Questions and comments from newcomers about GOF ERAS2

[Orazio]

Hello, I’m new here.
I have recently discovered this mod, along with GoF 2. I decided to try GoF 2 first, but when I saw characters from POTC in the character creation screen I started to understand this mod wasn’t for me… And this was later confirmed in game when I saw ships from differents periods all mixed together without any sense.

So I downloaded ERAS (I must confess that I find 9GB and 35GB uncompressed a bit too much), and – although I haven’t started a proper game yet – I could already appreciate some aspects of it, like the historical accuracy, the quality of the ships, graphical improvements, etc.
It’s clear a lot of effort and hard work was put into this, mostly by a single person if I understood right. I want therefore thank Modern Knight for his excellent work, and the other people that helped him, hoping another supporting voice will encourage him to continue this project.

Now a question about the upcoming patch: as I said, I haven’t started a proper game yet; I have ERAS2 1.5.7, and I manually applied the bug fixes found in this thread (a thank to Jeffrey for many of them). I would like to know if it’s safe starting a new game with this setup, and then apply the new patch later without breaking my saves, or if it’s better to wait for the new patch. Thanks

[modernknight1]

Welcome to the REEF! Glad you took the time to check us out. You will never be banned here without warning and the only reason you would ever be blocked or banned here is if you spammed the site.

Sorry about the mod size. It can’t be helped. I have been attempting some torrent tool versions and am also considering cutting a version into pieces like what was done with the Spanish COAS mods. The reason I feel I must do this is because it is only going to continue getting bigger. It already has hundreds of more ships, weapons, items and characters than its only comparable competition/mod (the New Horizons mod for old POTC found on PA!). However it also has a much more complex fighting system, character animations, sea animations, skies/weather, etc. Graphically it is FAR FAR superior to that other mod as well so it has to be larger. As I continue to add/port all of the colonies and dungeons/crypts from New Horizons, SOFS/AOP1 and possibly some from Voyage Century into the ERAS mod, it will only continue to get much larger still.

Concerning your questions on the patch. Make sure to DL the first patch out already and put it atop ERAS. You’re doing very well to be able to incorporate all of Jeffrey’s edits already. You must have a little experience with that already I suppose. Your current game will be safe for the time being, but when the new much larger upcoming patch is released, it will require a new game because the promotion, weather and cannon systems have been overhauled again and I am also adding a few other improvements as well.

Enjoy GOF ERAS! I think once you do start a “proper” game you will find it far superior to any other Pirate/swashbuckling games you have ever worked with/played before.

tot ziens!

MK

• This reply was modified 8 years, 10 months ago by modernknight1.

[Orazio]

Thank you for the answer. I guess I’ll wait for the new patch before starting what I call a proper game!
One other question not related to the patch itself: would you recommend playing with the ‘dynamic battles’ or the ‘tactical battles’ option on? I know it ultimately depends on everyone’s own preferences, but what do you prefer?

[modernknight1]

Over time I have determined that there is only one small block of code that governs the difference in dynamic and tactical. This simply determines how enemy ships flee the battle and how they will support one another. On dynamic, often one or two ships in an enemy formation will run away from the battle if they see they are outmatched by you. I play tactical because I enjoy the larger battles later and less ships run away. They also support one another better and because of this in my experience will attempt boarding your ships more often.

If you enjoy individual ship to ship battles more, then select dynamic.

MK

[Samir]

Ok, since I recently started playing ERAS Mod, I have a few questions.
First, how different is Eras Mod from the original GoF 2.0? Does it have new quests? What is the new content? Is the world dynamic? Is there a war between colonies and does it happen that a colony can be conquered by a certain nation? Can you play as a pirate like in New Horizons (without being attacked by pirates ships)?
I’m asking all these questions because the installation of the Mod has 35GB, which is a lot of space for a Mod (original game takes around 10 GB if I recall well). If the Mod only features a lot of ships and characters (without a rich gameplay), then I’m afraid that I’ll have to stick to the old GoF 2.1.5. (which is unfinished unfortunately).

Thanks in advance,
Samir

[modernknight1]

Samir,

I would invite you read the “read me” file. Your questions make me believe you don’t have much familiarity with COAS and haven’t played much of the COAS mods.

1st off, ERAS is not based on GOF 2.0. It is based on GOF 1.0/1.1 and vastly expanded. GOF2.0 was Luke159’s (who is a good friend and who I worked closely with on all of the GOF mods) last release of the mod. It was built during the same time-frame I was developing ERAS. Luke actually used some content of ERAS in his mod and cut down the number of ships from previous versions of GOF. Luke and Craig were always into the later 18th century ERA and this is reflected in the ships selected for GOF2. They have been awaiting my development of GOF ERAS3 which is the later era (1775-1825). ERAS3 is actually a working mod now but I refuse to release it until I finish ERAS2.

