Seafaring fantasies

[carmenara]

Oh be sure it would go somewhere. I had been involved with naval warfare since the age of 6. While others in my (former) family were obsessed with noble professions, I of all things wanted to be a pirate... Look where that led me.

Phase II is online.

Basically it's cover art, basic organisation into chapters and minor editing along the way.
http://rapidshare.co...e_II_271109.pdf

Ps. I'd like original photoshops files for Build's artwork if possible. Saves time on graphics design. Yes I ripped the NH logo off your moddb banner...

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Which artwork pictures do you want? Thomas the Terror should have the logo and I've got the loading screens.

And please don't take offense in all my "if"s. I trust you will complete your work,
but I've seen SO many people come SO far with mods only to disappear before finishing/releasing them,
that I don't really want to get my hopes up. But I'm going to be VERY happy when it's released.
In fact, I already AM very happy since you released more Build 14 manual material than anyone else did up to this point.

 

[carmenara]

but I've seen SO many people come SO far with mods only to disappear before finishing/releasing them,
that I don't really want to get my hopes up. But I'm going to be VERY happy when it's released.
In fact, I already AM very happy since you released more Build 14 manual material than anyone else did up to this point.

Oh I know that better than anyone else - commitment is difficult to secure without some sort of direct motivation (such as regular communication), and new content which sustains interest. Should not be a problem here as there's plenty of content here which I wish were standard fare in commercial products.

I was reading through historical sailing ship material which I intend to put in the manual, when I get to the technical parts, as well and perhaps influence my own modding if/when I get to it.

As for gameplay I'm right now making a quite profitable living off Granada working for the Portuguese government, and facing severe opposition from appreciably more modern enemy small craft... which are significantly smaller and more maneuverable than HMS London which I define as some sort of naval auxiliary with large carronades (I thought they were invented pretty much later in the 18th Century?), that while devastating in short range assault are unwieldy against small targets at range. I don't intend to progress the walkthrough much further after direct sail (dead reckoning nav) and setting up some sort of personal economy.

As you notice I'm writing 1 or 2 chapters behind my actual gameplay. I pretty much adore the dynamic ship generation of Direct Sail which makes for very long and entertaining tactical battles, what with unexpected reinforcements, wind direction changes turning the tide either way, declaration of war in the middle of a convoy escort scenario etc.

Graphics - if you point me to the tools necessary to extract them from the game format .tx files I would be glad to do so; otherwise I'd like pretty much... all of them (xmit via email?). I need a higher res logo obviously; I'll get in touch with Thomas eventually.

 

[Thagarr]

Good work SWS! It looks fantastic so far! I have been working on my part, and it's no where even near finished, but I wanted to give you a quick look so you can see what I have so far. Most of it so far I have written from memory, and if anyone runs across an discrepancies or has anything they think I should add, please let me know and I will add or correct them. I am planning on adding a History for the Build Mod, just haven't got it in there yet. The Brief History of Piracy will be a lot less brief when I am done! :

*EDIT Deleted file

 

[carmenara]

Thank you Thagarr. Your preface is absolutely brilliant; you've read my mind with the kind of frustrations casual players like myself have against profit-oriented management. I have a lot of things to say about this topic but lets concentrate on the game.. and pirates

I'll be adding your preface to the draft manual in a few minutes; I mean it when I say I enjoy every word I read!

I just got myself extradited from Portuguese service for a charge of smuggling (after being defeated in a 3 day schooner battle that deserves the label of epic) and have to contend with starting anew with the nearby Dutch with my tail between my legs and the guise of an "honest" trader with an outdated but cheap caravel. 32 cannon for 110k pesos is just perfect value for money. I said honest in inverted commas because I pretty much have a fetish for merchant ships turned commerce raiders. The Netherlands is currently at war with Spain who are in turn in a war with a French. I have a cargo of medicine bound for Hispaniola (going to be challenging getting there in Direct Sail, and in a ship that doesn't handle like a WW2 destroyer), and a letter of marque from the Dutch governor, giving two faces to my supposedly neutral, humanitarian disguise...

This means I'm 2 chapters ahead of the manual, and time to start writing.

