When you say you are “accosted” in pirate havens, do you mean they attack you? Or do they simply stop you periodically to tell you to “watch yourself?” If they attack, there is some error somewhere in your relations that might need attention/fixing. If they just stop to tell you stuff all the time, that is normal and has always been that way since COAS, unchanged.

Also, even if you are a pirate, pirate ships at sea will attack and that has always been that way, since COAS, and unchanged from the original game.

Well, after reinstalling both it works, so probably something went wrong while dl-ing the update.

Rgds, Oldtimer

Through some experimentation, I was finally able to replicate the stuttering ship on the world map; the only way I could cause that was by using fullscreen and VSynch at the same time. I do not yet know what to do about that. All other configurations (e.g. windowed + VSynch, without VSynch, etc.) seem to not produce that problem for me on my machine.

Falling masts have been enabled for several years in ERAS. However, the Storm engine was rather notorious for poor predictive skills for AI ships and running into one another. I took some time today and attempted to make it a little more sophisticated in that area (I’ve done a little in the past for this as well). I need to test it. However, I am reluctant to make huge changes, because that can often cause bad side-effects. It’s also rather tricky because there are quite a number of factors that come into play (e.g. braking vs. inertia, turning vs. inertia, ship stats, wind, etc.). I’ve tweaked some and we’ll see if perhaps they play a little smarter when navigating around each other.

It is a feature of some of the Gunner bonus items; if you or your gunner have one of these items, the reticle changes to indicate that different shape and now you aim it directly at the ship that you want to fire, instead of needing to aim the upward trajectory to account for gravity. Now, you aim straight at the target and the guns will automatically calculate the needed trajectory to hit the target, accounting for gravity/distance/velocity of fire.

Here is a short demonstration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUsThQwZ8Ek

I’m unclear what you mean by “some uploads” crash? I do know there was a recent mistake, with some crashes in Maelstrom a couple weeks ago, but that was fixed. If you are still having crashes, can you describe when or how? Is it a particular save game? If so, can you send me the save file and describe how to reproduce the crash?

I have tried the fast travel in some cities, but did not crash. Maybe it is only certain locations, so if you get a crash in a certain place using fast travel, can you send me a save file for me to try?

The various options should not affect or prevent crashes, but can change the visual experience and some people might find them preferable.

VSync will limit the framerate to your monitor’s refresh rate. VSync is supposed to prevent “tearing” where fast pans of the camera can create horizontal splits that you can see because the repainted display it trying to catch up, creating the effect, but in DirectX 8 or 9, the only way for VSync to fully prevent the tearing effect is to use it in combination with Fullscreen mode. So Fullscreen+VSync will prevent tearing.

Fullscreen in DirectX 8/9 will also allow the Gamma sliders in the Options screen of the game too. The Gamma options are not adjustable in DirectX 8/9 in windowed mode.

Post-Processing doesn’t really do anything and I should remove it, but have failed to do so yet.

Antialising is only the simple Full Scene provided in DirectX, not as sophisticated as some newer AA methods. Also, based on other user reports, it sometimes conflicts with Antialising features of newer video cards, so if you already have AA set for your card, probably best to leave it disabled in the Maelstrom config.

It all just depends on your preferences. I just leave them all off myself (except for the Enhanced sound…we added the FMOD reverb effect for locations and I like that sound), but my machine it old and I’m used to the older/poorer graphics of the COAS-style games.

You can send them to my email: [email protected]

The priority changes the CPU priority of the process and you can see this if you launch the Windows Task Manager to display the processes running on your computer. It simply means that the CPU will devote more of its computing resources to the game if it is set higher.

I loaded every save from City of Abandoned Ships location (your files dated 4/13/2020) and I am able to fast travel to all locations: store, tavern, money lender, residence. I did not crash in 32 bit or 64 bit. If you load those same saves and try to fast travel, do you still crash?

If you do crash, maybe there was another bug that I have fixed, but still need to upload and update for Itch. Let me know.

Real time priority is an option, but not recommended because it can cause the mouse and keyboard to become unresponsive. Here is a discussion: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1663993/what-is-the-realtime-process-priority-setting-for

Priority High, Above Normal, or even just Normal is usually good enough, but if you want, setting to real-time, understanding the possible problems, I wanted to provide an option. A user can also set these same priorities using the Windows Task Manager, after starting the game, but the Config just provides a way to launch it, without the need to later use the Task Manager.

I suspect that you have the – Less powerful skill books on in the mod options, this option reduces the majority of the skill books bonuses to 10. If that is not it then idk, I don’t remember any changes that altered said bonuses.

Filipe is correct. If Less Powerful Skill books option is enabled, then all bonus items are limited to bonus 10, instead of 10, 20, 30. There is currently no way to alter the desciption of the items if that option is on to reflect the change because the descriptions are hardcoded in a separate RESOURCE file.

That option was something the GOF modders added in order to limit bonus stacking to a point that some people thought was ridiculously easy, so they offered the new option and ERAS inherited it.

Not the Armed English merchantman but the Armed english trader. Its missing some of the rigging.

