Brainstorming and new mod Ideas -

Brainstorming and new mod Ideas

This topic has 73 replies, 9 voices, and was last updated 7 years, 10 months ago by Schiavonna.

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- January 12, 2016 at 5:03 am #1791
  
  modernknight1
  Keymaster
  
  Let’s talk about what else is possible… MK
- January 12, 2016 at 5:23 am #1792
  modernknight1
  Keymaster
  OK so the Patch is nearing completion. I have to tell you that this is a LOT of work to do this. I have to do it in little bites because I never know if something is going to “upset” the game engine. So I test out if things work and then I add more – wash, rinse, repeat.
  
  So the rank structure rewrite works and the new cannon mod works. Jeffey’s edits are working and I have added some new stuff. Based on the turning speed discussions I dialed down the numbers on some ships. I rebalanced weapons again and I have added some new ones. Some of these you’re really gonna love!
  
  I am adding a few new items. A few of these are suprises. You guys know I am always researching stuff. I came across something today that was just bizarre. I pride myself in having a good knowledge of history, especially of the Age of Sail. If you’ve looked through the items in GOF ERAS you know there are some really unique time specific items in there, but this one just takes the cake!
  
  So it is known as a CAUL. It is the sack that you are born in. An unbroken caul was considered quite valuable. If you were born with one still around you in those time it was thought of as a sign and was carefully removed and saved. It was believed that because a caul kept a baby from drowning in mother’s womb, that if kept, it could keep the owner from ever drowning. A captain that had his own caul from child-birth would hang it on the wall of his cabin or at the very least keep it safe in a drawer. Yes this superstition was also held by officers and captains – even as late as WWI there are anecdotes of cauls being returned to their owners after u-boat attacks!
  
  Because the caul was so valuable it was carefully sown into the sailors trouser pocket or worn around the neck. A sailor who had the caul with him was believed to be undrownable. A ship with a captain that had his own caul was thought unsinkable. There are adds in newspapers from the 17th thru 19th centuries advertising cauls for sale from mothers of new born babies. I was astounded at the asking prices. In one add I read the women was asking 14 guineas! That was an immense sum at the time. (think thousands of dollars) Cauls were also advertised from old seamen that had passed on or would never go to sea again. Some of the adds would specify that the owner had died calmly in bed and his caul had protected him during his years at sea.
  
  It wasn’t just the English that did this and I am continuing to research this to see just how wide spread this practice was in European navies and Merchant services during our era.
  
  In the words of Mr. Spock, “FASCINATING”. So before I close this patch up, I want to know if anyone has any further ideas for me to include.
  
  I would like to hear ideas from anyone that has them at any time. I am also thinking about making flags a purchasable item based on the erroneous info I read one of the moderators on PA! giving a newb advice. He said flags could be bought. This is absolutely not true, but it is a good idea. What do you think about buying flags?
  
  Please comment Mates.
  
  MK
  - This reply was modified 8 years, 10 months ago by modernknight1.
- January 12, 2016 at 1:56 pm #1794
  
  Jeffrey
  Keymaster
  
  How about getting the flag perk for a particular nation if a ship for that nation is captured and either kept or sunk?
- January 12, 2016 at 3:03 pm #1796
  
  Jeffrey
  Keymaster
  
  BTW, in initItems.c, I noticed awhile back (when I found cirass13 was missing definition), that there are some available item slots available in the array. The array size is 534, but the largest index used is 521. If the items (including the cirass13) you added are fewer than 13, you can still add cirass13 and your other new items without changing the array size. Also, if you add cirass13 just under the last item defined (which is cirass12), then your additional items, I think existing save-games will not need abandoned; they can just load, reinit items, then save and I think all would continue to work for them. Same goes for the missing Colonial Frigate…now that it is added, I think they would just have to reinit ships after loading a saved game. That’s all I had to do when I added the ship and cirass13 item.
  
  Just a thought.
- January 12, 2016 at 8:45 pm #1798
  
  modernknight1
  Keymaster
  
  Thanks Jeffrey. Do you have any ideas about how we would go about allowing the flag perk after you took a ship of X nationality? My thoughts are that this could be implemented within RPGutilities.c
  
  Its not that many new items so that will work. I left that number a little higher on purpose originally. A lot of the time when I think of new things, MORE new things will come to me and so I end up putting twice as much stuff in as I originally intended.
  
  MK
- January 12, 2016 at 9:19 pm #1806
  
  Jeffrey
  Keymaster
  
  I briefly took a look and I wonder if it might be easier from within the transfer_main.c interface? Once you set a captain as prisoner, or is noted as killed; it could be added in both:
  
  void SetEnemyToPrisoner()
  {
  ExitCaptureWindow();
  SetCharToPrisoner(xi_refCharacter);
  LAi_SetCurHP(xi_refCharacter, 0.0); // óìåð
  // íåò èçìåíåíèé ðåïû – áóäåò ïðè ñóäüáå ïëåííîãî
  OnShipScrollChange();
  // âòîðîé ïðîõîä – Êîìàíäà
  ShowCrewCaptureAsk();
  }
  
  void SetEnemyToKilled()
  {
  ExitCaptureWindow();
  LAi_SetCurHP(xi_refCharacter, 0.0); // óìåð
  ChangeCharacterReputation(pchar, -2); // ïëîõîå äåëî
  OfficersReaction(“bad”);
  OnShipScrollChange();
  // âòîðîé ïðîõîä – Êîìàíäà
  ShowCrewCaptureAsk();
  }
  
  Both have the NPC ref, xi_refCharacter, which will contain a property for what nation they belong to. We could simply add a void function to perform the nation check of the NPC, check if the Player doesn’t yet have the corresponding flag perk for that nation, and automatically add it if it is not yet ticked.
- January 12, 2016 at 9:25 pm #1807
  
  modernknight1
  Keymaster
  
  AWESOME!!! Could you try implementing it and testing it? Then I will add it to the patch!
  
  MK
- January 12, 2016 at 9:32 pm #1808
  
  Jeffrey
  Keymaster
  
  Sure. Also, every once in awhile the captain is already dead, so it looks like I may need to also call this from the ShipDeadAsk case as well. This doesn’t look difficult and I’m sure I’ll figure it all out.
- January 12, 2016 at 9:52 pm #1809
  
  truth serum
  Participant
  
  That is such a great idea. I have thought since I started playing that you should get through other faction flags when you ccapture them. I also don’t think they would be a common item for sale. If you do that they should be rare or more common in the markets of their own nationality. Getting them at shipyards would make more sense to me.
  
  On the caul all I can say is bizzarre. Creepy kind of. I always learn something when I come on this site Mk.
  
  Thanks
  - January 12, 2016 at 11:14 pm #1810
    
    Jeffrey
    Keymaster
    
    Yeah, I too always thought if you captured a ship and either left it to sink, or set another officer command you should get the flag perk for that nation.
    
    I made the change and so far, if I capture a ship where they fight back and I have to kill the captain, either setting another officer in charge, or simply allowing it to sink gives me the perk. I still need to test a ship that surrenders, as that follows a slightly different logic flow. But this is certainly doable, and I surmise what I have been able to anticipate is the proper logic flow for the untested scenarios, I have already put the proper call in place; it will probably work as I have things arranged, but still need to be sure.
- January 12, 2016 at 11:26 pm #1811
  
  Jeffrey
  Keymaster
  
  LOL, that was quick. Using the same boarding save, I found if I just waited a second, they surrendered instead of fighting back. All scenarios of throwing overboard, taking prisoner, sinking, setting my own commander all appear to work.
- January 14, 2016 at 12:13 am #1812
  
  Stéphane
  Participant
  
  I agree , the most logical is to capture a flag to use it …
  
  I don’t think we should buy them , or only from a governor , and having a trading licence from the country and having a good relationship with the governor …
- January 14, 2016 at 1:40 am #1813
  
  modernknight1
  Keymaster
  
  AWESOME Jeffrey! So glad this worked. Check you PM box. I sent you the link and key to the sourcecode.
  
  MK
- January 14, 2016 at 2:10 am #1814
  
  Jeffrey
  Keymaster
  
  Downloading it now.
- January 14, 2016 at 2:23 am #1815
  
  Jeffrey
  Keymaster
  
  LOL, I see now. I was expecting the source to what we have been talking about, was wondering, “Hmmm, why so small?” But I’m up to speed now…on the same page 🙂
- January 16, 2016 at 10:36 am #1826
  Samir
  Participant
  I would like to suggest some music themes that might contribute to the overall ambient of the game. The music themes are from three various games, but I don’t think it would be copyright violation if they would be used in a Mod:
  - This reply was modified 8 years, 10 months ago by Samir.
- May 8, 2016 at 7:07 pm #2581
  
  Samir
  Participant
  
  Hello everyone,
  
  First of all, I must say that I’m enjoying the GOF Eras Mod. Modernknight, you have done a wonderfull job with your team! I’m delighted how historically accurate this MOD is. I have a question for Modernknight: now that the Sea Dogs: To Each His Own has been officially released in English, have you been planning to convert Eras Mod to this game? I have been playing SD:TEHO for a week now, I’m must say that I’m pleased with the inovations to the game, considering that it is an old AoP2 engine.
  - May 28, 2016 at 1:01 am #2652
    
    Jeffrey
    Keymaster
    
    Why convert?
    