I don’t believe ERAS will have any new quests until later this year. The Russian versions of COAS and SOFS have a lot of new/different quests and I have learned enough to finally be dangerous. My next priority after the full porting of all of the NEW Horizon’s and SOFS colonies/locations is new quests. However, since it seems you don’t have much experience with COAS because you didn’t even know who Atila was. I would recommend you play the COAS main quests and sub quests. They are very good and I believe much better than New Horizon’s quests. My favorite quest in NH is still the old basic Hawk questline. As good as that quest is, I believe COAS outshines it.

If you mean by the world being dynamic, that you can directly sail from one colony to another directly, then yes – only ERAS and GOF2 have direct sail capabilities where you can go completely across the entire world map sailing and still run into colonies. However, only ERAS has encounters in direct sail where ships and patrols from colonies you are passing by will chase you and try to catch you.

In all COAS/GOF mods the world is dynamic as far as the political situation and war is concerned. Once you play through one of the national questlines you can capture colonies for yourself or your country of choice. In addition, other countries will capture colonies from their enemies. Alliances and declarations of war will change. ERAS is not like vanilla COAS, in that pirates will not chase you if you are playing as a pirate. However some pirates (Gentlemen of Luck) will chase you because they don’t care. They go after everyone.

In vanilla COAS there are 4 playable characters. In GOF2 there are 38 characters to include a number of POTC characters and late era characters. The last 10 or so are female. In GOF ERAS there are 123 different characters. Over 90 percent are real historical personalities from the Golden Age. There are no POTC movie characters. There are also more female and minority race characters than any other RPG video game anywhere.

You used the term “Rich game play”. For me historical immersion in the game-world IS “Rich game play”. So that is where the real differences ERAS has over any other Storm mod and why it is so much larger. There are literally hundreds of more items and weapons than you will ever find in New Horizons or other COAS mods. So many of the weapons are so beautiful and the weapons balance has been carefully engineered so that you can chose your favorites based on weight speed type and lethality numbers to figure out which ones are the best for you. These weapons are slowly made available over time. Many will not be found until after you reach level 26. Most of the items are germane to the times/situation or are historical to the golden age and have descriptions as such – many modify and improve abilities.

With all of the new characters running around, not only is the immersion in towns far improved with variety, but also you never know who your companions are going to be, who will be your friends and enemies, what type of situations you will run into in duels, cooperative actions, or disagreements. There are literally thousands of different play directions/situations/possibilities possible now over what other games offer.

Ships. ERAS has HUNDREDS of more ships than any other Storm game or mod(if you count every skin like New Horizons does). There are 198 different ship models in the game and with all of the different skins way over 500 different encounterable ships. This is the biggest factor for me because I LOVE ships and so love choices available and those that I will encounter. THIS IS RICH GAME PLAY. In addition, you will never find a age of sail game that offers this variety in such a nationally correct and historical method. The ships from France look French, the ships from Holland LOOK Dutch, the ships from Spain, ARE historical Spanish ships. The English LOOK English. This isn’t like weak New Horizons where the ships mostly look generically the same and are simply the same models reskinned with different colors to denote faction. They even admit that their game looks mainly English as far as this goes. How weak – especially for people who want to play as other nationalities besides English. So entering ports and encountering convoys offers incredible historical immersion not seen in any other game.

If you don’t have much historical knowledge to begin with, are not interested in learning(because this game is a learning tool whether you want it to be or not – you will learn something just from reading about the character, weapons/items, and ship descriptions), and you’re more interested in simple story line type play and don’t care about rich historical content, – then this is not the mod for you or the website for you. If that is the case, you should indeed stick with the kiddie crowd at Pirates Ahoy! and the New Horizons mods, GOF2 or other old COAS mods that are no longer supported by anyone.

However, if you do enjoy history and historical immersion on a very comprehensive scale and the thousands of possible outcomes/situations that RICH variety brings into causation, then keep trying out ERAS.

Have fun!

EDIT: Oh yeah I almost forgot….ERAS is the only COAS Mod in English with lower boarding decks enabled during boarding actions. This is a HUGE improvement and one that took me forever to figure out.

MK

• This reply was modified 8 years, 10 months ago by modernknight1.
• This reply was modified 8 years, 10 months ago by modernknight1.

