• New Horizons on Maelstrom
    Maelstrom New Horizons


    Visit our website www.piratehorizons.com to quickly find download links for the newest versions of our New Horizons mods Beyond New Horizons and Maelstrom New Horizons!

Seafaring fantasies

It should be...

  • Short and concise (Typical, basic, useless XXI Century toilet paper these days)

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Short and concise with hyperlinks to additional info (Wikipedia-esque)

    Votes: 5 17.9%

  • A quasi historical presentation (Like wargames of the 90s, references to real life on the high seas)

    Votes: 8 28.6%

  • Full of technical detail (Silent Hunter III : GWX style, 600 pages!)

    Votes: 5 17.9%

  • A Realist's point of view (Roleplay a character and explain special features along the way)

    Votes: 14 50.0%

  • Focus on Build's components (Detailed modding history, coding tutorials, etc)

    Votes: 3 10.7%
  • Total voters
    28
I like the setup to your "Arts of the Sea" text; sounds promising to be sure.
Will you cover realistic sailing mode vs. arcade sailing mode at some point?
 
I was thinking the same in arcade mode, but decided not to make too much mention of it, as similar concepts of gameplay would be applied therein; there's really nothing to talk about. It's the reader's choice if they want to use arcade mode.
 
Of course. But Arcade is on by default, so I was thinking some "advertising" for Realistic mode would be welcome.
It makes the game harder and it disables all sorts of features that you DO have in Arcade sailing,
so people will probably be inclined to not want to use it. Unless somebody (you?) makes clear to them why it IS cool. ;)

Here's some stuff that's different in Realistic GAME Mode (it's not limited to just sailing anymore):

- Realistic Sailing Mode
. Wind direction has a much bigger impact and you can't sail into the wind anymore (in Arcade mode, you can)
. Different rig types have a MUCH bigger impact than in Arcade mode

- In Arcade mode, based on what spyglass you've bought, they will show:
. Nation
. Ship name
. Ship type
. Cannon type of other ship
. Hull and sail damage
. Number of crewmembers
. Speed
. Charge type (eg. balls, chainshot or grape)
There IS an inaccuracy built into these spyglass observations (can be increased or turned off in "Advanced Options"),
but since a real spyglass cannot give you this information at all, in Realistic mode,
your spyglass tells you only other ships' name when they're close, but nothing else.
Spyglasses only enlarge the view (better spyglasses enlarge more) and you have to observe the other ships yourself.
So you'll have to pay proper attention to the other ship's type, colour scheme and flags to define whether she could be hostile or not.

- "Fast Travel" ashore is disabled for most locations, until you manually discovered them by walking through town.

- "Sail To" at sea is disabled for all locations until you've manually discovered them by sailing to them.
The buyable maps here really help you to find certain shores.

- "Sail To" at sea is disabled for all ships that are too close to you (no instant-teleports to right next to the enemy ship)
and also for all ships that, based on your speed relative to the other ship's speed, you cannot overtake.

- Ashore, when there's enemies around, the red flashing icon and danger music doesn't start until they actually draw their swords.
This way, you are not pre-warned of any impeding danger.

- Realistic Game Mode removes 'list of ships' log messages upon entering 3D sailing mode at an island

As per usual, do with the above as you wish.
 
The advertising's in para. 2 of Arts of the Sea's preface; also the varied use of real-world terminology in the walkthrough component of the manual, and Direct Sail feature, should emphasise that we're not dealing with arcade mode. If we were, the general mood might be a bit of "go here, attack this, sail across Caribbean in 5 mins" :)

There will also be a "recommended options" section where I illustrate how all those customisable variables affect gameplay, and my recommendations (blades being damaged, for instance, requires further documentation else people would think it is bugged, like I did).

As always the feedback helps greatly as it makes me look into areas that I don't normally do!
 