    Last I saw, they are trying to upgrade to DirectX9, but can’t get everything to work:
    http://www.piratesahoy.net/threads/age-of-pirates-ii-piratesahoy-edition.16966/page-6#post-533623
    
    We have a working DX9 version: https://mega.nz/#F!WtMDgRxK!hbeUg86kGLlQAqvWRNwTqg
    
    ERAS2TestDX9.zip
    
    They are trying to resolve shader declarations, the grass display, and shadow artifact problem: http://www.piratesahoy.net/threads/age-of-pirates-ii-piratesahoy-edition.16966/page-6#post-533629
    SD:TEHO DX9 shadow problem:
    
    Got it figured…vanilla COAS in DX9 example:
    
    So what is there in SD:TEHO that you would like to see?
    - May 30, 2016 at 7:23 am #2665
      Samir
      Participant
      
      Well, maybe there is no need to convert. The only good and new features of the SD:TEHO are:
      – you can encounter barrels floating on World map, and when you aproach them, you get a Sail Ho message. Then when you enter sailing mode, you see a bunch of barrels. The largest one usually contains money and items. Others are just ship goods. Sometimes, the barrel doesn’t containt anything, instead, it explodes and damages your ship.
      – you can encounter small boats floating in World map. When you enter sailing mode, you see a very small boat with a single man on it, floating on the sea. You can aproach him with your ship and he surrenders to you as a prisoner (the point is, he’s escaped with his small boat from a sunk ship or something like that)…
      – there are Indians in the jungle and they can sometimes attack you. They are usually sitting around the campfire and they get up when you aproach them.
      – you can use the wait option anywhere while on land, which makes it easier to do the governor quest where he asks you to bring something from an enemy town
      – boardings are massive: I think around 15 vs 15 fighters on ship decks, and also they made lower deck fights
      – Bandits are also sitting by campfire.
      – Random encounters of a woman running away from bandits has been expanded: now they are not always rapists, but sometimes they are chasing her because she’s a daughter of a Port Master from a nearby city, and they’ve been sent to bring her back home, so you can take her home instead of them and get a decent gold (around 10.000).
      
      If that all could be implemented into AOP2, then we don’t need SD:TEHO… My point is – it is a thrilling feature to encounter floating objects on open sea, and I think it’s realistic.
      
      This reply was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by Samir.
- May 8, 2016 at 8:14 pm #2582
  
  Anonymous
  Inactive
  
  I had no idea until now about this section of the site.
  So, here i am :
  
  1. I loved the option they added in TEHO (but i don’t like the game at all – too restrictive/inflexible) , helping you to “waste” one, two or more hours.
  This could be a great add in your version, MK
  2. I don’t have the game installed right now, so i don’t remember if you have the option to enroll slaves ( was there in one of the modds) . And i will add here : if they are actually captured crues, and not pure slaves, they SHOULD be at the level they were when you fought them . It’s kinda logic 🙂
  3. I would be moooooore generous with the recrutable officers, in taverns. Very rare Talent 10.
  4. A sell option for the citys you own. Why not ?:)….eventually when talking to the governor that rules in your name, a new dialogue option : sell this island to the previous owner for xxxx $.
  5. Bigger costs for upgrading big ships in Bermuda. I love to be a captain of a monster with 1700 crew and 17 speed, but at a great cost. It should pe painfull to do that :))
  6. I would love to see some signs indicating directions to help you when running between citys , through the jungle. Sometimes it s annoying – not anyone has the patience to learn the map or look at the map (it’s very small, without a zoom option – pretty bad choice)
  
  I stop here, because i don t wanna sound insatiable.
  
  Before i post this, i just remembered: i played years ago a french modd with interesting options inside a city, at night… some robbing/stealing stuff – does anybody played that and remembers better than me? – it could be nice something like that too.
  
  Sorry for the long post, want just to be helpful.
  Thanks.
- May 28, 2016 at 12:10 pm #2657
  
  Samir
  Participant
  
  Where can I see the features of GOF ERAS MOD 2? Is this mod same as GOF 1.2 but just with more ships and weapons? Also, if I take any character other than Captain Blood, will I be able to do any quest from the storyline (for instance, to visit City of abandoned ships etc.)?
  - May 30, 2016 at 4:08 pm #2674
    
    Jeffrey
    Keymaster
    
    Yes, any quest can be done by any character.
    
    There is a post at the top of one of these threads that describes what ERAS consists of. If I remember correctly, it is AoP COAS, with much of GOF 1.1 mod, then a bunch of modification to the available ships to make them more accurate within the era of game-time. There were a bunch of historical characters added, some AoP/GOF chars removed, then a bunch of new weapons and protective and other items added.
    
    The readme file of my patch file shows some of the other tweaks along the way. I added some of the GOF 1.2 hotkey combos for fleet and officer commands, added support for more fighters (although their battle icons don’t display upper left unless using the new source compiles in testing right now due to .exe/.dll constraints), Orazio’s model work for cabins, slight officer loyalty mod, officer gun/armor selection mod, etc.
- May 28, 2016 at 4:40 pm #2658
  
  Samir
  Participant
  
  Me again, I was wondering, did you consider putting the MOD on mod database website?
- May 29, 2016 at 9:35 am #2661
  
  Orazio
  Moderator
  
  I’ve been thinking about the same thing, putting the mod on moddb.com.
  I’m not really sure how many people are still interested in this game, and how many of these people check moddb.com, but it may be worth a try.
  
  Lately there is almost no participation at all in this community, with just me and jeffrey posting here regularly (even MK disappeared!). I haven’t yet figured out the reason for this little participation, if it’s because people aren’t interested anymore (for whatever reason) or because this place is unknown to many potential players/modders.
  
  That’s why I’d try to put the mod on moddb.com. Actually there is a mention of ERAS2 in the main page of the GoF mod there (and that’s how I got to know about this mod), but is that enough?
  
  The interest around Sea Dogs To Each His Own seems quite big to me, judging from its Steam page and the threads on PA, so it bothers me that there’s almost nobody here, given that the two games are pretty similar…
- May 29, 2016 at 6:46 pm #2664
  
  Samir
  Participant
  
  I think it’s the best thing to do, upload it on moddb.com as it would atract more and more people to play it. I have been playing it for a few days now, many, many improvements! Starting from the skies which look amazing, then the ships which seem to be in higher resolution than the vanilla ones. Towns are also redesigned. Lower decks are awesome, it was a feature I was looking into. The only thing I would like to change is adding more crew in boardings, to make it more massive. They’ve done it with SD:TEHO, but the overall gaming experience is not the best. SD:TEHO is too hard to play. There are no officers in the taverns: you can barely find an officer, and if you do, he will abandon you eventually because you have to pay more than 150.000 gold for the 90 or 100 crew on a ship. That’s too lame. I’m playing Eras 2 with Edward Teach, and my Queen Anne’s Revenge, which has around 360 crew, costs me only 27.000 for monthly upkeep of the crew. I unistalled SD:TEHO just because of that, it was impossible to earn money and enjoy the game. There are, however, some nice new features in SD:TEHO. So, uploading Eras 2 Mod to moddb.com is a next step in my opinion. It would, I hope, attract more people with knowledge who could further improve the mod, add new quests etc, because it’s the only thing that the MOD lacks.
  I noticed that MK is away from this forum. Even I barely found this forum, that’s why so little people know about it. So, shall we upload it?
  - May 30, 2016 at 8:06 am #2668
    
    Orazio
    Moderator
    
    I didn’t enjoy SDTEHO either, and stopped playing just after the end of the tutorial.
    
    About uploading Eras2 on moddb, Modernknight should have the last word, since it’s his own mod. We’ll see when he comes back.
  - May 30, 2016 at 4:38 pm #2675
    
    Jeffrey
    Keymaster
    
    The only thing I would like to change is adding more crew in boardings, to make it more massive.
    
    I believe that the higher difficulty options actually do add more enemies/crew to boarding battles, along with a higher degree of enemy durability/skill. This may be a good option to look into, even at lower difficulty levels. Depending on ship crew sizes, add more crew seen in the battle if appropriate per ship crews, but also keep their durability/skill levels appropriate with the selected game setting.
    
    I will look at this set of code and think about a good approach to this since this is another request that can be accomplished without modeling changes and is pure coding change.
- May 30, 2016 at 8:22 am #2669
  
  Orazio
  Moderator
  
  Reading the last suggestions, I really like the idea of finding floating barrels and shipwrecked people. Also slaves got my interest, but I don’t know how that works since I stopped playing SDTEHO very early.
  
  Now the “problem” is that we need somebody capable of writing (and also willing to do it) the appropriate code to make those things happen. And of course there must be interest from the community (in my opinion modding for just 3 or 4 people isn’t really worth it, but others may think differently), and lately I’ve seen almost no interest.
  