[Samir]

Thank you very much for your reply, MK. I do wanna stick to the ERAS Mod cause it is the most realistic one and it is the only COAS English Mod that’s still being worked on. I have been answered on PA! website a while ago that COAS is bad for modding and that it’s the reason they are not switching to Storm engine 2.8. I have played New Horizons a bit. It has interesting naval battles, very nice cannon fire and damage, but it has outdated graphics in general, very linear storylines, no blood and gore etc. I’m not a modder and don’t know anything about codding, but from my point of view, COAS has graphics that are pretty good even for nowadays standards. Anyway, keep up the good work and thanks again for your answer! I will read the readme file now. 🙂

[Galleon]

I love ERAS more than any other game. I am Spanish and much into the history of Nova Hispania, I can be one of many excellent Spanish characters. My ships – companions – weapons are all Spanish. When I go to sea in my Flota and patrol for pirates or deliver goods in the name of the King of Spain, I feel like I am there. Fortunately for me I speak very good English and grew up with it from the time I was as a young boy. The only thing that would make immersion better for me were if eras was in Spanish.

I have been helping MK for several months and come from a Spanish mod group that is no longer together. This is the first time I have posted here, but just wanted to echo what MK said about the historical immersion. There is not another game anywhere where I can play as a 17th century Spanish Capitana commanding a flota of eight Spanish warships that look and feel perfect for that time.

[Jeffrey]

So Galleon, you’re out hunting pirates, eh? Meet Mary Read and her chick army:

We eat sqaudrons of 4-5 class 3 ships for lunch 😉 Good luck!

And ModernKnight, you call the lower boarding decks an ‘improvement’? I still remember the WTF moment I had when I gained my bearings during the first couple boarding battles, immediately tried running to my musketeers because saving them from harm usually means more of my crew gets spared during the battle and I wind up on some lower deck. Huh? Dang it! Precious seconds wasted! Who put this hole with stairs in the deck? LOL. Just giving you a hard time…I now watch for them, before bounding to defend my rifle crew 🙂

• This reply was modified 8 years, 10 months ago by Jeffrey.

[modernknight1]

I LOVE IT!!! I did the same thing one time Jeffrey and had a whole group of Pirate chicks as captains and companions. I even had a video on youtube of it. Whan PA threw me out of their boat I took down all videos that promoted their site and their mods so that’s why the “Hot Pirate Chicks” video is not longer on my Youtube Channel.

It’s awesome when your squadron can take on superior forces because of your abilities, ships and weapons/items. Its one of the things that always keeps this game fresh. Love the anecdote of first seeing the lower decks. I have often used them to retreat to when things get bad. There are a couple good spots of advantage in a fight in those new places – especially on the large ships decks.

@Galleon, Well stated and nice sentiments my friend. Nice to see you finally post. That wasn’t so bad was it? I really appreciate your efforts.

MK

[Orazio]

Is there a way to make nights darker?

[modernknight1]

I’m working on it. Its all in the weather files and skyboxes and their corresponding location mask and shadow files. The next patch will have more new skyboxes. Are you talking about how it is too light on ship decks sometimes? I am missing some files in that instance.

MK

[Jeffrey]

LOL, I saw this post and thought, “Hey, why not take a look and see about this night thing?” So I found Night.c, and mucked with the shadow.density and sky.color argb call values by substituting extreme values of 0 or 255 to see what gives…I could find no discernible difference, so that ain’t it for sure.

Makes sense there is more to this, undoubtedly with semi-transparent mask layers and such that I obviously don’t yet have a clue about how what what works 🙂

[Orazio]

I’m mainly referring to some skyboxes and the overall darkness of the scene; in these two pictures for example the sky and darkness don’t match the time on the clock:


Especially when far from the coast, like in the first picture, I would expect to see much more darkness, almost pitch black (yet maybe for gameplay reasons it’s better to have a level of darkness in the middle, not too bright but neither too black).

[modernknight1]

Actually, Those screens look pretty good to me corresponding with time. The things that bother me that I have been working on is the glowing land mass at night when everything else is dark and the light decks with no shadow when everything else is dark. Hopefully the new sky boxes and substitute mask files I am working on will help this and spread the effects out wider over 24 hours. This game is a constant work in progress – but it is so beautiful!

MK

[jimmystanley]

Ahoy mate! As a new comer to your site I first of all wish to say bloody good work! Please keep it up, it’s obvious you’re passionate about the subject and it really does shine through.
As for the mod you’ve created, I’ve filtered through from PA! as that was the only modding site I knew of for the game and what ever happened between you lot, they’ve lost a bloody good thing with you, friend! I’ll leave that at that as it’s your business.
The mod itself, well what can I really say but WOW! I’ve been looking for this mod since years back playing POTC, a time oriented age of sail game, I really do admire how you can learn so much from this as to the Hollywood styled pirate games which are JUST that, games. Thank you so very much for taking the time and obvious great effort into making this wondrous game we have before us! Please for gods sake keep up the good work as I have now found my mecca for pirate gaming and it would be a bloody great shame to lose out on future updates.
One thing you may be able to help me on is the patch, I’ve extracted the patch but you state that I would have to start a new game, I can still play previous loads once patched, maybe installed wrong on my side? Thanks in advance for your advice.