Ps, I think I found a bug with the Dutch colony on Curacao (I can't spell the name of the port). The city exterior gate leads to an outskirts area with custom buildings but is in turn supposed to lead to the wilderness. And on to the two smuggling beaches, inland "tourist attractions" etc. That area transition from port outskirts to wilderness is broken. Notice the s/s says "Jungle." but there's no thumbnail or transition.

 

[Thagarr]

Thanks mate! There are several more things I want to add, mostly for the build history and pirate history. I'll also put in a list of links to the FAQ's and the Wiki and maybe a few other things. And then of course, also give your role playing the proper introduction it deserves, but I wanted to share what I had so far.

I haven't been able to find much before build 11 though, it looks like most of those old posts have been wiped out. Unfortunately I was not very active here for a couple of years due to personal reasons, so I don't remember a lot about the mods between what I have written and build 12. I will dig around some more and see what I can find, but if anyone else would like to contribute that would be very helpful!

 

[carmenara]

Phase III online.

Direct sail training mission went all haywire thanks to English commerce raiders and as such I'm forced to divide it into two parts. And no I didn't pretend the disruption didn't happen. See if you like that movement plot for major events. I kind of need a blank map background for high seas engagements though.

I made some formatting improvements and of course, added Thagarr's introductions.

Encountering minor difficulties in OpenOffice as it hates pic-heavy documents, and it made a mysterious blank page in Tutorial Part I. Will leave it there for now.

http://rapidshare.com/files/313295282/SWS_Build_14_Tutorial_Phase_III_281109.pdf

 

[Thagarr]

The graphics are awesome SWS! I was going to ask if you had OpenOffice, that's what I am using as well. From now on I will post it in .odt format. I was thinking about maybe using a background of old parchment in the PDF, to give it that old feel, but if your having issues with to many graphics that sure wouldn't help any. I'll try and get my next update posted sometime tonight.

 

[carmenara]

Not to worry, I broke it into sections so the lag is reduced.

I was thinking on old parchment as well, but it's best we focus on the content first. With the size and scope of Build, there's a lot to write for in a proper manual.

Don't rush, we've got all year

Oh and I appreciate the feedback! I should be able to detail the voyage to Portuguese waters in a couple hours; I need to finish this so I can start the commerce raiding campaign I have planned.

EDIT -

Here's the one with the direct sail tutorial finished, as well as hyperlinks from topics of interest to wikipedia or recent developers' discussions on this site. And fixes to some typos, as always.

http://rapidshare.com/files/313399839/SWS_Build_14_Tutorial_Phase_III-B_281109-2.pdf

 

[Thomas the Terror]

I will send you the logo atleast this week. One thing though, could you upload your document somewhere else? Mediafire for example? Because rapidshare is being a bitch here. I really begin to hate the site, since you can't download properly without paying.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I will read and comment on the above later. In the meantime, I'd like to comment on this:

It is preferable to hire officers when you are at level
1 such that you may have a companion to develop according to your entrepreneuring needs, and low level
officers command less salary.

With the Auto Skill System in place, you can't develop low-level officers as per your wishes anymore,
so the above statement is only half-true. Also with the Realistic Officer System, you might need several officers after all.
Maybe not earlier in the game, but certainly later. And in F2>Passengers you can change officer roles AND see their effective skills.
You might want to make some mention of that in the manual somewhere.
Also medicine usage and doctor + gunner special services
(doctor: decrease post-battle casualties - gunner: auto-stock officers with ammo upon going to sea).

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Oh... and do use [L] to hide some of the log messages on your screenshots or F9 to hide EVERYTHING on the screenshot,
except for the actual game world. Just looks cleaner.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

At the moment, there is no period influence on cannons or other weapons.
We intend to add period-specific weapons, but I'm not sure how to handle cannons.
Would be a lot harder for sure.

You can convert the game's TX files to TGA with the TX Converter available from this site's Downloads section.

What do you mean exactly with Curacao? I thought all reloads worked fine.
Do you mean there's loading screens missing?
Or is there a path that doesn't lead anywhere? Maybe it was never really supposed to.
Of course most of the island locations is copy-and-paste from stock island locations,
with some variation thrown in to make the islands a bit different from each other.

