Dynamic vs Tactical sailing

[Samir]

I thought it would be a good topic to start. First of all, I tried to switch from Dynamic to Tactical after starting the game with Dynamic sailing, but I don’t see any possibility for it. I also looked into game folders, but I couldn’t find anything. How do you guys play this game? I always played with Tactical, but recently I started a new game with Dynamic sailing, and I must say I’m starting to like it. I have sailed a few times on smaller vessels because I live in a Mediterranian country, and I can say that ships can catch up a nice speed when the wind is good. But in Tactical mode, sailing is very, very slow. In certain aspects, Dynamic sailing looks much more real to me. For instance, in Tactical mode, I never had a chance to move faster than 4.2-4.5 knots. And it’s still very slow. What is your opinion?

[Oldtimer]

IMO tactical sailing detracts from gaming experience and is unfun.

Rgds, Oldtimer

[Samir]

I have finally made it, after about 4 months of dedicated work. I want to share with you the Buccaneers reef GoF 1.2 refined mod for Maelstrom engine. Here’s the intro video:

• This reply was modified 3 years, 11 months ago by Samir.

[modernknight1]

I am totally with Old Timer here. I have always preferred Dynamic as well. In fact I can tell you that I have never done a thing to modify tactical sailing in any way from vanilla. If you like the way I’ve gradually changed weather effects and the wider spread of speed and turning of ships, I want you to know that I have continually been tweaking them and in the next major update, the spectrum of performance effects will be even wider with even lower and higher ship speeds, attributes and capabilities than there are now.

I never cared for GOF 1.2. That was the last mod the GOF dev team did together. I was part of that team and disagreed with them on the direction they were going in. This is why we split up – and lack of interest. Luke159 wanted less and wanted later era ships and I wanted more and ships that were correct for the period of the original COAS game – circa 1660 timeframe. THIS is why I started developing my own mod – called ERAS2.

Luke159 was convinced that the mast crashing bug was caused by too many ships and certain ships, but he was never able to prove it and he was unwilling to listen to other team member’s experiences with the same ships that he wanted to keep but we had had crash with masts falling as well. As we known now from Jeffrey – the ships (with the exception of a couple of old Voyage Century Online models) were not responsible for crashing the game. Jeffrey fixed that forever in Maelstrom – which is why in the next major update you will notice more masts falling more often. I tweaked the game high for testing in large fleet actions because I didn’t want a whole bunch of dismasted ships at the end of battles which is what used to happen constantly. Now they take quite a pounding- but I’ve slowly adjusted the numbers to be more realistic.

I frankly don’t understand why anyone still plays the old AOP1, or any of the old GOF mods when they can have the ERAS experience of hundreds of ships, items and characters. I can never go back – because IMHO its so boring. In my current game in ERAS2 I have reached Level 50 on Admiral – something I’ve never done before – and Jeffrey and I are testing our version of PANQL – I’ve completed the French Questline and am currently in the middle of the English Questline. SO MUCH FUN!!!

But I know some people like simpler things and sparser versions of stuff – hence 8 bit side-scroller games (which I love!), old Atari and Commodore games (which I love and still play!) so I’m not disparaging your efforts Samir and think your changes look nice on the texturing of the islands. I will say though from traveling all across the Caribbean extensively in real life that your islands look like the ABC islands but not the rest of the Caribbean. The Leward islands and the Greater Antilles are lush and really green – where the ABC islands and much of the norther Spanish Main look more like high desert. I visited a mining town on Aruba that looked like it could have been in the middle of Arizona in pioneer days.

Happy Gaming!