[Orazio]

Welcome jimmystanley! I agree with your words, and ask Modernknight not to give up on this project.

I think Eras 2 deserves to reach a final and stable version (to which I believe is pretty close), so please MK don’t give up!
You complained about the lack of participation here… that may be true, but I’m sure many people are interested in your work and are eagerly waiting for the updates.

[modernknight1]

Welcome jimmystanley!

Thanks for the very kind comments. I don’t care if you bring up PA! even though I am trying to forget about them. I am also trying VERY HARD not to let PA! bother me anymore, but they still do. The following almost neglected post sent me into a very deep depression recently.

http://www.piratesahoy.net/threads/problem-with-model-in-maya.26695/

Yet another ship I will never have and yo ho ho is one of my favorite modelers. If you read the credits, you see I comment specifically on his beautiful Dutch models.

The crying shame here is that that idiot Hylie Pissant offers to help with sailorpoints but then in another more recent post he tells someone that he’s completely forgotten how to make sailorpoints files. What a piece of work.

A ship like that should be front page news. It should be showcased, but they just don’t care for the Golden Age over there and he probably doesn’t even realize we exist over here. Its things like this that make me just not want to do anything further with this game.

As to your question, several people have told me they didn’t need to start new games after the patch – I guess maybe I did something right this time.

Still working on the new patch to be released soon. Glad you are enjoying the mod.

MK

[CoronerLemur]

The mod is beautiful.
Just now only one question – is there any way to get vanilla compass (with radar) back?

[Jeffrey]

I know how. In a file explorer, go to where your ERAS is located and navigate down to: RESOURCE\Textures\BATTLE_INTERFACE

To be safe, rename two files so they are retained:

compass.tga.tx to compass.tga.tx.orig
indicators_dark_and_center_ship.tga.tx to indicators_dark_and_center_ship.tga.tx.orig

Then in either GOF or stock AoP (whichever you prefer), navigate to that same RESOURCE\Textures\BATTLE_INTERFACE directory and copy compass.tga.tx and indicators_dark_and_center_ship.tga.tx to ERAS.

[CoronerLemur]

Big TNX. Problem solved 🙂

• This reply was modified 8 years, 8 months ago by CoronerLemur.

[CoronerLemur]

Another question – may I change sails and flags colors in game (like in some russian mods)?
In Damned Destiny for example you may change even hull texture.

[modernknight1]

Thanks for the words of encouragement JimmyStanley and Orazio. AND Thanks for you contributions Orazio!!!

I will probably always continue to work on this. I love it too much not to. I just work better/harder/longer/faster and more intently when I have lots of participation and interest. Otherwise I just work on it at a more leisurely pace.

I am even still working on GOF ERAS 3 (1767-1820) time-frame a few hours each month. It’s a fully playable mod right now. I will make this mod limited release only to contributors. This way all the people who caused my exile here (and are in “their camp”) will never have it unless I get some justified apologies and possibly some help with a few modeling issues.

For those folks… (and I have to believe they check here occasionally because we get 160-320 visitors a day. We just went over 5,000 registered members this week) …just image commanding squadrons of 18th century Ships-of-the-Line with correct colors and flags for each faction with beautiful sleek 18th century frigate escorts – up to 8 in your fleet.

Imagine running into enemy convoys of period correct French corvettes. I had a fun battle just the other day in the year 1780, and I plan to put up some video showcasing the late period mod soon.

GOF ERAS3

@CoronerLemur concerning the colored sails and flags. I have been experimenting with this for ages and hope one day I will have a good selection again at not only the Bermuda shipyard, but ALL shipyards where you can change your sails to any one of the several dozen different sail textures I have put in the game (to include symbology).

MK

• This reply was modified 8 years, 7 months ago by modernknight1.
• This reply was modified 8 years, 7 months ago by modernknight1.
• This reply was modified 8 years, 7 months ago by modernknight1.
• This reply was modified 8 years, 7 months ago by modernknight1.
• This reply was modified 8 years, 7 months ago by modernknight1.
• This reply was modified 8 years, 7 months ago by modernknight1.
• This reply was modified 8 years, 7 months ago by modernknight1.
• This reply was modified 8 years, 7 months ago by modernknight1.

[0range]

Modern Knight, hi again, it is me here. I spent another day playing, and unfortunately feel I am doing something wrong. Sorry for being a complete noob, I am just trying to master the game… And I keep getting somewhat unrewarding experience while enjoying the setting and the models of the ships you have done.

Firstly, I have already understood it is better not to fight with anyone, to pay gold to every offender… That gives me chance to survive for some time. I understood that cannons do shoot, but require skills, crew, food, rum, powder, cannonballs… And I have no useful effect of my cannons on my starting ship, it is cheaper to pay 120-140 coins compared to repairing the ship later. The seas are loaded with the pirates, I have seen about six of them near three towns. I do not feel I will be able to pay to all of them or escape from all of them. Neither I feel it is realistic that the very moment you leave a port, there is a high chance there is a privateer hunting you and almost ignoring other ships.

