Read Me file for GOF ERAs 2

[modernknight1]

Read about all the current content of the mod. Latest Version 2.6.0 Updated Read me filed dated 24 February 2017 is attached:

Current narrative “Read Me” file for latest version below:

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Original Base Game: AGE OF PIRATES 2 – City of Abandoned Ships; Licensing sold and owned by other third party(s). Original Source Code (freeware) which ran in DX8 was given away freely seven years ago and completely rebuilt and overhauled by the Buccaneer’s Reef team. This is completely new source code which runs on DX9 to which all rights are reserved by the Buccaneer’s Reef Team and official legal licensing pending.

This version is not in any way compatible with the original game source code. Others also basing their game offerings (both for profit and non-profit freeware) have renamed their versions. The “Age of Pirates” trademark has not been retained by most of these other third party game developers/ vendors who have marketed their software as “Sea Dogs: City of Abandoned Ships”.

Upon successful licensing of the Buccaneer’s Reef Storm source code, we will no longer be tethered to any current gaming trade marks. As such the “Gentlemen of Fortune: ERAS” name is the hereby claimed and official pending trademark. Buccaneer’s Reef reserves all rights to the names Buccaneer’s Reef, the Buccaneer’s Reef source code and the Gentlemen of Fortune: ERAS trademarks and names.

All original content which was provided by third parties which is no longer claimed by the afore mentioned is now claimed by Buccaneer’s Reef. All original third party content which is still legally claimed by those aforementioned, remains the property of those who maintain their claims and will not be contested by Buccaneer’s Reef. The GOF: ERAS Module2 currently maintains its status as a freeware offering with third party content contained within IAW USC 107. It is prohibited by other third parties with no claims to this content from distributing any part of this content (in part or whole) for sale and/or distribution IAW USC 107.

Other freeware gamer groups who might wish to use parts of this work for strictly non-profit use in other free gaming efforts please feel free to do so provided that Buccaneer’s Reef and the individuals who supplied the content are credited in your work.
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Gentlemen of Fortune: Historical Eras Module #2; Privateers and Profit – “The Golden Age”

Primary Modders and Modelers: Modernknight1(MK), Jeffrey(JLB), and Orazio, with support from other various modders(credits at end)

Readme – GOF ERAS2 Version 2.6.0 DEV Open Beta1 ——- 02/24/2017
=========================================================================================UPDATE on added content:

NOTE: This is an EXTENSIVE overhaul from the last version, so a patch was just TOO MUCH. In addition, thanks to Jeffrey the GREAT the game now runs in DX9 so the look of the entire game is sharper and shading looks altogether more realistic. Between 80 to 90 percent of game files were modified and many new models (both ships and characters) have been added, so there is absolutely NO WAY that this mod is compatible with the previously released ERAS2.1.5.7. So no previous save games will work and you have to download the whole thing all over again. Sorry. That’s just the way it is.

– Playable Characters and recruitable NPC officers/captains are now up to 136. That’s 14 new officers/recruitable captains added since the last update! One new female captains and two new minority captains.

– Emmanuel Wynne
– Alexander Exquemilin
– Thomas Tew
– Stede Bonnet
– Nikolaus Boez
– William Credo
– Isaac Rochussen
– Amaro Pargo
– Daniel Johnson
– John Bowen
– Nathaniel North
– Bernard Desjean
– Andres del Pez y Malzarranga
– Prudence “Spitfire” Stevens

– RPCs: Player characters continue to be equiped with unique ships and items to start out with. If they are historical characters they have the ship they possessed at some time in their career with the correct historical name, however a new Hull4/SKIN4 file has been opened in the game allowing many new skins to be added to the game that are specifically made for individual characters with different unique coloring/decoration and in some cases name placards. Remember if characters are naval officers they start with a letter of marque already in their possession from the correct country and they must equip item in their items list for it to take effect.

Another update to this for NPC captains which you will encounter is that they will have the historical ship in their possession when you encounter them. For example, Stede Bonnet with have his Revenge and Blackbeard will have his Queen Anne’s Revenge.

Remember experienced captains will already have appropriate foreign flag perks if it suits them from their historical experiences. Check your character! Some already have all foreign flags to begin with. This allows a much needed attribute of stealth to gameplay right from the beginning which I believe makes the game much more realistic.

