Hello everyone and hello MK. I am truth serum. You can also call me John if you like. Like MK I am also a retired senior level military officer. I have been a sailor all my life. The last few years have been difficult for me because of a string of personal and health problems. I lost my wife of 31 years last year. My kids are grown and gone and with my health problems I can no longer lead the active lifestyle I have been accustomed to. So I began playing video games. My kids had left behind a playstation and N64 and I began to play old west type games and a funny flying game called Pilotwings. I went ahead and bought a nice computer and started playing stuff my boys had left behind. That’s when I discovered Age of Pirates 2. I have been an addict ever since. I was overjoyed when I found modifications for this game and when I found Eras I was dumbfounded at the beauty and immersion in this game. I can forget I am alive and my present circumstances when I enter Eras.

I have to tell you that I may have done something that will tick you off MK. I made a couple postings over at the Pirates Ahoy site telling people about this mod and defending you. I did this as a reaction to your recent post about people being spineless that don’t speak up. I recently gave a lot of money to wikepedia during their fund raiser campaign. So I also though to myself, as much enjoyment as I have taken from Eras, I shouldn’t be silent. I should speak up and participate. So this is why I made that post and here I am to test anything you like. I know nothing about what makes any of this work, so half of what you guys talk about is Greek to me. However, I do know history and I do know a lot about pirates and a ton about handling boats and sailing in modern times. So that’s about it. Here I am.

I already read most of your previous explanations on that in several threads before I spoke up. I also already read the paint discussion in the ship modeling thread. Very entertaining reading I must say. I find it surprising and amusing that they reacted as they did to the Hitler comment. I think they should go have a look at a few political internet forums. If that comment bothered them so badly, they would have heart attacks reading the things said in those heated discussions. They remind me of kindergartners putting their fingers in their ears when they hear a mildly bad word. It’s just darn funny. Its clear none of them have military backgrounds or any real skin to speak of.

My main problem was not just with your “silent is consent” comment, but also that they avoided discussing the eras mod whatsoever when answering questions about available Age Of Pirates 2 mod options and if the game was still being worked on. In my mind leaving your mod out of the equation and simply saying that the game is no longer being worked on is just a bold faced lie and misleading to searching game players. So I understand and concur with your comments regarding their integrity. This is disheartening when your efforts are clearly the best most current product available for the Age OF Pirates 2 game.

Sorry I stirred things up a little over there but I’m sure you remember the old adage, when the air is stale and stinky, open some windows to let a little fresh air in on the problem. Looks as if they prefer their own stink. As you said – “closed minds”. I didn’t expect them to be so child-like about this thing. I will of course honor and comply with your request Sir. I will not comment further on that site. I feel quite at home here thank you very much.

Also I have a recommendation. Would you mind if I made a thread on real world sailing here? I would like to share some of my own boat pictures and location pictures on the site and maybe add a narrative or two of previous journeys. I think by doing this I might attract a few of my mates here in the process. BTW what kind of boat is that in your profile picture? Looks like a Hake.

Sorry I was a no show yesterday, dealing with some financial issues.

Honestly MK, after reading everything I have concerning those pukes I believe you are way too good for them anyway. They have no idea what an asset they turned their backs on. Also, their actions seem to have created serious competition against their own interests and alienated a whole lot of people in the process. They probably don’t realize this but I think other more intelligent people see it. They seem to have knocked the wind out of your sails some, so the speak, but you seem to have recovered well. I hope that you will continue your historical fiction because I have quite enjoyed the Hawkins piece and the Heyn piece as well. Just wanted you to know that someone is reading them as it seems you don’t think anyone is – and stopped writing? Don’t know if you’ve stopped or not, but I think more people are probably reading than you think. Especially if they’re here.

Thanks for creating the new topic, heading over there now. I have never sailed a Hake before but I hear they are fine boats. I have been dealing with a little larger vessels for a while – more about which – in the forum topic area you provided.

Hi modernknight1 and truth serum,

It’s been wonderful to find your site, mk1. Your GoF-ERAs2 mod is simply outstanding.