I started working peaceful quests for deliveries.

The problem is that I am not that acquainted with the map and the time period. So I tried to enter some port just to humbly repair my ride, and they shot me there. So the question, do you, and other guys, know by heart which city belongs to which country, and remember/know current political relationship between the parties? For me it is a complete mess, unfortunately. Other games (two shallow Android pirate games in comparison to ERAS – Pirates and Traders and The Pirate: Caribbean Hunt) do provide noob-user friendly interface to understand which guys and ports will attack you and which won’t, and a Reputation screen to understand who and how much likes/hates you. As well, I explore the map with Tab while going 0,5 speed to try to find locations I need… It is difficult. As well, Merchant Winds quest log do not provide island name of the destination port, and the map does not provide city names… So I need to force my memory not to forget where to go, while searching where it is… And confusing myself till forgetting where should I go.

How do you navigate, MK and people of the Reef?! Is it possible to update the map with “classic” red/green colors? The Reputation screen between the PC and the nations? The dotted line to the destination depending on the active quest selected? I know I might be asking for too much, I know it is a old game, but I am just asking for some basic ergonomics, like automatic gearbox, airbags and ABS breaks for a modded VW Beetle.

Ehm, I somewhat passed the tutotial fight with two crew members (oh! finally!), just for the reason of using constantly the spacebar, click them to death while one of them was stuck between the cannons. And yes, I learned to step back while seeing the crushing hit animation. Anyway, the fighting experience is weird, as compared to M&B, for example, where it is more logical to me.

Ohhhh! Sorry for all of that… Please suggest me what to do, because I do not manage to sail, trade, shoot and fight as expected in modern games. Sure, it is a hardcore simulator, it is no arcade game, but I feel it too complicated for a somewhat casual player for the genre. Sorry again, did not mean to offend anyone, please help with some piece of advice.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 6 months ago by 0range.

[Jeffrey]

To help navigate the map, download Age-of-Pirates.jpg here: https://mega.nz/#F!WtMDgRxK!hbeUg86kGLlQAqvWRNwTqg

Print it out and use it while sailing the worldmap in game. There are small flags to show the port’s nation. English like Port Royale, Charlestown. French like Fort-de-France, Port-au-Prince. Spanish like Cumana, Belize. Dutch like Willemstad, Marigo. Pirate flag ports can be used by any nation.

Use F2, click Nation, and review the nation matrix to find out who is friendly/enemy. A scale balance, or clinking mugs are friends, crossed guns are enemies.

As for cannon skills/fighting, you just have to practice. Also, the more you fire cannons, the more you fight, the better your skill points go up, so it’s actually good to engage often, then flee when you have to. Save prior to fights in case things go badly.

In the beginning, fire cannons in 1st person mode (tab) so you are on deck and manually aim for their sails with cannon balls as many times as you can. If the enemy gets closer, switch to chain shot and do the same. Try to fold sails when anticipating the enemy firing, then engage sails again and keep trying to get away.

Your quote, “I learned to step back while seeing the crushing hit animation.” Good. Now another trick…when that same crushing animation starts, hold shift and click your middle mousewheel down. You will parry the attack and slash for some small damage to your opponent at the same time.

If you have multiple attackers, hold shift, then click attack. You will damage two attackers at once. Your energy depletes fairly quickly, so careful not too many times.

Just keep practicing various attack moves. In ship battles, raise/lower sails depending on if your enemy is firing, and try to damage theirs so you can escape…the more you fire, the higher your skill points will get, along with your crew’s cannon skills. When you are low level/unskilled, it’s usually better to aim in 1st person on deck, and later, when your skills, and your crew’s skills get better, firing in 3rd person is usually more accurate.

[0range]

Thank you so much, Jeffrey, I will implement everything you mentioned.

[Jeffrey]

I should add, when you make good money from store owner/town mayor tasks, etc., be sure to go to the tavern and hire a good gunner first, then perhaps next, a navigator (you can ask them what they’re good for and you will see their skill scores/perks)…or better one officer with good skills in both, but with a multitask personal perk.

That will make your sailing/ship battle experience easier.