– CHARACTER BIOGRAPHIES are now available in the primary interface when you right click on your own or any NPC character in your employ.

– TITLES: can now be purchased from Governors

– SIX FIGHTERS now available in party.

– MAROON mod: If your ship is sunk you have a chance of washing up on a random shore as do your officers. Some officers may wash up with you. Others may live and be encountered again in other places. NOTE: This only applies to hero officers NOTE: If you can find the Caul or the Caul locket you can reduce your chances of drowing. The locket is not as powerful as the caul itself which ensures you will wash safely up on shore alive 100% percent of the time.

– NEW LOCATIONS: One new French town and one new Pirate colony – “Bodden’s Landing”. Numerous new forts.

– NEW CABINS and DECKS: Numerous new deck locations and new cabin model locations. Many of these are brand new scenes acquired by MK and retextured – as well as several gorgeous new cabins modelled by Orazio. Orazio’s stunning scenes have a peace and conflict version which eliminates the tables during combat, with cannon’s run out instead of stowed and cabin walls removed. In addition, Orazio’s new sound effects in cabins prompted me to remove music from these scenes so I could just listen quietly. When you go to your cabin you can stop and think. These are such wonderful places to go to now. Thanks to the GREAT Orazio!!!

– FLAGS have been YET AGAIN overhauled to be even more realistic blowing in the wind. There are also now 50 unique historically correct flags available. This is 5 naval flags and 5 merchant flags per faction except pirates who now have 10 unique pirate flags. Stretching has been eliminated and higher resolution textures in the game now make flags more realistic than ever before.

– PENNANTS have been added so that flags of a certain length now will be pennants instead of flags. These are also historically correct and add a very colorful, unique historical look to the game.

– SAILS can now be changed once again in at the two pirate shipyards (Bermuda and Bodden’s Landing) both in terms of color and emblems. Emblems will now stay and not disappear after sail repairs.

– PROMOTIONS mod – Promotions now work and you will be promoted more often. Promotion ranks are correct by nationality.

– MORE PIRATES and sea dog type characters will be seen in taverns and pirate towns. The Isabella and Danielle Shephard characters have been changed/overhauled.

– TEXTURES: Many new textures have been added to the game throughout and new fonts as well.

– NEW WEAPONS, ITEMS and SHIPS: 9 new swords, 17 new pistols and pistol combinations. (bringing the total to 141 swords/handheld weapons & 63 firearms & combinations)
New items: 20 new items (bringing the total to 597 items in game) many of these modify skills.
New ships: 5 new ships (15 new ships if we go by number of different skins) a total of 203 ships and with 3 skins (and in some cases 4 and even 5 skins)per ship this brings us to well over 600 different ships.

– PERFORMANCE: Weapons and ships performance numbers have once again been overhauled and rebalanced. Daggers/knives are now much more lethal with several possesing top numbers more damaging than many swords.

– NEW CANNON SOUNDS; Cannon sounds have been overhauled so that each size of gun has a unique set of similar reports. The smaller the gun the higher pitched the sounds. This adds amazing immersion and realism to the game.

– MUSIC: A few new music tracks mostly from Cutthroat Island and some of the original music tracks from the old Carribean Tales game to add something of an epic swashbuckling movie like feel to the game.

– MAST CRASHING has been eliminated completely thanks to the work of our brilliant computer scientist JEFFREY the Great!

– FLOATING ISLANDS: With a change to the horizon we have been able to almost eliminate floating islands. Notice that the space is now filled in. You have to look very hard now to see any space there. Sometimes just a tiny sliver of space can be seen, but it looks TONS better than before!

You should notice a lot better more stable game play in this version.

**************************************WORK IN PROGRESS**********************************

*NOTE: The mod still is not finished to where I want it. However, it was good enough to release so that loyal fans could enjoy our work. As I have said before, I like to get a new version out at least once a year. There were many new things that we nearly had ready, but are not quite there and I didn’t want to make people wait any longer. There should be another updated version in just a couple of months with more new locations added. Here is a list of things still ongoing.