  Since I’m not good at coding, I can help with 3D models, if they are needed for those features, but as I said there must be interest from the community.
  - May 30, 2016 at 11:39 am #2671
    
    Samir
    Participant
    
    Yes, I absolutely agree that MK should have last word. I hope he will agree. I came to know about many Mods trough Moddb.com. For instance, that’s the way I found Forgotten Hope 2 MOD for Battlefield 2, which is an amazing Mod.
  - May 30, 2016 at 4:46 pm #2676
    
    Jeffrey
    Keymaster
    
    I actually laughed a little at the suggestions because some of them remind me of AC IV Black Flag…I think perhaps they were inspired by the same, LOL. Notably, encountering/rescuing shipwrecked survivors on the sea, random floating goods upon the sea for recovery, sizable boarding battles.
- May 30, 2016 at 3:52 pm #2673
  
  Jeffrey
  Keymaster
  
  I liked the idea of being able to kill some time and it’s super easy, so I did it. It’s available in all my patch and test files: https://mega.nz/#F!WtMDgRxK!hbeUg86kGLlQAqvWRNwTqg
  
  Patches to original game
  
  AOP2.Patch.zip
  GOF1.2.Patch.zip
  ERAS2.Patch.zip
  
  DX8 testing for new source compile
  AoPTest.zip
  GOF1.2Test.zip
  ERAS2Test.zip
  
  DX9 testing for new source compile
  AoPTestDX9.zip
  GOF1.2TestDX9.zip
  ERAS2TestDX9.zip
  
  While on land, or in cabin, new ‘talk to self’ dialog option to kill some time will wait 2 hours, give or take 15 minutes or so.
- June 4, 2016 at 10:26 pm #2782
  
  Samir
  Participant
  
  Any chance to increase the number of the crew at deck when boarding? At least 15 vs 15? I noticed that when I was playing SD:TEHO. Maybe that’s one of the best features of that game. It makes boardings much better, because every soldier is occupied fighting with at least one enemy, and the ship that has more crew just has stronger soldiers, which means when they fight 1vs1, your soldiers are stronger than enemies’ and vice versa. It would be a cool feature. For instance, I boarded the Caravel (which was causing me headache with empty screen after deck fight) and there were only 3 enemy soldiers at deck. My crew killed them in no time… :/
  
  I recall in SD:TEHO, the boardings were tough, cause you would have at least one enemy fighting you, and your crew also fighting enemies’ crew. It made the boardings more massive.
  - June 5, 2016 at 12:37 am #2785
    
    Jeffrey
    Keymaster
    
    I will take a look to see if any change/improvement might make this better. But, to some extent the game does take care of the ratio and it depends on the crew size of each ship. So if your/theirs outnumber you, then the battle will be skewed and I think that should remain. It makes sense that a ship of 400 will easily overpower a ship of 100, and that it will have more crew in battle, against fewer adversaries, and I think that should remain so.
  - June 5, 2016 at 9:17 am #2788
    
    Orazio
    Moderator
    
    I also agree with Jeffrey.
    Increasing the number of the people fighting is ok, but the crew ratio between the 2 ships must be taken into consideration when spawning the sailors.
- June 5, 2016 at 8:55 pm #2789
  Samir
  Participant
  I agree wwith both of you, but still I think that the current ratio of the crew on deck doesn’t reflect the real situation. My ship, for instance, has 346 crew. I boarded a ship which has around 150 crew. On deck battle, there should be 15 of my crew versus at least 8-9 enemy crew. Instead, I had 10 crew members fighting only 3 enemies… It makes me, as the captain, “unemployed”, and the boarding too easy. I was just sitting (because I couldn’t reach the enemy soldiers from my crew) and waiting. It took about 30 seconds, and they were dead.
  
  I’m also wondering… what will happen when I get a ship with 500+ crew and I board the one with the equal crew ammount. Decks will be huge (because on larger ships, decks are larger, right?) and there will be 10 crew vs 10 crew, fighting on a large deck which will look almost empty because of such low ammount of soldiers…
  - This reply was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by Samir.
  - June 5, 2016 at 11:15 pm #2794
    
    Jeffrey
    Keymaster
    
    what will happen when I get a ship with 500+ crew and I board the one with the equal crew ammount. Decks will be huge (because on larger ships, decks are larger, right?) and there will be 10 crew vs 10 crew, fighting on a large deck which will look almost empty because of such low ammount of soldiers…
    
    If that turns out to be the case, I will definitely play around with some tweaks to change that and see how it goes. Like I said, I think the number of them gets boosted with different difficulty levels, but they also get boosted stats too. What I’m thinking is keep the lower stats on lower difficulty settings, but maybe bump up the numbers if the ship size warrants.
- June 6, 2016 at 7:18 am #2800
  
  Samir
  Participant
  
  Ok. 🙂
- June 8, 2016 at 5:37 am #2815
  
  Jeffrey
  Keymaster
  
  I’ve been playing around a little bit.
  
  I tried doubling, but that killed my machine. A boarding literally took 4+ minutes waiting on the loading screen. So let’s try this one:
  
  Find Programs\loc_ai\LAi_boarding.c and rename it to LAi_boarding.orig.c
  Download that same file here: https://mega.nz/#F!WtMDgRxK!hbeUg86kGLlQAqvWRNwTqg
  
  Put it in Programs\loc_ai and try it out. No need for a new game or anything.
  
  In addition to bumping up the number about as far as my machine cares for (due to that loading wait), I noticed that if you have even one more crew member (or vice-versa for the enemy), the program adds some bonus advantages. I tweaked that to where one side has to have at least 60 crew difference for that advantage.
  
  But with a class 5 ship of 380 crew, boarding another class 4 of 360, I think there was a noticeable change in number of characters fighting it out. The higher the class of ship, the more you should see.
  
  Anyway, try it out and let me know what you think. I should add that I also tried this in our own compilations and my boarding wait for this is significantly shorter in those versions of the game. But with stock, be warned, it might be a wait…mine is about a minute, but my machine is slow to begin with.
- June 8, 2016 at 5:47 am #2816
  
  Jeffrey
  Keymaster
  
  Hmmm, thinking more about this…I wonder if instead of a flat 60 difference for that advantage, I change it to above a certain ratio? Might make more sense?
- June 13, 2016 at 7:59 pm #2913
  
  modernknight1
  Keymaster
  
  New Idea.
  
  I know how to add new tabs to the logbook already and had some ideas for adding a clue section just like the Nautical Quiz help tab. So I just put together a whole guide I compiled from several different websites on where all of the Totems can be found. So I am thinking about a totem tab.
  
  Question: Does that make it too easy?
  
  NEXT: I am still working on the guidebook with all of the characters, ships and weapons. I just had an idea to add a tab for that stuff. So imagine if you want to see what ships are what while you are playing the game you can go to the tab and pull up the ship guide. Or character bios.
  
  Another Idea I had on the character bios is a possible right click on the character list that brings up a window with their bio.
  
  The only thing I don’t know how to do yet is make a picture of the ship appear with the write up description in the tab.
  Does anyone know their way around GUIs good enough to figure that out or tell me how to do it? Hammer was supposed to import some of the GUI functions of SOFS months ago, but he has disappeared. Guess I’m gonna have to call him.
  
  Thoughts? Anyone?
  
  MK
- June 19, 2016 at 11:36 am #2984
  
  Samir
  Participant
  
  About our idea to publish the MOD on moddb.com. I have managed to compile the MOD and create an .exe file with the Inno Setup Compiler. It looks much better and actually took only 8.89GB of space, which is awesome. I have put the licence agreement in the installer, and I also changed the icon of the installer. I found a random pirate flag on Google. Of course, this package is for private use only, but I wanted to say that I still think that publishing the Mod on moddb.com would attract much more players and potential modders aswell. If MK agrees with it, then I think we should do it. Orazio also suggested that it’s a good idea. I want to point that I compiled the original package with 1.5.7 patch and Jeffrey’s Eras patch aswell. Well, that’s about it what I wanted to point out. Hope MK decides to publish the MOD. Here are the screenshots:
- June 19, 2016 at 1:38 pm #2987
  
  Jeffrey
  Keymaster
  
  Hey, nice work Samir.
  
  I have Advanced Installer (freeware), but have not packaged the DX8/DX9 projects yet. I wonder it it would shrink it to a similar size as your Inno. I like that icon and maybe should borrow it for the source compilation start.exe?
  
  But since you’ve already done this for the original ERAS and with the other work folded into it, seems like we don’t have to duplicate that part of the work you’ve already done.
  - June 20, 2016 at 7:48 am #2996
    Samir
    Participant
    I’m afraid that Advanced installer isn’t able to do it. I have tried many installer programs before managing to repack the MOD to 8.8GB. I tried Install creator, Install Forge, Advanced Installer and many others. They just seem to have problems repacking large files. All of them reported an error during repacking. Also, their compression method is weak. With inno setup compiler, you can use codes that come with the manual. The default compression method with Inno Setup Compiler is lzma, but it supports all the possible formats, you just have to use the code. I used the code Compression=lzma2/ultra64 and also you have to use DiskSpanning=yes. That creates .bin files as much as needed. It is possible to split the installation for more DVD’s if you plan to write the installation on DVD. Well, what I repacked contains someone else’s work also. I use some Mods by Black Knight which I found on PA! So I think that repacking for public use is still needed. You are better at coding, maybe you could check out other possibilities of Inno Setup Compiler. It is an awesome program. And it’s completely freeware.
    
    Here’s the link for the icon: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ikw479rhgiqv9ra/Pirates.ico?dl=0
    
    This reply was modified 8 years, 4 months ago by Samir.
    - June 20, 2016 at 3:15 pm #2998
      
      Jeffrey
      Keymaster
      
      Sounds like you’ve put some good time and effort into checking all the options. This is good information and I appreciate your review of the tools you’ve tried. Given your rave review, I will have to check into Inno.
      