Aaron(MK)

[Samir]

Thanks MK for this detailed explanation. I don’t know this guy Luke that you mentioned. I know that there have been disagreements on the development of the mod. I actually chose to modify GoF 1.2 for certain reasons, and the first one is the fact that it’s an abandoned project and that I cannot be accused that I’m stealing someone else’s work. I personally play Eras 2 together with my modification for GoF 1.2 I needed GoF 1.2 to test my storm modding skills. I have changed some things to suit my personal apetite, which I know that Eras 2 won’t have because Eras is very much focused on reality of the gameplay. For instance, I have changed all the water splash animations to be the large ones (like in POTC) and Jeffrey helped me very much with the codes. I know in real life small guns cannot make that kind of splash, but I just visually enjoy the larger splash animation. Also, I like the fact that in GoF 1.2 masts fall pretty often (maybe too often), but it makes the gameplay fun to me. In latest Eras 2, I haven’t had any mast fall happen after weeks of playing. But I’m very happy to know that this is also coming with the new release. I have seen your screenshots on Facebook and I really enjoy the direction and development of the mod. I also agree that AoP1 and POTC is the thing of the past. I just can’t stand the old graphics. What would be good to have with Eras 2 is maybe some new random quests, to give the game a bit of immersion, and also retexturing the islands would be good. I know that my island textures may not be the best ones in terms of reality of the Caribbean islands, but the vanilla ones from COAS just make the game atmosphere too melancholic for my taste. Also, playing with the textures I am now 100% sure that any tga.tx texture can be changed and replaced with the HD textures. I have used this website to download some good HD textures for free:
http://texturelib.com/

P.S. If you need any help that I can offer in development of the Eras 2 mod, I would be very happy to assist, because this what I have done with GoF 1.2 was just a small test for me. Also, about dynamic and tactical sailing, I really don’t see the point of tactical sailing, because everything becomes just too slow. It would be nice though to have a ingame switch between those two if it’s possible, just for testing. Cheers!

[PapaWulf]

If it helps, I only found out about ERAS2 by chancing on a few Youtube videos, and decided to look into why some were labeled AoP vs GoF. Normally, I use Steam for my game purchases, and they still have AoP on there under the Sea Dogs name. So, if people are looking for a pirate game, and they don’t bother looking past Steam, they may get AoP and not ever be aware of this game’s existence.

[Samir]

I’m pretty much done with GoF 1.2. The link is here if somebody wants to try it. Take any resource that you want. I think I have done a good job with retexturing islands to HD. Maybe that could be used in upcoming Eras releases, I’m pretty much motivated to help develop Eras as much as possible.

https://mega.nz/file/FeYwmZAR#qdgC3AejiZBDAKss0cZVhouY-I8Mx09XXaVTCJ0ZFyw

[modernknight1]

You know it sometimes feels like I have no voice – and no one realizes what I’ve worked on or what I am currently working on. Sometimes I get inspired and have the time and put out massive amounts of stuff…. and conversely sometimes things happen or people do crappy things to me or disappear and that makes me just stop working on anything for a long while until I find inspiration again.

It kinda just sucks the air right outa my sails to even release anything when I see all those dozens of characters I took so much time to research, develop, build historical bios for with timelines and in many cases visually made something altogether new for my beloved ERAS – and then that same content just being lifted out like an unwilling organ transplant into the very mod that caused me to break away from the GOF team and develop ERAS in the first place.

I’ve been working on a batch of 32 new historical characters for quite a while now that I feel like will really finish out the holes in the historical tapestry to make it fairly complete – also now including a realistic Chinese character based on a real historical person with a Chinese war junk in the Caribbean (Ming Koxinga – second son of the great pirate warlord Zheng Koxinga who had a Dutch advisor and who defeated the Dutch at sea in a great battle and conquered Taiwan from the Dutch. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Koxinga). Here’s a list:

1. William Wright 1675 pirate

2. George Cussack 1668 pirate

3. John Benbow 1665 English Royal Navy

4. Francois Le Sage 1678 pirate

5. John Bear 1684 pirate

6. Jean Hamlin 1681 pirate

7. Don Benito 1720 Spanish pirate beltro model

8. Jacob Evertsen 1680 Dutch pirate out of Port Royal sometimes working as English privateer

9. Thomas White 1700 pirate

10. John Auger 1718 pirate ?

11. John Bannister 1684 pirate

12. Adrian Claver 1703 Dutch

13. Jean Davy 1703 French

14. William Rhett 1699 English

15. Hendrick van Hoven 1695 Dutch pirate

16. Pieter Janszoon 1665 Dutch pirate mercen_5 model

17. Regnier Tongrelow 1703 Dutch

18. Alexandre Bras de Fer 1665 French

19. Nicolas Brigaut 1665 French mercen_4 model

20. Jean Charpin 1680 pirate Shark blaze model

21. Mathurin Desmarestz 1665 pirate Matthew model blaze animation

22. Jean Fantin 1680 pirate

23. Nathaniel Grubing 1690 French

24. Etienne de Montauban 1676 French gay etienne Leito lejo character needs retexture of face

25. Mateo Lucia 1710 Spanish Sharl8 Sharl8xxxxxx models masked guy needs face and armor retex

26. Lancelot Blackburne 1681 English (secret agent)

27. Francois Groginet 1680 pirate

28. Thomas Anstis 1718 pirate

29. Thomas Tobias 1665 (Irish) Dutch navy captain

30. Sir John Harmon 1673 English

31. James Kelly 1696 English Pirate

32. Ming Kox (Koxinga) 1660 Chinese (Dutch freebooter)

All those beautiful ships in ERAS not found in any other game or mod – the best most authentic Dutch and English period warships for the 17th century existent on the planet by Stephen E. – but most people don’t even know they are here…. and all of the other models I purchased with license or were built just for us.

Its so frustrating hearing about discussions on PA and Steam and folks not even realizing what could be had – they would rather eat cardboard instead of fillet mignon but don’t know any better.

I literally have nearly two full years of work almost ready to offer on top of the ERAS mod. We are close to finishing the Famous Pirate Battles DLCs – but…. burn out and frustration and then our work being torn apart without permission and put other places with no context of why the work was done in the first place.

This is why I hold stuff back just for myself these days. I didn’t used to be like this – but I’ve become like Mett over on the Russian side with Secret Shore. He’s been working on it for years and showed his work but keeps it for himself. I guess I’ve become a ‘mod miser”. Its a hobby – like people who work on model ships and never share their work with anyone – but they still get great satisfaction and enjoyment from their work.

I’ve been putting together a video with all of our new features that most people don’t even realize are in the game – like being able to bury treasure and have a map reminder in the log that will guide you back to it – just need a caching chest and a caching spade. Also the frying pan and the soon to be released El Kabong guitar.

Has anyone tried to use the frying pan as a weapon? Go on try it. Its the most OP weapon in the game. And here you all just thought it was another worthless item.

Its ok – it is what it is. As I said to Jeffrey the other day – I think we are about done here anyway.

Rant over. I will play Bannerlord now. MK

• This reply was modified 3 years, 10 months ago by modernknight1.

[Samir]

I’m really sorry if I have in any mean done anything wrong. I have reverted back to stock GoF 1.2 and kept only Edward Teach, Silas and Edward England. If that is ok. My goal is not to steal other’s work, but being that the mod if freely distributed, I thought it would be good to have those characters. On the other hand, my PA post is there because there are new people who want to play the mod, and I always say to them that Eras is the best that you can get if you like pure historical mod. My main goal is to promote Maelstrom and Buccaneer’s reef and that’s why I always credit the people who helped me, in my post I have credited modernknight1 for all the work with the characters. I am really sorry for the inconvenience, I will not make a mistake second time.

[modernknight1]

Sorry I overreacted. I’m just frustrated at how invisible we are. I’ve tried all kinds of things, and thrown away a lot of money and time, but we remain hidden away and only a very small group of people actually know about us or even like what we’ve done. I started out trying to make my perfect immersive pirate universe – and I should be satisfied with that if others don’t like it. However, I guess I finally understand why Willy Wonka closed his chocolate factory for so many years. LOL

[modernknight1]

Also I have a new female character I’ve been working on – but have run out of historical personalities and fictional ones as well. Any suggestions? Should I just make something up or am I missing someone I don’t know about? MK

[Samir]

This one could be a nice fictional character.