WARNING: THERE ARE SPOILERS IN HERE AND SOME OF THIS WORK IS CLOSE TO BEING FINISHED. Some of this work almost made it into this new version. Jeffrey and I have both agreed that another release must be accomplished in another couple of months because we are so close on a few great new capabilities and our momentum is EXCELLENT right now. We must continue while we have this great energy and awesome synthesis of movement going forward with all of the members of the mod team doing INCREDIBLE WORK!

– So there are still MORE new ships in the works. Some of these are simply awesome and a few will be great surprises to you. They are both large and small. I will not say anything more yet!

– Deck and cabin randomization with the old cabins still apearing as well as the new in a random method based on the types of ships.

We feel like we have enough characters and the vast majority of the really important historical figures are represented. We will still entertain suggestions, but think we are done. Unless its someone really great and we just neglected to get them into the game, characters for ERAS Mod2 are pretty much set. I am still taking recommendations for ERAS Mod3 (1775-1820) timeframe. Also, I think this is the last time you will see a large amount of new items and weapons introduced. Unless its a really AWESOME new weapon model or item suggestion, don’t expect very many new items in the game after this point. All this to say that our focus from here on out is NEW LOCATIONS and NEW QUESTLINES. Of course we will always entertain more good ship models of good quality if they are found, offered to us or built by our own team.

FROM LAST UPDATE WITH CONTINUANCE: – New islands, crypts, cemetaries and towns. The locations of St. Eustatius, Marie Galante, and St. Kitts have been added successfully (but incomplete) to a beta version of ERAs, but locator work is still ongoing. Once finished, I plan to add Eluethra, Aruba and a new pirate colony – possibly other islands too. We will see how these go first. This is my PRIMARY focus right now. I’m using the locations from SOFS which are almost identical to POTC. NOTE: THIS WORK could not be finished because a work around is required to get them into the game. SEE NEXT PARAGRAPH for explanation.

– MK’s new world map with eventually over a dozen new islands and colonies added. *NOTE: The existing large land/island model is very corrupt and hard to work with. Our island work is currently centering on visual “work-arounds” that will not actually add new models to the big worldmap, map but we can fool the game to making it look like there are islands there. The downside is that you will be able to sail right through them on the world map. However when you go into direct sailing mode you will be able to see an actual new island model and/or town, fort etc…. We are confident now that we can complete these new colonies and bring them into the mod based on our successful ability to both substitute old colonies and add an entire new colony (Bodden’s Landing) to the mod. In our next phase/update which should be accomplished in just a couple of more months from now – we will be bringing you more new colonies which are nearly ready now (SPOILER): 1. (English) Lucea/Fort Charlotte Jamaica, 2. (Dutch) New Middleburg/Fort Zeelandia south of Port of Spain on the mainland, 3. (Dutch) Tobago on the little island just north of Port of Spain, 4. (English/French?) St. Kitts(New island), and 5. another pirate colony on Dominica. *NOTE: Even though we will have two English ports on Jamaica, Fort Orange must remain regardless of its historical inaccuracy because its a key component to both the primary Dutch and English national/governor quests.

– A new GUI tab which allows Captains to select personal FLAGS!

– Buying a house with a chest like that on the ship. In addition, chests in Isabella’s house also stays constant like that on your ship.

– Buying ships from citizens. Citizen encounters will sometimes (fairly rarely) offer to sell you a ship that they have no use of.

– Random women in town locations may make the same lewd propositions as bar maids do.

– New ships almanac which will be available in the interface to review pictures and descriptions of each of the hundreds of ships available in GOF ERAS2.

– New historically correct cannon mod and additional cargo mod – MK working this one a long time. Will be finished soon.

– New random video mod. In addition to loading screens it will be possible to randomly encounter short transition videos during certain events like boarding, death, going to shore, etc…

– New sound mod with many more gun sounds and ship sounds available. The days of Russell Crowe yelling “Starboard Battery” are nearing their end.

– New quests in development. Slow going as we learn. First will be an additional marriage quest. Anneke in Curacao. *NOTE: Isabella quest will still be in the game as well.

– I almost added Norbigus’s PANQL mod but it changes so many things that more testing is required in a seperate game. My plan is to eventually incorporate at least part of Norbigus’s work into the mod.