I hope that you can manage to finalize it and can experience some well-deserved rest, and find the satisfaction from playing it in a completed form.

I am 45, got my first VG console in probably 1980 (maybe even 1979). It was a Prinztronic 5500, I still have it and it still works. Online sources say it was released in 1981, though I am sure that cannot be correct as I moved from Scotland to Australia in March 1981, and had been playing it for about a year at that point.

I’ve owned and used various consoles and computers over the years, so video games have featured prominently in my life.

I know that this is not much of an introduction, but I am mainly posting to let you know that you, personally, have given me moments of great enjoyment in my life. I want you to know that your efforts are truly appreciated by me. You have added something wonderful to my life experience.

I have read various posts on your site and want to wish you the very best. I’ve enjoyed your writing and deep historical knowledge, thank you for sharing your work.

Finding your site was especially pleasing, as, to me, it shows your inner strength, and strength of character as an individual, to continue sharing what you clearly have so much talent, passion and knowledge about. After being treated so obviously harshly and unfairly. I will say no more, other than to state my agreement with what truth serum has posted in the thread.

Once again thanks, and take care, mk1.

Just read your Curacao article and all I can say is fantastic! When are you going back? Maybe we could go together. Just tried to leave comments on your article and it wouldn’t allow me to. Don’t know why? I just got back from a sailing trip myself down the inner-coastal waterway from Norfolk down to Oriental. I will be sharing my experiences as soon as I can get the pictures downloaded. If you can handle navigating around barges and floating logs, this is a pretty neat experience. All I can say is that I’m glad it wasn’t my boat.

Hi guys. Thought this is as good a place to leave an update on what’s been happening in my life.

I moved into a rented property 3 years ago on November. After several weeks there, I became aware of a damp problem. The floor, which was mostly linoleum and tiled in bathroom, appeared to be soaking. I just had a mattress without bedstand when I intitally moved in – this was getting soaked each night. I would go through one complete newspaper a day…to absorb this damp from the floor. Just so you can get a picture of this.

So, I made my landlord aware of this the first month. And the second. And the third…finally, got someone in to look at the boiler, changed a pipe that was open and possibly leaking, and that was that. Waited for floor to dry….

Nearly 3 years later…and the floor is still wet. And now I’m aware that it’s chipboard underneath – which will not dry. But come end of september this year major black damp started appearing, ruining my laundry, a tablet, the fretboards on two guitars, bah! Due to difficult working factors I couldnt get hold of my landlord to tell her about this recent escalation of this problem that was consistently ignored in the past. So come october…and the floor in bathroom started to give away! Great! So, landlord finally came to see it…agreed there was a damp problem and promised to get some work done from a joiner and maybe plumber immediately. I had an event on that weekend, so wouldnt be in the house. So, left for a friend’s daughter’s 21st birthday do and hoped my toilet would be fixed when I returned..and maybe receive some enlightenment on the ongoing damp issue…

Didnt work out like that. Received nasty text saying I have to leave in 2 days and have my stuff out by end of week! That and not said, but heavily implied – that I was the cause for this floorboard hole. The only work that transpired was she took the cistern/tnk of the toilet, so effectively disabling it for my use!

LONG STORY SHORT – got in touch with support organisation for housing/ tennants’ rights and they read her the riot act! This changed the ballgame in my favour and now the landlord was made aware that SHE had been negligent and it was HER responsibility to find and pay for suitable accomodation for yours truly!

So if anyone was wondering why my activity here’s been quiet of late – now you know! I’m now in a new flat, sharing with another guy (I haven’t been in shared accomodation for nearly 10 years now…feels very wierd!), the chaotic sudden upheaval of finding a new home has passed and things are a little more stable for now.

You want to know the funny thing though? There have been professionals in to access the place…and they are damning to the extreme and have been quite sympathetic towards my situation – maybe empathising with the health risk. Here’s the punchline – after maybe the 5th time of bringing up the damp floor problem in the first year…my landlord actually suggested…it maybe be my sweating in my sleep thats causing it… – !!