[Samir]

Ok, so I have a question here regarding Eras 2 MOD performance. I think that the MOD is overloaded with some useless things that could be removed, or at least I would like to remove them for me personally. For instance, there are a lot of transition backgrounds when moving from Sea to Town, or from Town to Jungle etc. I personally don’t give a damn about transition backround. I especially don’t like the ones that are made of real pictures. I prefer the ones from the original game. I would like to use the ones from the original GoF 1.2 if it’s possible, but I’m afraid that it could brake the game code… Is it possible to just delete that folder from resources and copy the one from GoF 1.2? Will Eras Mod run?
Also, I noticed many new items, from which some of them seem to be large files, because the shop menu sometimes lags when I open it. The stock ones newer lagged for me, and I can see that the new ones from the MOD seem to be causing the lag when exploring shop items… I would remove some of them, but again, I don’t know if that would cause the game crashes…

Hope someone can give me the answer…

[Jeffrey]

Also, I noticed many new items, from which some of them seem to be large files, because the shop menu sometimes lags when I open it. The stock ones newer lagged for me, and I can see that the new ones from the MOD seem to be causing the lag when exploring shop items

I had this problem too. Store, trader and chest-opening would lag horribly. Some of the texture files are very large and the only way I could find around the problem was to set the engine.ini texture_degradation = 1. Unfortunately, that degrades resolution of everything, so not very pretty. Even converting to the files to a lower resolution with a pic editor did not help much, but that may be just because I don’t know what I’m doing with graphic editing and didn’t do it properly, even though the file size reduced to half. I would very much like to see those files changed to improve performance for those with modest computing power; apparently a racehorse beast machine doesn’t experience this noticeable a lag.

As for transitions, if named/renamed similarly, I’m sure they could be swapped out to one of the other games/mods (vanilla, GOF). I can look at it and tell you what to do to switch them to vanilla COAS if you’d like.

[Samir]

As for transitions, if named/renamed similarly, I’m sure they could be swapped out to one of the other games/mods (vanilla, GOF). I can look at it and tell you what to do to switch them to vanilla COAS if you’d like.

Thank you, I would be gratefull! Regarding the performance, I don’t think my PC is modest for such an old game:

Intel Xeon E5450 Quad Core 3.0GHz
8GB RAM
Nvidia GT630 2GB DDR3
Windows 7 64 bit

P.S. Do you also have lag when looting corpses? Because I have it too, and it can be super annoying…

Maybe a superpowerful PC could handle it. I don’t know… I still think that the problem is with the large textures… Maybe Orazio could look into this?

• This reply was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by Samir.

[Jeffrey]

P.S. Do you also have lag when looting corpses? Because I have it too, and it can be super annoying…

Yes. When I first got here, that was one of the first things I mentioned (in the bugs thread I think). I had to resort to the texture degradation setting. It’s those texture files.

And your machine specs show faster/more powerful than mine.

[Orazio]

I had a look at the texture files for the items, and actually they are very big: most of them have a resolution of 2K, that is too much unless maybe one is using a 4K monitor, and they have not been compressed.

I have heavily optimized the textures for the items and also my inventory character picture (I didn’t compress it at the time); the items have also been scaled down to 512×512. Notice that compression results in a loss of quality, but usually this is not very noticeable. And for those with not so powerful machines, it may be an acceptable tradeoff.

To give some numbers, before the optimization, the items textures were around 470 MB, after only 6,7 MB! However, I still noticed some lag, but at this point I don’t think the textures can be optimized even more.

So download them and check if you see any improvement. Copy the new textures in Age of Pirates 2\RESOURCE\Textures\INTERFACES.

DOWNLOAD

On a side note, there are actually many other textures that are not compressed, and this may affect performance I suppose. But there are thousands of texture files, and I can’t check them all.

[Jeffrey]

Those new item textures offer a huge improvement. I have two folders, turned off my texture degradation setting and tried both versions – original and your reworked. The original files cause a 30-45 second delay when opening a chest to see the item box display. With your new files the box displays near immediately.

[Samir]

As I suspected, and I was right, even though I didn’t know how to fix this. Thank you very much Orazio! You are a true genius! It’s working perfectly now! The difference is huge, no lag at all at shops, or when opening chestes, or when looting corpses, loads in a milisecond!

I would also like to remove some of the loading screens. I read in the Eras introduction that there are more than 100 loading pictures in the MOD… That’s too much for my taste…

I would only keep the ones that illustrate that period. I have seen many of the images that were real, like taken with camera. I don’t like them, because it’s still a game, not reality.

These ones are fine

• This reply was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by Samir.

[Jeffrey]

Yes, there are many. Unfortunately, they are all coded into various loading image spots and it’s far too much trouble/effort to find them all and frankly, I don’t really want to take away that variety feature from the code anyway.

But, what I can do is this:

I copied the original game loading textures, then replicated any related images and renamed the various replica copies to match the file names ERAS will look for. This probably accounted for 80-90% of them, so when ERAS finds its unique one, it will most likely be a copy what the original game would have used anyway. For the others that remained, that I couldn’t really identify a similar feature from the original game, I used the ERAS ones, but tried to make sure only the artwork/painting types remained and none of the photographs. Give it a look in your game and see what you think.