Pretty exciting news eh mates!

BUGS: Note all previous bugs listed in earlier versions of the read me have been fixed! Please report any bugs you find.

CREDITS:

JEFFREY: Massive overhaul of source code which previously ran on DX8 and now runs on DX9. Huge rewrite of both original and previously modded script files. So many old bugs have now been fixed and leaks/errors eliminated that my game went from running at 60 FPS to 130 FPS.
ORAZIO: New cabins models and sound effects. New GUI backdrops.
GALLEON: New weapons and ship files.
FLORICK: New Locations
NikK: New Locations
PhilipJN: New Ship: Swedish Indiaman – used with his kind permission.
TheBlackKnight: New Fonts
John Debney: New music tracks from Cutthroat Island

Cheers, Modernknight1

P.S. Please provide feedback and bug reports on the forum at Buccaneersreef.com

Thank You

END of FEBRUARY 2017 UPDATE ===================================================================

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AGE OF PIRATES 2 – City of Abandoned Ships developed and published by SewardRU & Akella
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MOD: Gentlemen of Fortune: Historical Eras Module #2; Privateers and Profit – “The Golden Age”

Primary Modder: Modernknight1(MK) with support from other various modders(credits at end)

Readme – GOF ERAS2 Version 1.5.7 DEV Beta3 ——- 10/30/2015
=========================================================================================UPDATE on added content:

NOTE: This is an EXTENSIVE overhaul from the last version, so a patch was just TOO MUCH. Between 60 to 70 percent of game files were modified and many new models (both ships and characters) have been added, so there is absolutely NO WAY that this mod is compatible with the previously released ERAS2.1.5.1. So no save games will work and you have to download the whole thing all over again. Sorry. That’s just the way it is.

– Playable Characters and recruitable NPC officers/captains now up to 128. That’s 53 new officers/recruitable captains added to the game! Several new female captains and several new minority captains.

– Every player character is now equiped with unique ships and items to start out with. If they are historical characters they have the ship they possessed at some time in their career with the correct historical name. If they are a naval officer they start with a letter of marque already in their possession from the correct country (NOTE: must equip item). In addition experienced captains will already have appropriate foreign flag perks if it suits them from their historical experiences. Check your character! Some already have all foreign flags to begin with. This allows a much needed attribute of stealth to gameplay right from the beginning which I believe makes the game much more realistic. However, some captains, have no foreign flags at all. It all depends on who they were. I wanted the lower fictional captains like Silas Scallywag to have very little so the player that wants to start with absolutley nothing still has some character choices.

– Options are now pre-set to what I think is the optimal solution for my mod. The only other thing I recommend is to tick off the show info button about ships. I hate the way the health bar looks above the ships. I believe it ruins immersion.

– Flags have been overhauled again to be more realistic blowing in the wind. Also flags will now change immediately when you select them instead of having to wait for the next load/transition screen. In addition, when ships surrender they will strike (pull down) their flags.

– Sails look better than ever with improved more realistic looking damage and shredding effects. In addition there are well over a dozen different sail textures now. Most ships have a special random selection of sail textures that will appear on them based on their historical classification – e.g. Spanish warships have crosses, large capital ships have the finest textures available. French capital ships have some horizontal stripped blue textures that will occassionally appear. Pirate and corsair vessels will have red, black and patched sails. Poorer lower class working ships will have dirty sails and patched sails, etc… Note: Selected ships have 4 different random sail textures that can appear on them in most cases – Sometimes 3. Over half the ships in the game were selected, the other half get the usual random choice of three common sail textures.

– Promotion mod – still in beta needs tested. Promotion ranks correct by nationality.

– 5 new whores, 5 new girls/women, 28 new pirates and 50 new citizens added. New Dutch deck officers added. Better variety than ever.

– 16 new weapons added to include the most powerful swords in the game. The Hawk Eye is now the most powerful sword. Thanks to Galleon Love for the new swords supplied by Corsair’s Harbor modder Ostrov who ported the swords over from Assassin’s Creed. Seven of the new swords are from AC Black Flag.