      Unrelated, but don’t you just love when you find a software tool that contains really nice features and does exactly what you want? When I was investigating a method to keep the Item textures at the super high resolution, but make them smaller, I wrote a program to rewrite initItems.c, with the idea being to take the 16 items in the one texture, and split them into separate files, with a specific naming scheme using the original name, but add a items1-N, where N would go 1-16, and my small program would find those in the initItems and change the program to point at the 16 new file names based on a naming convention for me. But then I would need to cut out the 16 images into separate smaller files. Except I found a really slick program: https://www.imagemagick.org/script/index.php
      
      Put the 22 texture files I wanted to change into a directory by themselves and just one command line per file did the whole thing all by itself…perfect!
      
      magick convert items1.tga -crop 512×512 -repage 512×512 -adjoin items1_%d.tga
      
      Creates 16 files, with a items1_1through16.tga name, each file as a cutout of the individual part of the texture…that above command scans left to right then down for you and cuts each piece of the file out into its own file. Brilliant.
      
      In the end, it didn’t help speed up the game, but that piece of software is awesome.
      - June 20, 2016 at 3:30 pm #2999
        
        modernknight1
        Keymaster
        
        Interesting, I am surprised there was no evident FPS improvement. Do you recommend we implement this method regardless?
        
        NEW MOD IDEA:
        
        Just had this idea last night while I was dreaming. Shows you just how badly this game is addicting to me when I actually dream about being in the game. LOL Yeah I know pretty bad…. WARNING WARNING – loser level rising to 87 percent
        
        Anyway, my idea is this: CASTAWAY or MAROONED MOD
        
        Would it be possible to take the same code used in the Flying Dutchman quest when your ship is sunk and modify it so that when your ship is sunk in any battle, (instead of just dying) you end up losing all of your money and on some unknown shore with terrible health.
        
        I don’t know maybe even make it to where it occurs a certain percentage of time based on level/ability? The rest of the time you still die and have to go to an earlier save.
        
        I think this might actually be very possible but would take some research on what to cut and paste from which files into what other files. Doesn’t seem like it would be too terribly difficult once we figured out where it would need to go to be implemented.
        
        Thoughts???
        
        MK
      - June 20, 2016 at 7:29 pm #3006
        
        Jeffrey
        Keymaster
        
        I see no reason to split the item images at this point. I had forgotten that Orazio provided both reduced size and compressed item images, but there was a decent discovery in both his and my different approaches. What I found is that ideally, they do need to be resized to, at maximum, 512×512. But they don’t need the further compression to eliminate the problem both Samir and I experienced. I see that Orazio’s compressed files are fast, but they are grainy as a result, losing much resolution, which I think you would be unhappy with. These really don’t get loaded into anything other than the item screens, so I didn’t expect an FPS improvement per se, but needed to eliminate that excruciating delay every time I tried to launch an item box.
        
        Mine as resized, but uncompressed are still very fast loading and no longer cause the horrible lag opening store, looting bodies, opening item chests, but retain much finer resolution since I also chose the ‘resharpen after resampling’ option in IrfanView. You should compare Orazio’s version of those 22 item files to the ones I did the slightly different way. Orazio’s are roughly 170 kb, while mine are roughly 1.4 mb and the larger ones still look quite sharp on my machine. See what you think on yours. I personally would still like to reduce that terrible lag for people like myself and Samir that suffered terribly and I’m hoping they are sharp enough to replace the massive files that caused the unacceptable lag.
        
        As for the marooned idea, I like it. Make it a random chance to survive, maybe even improve/decrease those odds based on some sort of appropriate personal stat even. It should be very easy to borrow from the Dutchman quest to make that happen.
      - June 20, 2016 at 7:47 pm #3007
        
        Orazio
        Moderator
        
        When I did that texture optimization, my goal was to get the smallest files possible, and compression does really help in reducing the file size. Probably I went too far, because it seems now that around 1 MB is ok for less powerful machines too.
        
        In the original game (and in SDTHEO too, from what I remember) the majority of the textures use compression. Unfortunately compression lowers the quality, and I too don’t like the grainy textures that sometimes come out, but having too many uncompressed 2K textures, on the other hand, may result in some lag and also raises the mod size considerably, so the best thing is to find a balance.
      - June 20, 2016 at 7:59 pm #3008
        
        Samir
        Participant
        
        I personally give advantage to performance over quality… I think that all the textures that can be resized should be resized. There is still a bit of delay when going from World Map to 3D sailing mode. I don’t know what’s causing it, but it’s different that vanilla game…
      - June 20, 2016 at 8:41 pm #3009
        
        Jeffrey
        Keymaster
        
        I am not 100% certain, because I haven’t fully traced everything that’s happening, but I do have an educated suspicion about why there is an increased delay from vanilla when going to Worldmap. There are several things that happen when switching that mode and one of them is to compute the various quest updates for the NPCs. Every one of those other captain NPCs get assigned AI quests that get completed (they get cargo, navigate to different targets/islands, ‘complete’ their mission and get a new assignment, etc.) and since there are many more of them within ERAS to iterate and compute those updates, it takes longer to get through all the update logic for each of them, hence the increased delay.
      - June 20, 2016 at 8:49 pm #3010
        
        Jeffrey
        Keymaster
        
        I figured that was your aim, and understandable since Samir and I were plagued with horrible performance opening an item box, so a goal to minimize the size as much as possible makes sense. When I was reminded you had already done this, I compared and found that your compressed were different quality, so thinking MK might be unhappy with the quality of the smallest files, I was hoping the larger, but still acceptable performance-wise for a machine like mine, would also be acceptable quality-wise for MK.
      - June 21, 2016 at 2:32 pm #3015
        
        modernknight1
        Keymaster
        
        Stated Exactly as I want. I want high resolution quality because I spent hundreds of hours of my life photo shopping and creating all of those images for those items and many have a lot of detail. My monitors are 38 and 42 inches depending on where I am – so GIGANTIC. I need to see good detail when I play. So a compromise with good performance while not sacrificing resolution quality is what I want for the main release. If you watch my videos you see I have no lag issues with the way it was already and there are a lot of other people with high performance PC rigs out there as well.
        
        I want to try to make the best compromise for all players – regardless of rig or monitor.
        
        MK
- June 19, 2016 at 3:48 pm #2988
  modernknight1
  Keymaster
  Samir,
  
  Thank you for the interest and enthusiasm. I appreciate the work – I really do! Thanks for the effort and I am certain we will eventually proceed with something in the vein you are thinking about. Let me ask you a few questions.
  
  1) Does this also include the tweaks you have been collecting from Jan Marten on Pirates Ahoy! ?
  
  2) Also is this my version of the mod or is it yours with your own exclusion/replacement of certain images/loading screens to your own taste? I retain configuration management decisions for what is released in what version. I hope you understand. If you would like to release your own patch that has your tweaks and changes in the member contributed mods section/thread I have no problem with that as long as you include a thorough explanation of exactly what you changed/added with credit attributed for new images or tweaks from Jan Marten.
  
  3) Do you realize I am still working on a large patch of major improvements that I hope to be finished with soon?
  
  4) Do you realize that I have a MODDB account already that I have been promoting this mod on for some time?
  
  Discussion:
  
  1) Other considerations, 2) Things MK wants and essential “must be this way” items.
  
  1. Other considerations:
  
  First I want to say that we are actually doing quite well in getting our message out there that this mod is here. Buccaneer’s Reef gets between 190 to 300 visits a day. My mod links alone get around 8-10 downloads a day at present. I’m certain Jeffrey’s work is surpassing this. The mod since it was first created has been downloaded over 85,000 times. Over 28,000 of those downloads were when it was still on Pirates Ahoy! so we have actually had more downloads over here.
  
  So why haven’t people come out of the woodwork to help? Well I quite frankly cannot help but believe that that is entirely because of me. As Jeffrey pointed out over on Pirates Ahoy! he was looked down upon for playing with the “wrong neighbor kid”. I am “the wrong neighbor kid”. The unpleasantness of the schism between PA! and me has made me a pariah. This is heart breaking to me because it has hurt me on a professional level as well. Everyone has an online footprint and when people look at mine they look at PA! So you see I can’t get the stink off of me and people believe the things that the PA! people say without looking further into the matter. This is one of the reasons I wanted my content (to include my actual real name) off of their site. The drama of the banning and resultant flame war caused me to lose most of the support I had in developing a new game, so this is a very sore point with me.
  
  The truth of this has made me very depressed and discouraged and I have considered quitting all of this for sometime now. In fact, this website would be dead and gone if Jeffrey had not shown up when he did. I was ready to pull the plug on the whole thing. The worst thing about it is that people who had become long time friends who were modelers and modders abandoned me. In fairness some of them abandoned Pirates Ahoy! as well because they wanted nothing to do with any of the drama. However, no one from before – wants to help me now. They either don’t want to be seen associating with me by the HOO/PA! folks or they simply don’t care to help – even if they are playing ERAs.
  