Download Loading.zip from https://mega.nz/#F!WtMDgRxK!hbeUg86kGLlQAqvWRNwTqg

Beware, it’s rather large 🙂

Navigate to your ERAS RESOURCE\Textures folder and rename the Loading folder to something like LoadingOriginal. Then create a new Loading folder where it used to be, but now empty. Unzip everything from Loading.zip into your new Loading folder.

[Samir]

It seems to be working! No more photos taken from camera! Only illustrations and paintings! Thanks! And one more thing: the folder now takes only 800 MB! The original one took about 1.6 GB! So, there is a way to reduce the size of the MOD. I mean, I know that MK surely enjoyed it as it is now. After all, it’s his personal MOD, but it’s nice of him that he shared it with other people. However, if you guys are planning to put the MOD on Moddb.com, you have to think about other peoples affinities. People complain when a game takes too much space. I play Red Orchestra 2, and when they merged it with Rising Storm, the game size increased to 23GB. People complained about that, and now they reduced the size to 10 GBs for both games. For Eras 2 MOD, it is good to revise some files from resources, because it also has impact on performance. The Orazio’s patch for textures and your Loading.zip made my day! Game performs 1000 times better now! I’m pretty sure there are also other texutres that haven’t been resized properly… But now, looting corpses and trading with merchants is just as it is in original COAS…

[Samir]

How am I supposed to do this quest? French are neutral to me… After stealing the papers, shipyard owner attacks me. I managed to escape, but guards also attack me, so as the fort. And French tunr hostile to me. Is this quest forth damaging relations with friendly nations?
I also looke here for this quest: http://ageofpirates.wikia.com/wiki/Age_of_Pirates_Wiki
but there is nothing about this quest. Seems like it is not an original quest from COAS?

• This reply was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by Samir.
• This reply was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by Samir.

[Jeffrey]

I have only done that a couple times, and it’s been awhile, but here’s what I remember.

After stealing the plans, don’t bother fighting the yard owner as he’s invincible. Don’t attack any guards at all, just run to the port and board your ship. If you don’t attack anyone, I don’t think the fort will fire upon you, but if you do injure a guard, they probably will. If so, and you don’t want to damage relations further, don’t shoot back and instead, flee.

After boarding your ship, and you didn’t attack anyone, I believe you can actually just immediately port again and everyone will act as nothing happened.

[Samir]

Why does it say fmodex.dll skipped and “interface function not found” when entering game?

It doesn’t write when opening the original AoP2…

I saw it many times, but always forgot to ask. It doesn’t affect my game, so I was just wondering is it ok?

• This reply was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by Samir.

[Jeffrey]

In MK’s original download, fmodex.dll is both in the same directory as start.exe and the modules folder. The only one you need is the one in the same folder as start.exe, so keep that one there. When the program launches, it scans/loads all the .dll files in the modules folder, but since fmodex.dll is not a .dll that the game knows is something it uses within the context of the game engine (it’s not designed for that, but rather produces the sound and is both coded and used a different way that the rest of what the modules/.dll files are for), it skips it. Delete the one in the modules folder and you won’t see that message anymore.

[Samir]

Tnx, this worked! It looks better and loads a little faster now! 🙂

[Jeffrey]

Hey Samir, remember that lag for items? I’ve got a solution. Been playing around and I found that IrfanView will resize/resample/resharpen the original image files. I changed the 22 offending, larger files from 2048×2048 to 512×512 like all the others. I can now turn off that texture_degradation and the store, looting, chest open is near instantaneous again. I added the new texture files to the patch in RESOURCE\Textures\INTERFACES\.

Give it a try.

[Orazio]

Mmmm I had already resized to 512×512 and compressed the items textures. Did you resize the remaining textures in INTERFACES?

[Samir]

Jeffrey, Orazio’s mod worked for me. I don’t know what textures he resized. However, I’m 99% convinced that cloud textures that MK implemented into Eras 2 need to be resized also. I know that comparing GoF 1.2 and Eras 2 Mod in World Map. When I press enter in Eras 2 to go to 3D sailing mod from Sea Map, often it takes time to load the sea. I think it’s because of the Cloud textures, which have been changed. If you, Orazio, could have a look into it, it would be awesome!

[Jeffrey]

The worldmap has its own textures and none of those have changed from the original game, so it’s something else.

Also, for kicks, I did try resizing the sky textures for a particular hour I was out at sea. I halved the dimensions and it reduced the file size to 1/4 what it was. Two things I observed:

1. It did not speed up my fps while sailing, so the reduction in fps from vanilla AoP to either GOF/ERAS (both are slower than vanilla) is something other than the sky.

2. It looks terrible because you can see the seams where the textures meet.

I guess the good news is that the very nice ERAS sky textures do not adversely affect anything I noticed, so they can certainly stay.