You couldn’t make it up could you! 😉

Cheers MK! I know you’ve been having similar problems with water pipes bursting – I hope you didnt get to many things damaged irrepairably due to this (its not funny…really). And the irony of the situation – here we are discussing ‘water’ problems on a pirate/naval/ships/sailing/sea site.

What you said about the spiders made me jolt! From late october onwards I had a household fly epidemic. Never got flies in the house even in summer (scottish summer – some would argue this is a ‘concept’ that doesn’t actually exist in reality! LOL!) – but they were coming out about 10-20 per day after the floorboards started to go in toilet and this was in November! But now you mention it there was an incredible amount of spiders active in the property. The day before finally leaving the place, I checked out if there was anything worthwhile still in my shed – which is literally 4 feet from my front door, adjoined to my living room wall. I was greeted with the sight of 4 HUGE spiders (certainly very large by european standards) that had made some rather intricate webbing among my dismantled bedstand. So…I just left that for the landlord to clear. Poetic justice!

New character models for ERAS v1.5.8? I have been working on a few. Nothing 100% original, just retextures of old stuff from Corsairs Harbour and ERAS. The “de Soto” character model – came up with a nice, different retexture on one of them and used it for an “Emmanuel Wynne” character*. I introduced him over your ‘davy jones’ character (so long Ron Perlman!). Works well as an officer too, which having introduced a few days ago, I really like. For some reason reminds me of ‘Pvt Mellish’ (with a ponytail) out of Saving Private Ryan! Might have a few more too 😉

Tried to touch up your ‘Hans Sloane’ model/texture…with mixed results – somethings really wrong with the texture’s forehead. Needs alot of patience to get that right, which I didnt have when attempting first time. Its a really nice model, but the texture just seems too bright.

Where would I put such things for your discretionary viewing? PM you and put up a MEGA link – ?

* Emmanuel Wynne – I have scoured the web and peroused various David Cordingly and Daniel Dafoe tomes and I CANNOT find any more imformation regarding this historical character, bar the “credited with the first jolly roger” references. After literally hours of delving, learned a crumb more of insight about him: That he operated off the North American coast, preying on English shipping, then departed south to the Caribbean for more lucrative Spanish prizes. If you have ANY MORE INFORMATION beyond the typical copy/paste jobs that abound on the web (- I’m looking at you Mary Lou Tyndell and others of your ilk!) – please, I’d be most grateful if you could inform/educate me more on the matter. Same applies for Jaquotte Delahaye 😉

I wish you all the best year you’ve ever experienced 🙂
And, above all, Gesundheit 🙂 (german word for health)

Heya there,

I’m 24 and an Aussie, love my pirates, absolutely love your mod. Had a few issues getting an account going (I’ve read about the Go Daddy issues) but I figured I’d jump on to show my support for your great mod MK. It’s a damn shame that the community split (I last played GOF in 2012 I think? and the community seemed fairly cohesive back then) but that’s no reflection on the high quality of your work.

My dream is that one day there will be a new pirates game with a purpose built engine but till then, your GOF version is easily the best pirate game out there.

I did check out the FB page, but it’s a bit political, particularly for someone without any sort of stake or opinion on the issues.

Anything else you want to know, just ask away. And thank you again MK for the great work, and your dedication to accuracy.

^ Bonus points, MOT, for the cool avatar (Loved “Monkey” when i was a tot!)

Out of the frying pan and into the fire,,,and back in the frying pan again…!!

Long story short: Out of the last temp accomodation (dont ask!), short stop in a “hotel (Hostel would be more accurate) in a really dodgy bit of Glasgow. And now currently residing in a dilapidated flat in South East Scotland. Place was abandoned for 5 years after previous tenants abused it and had most of its copper piping robbed! Landlord is good friend of a good friend, so no funny stuff this time…in theory! So I now have electricity, water supply, a functioning toilet again, internet (notice my prioritising!), shower but NO lights, bar table lamps. Fuses keep popping when I try the lighting. Might have something to do with upstair’s over-running, badly-fitted, external drain that is constantly dripping on next doors doorstep. Mmmmmmmmm……. -!