  Part of me says, yeah just divest yourself from this altogether and allow these guys to start a new fresh page for ERAS on MODDB – and I can then just step away and continue to work on the new ERAS world map and ERAS 3 by myself in private. However, I just can’t do that because I have put far too much of myself into this game. Also if I did, those PA! moderators would win. I am NOT the villain they have made me out to be – I AM NOT!!! As I was telling Jeffrey in a private message a week ago I think their illogical hatred of me stems more from what they did to me and their own guilt then from what I actually did. A well known social behavior that has been exhibited throughout time and is manifested in an increased hatred visited upon the object of the hate. For example a husband that beats a wife hates her more because of what he has done to her. The NAZIs hated the Jews even worse and did even greater atrocities to them at the end of the war because of what they had already done to them.
  
  Just recently even I have considered stopping work again – the only reason I haven’t is because of the handful of people that continue to pitch in and make ERAS even better. If you guys want me to disappear, all you have to do is stop helping out for a month or so and everything here will disappear.
  
  Its because of all of this recently that I have considered adding a now topic page entitled Dirty Laundry. This page would have in detail all of the private correspondence between myself and the PA! moderators made public. I didn’t and don’t want to do this. However, with the pariah stink already firmly affixed to me and the fact that I don’t think that I can ever get rid of it at this point, it would at least allow people to see the truth about how badly I was treated. At the very bottom of this post I will include just a sampling if any are interested. Keep in mind that people think what they do about me because of the things these people are saying about me. The fact is that 95 percent of it is just complete conjecture and completely untrue.
  
  So all of this to say that we now rely on new people to come out of the wood work to help out who have no knowledge of what drama happened prior and don’t really care. That’s who’s helping out now. Do we really believe that more people would be recruited on MODDB to come and help with a game that is now TEN years old? I don’t tend to think so. Everyone wants to play newer stuff. We are a niche group of people into authentic pirate/age of sail experiences.
  
  Last consideration: Anyone who has really taken the time to actually read the “Read Me” file for the game understands WHY I made this super mod which is far larger and more comprehensive than the original game. It was out of an EXTREME LOVE of the history of this time-frame and a BURNING DESIRE to portray it in a game mod as accurately as is possible with as great of a variety of everything available for realism. This is why there are so many real historical weapons and ships and characters and items. The only thing we are missing now from a variety standpoint are more and different new places to go to – and I WILL solve this and make it happen just as I’ve done with so many other things that people said wasn’t possible. This brings me to 2.
  
  2. Things MK Wants and essential “must be this way” items:
  
  a. History and a love of it is the single most motivating factor that drives me. As such I built this website that offers much more than just a video game. People actually do read the articles here. Just take a look at how many Facebook likes are on some of my articles. Many people come here just for the articles and content I post. A very kind commenter during my absence called our site a “treasure trove” of information. So a MODDB website would have to point here to this website. It would also have to promote content on this website. It would also have to be named the same name as this website. The last thing I want is people from the peanut gallery downloading the mod who have no idea where the support forum for the mod is or why it was made and what its about. I want people to learn REAL history just from playing the game…..and I think they do!
  
  b. While I am not against putting the mod up on MODDB, I do not want to put another new major version out there UNTIL the MEGA PATCH I am still working on is finished. I have put a lot of time and love into this patch and there is a LOT of new stuff. I don’t want another version getting out there until it has the MEGA PATCH applied. Period…
  
  So I’m not ready to do this just yet. Sorry. MK
  
  I am still uncertain about creating such a page but feel I have nothing left to lose anyway. I am interested in anyone’s opinion on this. This is a sampling if I create the new topic “Dirty Laundry”. There’s much more and its worse than this…
  
  Excerpt: From private conversation with PA! moderators on MODDB
  
  MK: “That was not directed at only you. With the exception of Hylie, none of you game much and have all said as much one time or another. None of you play COAS. I made the comment to illustrate that I have not got a fair hand in this business because of how you all judge and value my contributions. They are not of value to any of you because none of you care about them. However, other members do very much, but I don’t think you guys can see that. I have always felt like a second class citizen and alone in this regard, and that my opinions and desires were never or rarely considered. The fact that you could allow Post Captain to delete my posts whenever he pleases and for no good reasons is what really set me over the edge.
  
  Just so you know – that last bit with the Hitler comment was added only after I had tried to justify my own reasons in my own thread six times. Each time, Post Captain would delete my post and each time I would put it back. Finally I was so upset I put the Hitler comment in and that’s when he let it stay because he knew he would have ammunition against me with it….what a piece of work.
  
  I have always been a passionate gamer that made the time to game any time possible even during a long military career. I am addicted. I was programming the first TRS-80, Apple, and Commodore 64 games back in the late 70s/early 80s. I spent a whopping $6000 on a state of the art IBM 486 when they first came out in the mid nineties and I am the owner of every single video game console ever made. In addition, my Aspergers syndrome causes me to be overly passionate about a couple areas. One is computers and the science of data morphology and sharing, another is sailing, and the last is ships. My 1st and 2nd grade teachers had to bribe me with brand new pieces of typing paper to get me to pay attention during class and not draw little pictures of ships on my assignments. I won first place in the junior art fairs from 1st grade to 7th every year with drawings and paintings of…..sailing ships.
  
  This is why I am willing to pay thousands for good models and am willing to share with everyone with no profit for myself. You guys just are unable to understand me or who I am. You guys don’t even realize that Jan Marten released a new version of MOTCS with unbelievable amounts of new content. The mod compressed is even bigger than ERAs at over 9.5GB. I would have made an announcement and published links but with Post Captain ruling the roost and HoO the only consideration I’ve been kinda like, “why bother doing anything.” I wrote several really great historical articles when their dates came, and I thought, “why bother”.
  
  and more….
  
  “Well I do believe that you care very much about POTC. However, I seem to remember when we built our very first modpack you didn’t even want it on PA!. You wanted us to put it on MODDB.
  
  I don’t feel you read or considered my explanation at all – and I am not fighting with anyone. I can’t – I have no voice. Most websites at least have a warning system. In my mind all of you took his part before mine. I had no advocate in the matter. I don’t think any of you have the love of sailing ships that I do nor understand my love of ships. That is the major reason for my highly emotional reaction to how I was personally treated and injured by Post Captain. We will now never have the (model ship) Oliphant….that is still an extreme tragedy to me and I don’t think any of you care about that at all.
  
  It also comes down to one additional very simple equation in my mind:
  
  Post Captain’s contributions and administrative rights are greater than MK’s contributions and his ability to manipulate his own content/intellectual property.
  
  MK’s contributions are not that great or substantial to PA! or it’s current focus, and Post Captain is so engaged and committed to HoO, so he should have the rights to censor MK at anytime – even on his own threads.”
  
  and more… “I am quite willing to apologize for the Hitler comment – even in light of my explanation of it. I am even willing to apologize for becoming emotionally distressed. But I am still so unhappy about losing the Oliphant and Post Captain’s out of control deletion powers. You guys do not care about acquiring new ships for our members. That is the single most important thing to me. If I was unbanned I would never write another story for PA! or ever comment again on anything but questions about my own content with simple concise one line answers. However, because I am banned, I do not want my intellectual property or comments to continue to exist on a site that doesn’t appreciate my contributions.”
  
  PB: ” On the subject of your PMs, you should have considered that before making some of the posts you made.
  Shame, because I would have been willing to help you with it if this were not the case.
  
  We are already cleaning out the dead wood on the forum.
  We don’t like deleting threads unless they are spam or something repulsive, but they definitely will be closed and unpinned.
  In other words, they’ll be going down to Davy Jones’ Locker soon enough.”
  
  Thagarr: “Hi Aaron, good to hear from you man! Yeah, I have been a bit scarce around PA for a while, I just needed a break. I appreciate your kind words mate, I was getting a bit burnt out and just needed to take some time off away from PA. I am used to the no comments thing, it’s been like that for a while, with a few exceptions such as Hylie and yourself and a few others. The main reason however has a lot to do with me reconciling my love of all things pirate with my Christian faith, there is quite a lot to reconcile and I have been doing a good bit of soul searching lately. It’s something that I will have to come to terms with myself, but I wanted you to know exactly why I haven’t been around.
  >
  > There are a couple of other minor reasons as well, the Hearts of Oak project for one. It really doesn’t seem to be going anywhere at the moment, and seems to be completely dominated by the Napoleonic crowd. Overall the Seven Years War was a pretty boring era for pirates, with a couple of exceptions.
  >
  > There is also the official AC4 announcement a couple of weeks ago, I had heard rumors for several months but I never posted anything about them, I was hoping that they really were just rumors. I have many issues with the AC franchise, the least of which is the blatant disregard for actual historical fact. I simply have no desire to get involved in another pointless argument with some 19 year old kid who thinks the whole world revolves around his narcissistic perception of reality. As you point out, there does seem to be an abundance of them around lately.
  >
  > Sorry to hear your funding didn’t pan out like you wanted, I was really looking forward to seeing what your team could come up with. I sometimes get the feeling that Pieter thinks that no work gets done around PA when he is at sea, but I know there is still quite a lot of activity going on for both Mods. He would be the one to talk to about getting access to the source code. I am really looking forward to your Era’s mod, and I know several other people are as well!
  >
  > Anyway, thanks for your concern, I am sure that I will probably be back at some point.
  >
  > Sincerely,”
  