– 38 new items in total. (Spoiler alert: If you want to see some of the most unique items and weapons briefly play with my character: Modern Knight. If not, then don’t play him if you want to be surprised. Many of these items and weapons will not start randomly appearing until you reach level 16 to 28. Total combined items(including weapons) now at 469. About 280 of these are randomly available with tuned rarety numbers.

– Weapons and ships numbers have been overhauled and rebalanced.

– If you count each skin as a seperate ship then over 40 new ships have been added (Technically only 13), but dozens of others have had new reskins done. Many ships have been renamed and given better historical descriptions. The modder who supplied many of these new ships to me does not want to be mentioned, but I thank him for his wonderful contributions regardless! Counting every skin we are now well over 500 different encounterable ships.

– Tons of new sounds! From weapons, to splashes, to voice-overs, to walking on wood. The battle sounds just make the game so much more immersive.

– Lots of new music. If you already liked the music – its now even better, if you weren’t into the classical, give this new music a try again. I have added lots of new game and cinematic music along with the classical. The music really is better than ever now. Please give it a try! Its more like you’re in a movie now.

– Better sinking effects added thanks to modder Naurshima.

– Thanks to Galeon Love and Hammerman777 for assistance on expanding the Character capabilities of the game and the new overhauled surrender code.

– The treasure questlines and pirate quests to pursue convoys now work again. However, there are still some character errors that you will witness when enemy ships sink and you shoot at some ships. I had this fixed but after reworking the mod after several new bugs came up, it is back. Its not as bad as it used to be and it is not game breaking – just annoying to see the error message.

You should notice a lot better more stable game play in this version.

**************************************WORK IN PROGRESS**********************************

*NOTE: The mod still is not finished to where I want it. However, it was good enough to release so that loyal fans could enjoy our work. Here is a list of things still ongoing. Some of these things are very close and almost made it in. More testing is needed on some of it before it is ready.

– New islands, crypts, cemetaries and towns. The locations of St. Eustatius, Marie Galante, and St. Kitts have been added successfully to a beta version of ERAs, but locator work is still ongoing. Once finished, I plan to add Eluethra, Aruba and a new pirate colony – possibly other islands too. We will see how these go first. This is my PRIMARY focus right now. I’m using the locations from SOFS which are almost identical to POTC.

– Expand fighters to 5 or 6. Interface issues are holding this one up but with some trial and error I will get it sorted out.

– Historic cannon weight overhaul. This one is almost done. It changes cannon to, 3,4,8,12,16,18,24,32,36,50 pounders and the largest culverine is 24 pounds.

– Sail emblems confined to one middle sail only or selected sails. In addition, full reactivation of the capability to modify one’s sails at the shipyard at Bermuda. Experimentation has revealed very promising results here and I think we will have this capability soon. So imagine Royal Spanish warships not only having crosses on their sails, but also the Habsburg eagle with the Spanish Royal arms on the central or lower sails. Future combinations could be very historically accurate which is exciting.

– New cargoes mod. This mod is partially done. You will find it harder to sell slaves to Spanish ports because of the historic Encomienda which prohibited slavery in New Spain. The Dutch who wouldn’t buy them as much before will now buy them. The Dutch were the largest slavers in the New World. Among the new goods are Cochineal, Logwood, and Water which is essential like rum but much cheaper. Next version will have all of this.

– I almost added Norbigus’s PANQL mod but it changes so many things that more testing is required in a seperate game. My plan is to eventually incorporate at least part of Norbigus’s work into the mod.

Cheers, Modernknight1

P.S. Please provide feedback and bug reports on the forum at Buccaneersreef.com

Thank You

======
CONTENTS:
———
1. Introduction
2. Content:
New Ships, New characters, New weapons, New items, capabilities and added mini mods.
3. Recommended Settings
4. Bugs
5. Disclaimers
6. Credits:
Games, Modders, Modellers, Artists, Music, Multimedia

1) INTRODUCTION:
—————-
Welcome me Hearties to GOF Historical Eras Module#2. This mod has been a two year development
with the purpose of attempting to simulate the Golden Age of Piracy from roughly 1648-1725.Thousands of hours of my life have been spent on this so a good explanation of my intent and work follows.