Barbarossa
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/QtUQXwk1kXS6tzt60R9Vx_-K2yxnbEjxaO5HMP9elkqsMPGQKkphljssK1lJVdzBUB5rSGUvKibJ_KF-9IBf5uc638yW3dXwSCpWzAqLMtL46VQ

[Oldtimer]

Mr. Knight,

2 NPC chars that might be outside the ERAS time period but not too much:

1. Krzysztof Arciszewski, Polish generaaladmiraal in Dutch service. Active during Dutch Brazil campaigns. Governor of Dutch Brazil for a while IIRC. Artillery specialist.

2. Maurycy Beniowski, Polish-Hungarian adventurer active on Madagascar in XVIII century. Tried to found a republic there.

Both figure in Europa Universalis game series labeled as conquistadores.

Rgds, Oldtimer

[modernknight1]

The characters are one of the MAJOR features of ERAS and so when they are taken out and offered somewhere else I feel like its stealing ERAS Mojo away. The old GOF team who put together 1.2 (that I was a part of) never cared about my vision of where I wanted to take the mod. They had their own vision. That’s why we split up and started doing our own thing.

[Samir]

It is stealing mate, and I sincerely apologise, though I saw them also in russian mods, but I guess you cannot do much about it. Unfortunately, a prerequisite for better visibility would be a cleaner forum. The one that you (we) have is a bit outdated unfortunately, and that’s what make new people go to PA, which is unfortunate because there are no real modders over there, but there are new useres who want to play pirate games. What we here can offer them is Eras and Maelstrom (my GoF 1.2 is just pure playing with graphics and textures, because that’s only what I know to mod, since my programming skills are poor).

Any help you need, pm me or write me on FB. I don’t want to break relations with anyone here, I know that good guys are here, I will take away anything from the mod, just to keep good relations with everyone here. Cheers!

[modernknight1]

I knew a few characters were taken by the Russians but do those mods allow for the game start date to be different depending on character and for them to have a correctly named historical vessel and equipment at the beginning like we have in ERAS. To my knowledge we are the only game that offers the specific start dates, ships and equipping. Old GOF1.2 had nothing like that. They came with the standard Windchaser ship at the beginning with the same meager equipment and same start date.

[Samir]

Btw, which programs you use to make character meshes and textures?

[modernknight1]

I use all of the old modding tools in the old standard bundle – I haven’t got sophisticated enough to learn anything new. https://buccaneersreef.com/forums/topic/ship-modeling-and-modding-tutorials/

I don’t change the meshes. I just reuse all of the hundreds of existing models and sometimes might change their heads out for one with a hat or no hat. Jeffrey has modified some of the animations to be more modern.

[modernknight1]

I fully realize this website is outdated. I spent thousands on trying to build a new one and got swindled by someone I was assured could do the work and would be helped by his older brother who was one of Twitter’s original developers. He was not up to the task and just gave up. That’s what I get for trusting family recommendations.

I have a company ready to do a brand new professional website for us – but they want $4,000.00 dollars US. I have the money, but will not spend anymore on this old game and project unless I knew we were going somewhere. When Orazio abandoned us, I just kinda gave up.

If I saw that people might still be interested and wanted us to continue I might spend the money, but was hoping the PATREON account might allow that – however, even though others recommended me doing that, not a single dollar has been dedicated to it yet so I think I’m going to just take it down.

That’s where we are – and its not a good place. So that’s why I’ve kind of just given up now.

If a new modeler came a long or Orazio came back and put those new models I’ve collected in the game – it might be enough to inspire me to spend more of my own money again. We don’t have enough in our sales to do it or we would. We have about half the money in our sales and were hoping we would make more. We’ve never spent any of that money we’ve made from the Engine on ourselves. It’s just waiting there for us to use when we need it. If PATREON even pulled in 2000 dollars we would have enough to do the new website.

MK

[Samir]

Ah, that’s too bad. I think the best way to gain money is to promote Eras and Maelstrom on Youtube, by making nice gameplay videos. Maybe that would be a good way to start. That’s what I’m doing. If the sales raise, eventually money could be collected for the new website. When did Orazio leave? He was a great modeler.