  and when he came back again after almost a year absent… “You are also the last one to be giving me a lecture on forum rules, you know very well what they are because you have violated every single one of them, in fact we had to make new ones to deal with the crap that you pulled. You were warned on many occasions, and several times by me. Those warning may not have been issued to moderknight1, but you were warend. You are hardly an innocent party, and we are still dealing with your spam bots and troll logins, not to mention your DOS attacks and hacking attempts.
  >
  > I am well aware of your communications with Pieter, he showed me every one of them. And since your obviously curious why I came back to PA, it was to deal with your crap, and the aftermath of your banning. Apparently you forget just how long I have been around PA, numbers as far as visitors mean absolutely nothing to us. A big reason for some drop in numbers is the fact that your bots disappeared when we banned your IP’s. I also don’t need a lecture from you on how the Internet works, I have been a geek for 40 years. Your “son” can blame you entirely for his banning from PA. I will continue to ban anyone that is a threat in any way to PA, and using IP’s linked to your account is a threat.
  >
  > I am also well aware of the fact that you tried to buy PA, and I thank God that Keith is a good judge of people and turned your offer down flat! I still have all our PM’s, and knowing what I know now, it is very easy for me to go back through and see just how much division and contention you were stirring up on PA. I am sure that there are other PM’s you sent to other members that were just as divisive, I have talked to some who received them. Yes, we wished you luck, but you just couldn’t resist stirring the pot even more before you left could you? Couldn’t leave well enough alone and just move on. To be honest Arron, if that is indeed your real name, I hope your new website succeeds and is a big hit, then maybe you will realize just what it takes to keep a site going, and all the crap that you have to deal with from trolls and spammers, both of which you are intimately familiar with.”
  - This reply was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by modernknight1.
  - This reply was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by modernknight1.
  - This reply was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by modernknight1.
  - This reply was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by modernknight1.
  - This reply was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by modernknight1.
- June 19, 2016 at 9:31 pm #2995
  
  Samir
  Participant
  
  I have carefully read your post. The repack that I created containts the Eras 2 MOD with Jeffrey’s patch and Orazio’s tweaks. I also use HD fonts by Black Knight and also the crosshair for first person sailing by Black Knight. I didn’t use Jan Marten’s work on the MOD. I use his tweaks on the original COAS game. I must say that I have made the installer for private use. Me and my friend are true fans of Eras 2 MOD and we both play the mod and share our experience with the game progress. Regarding my idea about uploading the MOD on moddb.com, it was rather a suggestion, but since you pointed in your post about a respectable number of MOD downloads, I think that it is not needed to promote the MOD via moddb.com. I’m also sad to hear that you have been close to giving up on Buccaneersreef and Eras. I have carefully read part of your discussion with PA! administrators. I can’t judge anyone, since I don’t know what has happened over there. I personally have noticed that the modders on PA! aren’t very interested in modifying COAS. I have started my activity on PA! when I first found out about New Horizons (via moddb.com) and I was fascinated with that MOD. However, after a while of playing, I found out about GOF 1.2. Then Jeffrey commented on some of my posts regarding GOF 1.2 and he mentioned that GOF is not dead, it’s just developed elswhere. That’s how I went searching for Eras. Eras is a masterpiece, a modification full of content. I have seen the discussion between Jeffrey and Hylie, and I must say that it wasn’t good to judge Jeffrey’s work like that. My relations with Pieter B. are quite correct, even though he’s working on PoTC which I have no interest for. PoTC is an outdated game with very simple fighting system, no blood and gore, and outdated graphics. I just couldn’t be anymore attracted to that game. Regarding Modernknight1, I can say about you, from my personal experience on this forum, that you deserve respect in the modding community. I have never been insulted by you or disturbed in any way. Your help was always there when I made questions in my posts, and I just can’t understand how the conflict on PA! occured, since I consider you a very decent and respectful person. But, let’s not dig up the past. To be honest, I’m personally not interested in that conflict. I’m just sad about the damage it caused by deleting your content. All in all, can’t wait for the mega patch that you spoke about. I didn’t know that it was comming. You were absent for quite a while, but I’m glad you are here. I saw later that you have been on a trip. I also saw your new videos on Youtube. Keep up the good work.
  - June 20, 2016 at 4:05 pm #3002
    
    modernknight1
    Keymaster
    
    Thanks Samir for the kind words.
    
    I don’t like dredging up the past either. However, with the very latest events at PA!, it has occurred to me more than ever recently that I can never escape from this past unless some kind of change occurs.
    
    Using simple IF ELSE logic what are my options?
    
    IF THE CURRENT SITUATION REMAINS THE SAME;
    
    1. QUIT all of this – pull down Buccaneers Reef and the ERAS mod and try to erase my online identity completely – or as best as I can – and then ignore the past and hope in a few years time that maybe I can work again professionally without the stink on me – with just a resume presenting a picture of myself – as people won’t bother to look at PA! for my past any further at that time.
    
    2. Hope for some kind of reconciliation or mutual apologies and retractions/erasures/deletion of all incendiary online content from all of the past unpleasantness on any/all sites that have such content.
    
    3. Sue PA! with a libel action and after a long drawn out two year process and thousands of dollars spent – force them to delete all my content/footprint and if they won’t comply (because they are an international entity not subject to US law), have them blocked from all US based cloud enterprises/hosts/activities.
    
    4. Continue to go on with my ostracized position in the greater digital age of sail community, regardless – with all of the stink on me – with no additional modelers coming to help us, some rare passers by possibly showing up occasionally and volunteering some new content. Instead of ever going back to work again full time making executive/PM level salary, just keep taking small part time consulting gigs from people that don’t really care about my “stinkey” online footprint. Would you hire me to run anything with everything they have up about me on public view over at PA!?
    
    5. Sail off into the sunset into the open sea, aboard my boat which can keep me alive with water and provisions for about two weeks, maybe a month or more if I catch fish – and hope for the best. That might be fun regardless… Start a new blog entitled “Flappin in the Wind”…
    
    MK
- June 27, 2016 at 5:55 am #3047
  
  modernknight1
  Keymaster
  
  Jeffrey,
  
  Need your help. Please look at my explanation of new titles/promotions in the announcement sections. I am having trouble getting it to work correctly. Perhaps you can point me in the right direction.
  
  In addition I was wondering if you might be able to figure a way to make ships consider two different flagall.tga options.
  
  My thoughts are that if I created a new flagall texture file with only half the current flag textures and then made the current one half of its size as well we would have cleaner more distinct flag textures and they would be more historically accurate ones as well. The new texture sheet would only have the merchant flags on it. So the division would be merchant ships receive one kind of flags for the different nations – and warships the standard flagall with no merchant flag textures.
  
  It is already possible in ships init to classify ships as merchant or war so this is why I am thinking along these lines.
  
  Possible?
  
  MK
  - June 27, 2016 at 7:20 pm #3052
    
    Jeffrey
    Keymaster
    
    I think some more flexibility can be built into the flag system. It’s a bit of work, but changes need to be made on both sides of the .c and the source. In other words, I can only find a way to make it work with a change to the source code and would have to run the new compilations. Here’s what I would try:
    
    1. Use only one texture file, but make it much wider. I notice in yours you shrunk the width of each flag. I would go back to the original width for individual flags and make the whole texture file as wide as you need for the flags you want. Put all the nations proximate to each other and make sure each as the same number of flags. Maybe even add some for alternate randomness. For instance:
    
    DutchWar1
    DutchWar2 (for random selection)
    DutchWar3 (for random selection)
    DutchMerchant1
    DutchMerchant2 (for random selection)
    DutchMerchant3 (for random selection)
    EnglandWar1
    EnglandWar2 (for random selection)
    EnglandWar3 (for random selection)
    EnglandMerchant1
    EnglandMerchant2 (for random selection)
    EnglandMerchant3 (for random selection)
    …etc…as many as you want
    
    Don’t worry about much in the the [FLAGS] section of rigging.ini. Go ahead and strike out from TextureName = flagall_shipX.tga.tx and below as it will be useless.
    
    Change only the TextureCount to equal the number of flags in flagall_ship.tga.tx. The real numbers for the change will come from other functions.
    
    The MSG_FLAG_INIT message only receives the .nation, but now we would add a .type (for war/merchant) as well. This requires some changes to struct GROUPDATA in Flag.h and changing the message type MSG_FLAG_INIT to read in the extra .type element. Since the AI ships send that message via a different message MSG_SHIP_FLAG_REFRESH, that message needs to change to look at the character’s attribute for war/merchant (which is available to use at that juncture in ship.cpp), and send that along to MSG_FLAG_INIT. Any other code, like locations_loader.c needs to send that additional parameter to MSG_FLAG_INIT (probably used for the fort, so it will send war type).
    
    The back-end will receive all that, but then calls procGetRiggingData() in BattleInterface.c. It pops off two parameters with GetEventData(), but we will add new type and the random numbers to select a flag index there.
    
    Sounds like a bunch, but I think it’s relatively easy. If you add a white flag, we can add a message similar MSG_SHIP_FLAG_REFRESH but raise a surrender, then call that message from the character AI .c code when they strike their colors. I think you were looking into that at one time.
  - June 27, 2016 at 7:54 pm #3053
    
    Jeffrey
    Keymaster
    
    Well I looked, but ‘promotions’ is pretty general. I believe you were attempting to get language-specific titles? Save me some time and give me the code files you’ve worked and tell what part is not going as planned.
    