The Golden Age is the era that epitomizes the pirate genre and contains all the greatest heroes
villains and characters from the classic era of piracy and most of the greatest characters of
the age of sail. This era is the timeframe originally intended in the vanilla AOP2:COAS, but
over time the previous mods pulled in content from the entire timeframe of the Age of Sail. This
was largely due to the conflicting interests in favored time periods by the different modders
coupled with a lack of historical knowledge.

On top of this was a desire to import content from the popular Pirates of the Caribbean movie
series (supposedly set in 1750 after the age of pirates)as well as content from the Build mods/New Horizons.

So after the dust settled from all of this out of control haphazard modding & importing, the
problem became that we had Royal Navy ships with officers men and weapons reflective of the time
of the Napoleonic wars 1789-1815 (example: say the USS Constitution with Jack Aubrey aboard)
coexisting within the same game space and time as galleons & conquistadors armed with late
medieval weaponry from the Age of Discovery and exploration (1450-1620s). This just wouldn’t do.

The original game start date is 1665 – set during The Golden Age but with all of the cludged
fusion of historical inconsistency becoming so bad that gameplay began to resemble a Pippi
Longstockings movie.

My favorite era has always been the Golden Age as portrayed in the history books & as
romanticized in Howard Pyle’s books & illustrations – Piracy as seen in the great Hollywood
Swashbucklers – Captain Blood, Captain Kidd, Against All Flags, The Black Swan, and Roman
Polanski’s Pirates. With that in mind, that’s why I chose to do module #2 first.

I had maintained my own beta of the CMV and GOF1 mods as we tested that I didn’t keep fully
current with the dev test versions and I began to morph it to my own tastes over time.
I called it Frankenstein and it finally turned into what’s before you now.

I wanted to create different time periods within the game as found in the POTC: Build mods.
However, this was too difficult of a task to implement in COAS.

So my intention all along has been to build three seperate mods that contain three different
eras. Module#1 will be the Age of Discovery and Exploration, Mod#2 is the Golden Age, and Module
#3 will be the last half of the 18th century into the early 19th century.

That all said I want to warn you that if you are expecting the HMS Victoy and USS Constitution,
in this mod, they are not here. There are no late 18th century era ships in this mod as seen in
the Hornblower series or Master & Commander. If that’s the time you’re looking for and want to
play in, with flush deck frigates and Royal Navy characters you will have to wait for GOF
Eras Mod#3 not yet complete – where we will attempt to simulate that era.

GoF Eras Mod2 contains only characters from the Golden Age and 95 percent of the ships, items, &
weapons are from the Golden Age. The 5 percent that are not, – visually coexist well and do not
appear out of place in the Golden Age. Or – they might be the odd obsolete item or an old ship
that could feasibly still be sailing and thus not out of place. There are many historical
precedents for this – just look at John Hawkin’s ship at the Battle of San Juan de Uloa in 1568.
Historians believe the ship was probably built in the 1480s, so she was almost 90 years old.

The only other exception to this is in regards to music. I was looking for a classical flavor of
music that lends to the turbulence and dissonance of this great era so there are many boroque
selections or classical fusion pieces that were composed well after the The Golden Age. If you already liked the music in the GOF mods and the previous version of Eras you will love it even more now. There is a lot more new music and there are a lot of new tracks from movies and games. Many of these tracks water the heavy classical flavor a bit to make the game a little lighter. For me, the music fits and if you like classical music you will love this mod. If you don’t, then you can tolerate it or load music from somewhere else.

===============================================================================================
2) CONTENT:
———–

SHIPS:
======

*New Ships: While many ships will no longer be seen in this mod, 21 new ships were imported.
Besides many of the PO:TEHO ships, there are new ship models from SOFS and Voyage Century. Almost every old ship in COAS has been reskinned by me. Most of the PO:TEHO ships have also been
reskinned. In addition, there are a few ships that I made myself by morphing others in Maya and giving them unique rigs. Ship encounters will be a completely new experience for you. If you consider also that most ships have three skins (which in New Horizons they consider seperate ships) that are possible to randomly encounter, its like having well over 400 ships possible to fight, take, or sail.

