenge on you - she is very clear on this point.

I'm not a pirate, I am a corsair. I have a letter of marque of the French authorities.

Why change this? If anything, perhaps change the description to make it fit better for both privateer and pirate.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Perhaps change the career "Adventurer" to "Treasure Hunter"?

So @Talisman, what do you think? We need to be on the same page this time,
because I don't want to waste my time changing the same things back and forth for the next two months.

Correct, a corsair is a privateer, at least if linked to a nation. If you try to make corsair a pirate by default, Roxanne Lalliere will probably take her revenge on you - she is very clear on this point.

I though Corsair was by definition a Pirate. But I was wrong:
"A corsair (sometimes referred to as a buccaneer) is a privateer or a pirate."
So looks like we're good there.

Why change this? If anything, perhaps change the description to make it fit better for both privateer and pirate.

Since apparently a Corsair CAN be a Pirate, shouldn't Roxanne say that she's a privateer?
Now she appears to say "I'm not a pirate, I'm something that could also be a pirate".

 

[Grey Roger]

That would be for @Bartolomeu o Portugues to decide, since she's part of his storylines. Anyway, the difference between privateer and pirate is that the former does his - or in this case, her - raiding on behalf of a nation under a LoM, and Roxanne goes on to say that she has a French LoM. That's also the distinction you make when you choose the Corsair character type - if you pick a nation then you get the relevant LoM and become a privateer, if you pick Pirate then you become a pirate. Roxanne apparently picked France. But she's perhaps more independent-minded than some privateers and not averse to joining forces with an outright pirate, e.g. Bartolomeu. All of which means "I'm not a pirate, I'm something that could also be a pirate" is about right.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

That would be for @Bartolomeu o Portugues to decide, since she's part of his storylines. Anyway, the difference between privateer and pirate is that the former does his - or in this case, her - raiding on behalf of a nation under a LoM, and Roxanne goes on to say that she has a French LoM. That's also the distinction you make when you choose the Corsair character type - if you pick a nation then you get the relevant LoM and become a privateer, if you pick Pirate then you become a pirate. Roxanne apparently picked France. But she's perhaps more independent-minded than some privateers and not averse to joining forces with an outright pirate, e.g. Bartolomeu. All of which means "I'm not a pirate, I'm something that could also be a pirate" is about right.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

So @Talisman, what do you think? We need to be on the same page this time,
because I don't want to waste my time changing the same things back and forth for the next two months.

All joking aside, I need a unanimous decision this time. I thought we all WERE agreed. But then we weren't.

I will change this again only once, so you guys tell me what you want and I'll do it.

 

[Talisman]

All joking aside, I need a unanimous decision this time. I thought we all WERE agreed. But then we weren't.

I will change this again only once, so you guys tell me what you want and I'll do it.

Personally I don't mind - the problem was having both the background profession and the difficulty level called the same thing ( Adventurer ), so if someone posted on the forum saying they were playing as Adventurer there could be confusion.

So as long as they ( the background profession and the difficulty level ) don't use the same word. I am not bothered.

Perhaps change the career "Adventurer" to "Treasure Hunter"?

That seems the best solution


Not sure what Hornblower is complaining about though - I thought he was modeled on Thomas Cochrane, 10th Earl of Dundonald

"He was a daring and successful captain of the Napoleonic Wars, leading the French to nickname him Le Loup des Mers (literally 'The Wolf of the Seas')."

"His life and exploits inspired the naval fiction of 19th- and 20th-century novelists, particularly the figures of C. S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower and Patrick O'Brian's protagonist Jack Aubrey. "

Thomas Cochrane, 10th Earl of Dundonald - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

who certainly led a"buccaneering" life .

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Not sure what Hornblower is complaining about though - I thought he was modeled on Thomas Cochrane, 10th Earl of Dundonald

"He was a daring and successful captain of the Napoleonic Wars, leading the French to nickname him Le Loup des Mers (literally 'The Wolf of the Seas')."