    Back to bugs…one of the things I was able to consistently crash the game with is to ram full speed, head-on into another ship (usually my own, but an enemy ship can work) and in the case of my own squad, just before impact would click ‘exchange’ remove captain and sink it. Right after the remove, the ships would then collide, then game-crash. LOL, don’t ask why I tried this…just trying everything to break it (I had an incident a long time ago with a head-on collision breaking the game, so tried many thing to recreate). I could fairly consistently (about 1 out of 10 tries) get this to crash. Well, after my work to ‘fix’ the problem. A few tweaks to TSinkSplash and others, I now get my new log write errors for the faltering code that I now skip (++_index problems in splash index/vertex manipulations for sinkeffect), but no more crash and no glitches or problems in display/gameplay. Yes!
    
    Again, I would like to test some more, but will get the word out on a new upload within a couple days for sure.
    
    ERAS, GOF & AoP COAS Files: https://mega.nz/#F!WtMDgRxK!hbeUg86kGLlQAqvWRNwTqg
- June 28, 2016 at 4:55 pm #3057
  modernknight1
  Keymaster
  AWESOME on the flags! That sounds excellent. We will probably need to collaborate via phone to get all of that worked out. Yes I was trying to get white flags going but was happy with the flag striking. The way I accomplished that is with an alpha mapping solution which eliminates the first flag from the texture making it blank in gameplay. I think it may be more realistic to have a striken flag rather than a white flag anyway.
  
  Unfortunately I am on the road right now so can’t upload anything for about two more days. I will be fully capable at the new destination.
  
  On promotions, I think most of it is already in the current version, it just doesn’t work. I think its a problem in the quest texts files. So it looks as if there was another method of promotion originally planned for implementation but it was never put in. So when you earn a certain number of points the next promotion should happen if you are working for faction X. If you look at your interface, you can see the blank placeholder, next promotion at BLANK experience points, but its always left blank and I never figured out why. I even explored the NET files believing that it may have only been intended for the multi player version they were trying to implement as well.
  
  As it now stands, the only time you get promoted is in the National Questlines. So I was hoping to interject more numerous promotions in the quest text files, but they don’t work for some reason. There is another file that triggers the action and I don’t know what it is.
  
  So I did make up a folder of files I was playing with and will bundle that up for you a day or so after I make it to my destination. Feel free to call me on the road if you like. I will just be mostly driving long distances anyway. Not too early though. I don’t get up as early as I used to when I had a real life and real job. There are some nice things about being retired.
  
  EDIT: PS I noticed pirate KK (KonradK) released an update on PA! Did you help with that? Is there anything of benefit for ERAS in there?
  
  I also saw Boelen commented on Jan Marten’s thread about COAS never being modded as much as POTC “not even close”. He always kills me when he says that. He just can’t stand that AOP2 is the better and more popular game. Plus how does he even know… he’s never even played any of the mods. He has no clue how far we’ve taken ERAs. Wait till I have the new world map done. It will blow everyone away! Waves in the harbors is what the topic was about. That is something I have wanted forever. I have spent dozens of hours of my life trying to implement that, but was never able to get the Jetty functions from POTC or waves in the harbors to work right. That one is still on my list, but I have no clue how to achieve it at this point.
  
  MK
  - This reply was modified 8 years, 4 months ago by modernknight1.
  - June 28, 2016 at 9:19 pm #3061
    Samir
    Participant
    Actually, that’s me who asked about the waves on jetty, hoping that I might get a clue from someone on the forum. I know that Jan isn’t interested in modding the original AOP2 game, and I respect that. I thought at least someone else could say something about it. As Pieter said, they didn’t need to change the source code to get the ships moving on jetty and having waves etc. About your conclusion that AOP2 is better and more popular game, that’s clear and obvious. Nobody plays POTC anymore, and I think that modding POTC is a waste of time. Outdated graphics, extremely simple fighting system, no blood and gore, static skies… I could count a thousand things that AOP2 has and POTC hasn’t. However, I must also admit that they have implemented many new cool stuff in New Horizons, but they needed more than 10 years to get there… I still think that it’s a waste of time, but for some reason, they don’t wanna switch to COAS…
    
    This reply was modified 8 years, 4 months ago by Samir.
  - June 30, 2016 at 2:24 pm #3079
    
    Jeffrey
    Keymaster
    
    I had no involvement with KK’s new release. Looking back, when he kind of dropped off working on the source I eventually got, it looks like he had inadvertently mucked the stars while not directly or deliberately altering any of the stars source. Given his recent description of known issues with his new dev, it would appear that remains a problem, so I think he just picked up where he left off with his own development from back then, with some further modifications. The source I received was probably from just before his stars issue, because that was not present in the source I got and started work with.
    
    I downloaded KK’s new .exe, but I get a ‘not a valid Win32 program’ error on launch and can’t use it. I inspected it, and the .exe is 32 bit (I thought perhaps it was 64 and why I couldn’t launch), so not sure what the problem is. However, I can still poke around the Program/.c, as it looks like he’s made some mods as well.
    
    Jan has stopped talking to me on the ‘Source Thread’ we were engaged in, claiming I am not interested. There is either a huge communication gap (he posts to me in German, requiring me to use translate), or he was never really interested in collaboration. When he first explicitly threatened to drop comm with me on the thread, I actually mentioned that I might just not be understanding some of the things he was asking and maybe we just need some patience to clarify. However, I suspect he never really wanted to work because on at least 3 occasions, from the very outset, he kept saying that it was me that clearly had no interest, all while I kept asking what it is he wanted me to do. He asked to use VS 2012, I asked if we could maybe agree on VS 2015 Community, since it is the most recent, free, and even I would have to change as I’m using 2010 Express. He didn’t want to, so I said since 2012 Express is still downloadable, I could agree to that. So I’m engaged, asked one question, ultimately agreeing to use of 2012 in my last post to him, then the very next post, paraphrased, “Chez is not interested, I’m not posting anymore.” And he hasn’t been back since. Weird.
    
    KK, just posted to that Source thread, correlating to his other, open thread, about his new release and that he is also using VS 2012, so I’ll see about what transpires between us. I’ve not yet posted again, since Jan’s departure from that thread, but I’ll likely do that soon to see…given what I’ve seen so far, I think KK might be a bit easier to deal with.
    - July 1, 2016 at 3:23 pm #3089
      
      modernknight1
      Keymaster
      
      Interesting. Thanks for the update. Jan is even more quirkey and eccentric than myself and from personal experience much harder to get along with. If he doesn’t like how something is going he will throw up his hands and give up – and then blame you. I think this is one of the reasons his community has become so small and lost key members. He had a lot of momentum going into it. I wish a couple of those modders who disappeared from site over there who had been PA guys would reemerge over here. I will look for a falling star to wish upon tonight while I am driving LOL.
      
      MK
- June 28, 2016 at 10:01 pm #3063
  
  Devoidbrah
  Participant
  
  In my Job as IT-Consultant and IT-Service guy, I always Need to take a step back to evaluate and look at the bigger Picture.
  
  In the case of the COAS & POTC controversy maybe I could shed some light upon it, from my Point of view:
  
  As is the Situation right now is as follows:
  POTC_NH: Old game with lots of implemented Features limited in graphics and animations. Not attractive anymore in current time but still developed on since the People who develop it do it because of nostalgia and because they dont want to Abandon their “Baby”. And as Long as its not officially complete, they will still Focus on it even if not even playing it actively anymore.
  Mediocre amount of modders > Small amount of People actually playing it
  
  COAS_ERAS: Fresh game, in Terms of engine and functionalities. Even after over half a decade, still a game that is considered to be “playable” without getting eye cancer. HUGE Content packs and huge replayability make this game a charm amongst Folks that know of it and frankly the main Problem of the game is that so few People know of it. A small “cult-like” following of a game that has a scale few would give it credit to. A modding Group, that works in a manner that is astounding and makes the mod that much greater. Most People only download this mod, Play it extensivly/lurk on the forums and Keep silent. Simply because it is like a Close kept secret and the genre not to everyones taste.
  Few realize that by being somewhat of an echo in the Forums would go a Long way to motivate the modders and give them some Input.
  Small amount of modders > medium amount of Players playing eras.
  
  So PB and the rest of PA! are clinging to their former Tools of the trade. Like in Society there always gonna be some Folks that are not wanting to evolve, that want to have a stand still even though time travels and does not wait up for them. I really think that Buccaneersreef will build up momentum, maybe not this year, or next year, but it will grow over time, slowly but steadily. The Content and the community speaks for itself.
  
  I myself will try to be a tad bit more active in the months to come. Stay tuned!
  - July 1, 2016 at 3:40 pm #3090
    
    modernknight1
    Keymaster
    
    I agree with most of your assessment. I hope you are right Dennis that we will pick up more momentum this year. I agree completely with the fact we are a very niche community. What frustrates me the most though is the lack of participation from the “small player population”.
    
    I don’t know if I would exactly call it small with over 85,000 downloads of the mod. The amount of people lurking here is really amazing. While I type this there have been 39 different people visiting our site in just the last hour. We still consistently get between 2 to 3 hundred visits a day. I think we may even be outdoing PA! in traffic sometimes. Why won’t these people sign in if they are members of if not, why won’t they take the plunge and just become a member? Are they waiting for us to get more done? Do they not realize that we are motivated by participation and would probably get more done faster if more people would at least make their presence known and just say – “hey great job, can’t wait for more – when do you think your next major mod release will be?”
    