[Samir]

Yep, I know about World Map textures. Though I use ones that Jan Marten provided, since they look really awesome. I thought about sky textures, but since you already tested it, then it’s good to know that those awesome Eras sky textures don’t affect performance. I guess the clue is somewhere else…

[Samir]

Jeffrey, I will also try your mod. Improving FPS is always welcome, since MODs know to decrease the game FPS. Stock COAS runs awesome on my PC, which means that there are a lot of textures that need to be resized as the original textures…

[Greg]

Hey guys and gals, I thought I drop by and say hi.

I am a long time COAS player, basically been following the game and its most notable mods since day 1 and also been active for a while on PA!-mostly posting in regards gameplay/quests/tactics. I am and always were an avid fan of the era of pirates and age of sails, my very first computer game was Sid Meier`s original Pirates! 😉

Currently I have no appropriate hardware to run COAS but now am itching to get back into it once again, I`ll probably buy a laptop capable of running games very shortly.

I was reading through the site a year ago, and I learned about what happened with MK over at PA! but cant say I was completely surprised. I thought that the forum got diluted and flooded with people of limited and narrow interest of certain factions and time period and that in turn made many old members leave. I eagerly awaited and offered to help out as much as I could with Hearts of Oak but lost interest quickly enough due to peoples attitude.

I just wanted to say that I am really interested in trying the ERAS-time permitting-and will be sure to give feedback once I got into the game again.

As for you MK keep up the good work, it is greatly appreciated, of that I am sure.

EDIT: Can`t seem to remove the quote looking box from the reply. 😀

• This reply was modified 8 years, 4 months ago by Greg.
• This reply was modified 8 years, 4 months ago by Greg.

[modernknight1]

Hello Greg,

Welcome to the Reef.

Thanks for the kind words.

As far as HoO is concerned I have to agree from what little I can glean from their open discussions. At the beginning of the effort I myself disagreed with their chosen name. Hearts of Oak: Conquest of the Seas. Far from being a title about a game that might have awesome pirates and buccaneers involved, Hearts of Oak evokes immediately a vision of the British Royal Navy of the 18th century – especially for the well educated who know that’s what the name is associated with. Heck there are already board games with that name. The second part just sounded way too cliche and amateurish for my taste.

Just my experience with the name and surveys was a major reason I stepped away from helping. Even though a lot of what started the effort off to begin with was my own ideas, I realized that no one was going to listen to my input. I thought they were kinda short-sighted to just reject and throw out someone with an extensive real world development background like myself. If I had been in charge, with the time that has elapsed, there would be a playable game NOW.

I have no idea what they are doing now because they keep their efforts and discussions under wraps, but think from what I’ve seen in the model development side they should rename the game Post Captain: 18th Century Royal Navy simulation

I myself have fond memories of playing both Sid Meier’s Pirates. I still actually have a working Commodore 64 with the five and a half floppy drive. Among the games: the 1981 version of Sid Meier’s Pirates.

Welcome!

MK

[Schiavonna]

Hello All

What an incredible mod! Been playing COAS since the tailend of 2011 and this mod has blown me away with its depth and historical immersion. Thank you so much for sharing this MK.

In return, I offer my limited help in any capacity I can help. I’ve been dabbling in modding for a few years now. Bethesda games, STALKER, Deus Ex, IL-2 sturmovik, Hidden and Dangerous (remember that?), etc etc. Quite a few. In fact, if I cant mod it – I dont generally play it (Take note Ubisoft!). I am NOT a coder nor modeller but texturing, file hunting and changing miscellaneous ‘stuff’ I can do.

PAINT.net, Notepad ++, Winmerge, ConvertorTX and GMViewer are my friends.

Inez Diaz tool – starting to get along quite well actually.

Photoshop – mmmm, so so…maybe we can come to an agreement? Find it awkward and cumbersome compared to PAINT but it certainly has more options.

Blender/Maya/3dMax – Aarrghh! Help! Out of my depth – I promise to myself I’ll watch some tutorial videos…but I never do!

Thats the CV then 🙂 I’m now going to pick another thread and moan about all the the things I dont like about ERAS – lol!! Seriously, a note on that: Please take any future criticism with a pinch of salt. I really love what this mod is trying (and overwhelmingly succeeding) in trying to do. The code corrections coming thick and fast from Jeffrey are going to propel ERAS right up there to the “pick of the bunch” of COAS mods, if it isn;t already. Any future input from me is ONLY meant for the greater goal of improving the experience and not a slight towards people in any shape or form. Okay?

I say this because I have a propensity for speaking my mind about things (that…and I’m Scottish – some people really dont get our sense of humour or matter-of-fact speaking) and I dont want to ruffle any feathers if at some future point I come across being too candid. Take it with a pinch of salt – always! 😉

Thank you for ERAS, MK – and keep up the good work!

[Author]

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