"His life and exploits inspired the naval fiction of 19th- and 20th-century novelists, particularly the figures of C. S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower and Patrick O'Brian's protagonist Jack Aubrey. "

Thomas Cochrane, 10th Earl of Dundonald - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

who certainly led a"buccaneering" life .

From: Buccaneer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"The buccaneers were pirates who attacked Spanish shipping in the Caribbean Sea during the 17th century. The term buccaneer is now used generally as a synonym for pirate."
So... Definitely pirate and not a navy man.

That being said, the NEXT difficulty level, "Swashbuckler", also doesn't describe naval officers very well.
From: Swashbuckler - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A 'swashbuckler' is generally a protagonist who is heroic and idealistic and who rescues damsels in distress. Swashbucklers as an archetype are not pirates. His opponent is typically characterised as the dastardly villain.

So somewhat more neutral. But the more evil pirates probably wouldn't like being called Swashbuckler, same like how Hornblower wouldn't want to be a Buccaneer.

It is quite difficult, if not impossible, to come up with four names that are completely neutral in all ways.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Figured I'd ask Google and got the following suggestion for the Difficulty Level names:
Apprentice, Journeyman, Expert and Master
How about that?

It does sound rather bland as it lack a period/piratey touch.

 

[Talisman]

Figured I'd ask Google and got the following suggestion for the Difficulty Level names:
Apprentice, Journeyman, Expert and Master
How about that?

It does sound rather bland as it lack a period/piratey touch.

What about - Cabin Boy - Deck Hand - Bosun - Master Mariner

General nautical terms - without being attached to Navy or Pirate factions

 

[Talisman]

Other possibles:-



Landlubber
Pressed Man ( or Pressed Ganged )
Sailor
Navigator


@Grey Roger - might have some better suggestions

 

[Grey Roger]

I rather like your suggestion of Cabin Boy, Deck Hand, Bosun, Master Mariner. Maybe replace "Bosun" with "Captain" as that's supposed to be the difficult but not near-impossible level.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I added a poll to the opening post so that hopefully we can get some clarity on the "general consensus" here.

"Bosun" and "Captain" are both terms used elsewhere in the game, mainly as titles or officer types.
Same goes for "Sailor" and "Navigator".

Maybe "Landlubber" fits in there somewhere?

It seems that there are enough "low level" names, but not so many high-level ones.

How about:
Cabin Boy, Deck Hand, Officer, Master Mariner

 

[Talisman]

For Officer :-

How about:-

Old Salt
or
Sea Dog ( Old Sea Dog )
or
Ancient Mariner

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Then how about:

Apprentice, Journeyman, Sea Dog, Swashbuckler

Which would mean just one change for me rather than a whole bunch of them.
Plus a nice shout-out to the start of this game series.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Apprentice, Journeyman, Sea Dog, Swashbuckler

I added this one as an option to the poll.
Unless anyone voices any objections or we get a lot of other votes for one of the others, this is the one I will make use of.

 

[Grey Roger]

Am I right in thinking that what appears on screen in the difficulty selection is dictated by 'GetDifficultyNameFromListNumber' in "select_storyline.c"? Because one thing which occurs to me is to leave the "DIFFICULTY_*" labels as they were, i.e. "DIFFICULTY_JOURNEYMAN", "DIFFICULTY_ADVENTURER", etc. and just change the strings in 'GetDifficultyNameFromListNumber'. Then you can change the labels to your heart's content without having to correct all game references to difficulty level.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Am I right in thinking that what appears on screen in the difficulty selection is dictated by 'GetDifficultyNameFromListNumber' in "select_storyline.c"?

Almost; it is the 'GetDifficultyName' function in Dialog_func.c .
When I did the previous renaming, I removed the 'GetDifficultyNameFromListNumber' function because it was basically a copy of 'GetDifficultyName'.

Unfortunately the difficulty names are also in one two of the RESOURCE\INI\INTERFACES files.
I found out about that when I thought I had changed everything, but then I hadn't.

If we've got a final set, I'd like to also update the variables; just to avoid confusion when coders try to understand it in the future...

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Does anyone else care anything about this? Remember there is even an "I don't care" option in the poll.
This isn't quite an overwhelming response....