Thagarr, have a look at the files in the "\buildinfo" subfolder;
there's a Build 11 and Build 12 ReadMe, that should point you in the right direction.
I only joined between Build 11 and Build 12 as well, so don't know much of the earliest days either.

"inertial navigation"? I think you mean "dead reckoning".
Intertial navigation is so advanced most modern ships don't do it either.

The external links in the PDF don't seem to work for me.

There's a bug in the game where the sun rises and sets on the wrong side of the hemisphere.
This was introduced when we added the new larger worldmap into the game
and has proven more than a little complicated to fix. No luck as of yet.

With Realistic Sailing mode on, do you feel encouraged to try and recognize ships yourself?
We deliberately removed all "name/nationality" information from the spyglass and the "Sail To" interface.
However, you can tell the nation of a ship by recognizing the flag and sometimes from the ship type.
For example, Fleuts are commonly used by the Dutch while Caravels are more used by Portugal.
Especially ships' colour schemes also help in recognizing the nationality of ships at sea.

Another thing we did is to disable Sail To for locations you haven't yet visited.
The intention is to encourage the player to find his destinations manually,
for which the buyable maps are also handy. Also a compass once you manage to afford it, of course.

If you are planning on adding some stuff on salary/divide the plunder,
be sure to make mention of the morale of the crew which decreases on salary mode if you've got too much money.
Basically the crew becomes envious of you when you don't share the money so you either have to pay to raise morale,
or switch to "divide the plunder" mode.

 

[Thagarr]

Thanks Pieter! I missed that the first time I looked through the folder.

 

[carmenara]

With the Auto Skill System in place, you can't develop low-level officers as per your wishes anymore,

Ah, I like to micromanage them, so I never tried the automatic level up system. You might also notice I much prefer sailing small ships, so I tend to multi-skill the officer and assign her battle (surgeon) and cruise (carpenter) stations. The rest well, I do it myself!

It's not a recommended action for the way people seem to play but with my style I don't really need any skill leveled besides high leadership, melee and cannons. Officer for defense and repair and that's it.

Oh... and do use [L] to hide some of the log messages on your screenshots or F9 to hide EVERYTHING on the screenshot,

Some screenshots with logs and interfaces are deliberate, as there is no better way to illustrate ships striking colours, etc, than with the real time log. Besides, it's a player's-eye review.

At the moment, there is no period influence on cannons or other weapons.

Small issue there - we can always imagine the "carronades" in the earlier days meant oversized but shorter ranged compromises from the usual long guns. Not a very special innovation to me. But I always thought we can give the cannon more interesting names than "cannon, 24lb". Some types and classes had names to go along - perhaps 4pdr Serpentine etc. Perhaps toss in some very expensive one-off builds - Turkish Bombards 128 lb etc, for ships modified to serve "special duty". Won't mind cannon types by nationality, with strengths and weaknesses for each nation. It's like simulating (in a WW2 surface combat sim) the flat trajectory of German naval guns compared to other nations.

I'm not sure if this is possible but it would be nice to allow the player to have multiple types of cannon, as actual ships did. Frigates could elect to have 4 long guns and 20+ carronades, etc. Perhaps hardcode the armament into the ship if possible, more fun. This would allow custom makes like long guns on the side and a bombard on the rear or front for some kind of primitive assault ship that while maybe not period, illustrates some degree of innovation that humans in history are bound to have!

What do you mean exactly with Curacao? I thought all reloads worked fine.
Do you mean there's loading screens missing?

As you can see in the screenshot I attached, there's a missing transition point. (meaning you can't walk to the smugglers' beaches) I'm sure Curacao has an inland forest like the rest of the cities.

The external links in the PDF don't seem to work for me.

Confirmed issue - fixed for the next release. Basically it links everything to wikipedia and some development threads on this forum.

There's a bug in the game where the sun rises and sets on the wrong side of the hemisphere.

No worries, it was enough input to render my brain-integral inertial nav system operable. And the orientation was pretty correct in that it rises from the east, right?

With Realistic Sailing mode on, do you feel encouraged to try and recognize ships yourself?

I would have it no other way! When visibility is poor it's prudent to label all unknowns "assumed hostile" and maneuver accordingly. While sailing convoy escort for the Portuguese later, I would need to keep a good lookout to the flanks and rear as privateers and pirates could close the distance and attack pretty much without warning (save for the dynamic music). It pays to attain, if possible, the weather gage before the engagement (and I would use the merchants' hulls as cover and unmasking only at attack range - no gameplay effect but makes my roleplaying happy!)