    I think a lot of people who play fear that people will find out that they play or who they are if they are in government or IT jobs. Its like you say, “a well kept secret”. I guess I can respect and understand that I suppose.
    
    However, a call out to everyone I think is in order. MK here – to all of you secretive lurking people – We love you, but we could sure use some more help around here!
    
    MK
- June 29, 2016 at 5:36 am #3069
  
  Jeffrey
  Keymaster
  
  A little OT, but I’m glad Devoidbrah is back and looking to post some more. I like your style and being a fellow IT geek (with some of the others here) I like company!
- September 16, 2016 at 4:34 am #3244
  
  Jeffrey
  Keymaster
  
  Hey MK, just got the flag thing working today. Modified the flag texture to be a 2D array of flags. Right now, using the width-shrunken one, where I widened them back out, they still look fuzzy when expanded in game. But if you were to remake that file with crisp images for each flag using the original width-per-flag, they would retain better sharpness once laid out in-game.
  
  But doing this for test, I now have 5 rows of 10 flags available. In theory, judging by the TXConverter limiting to 4096×4096, we could probably have roughly 18×20 flags. Anyway, there is also another message parameter for a Type, that can be obtained from either a character or ship attribute. Either way, that type parameter, along with the nation, then can be used to identify what flag to present. Works like a charm!
  
  So, give me a call, I’ll show you my example file and you can sharpen one up in that layout.
- September 16, 2016 at 6:29 pm #3246
  
  modernknight1
  Keymaster
  
  I saw you tried to call me yesterday Jeffrey. My phone is on this crazy international plan while I’m in the Caribbean and it doesn’t work a lot of the time. Plus I was snorkling along a coral reef right below the Pitons in Saint Lucia when you called… no joke. Spectacular!!!
  
  I still have another week left in the Caribbean before I can look at anything you have done. I am very excited to get back to the game even with as much fun as am having in the Caribbean. VERY EXCITING that you got the flag ideas we discussed working!!!!!!!!
  
  I am completing a historical article now that I will post in the next day or so with lots of pictures (that I took) about the Very Bloody history of the Pirates and Heroes of Puerto Rico and a review of the Museo de la Mar in San Juan. More articles about St. Kitts, Nevis, Barbados and Sint Maarten are in the works. Have discovered SOOO many new things this trip. So much needs changed in the game. This trip has shored up my resolve to get the new island map done. I already have tons of new period buildings and structures to import. People already say that ERAs is a completely different game. Wait till they see what we do with it by next year!!!!!
  
  MK
  - September 16, 2016 at 6:35 pm #3247
    
    Jeffrey
    Keymaster
    
    LOL, yeah, I wasn’t sure if you were back yet because I thought you mentioned first week of September, so thought maybe….
    
    Anyway, that ‘crazy international plan?’ You should have heard it on my end while it was ringing. Fricken’ loud, crazy, almost old-skool modem sound for the ring tone in my ear. Who woulda thunk it would affect the ring I hear on my end? Funny stuff.
    
    Oh, and the nice thing about the flag mod I did on my end is that it still works with the old style Program .c code that doesn’t contain the extra flag-type message parameter. But if you add it, change the rigging.ini to point at the 2 dimensional style intended to expand it, with the row/column counts, then it does. Nice.
- September 16, 2016 at 6:54 pm #3250
  
  modernknight1
  Keymaster
  
  Funny but no surprise. There are places down here with no modern services of any kind at all! Kind of cool.
  
  AWESOME!!! on the code. Now if we could just get pennants working as well. I think we would need to import and enable a new DLL from POTEHO or POTC to get that going.
  
  With the ship and personal attributes you mentioned it will be possible to give historical captains their actual historical flags and give players a choice of their own flags. The only issue here is that I am not good with GUIs although I could try…. a new GUI with flag choices would have to be made or imported from another game/mod in order to allow personal flag selection.
  
  Fun stuff!!!
  
  MK
- September 16, 2016 at 8:13 pm #3251
  
  Jeffrey
  Keymaster
  
  Ah, at the moment, the back-end looks for a particular character attribute, then sends back to the .c function that particular value (war, pirate, trade), that then uses a combo of nation/value to determine flag. What you’re describing is better, but just needs a little tweak. It’s better though. What I would send back is the whole character object, that the .c code would then be able to investigate and would have a lot more flexibility about doing what you want. Very doable and a very minor tweak.
  
  The hard part, for me, was figuring out how to traverse the texture and map the coordinates correctly. My initial attempts were getting several flags, and upside down, because I didn’t know what I was doing, LOL. But a little research cleared it up for me. Now that it is figured out, the little change you ask for is easy.
- September 21, 2016 at 8:24 am #3281
  
  Schiavonna
  Participant
  
  Okay – this has been a gameplay ‘bugbear’ for me (and probably you too) since starting playing COAS.
  
  During Sea battle – the Interface option “Sail Away” that you can give to other ships in yor fleet.
  
  So – you select it and what happens?: Your officer with very high NAV skill does the most stupid thing possible in 95% of situations: Sails directly into the wind or changes course and sails directly through the battle/ ships your are trying to escape from…! You know what I’m talking about now?
  
  My suggestion is: Would it be possible to further code further navigational points as an extended option for “sail away”? i.e Sail Away > (extra sub menu icons) North? East? South? West?
  
  Realistically, maybe start with 4 points and if it functions and it’s not too much extra hassle, expand to a full 8 compass points. 12 compass points would be ideal but lets not jump the gun yet…and maybe too cumbersome -?
  
  Making new interface icons wouldnt be difficult – I could do that, but coding in this proposed interface extension is where I stutter. Jeffrey/MK – can you offer any help here?
  
  The “Sail away” option I use alot, though in its current form – I use it very hesitantly! It could potentially really help newly started and struggling pirate captains – as one of the best methods of making money is “repossessing” ships with the intention of reselling them at shipyard. If your officer decides “sailing away” means “stepping into the breech” again…then its kind of pointless. Any enlightenment into what code controls this AI lunacy is much appreciated!
  
  Just putting this out there and hoping someone bites….<hint hint> Hi Jeffrey! 😉
  - September 21, 2016 at 8:58 pm #3286
    
    Jeffrey
    Keymaster
    
    Welcome aboard, Schiavonna.
    
    LOL…yes, I know exactly what you mean. I too have noticed that they will sometimes select to not only sail upwind, very slowly, but right into the mix of trouble. I’ve not yet looked into the logic of determining course, but will make a note and look into it at some point.
- September 22, 2016 at 11:42 am #3290
  
  Schiavonna
  Participant
  
  Thanks for the welcome!
  
  It’s pretty low priority compared to other things but appreciate that you’ll look into it sometime.
- October 14, 2016 at 7:15 am #3374
  
  modernknight1
  Keymaster
  
  Welcome Aboard Schiavonna!
  
  Your insights are much appreciated. I have tried to fix the sail away problem for years. I too would love for there to be an intelligent solution. My thoughts are very simple. If wind direction is X, THEN sail with that wind direction directly behind to allow the quickest escape. If land is in front of you, THEN sail the direct opposite direction into the open sea. What I have come to realize is that there is no CHECK for land mass models. The ships models simply chose a direction and go.
  
  I had actually added a very cool feature a couple of years ago where you will see ships sailing in the harbor while you are in bodily in the port or on the dock looking out to sea. The problem is that often the same problem happens. While you are looking out at your own ships in the harbor, the others will sail right into cliffs, forts, beaches, etc… very frustrating and beyond my ability to fix.
  
  MK
- December 24, 2016 at 8:39 pm #3429
  
  Schiavonna
  Participant
  
  Sorry for delay (see Off-topic forum for why I’ve been absent last few months)
  
  Hello MK! Thanks for replying and sharing your knowledge. No checks for land mass then? Thats a shame concerning both the ‘sail away’ and your ‘ambient harbour’ – which I would have loved to have seen. I have been reliant on the “defend (my ship)” option with the former problem, then I do the sailing away. Kind of works, but takes you out of the battle…oh well, nevermind.
  
  NEXT on the Brainstorming list: OFFICERS!
  
  WOULD IT BE POSSIBLE TO: Add some paragraphs of code to allow for TWO sets of officers dependant on whether from a REGULAR NATION or PIRATE? As in choose officers 1-10 in a French/English/Spanish/Dutch port and choose officers 11-20 for a pirate port? Possible with an overlap (regular nations 1-15 ; pirate nation 10-25, etc). So, you could put the smarter, cleaner, uniformed officer types in the low numbers, the “could go both ways” types of models in the middle, and the absolutely scruffy/mean/ugly pirate models (officers) – start filtering them in as officer_15, officer_16, etc….You catch my drift?
  
  This way players could have the best of both worlds, whether you want a pirate-looking crew or a more formal, naval one. It certainly would add a little more immersion and I noticed you have added up to 40 NEW SLOTS for officers. AND – does anyone now which part of the code/file chooses the enemy pirate captains for the world map encounters?
  
  And, even if you’re not interested…could you or Jeffrey tell me how to do it, so I can implement it in my own game? 😉
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