I can make a note of that ship, but I won’t be able to fix it because I don’t know modeling and we seem to have lost our only ship modeller a short time ago. But I will record the problem and if anyone ever comes along with an ability for that type of work, they can take a look at it.

As for performance, there are some periods of slowness when many of the moddable scripts run, which is for just about everything from cannon firing to character movements and decisions. I have profiled the game using VS dev tools, and I believe the slowest parts of the game are when it needs to parse and perform the moddable, script parts. I don’t think there is much I can do about that, since that is a core design feature to allow the flexibility of easily changing/modding the mechanics. A complete redesign would be needed to properly optimize.

Keep in mind that this engine design was not originally written by us, and much of that design had to remain as-is in order to remain compatible with these old games.

Myth gave me many potential updates, and within his package he offered some changes for the Tavern overnight that I did not yet intend to adopt, but I accidentally copied some of his code that applied to that feature into a file. I fixed this problem and it is uploading to Itch right now. It should be fixed as soon as it completes its upload and Itch publishes the update.

Sorry.

It’s not just one place. There would be many edits in the following files:

battle_interface\BattleInterface.c
battle_interface\LandInterface.c
battle_interface\LogInterface.c
battle_interface\WmInterface.c

The easiest way would be to open each file and search for the word “scale” (without quotes). Sometimes it will be .fontScale, sometimes it is .scale, but is preceded by .font, which will usually mean it applies to the scale size of the font. They were inconsistent with the attribute name, and which scale setting name is used to adjust the font, but if you search for them all, you can experiment by changing the number to a larger size.

Change INTERFACE\NationRelation.c. Go to line 114 and adjust the 700 number. Given your screenshot, I am changing it to 680 for the next update:

CreateString(true,”EngH”,””,”INTERFACE_ULTRASMALL”,COLOR_NORMAL,680,134,SCRIPT_ALIGN_CENTER,1.0);
CreateString(true,”FraH”,””,”INTERFACE_ULTRASMALL”,COLOR_NORMAL,680,190,SCRIPT_ALIGN_CENTER,1.0);
CreateString(true,”SpaH”,””,”INTERFACE_ULTRASMALL”,COLOR_NORMAL,680,246,SCRIPT_ALIGN_CENTER,1.0);
CreateString(true,”HolH”,””,”INTERFACE_ULTRASMALL”,COLOR_NORMAL,680,302,SCRIPT_ALIGN_CENTER,1.0);

I have no control over the Itch downloads. If you are using an internet browser to download, you might have better results if you download and install their free Itch client, the use the client to download, instead of a browser.

Confirmed this is a mistake for the ship init. Will be fixed in next upload update for ERAS.

Workaround: strip your operational cannons to hold, buy missing and install. My zabra now has 2-6-6-4 layout. None in the hold.

Rgds, Oldtimer

Hi all,

started a new playthrough and atm it WAD:s. Older playthroughs did not rectify themselves though. Your passengers will, however, complain abt. late arrival(thus you will know their destination) so it`s not game-destroying but annoying as you know what…

Rgds, Oldtimer

Your post comes at a coincidental time, as MK recently notified me of character problems in his game. He sent me a save and I eventually discovered a flaw from the original COAS handling of quest passengers and quest merchant escorts; the characters for those two never dissolve from the “character array” held in the game, even if you decline their quest, or complete their quest. Those characters stay “active” in the game, forever. So over a long course of gameplay, the character array becomes too full and things start to go wrong, because the character array is a hardcoded size and can’t be enlarged.

I think your problem is related to that, because it sounds like you take these missions often and over time, you would run into the same problem. I found a way to retroactively sift through the character array for an existing game and remove the old characters, as well as adding what I think might prevent the problem in the first place, by also removing these characters from the array if you refuse, or complete the mission.

I also added the fix to GOF and COAS.

I solved the issue. It was indeed an outdated Maelstrom. Now there are no more crashes.

A slow and steady decrease in stability? Whatever…it runs faster and without any trouble on my machine and has been perfectly fine for me for a long time.

Since I have no problems, I can only guess at what might be causing your issue. I just uploaded another version. If that still causes you an issue, add this to the top of your start.ini file:

cncLevel = 0

That will probably help, but will also mean it won’t be doing the latest performance enhancement I added for at sea.

This might only happen in specific locations, because I have been unable to reproduce the problem on my own when I try random locations. Can you send me a save where this occurs?

Sail-to label problem should be fixed now with latest update.

The hats need positions defined for every model and unfortunately, that is a manual, trial and error process, so not all models are yet defined. That is why they don’t get placed on some characters. As for Morgan, her model is “beatrise” and I confused the positioning for that one with the “beatrice” model. They are clearly not the same LOL.

I spent some time and figured out the correct placement for beatrise model and I will send an ERAS update to Itch sometime this week so that will be fixed.

Itch has been updated with the Morgan hat position fix.

Well, there is an expensive workaround. I had the ship repainted and now we have the hull planked as it should be.
The problem remaining are the disgruntled sharks trapped in the bilge…

Rgds, Oldtimer