You should disable the world map ("long range sail interface") too - would solve a fair bit of your crashing complaints, of course, there can be an option for this just like the battle compass ; either buy an expensive item to unlock arcade distance travel, or learn to navigate. Not that hard. However we could benefit from a hotkey or action menu link to view the map inventory screens. Right now it takes more than a few clicks to bring up the maps.

If you are planning on adding some stuff on salary/divide the plunder,

My small boats don't make enough profit to warrant that, besides my cannon settings make it so that it is very possible to force ships (or myself) to retire because they had run out of powder or ammunition after a few hours of pitched battle. I notice damaging enemy sails makes them want to retire, which is realistic. However for the caravel which I would sail like an armed merchant cruiser out to sea for months at a time, I might give that a try. I notice that when I capture AI ships their crews' morale seem to be no more than awful. I hope that's because they are unhappy being fired on and captured, because the ships really do surrender too fast unless I set that option to 0.01.

You've given me plenty of good tips to work with, I have one more day to work on this before I return to the madness of earning a paycheck. Do keep up the commentary, in the meantime

EDIT:

Hyperlinks have been fixed, and the chapter on naval combat off Granada completed

http://rapidshare.com/files/313670919/SWS_Build_14_Tutorial_Phase_III-D_291109.pdf

 

[Thagarr]

Back to work for me tomorrow too SWS, this may be my last update of this for a while. Added a lot more to installation, almost completed the Build history, and added some more to Pirate history. Let me know if you have any problem with the formatting, I was doing some playing with the default controls trying to get them all on one page, and the list of modders might be a problem as well.

Grrrr, had to send it as a .doc again, the forum wouldn't let me upload an .otd!


*EDIT Deleted file

 

[carmenara]

No worries, knowing you I should be able to happily plug and play without editing.

Proofreading complete, lots of stuff for me to play with. Hmn, midnight full cargo CTD fix? Care to shed a couple words on that one? It isn't in the build 14 "official" install procedures and I hope I'm not suffering from that!

I liked immensely the article at the end relating to pirate crews being democratic in nature.

http://rapidshare.co...RT_1_301109.pdf

This is half the manual, minus the graphics heavy walkthrough section.

Please find much of Thagarr's information added (I will do the controls and options section later) as well as an improved content page showing authors, and proposed future content. Again, thank you for the hard work putting that sheer bulk of information together!

It's a lot of work to be done (I think we need some sort of ship recognition guide, Silent Hunter style) and the key is well, bite sized progress.

It's getting late here and I will need to at least put some time in sailing the new Dutch commerce raider - all that's between the walkthough's progress and current gameplay state is a 3 day battle vs a large Portuguese flotilla followed by escape to Curacao. I would likely elect to cover this mostly by narrative due to the sheer size of it.

 

[Talisman]

SWS your manual is a great achievement

You and Thagarr have done marvels - keep up the good work.

What do you mean exactly with Curacao? I thought all reloads worked fine.
Do you mean there's loading screens missing?

As you can see in the screenshot I attached, there's a missing transition point. (meaning you can't walk to the smugglers' beaches) I'm sure Curacao has an inland forest like the rest of the cities.

I think Willemstad on Curacao has 2 exits to the jungle.

The one you show in the screenshot just has some buildings outside the town. Before you got to the point in the screenshot you may have 'walked through' a building placed across the path.

Try the other exit from Willemstad, it should take you to a jungle village and the beach.

 

[Thomas the Terror]

Can someone upload this else where? Rapidshare is telling me I have to become a paying member to download!

 

[carmenara]

Hmn, there should be the "Free User" button right there, non? Unfortunately attachments here in this forum are limited to 500kb...

Filefront should work better; at least, it did when I last used it 3 years ago.

Walkthough, latest ver (rev. D)
Update with Thagarr's latest entries, etc

Try the other exit from Willemstad, it should take you to a jungle village and the beach.

Indeed I did walk though a house to get there. Given my play-write-play-write routine over the last 3 days it was unsurprising :3