I reckon the information from my previous post should be listed somewhere to prevent it from getting lost.
Either in the manual (preferrably) or a forum sticky otherwise.
If you put it in the manual, I don't really care where it goes, as long as the placement makes sense.
Edit: Oh, you can freely reword everything. I don't care. ;)
 
I love the idea of the "Arts Of The Sea" chapter SWS!! Great idea mate!

I have been a bit busy with work and the the main page the past couple of weeks, but I have been putting in what free time I can on the manual and the History of The Build Mod. It is far from complete, but I finally have everything transferred into one text file, and a preview of how the formatting might look in PDF form. I had to go through and manually change some of the formatting to get it to work withing the margins of both the editor and PDF file, so some things may look a bit different. I have corected some spelling mistakes that I noticed, but there are probably several of those still to be found.

This thing is 144 pages and will take some time to go through, and I haven't even added the tutorial section yet or a preface! I have attached both files to this post should anyone want to go through and take a look. I have tried as best I could to put them in chronological order, but I may not have it quite right.

Please let me know if you find anything out of place, or something that you think just doesn't belong and I will do my best to correct it. If you feel there is something that needs to be added, please let me know as well!

*EDIT Deleted files
 
Thanks Thagarr. That's like the buildinfo content in a PDF file, right?
I'm thinking I might want to do some serious changing of all those files,
cleaning out everything that's irrelevant or outdated and ordering things in a more Manual type fashion.
No idea when I might have time for that or what it'll end up looking like though...
 
Yes, I know some of it is outdated, and is either not used anymore, or has been replaced with better code. I did leave out one or two that seemed redundant or dated, but I am not sure what all is relevant anymore. With all the information in one file it should be a little easier to break down as to what is relevant to the mod history. As soon as I get that all sorted out(By all means feel free to help me when you have some free time!!) I will add a proper index and links, and probably a parchment background as well.

I should be able to get started on the tutorials section within the next week, and hopefully put some finishing touches on the pirate history section of the NH manual and a couple of other things. It's been a while since I have had this much work to do, and I am enjoying it! It's good to at least be able to give back a little something more concrete than just news posts and forum advice! Who knows, I may just have to take up modding next! ;)
 
Nice to see you back Thagarr - for my end the manual's realistic sail tutorial is progressing well but I stumbled on a major delay... Why not make the ship handling more realistic? . And so my seakeeping review is underway and so is the ship recognition guide. You can blame Pieter for giving me a link to that Virtual Sailor game... which is bloody awesome!

I found something cool in Photoshop so I don't have to hand draw the ship art. Check out link 3 in my sig.
 
Captain Maggee said:
You do realise SWS that people DONT post in every topic that they read, just because the topic isnt getting heaps of recognition doesnt mean it isnt appreciated...
Click to expand...

Capt. Maggee is right :yes

Just because people don't post in the thread doesn't mean it is not appreciated or noticed.

You have over 1,000 views of this thread ( which cannot be the same half dozen people looking at it over and over again ).

That is the true measure of how much your efforts are appreciated. :cheers
 
Thanks for the feedback Computica! Much appreciated mate!

Quick update on the coding tutorials, I have them all converted to DOC's, now I just have to go through and edit out the last bits of HTML formatting, and reformat all the code sections so they are easier to read, that is going to take some time. :modding
 
But those were never finished. No need putting the real tutorials in a PDF, I reckon.
Better to keep them posted on a forum or wiki or something where they could be kept up-to-date. :?
 
Quick update on the coding tutorials, I have them all converted toDOC's, now I just have to go through and edit out the last bits of HTMLformatting, and reformat all the code sections so they are easier toread, that is going to take some time. :modding
Click to expand...

It sounds like you created a fair bit of stuff, lets see it!
 
Pieter, it was the links from THIS post by Suraknar. He says that the domain is about to expire, so I figured I had better loot what I can so there is at least a backup somewhere. I thought it might add a bit to the Build History file to have some actual tutorials on the basics. I don't recall seeing any of this on our wiki, maybe I just missed it, most of this hasn't been updated for several years.

It's nothing at the moment SWS, just a bunch of files, you would get a better idea by looking at the links in the above referenced post.
 
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