[Oldtimer]

Hi all,

well, this is a sad state of things. Still, I understand Mr. Knights frustration, it seems that the old dogma of “quality always wins in the long run” does not hold up. It`s been a long run, with lots of quality but no commercial success.

I agree with Samir that videos on the Tube could help with promotion but have no skills to put up anything there and don`t like their PC activism acting as censorship either. Perhaps it would be more effective to try BitChute, smaller and thus easier to become visible there.

Anyway I hope that this project will survive and develop.

THX for your hard work and good luck to you dear Devs in this year of 2021,

Oldtimer

[Samir]

Thanks for the kind words and the support, I know what MK has been through because I am an old member, I have had moments when I completely stopped playing Storm engine games, but there’s always a bit of juice left, because games like Assasin’s creed IV: Black flag or similar games don’t give me that pirate life simulation with all their perfect graphics. I think this project has future with a bit of luck and better advertisement. Hope the project will survive. Happy New Year to you too.

[Samir]

If you guys would like to try my new HD textures for Eras/GoF, I would appreciate it and report back if you like them. Also, I’m sharing with you my weather system that I have been working on for quite a while, I would be happy if it makes it to new Eras release, of course if MK finds it proper for the mod. Cheers!

1. Put the files from Textures folder into: Resource\Textures\ (overwrite the original files).
2. In Program folder delete Weather folder and replace it wit the one in the zip file.

https://mega.nz/file/YfwAEKiK#epj3wJeHSWlB01nSr_YYgFkm-HtVMwJZ0jMrMvqNA3E

https://mega.nz/file/9axy0IbT#a3zdrzsm-ae3ioe4i_800UcGUItU32wUGDIq18jIE58

[modernknight1]

Frankly I see very few edits to your weather system. You say you spent hours on it – well I spent months on it.

I did a massive overhaul of the weather in ERAS2. This is why you see much lighter CORRECT tropical colors – much less fog – much less rain – way different skies – many more wave types – and much more translucent see-through water in many places (like it actually is in the Caribbean and I’ve visited it a TON)

Jeff and I are actually developing a new method that will allow a set of random weather changes to occur more gradually. It will mean that there are three times as many sky boxes as there are now and they are all pictures I took myself in the Caribbean.

They one thing I might use that you have are the island textures – they do look better – but I wouldn’t call anything in this old game “HD”. Did you take those from somewhere else or are they actually your own photoshop work?

MK

[Samir]

The textures are from a website called Texturelib, they are completely free to use. I have only edited them in Photoshop to match the colors of the jungles in COAS, because the original texture was more yellowish and it was not a seamless texture. I have made it seamless using the offset tool and spot healing tool in photoshop. Regarding my Weather interventions, I haven’t personally ever visited Caribbean islands, and I have made the sea to act differently in daytime and in night time according to my own experience because I live on the Adriatic sea coast. It surely must be different in the Caribbean, but that’s what I see watching the sea during summer and winter time. I have also changed the colors a bit.

I assume you mean this texture:

https://i.ibb.co/4pLGQhm/Buccaneer-s-0000.jpg

I would be honored to have this textures in new Eras patch ^_^

[Samir]

This is the link for the textures:

Variant (realistic textures): https://mega.nz/file/4LZhEQbJ#Jl3CR31TX-d7bfcmF2lo04uycUQDSK9sIw3L6ouR37U

Variant 2: https://mega.nz/file/9PZQRbBT#ECW8nyXoZb7jZrtk7hbCZuzaRgO3vQg1uVzt7GgWydQ

[Samir]

Realistic textures link updated. They are now even better. I have updated the hill textures and also the island textures have been improved. Check them out.

https://mega.nz/file/oeh0zLQT#BGEjJB6IXlJEVKnP_4e9GrpHb0U24zPLbBd8bzQUDIU

[Samir]

[Samir]

[Samir]

New island textures, updated february 2021 (based on real Caribbean islands)
https://mega.nz/file/kbwDDSKC#GfnMfGDB4_sNft6mFEHwoUKK98yLJ5eNgH0J7G_RjqQ

[Author]

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