My backyard…looked like a rubbish dump. Absolutely stinking! Finally cleared it last week with help from neighbours and friends. Loads of bottles, tins, baby shit, nappies (dypers??), old clothes, general mould and decaying food, etc….a right breeding ground for disease basically. Also it was blocking the air vents to property, so one side of house has bad damp (oh shit, not that again!).

In the meantime, had to work at festival. Returned with bad chest infection (can think of two “Plague Mary’s” that possibly gave me it – both selfish bints that should know to go home and not spread their viruses amongst their colleagues!). And trying to subsequently recover from that….with damp walls…lol!

Well the offending rubbish/garbage has been removed, some internal walls have received a few licks of paint, chest is beginning to heal again, it’s all getting slowly but surely better…phew! Think I’ll download the latest version of ERAS to celebrate! 🙂

Just in case you thought I had abandoned you all – now you know 😉

• This reply was modified 7 years, 4 months ago by Schiavonna.

Apologies if this ends up being a double post, I did an edit and then it disappeared but still shows as if I had posted a few mins ago (thanks GoDaddy)…

Capt Qbert reporting for duty!

Actually, here is my 1st post, I had not seen this intro thread initially…

https://buccaneersreef.com/forums/topic/new-features-and-changes-id-like-to-see-added-in-future-updates/#post-4589

I am an avid gamer going on 4 decades, mostly strategy and RPG types but also loved the Borderlands series for the RNG (random number generator) loot system and all the Civ, Alpha Centauri, MOO 2 and Heroes of Might and Magic games as well. I played the original Sea Dogs and loved it….so was uber happy to find COAS ERAs (of course after paying on GOG for the original game, lol). I just finished playing Kerbal Space Program…love that game since you can mod the crap out of it and it’s based mostly on real world physical law, gravity, etc. Now am hooked into GOF Eras Mod 2.

I work in Mobile/Website QA and dabble in some code but am by no means an expert. I was savvy enough to edit the sea/land font sizes, CameraAI zoom levels, vendor availability and compass textures in ERAs by reading through a good chunk of MK’s & Jeffrey’s posts.

But most of all, I just wanted to say thank you to MK, Jeffrey and all others involved for all the work and ongoing initiatives for this game!
Will be happy to help test, report bugs, etc as needed where possible. Also thanks to MK for the help getting me through the sign up process!

– John
California Pirate in Training

Hi,

I’ve been lurking for a while. I found the Buccaneer’s Reef through YouTube videos by Vincent Spencer where he tells the viewer more about the game and how to download it. I’ve bene playing the Sea Dogs games since they became available on GOG.com and been exploring all the mods. I like TEHO as well, but think it’s a bit too rigorous in its quest requirements. So now I’m just starting out in GOF Eras2 and find the open world gameplay very interesting.

I’ve been gaming since the 80’s and my very first favourite game was Sid Meier’s Pirates! I’ve been moddign games since way back. In fact, my first game mod ever was when I changed the graphics in Pirates Gold on Windows 95, but back then it wasn’t called modding. Mostly I’ve been modding the Civilization series and the Elder Scrolls since Morrowind. I’ve also been doing Let’s Play videos on YouTube in my day; mostly strategy games like Empire Total War and the like.

Thanks for all the hard work you’re putting into this impressive project and keep it coming!

Hey, ModernKnight.

The planned editor sounds really interesting. That’s the sort of stuff I’ve been doing in the Elder Scrolls. I’ve become quite a level designer over the years. Here are a few examples of an island I created for Skyrim a couple of years back: https://frontierskyrim.wordpress.com/screenshots/

I would potentially be a candidate to work with that editor to create scenes for GOF Eras in the future, so I’ll keep my eyes open for any news on that. Really interesting!

Thanks man! I appreciate it! I’ve been playing the game every day now and would love to check out the loyalty patch as well.