NOTE: There are no flush-deck frigates or ships in the game that would have appeared or been
built after 1725. If the ship is very close to that date or visually very much like ships in
the same class that would have been around, I make exceptions. Exceptions to this are the
Gentlemen of Luck encounters and a few NPC characters. I have not been able to completely
prevent the leakage of a few later era ships in these instances, but they are VERY rare.

*Pirates, Gentlemen of Luck and Bounty Hunter encounters have been overhauled to reflect
more realistic numbers and ships.

*Ships encounters and behaviors have been overhauled. You will rarely encounter spinning ships
in single positions. Occassionally it will happen but more often they will spin but in a wider
circular maneuver. Convoys now look correct with like classes appearing together and only ship
types belonging to specific nations appearing in their convoys, patrols and ports. This
significantly improves the flavor of the game to a much more historically accurate feel.

*More harbor clutter/ships encountered for a hustle and bustle feel as you enter/exit ports –
as it really would have been.

CHARACTERS:
===========

*All uniforms have been redone to match the appearance of the correct nation during this era.

*New officers: over half of the recruitable officers have been changed to new character models/
textures. Less pirate flavor here and more mercenary/military flavor.

* Over three dozen new characters imported and specially modified. Many of these are Metazot
PO:TEHO characters with my own changes incorporated to give personality and historical flavor
where I desired.

*New Pirates and ship captains. Most of the pirate crews and ships captains have been replaced
with better more authentic models. No more eye patches or peg legs.

*New Brothel characters and brothels will have a better variety of girls available. Most of the
Madames have been changed to the old AOP1 whore models.

*New and More citizen characters that look realistic for the Golden Age. You will also notice
more people walking through the towns than before for a little more hustle and bustle.

*Playable character interface allows for 75 different player choices now.(15 more are in the works). Most of these are real historical figures. No more POTC characters although I did keep and modify a few POTC models changing them into actual historical personalities. New detailed portraits and narratives included with each RPC which is not only fun to look at, but also provides an education on the REAL buccaneers and corsairs of the Golden Age. Among these new playable characters are four new females and two new personalities of African descent. Each nation has a balanced group of characters to select from. More than any other COAS mod ever.

NEW ITEMS AND WEAPONS:
======================

*Breastplates are back in the game and there are a lot of new ones as well.

*New working spyglasses double your choices in this area.

*Lots of new European religious items which would have been found anywhere you went in the Caribbean of the time.

*While I did get rid of some late era blades and some medieval era blades that just didn’t fit
into our time period, I did import over 40 new blades. There are now 81 blades in the game
(thats over 40 new blades and 40 more than in any other GOF mod)

NOTE: There are only a few sabers that meet the pre 1725 cut off and most weapons are cutlasses,
military rapiers and the like. The type of weapons you would expect to find during the Golden
Age. Module #3 will eliminate most of the rapiers and favor many more varieties of cutlass and
sabers.

*There are now 39 pistols and pistol combinations (pairs and braces of pistols) All other GOF mods only had the standard five pistols in game which means 34 new pistols/pistol combinations

*Over 80 new items and 20 existing items revamped or replaced. Many of these new items will
enhance certain abilities in realistic ways in the same way that the books/manuals do. Some of
the bad items have been replaced with other bad items. From astrolabes, spectacles, and gunner’s
quadrants to filthy rags and half eaten meat, there are some really neat new items. Among the
best items are many new treasures and hoards consisting of different kinds of coins, cobs, bars,
jewelry, and sacred items. Some of these items you will see in markets, but most you will not.

NEW CAPABILITIES:
==================

*New intro movie.

*Lower boarding decks now work! You can fight below decks and loot as well during the boarding sequences. I may add more loot locators. Also some shade file work is still ongoing and you will notice the lighting is sometimes too bright for the time of day. Work in progress.

*New flag mod with lots of period correct national flags on all ships. You can potentially have five different flags on your ship at the same time that are correct for your nationality – even for pirates! This one adds a lot of historical atmosphere to the game.

*Many new period correct signs on taverns and other buildings.

*New more realistic period compass taken from original examples. Wind indicator still works but
no radar because that’s just not realistic at all….sorry. I like this one WAY better.

*Lots of new music and sounds overhauled with even better historical music variety germane to
the situations encountered. Lots of new game and movie music as well. Sound bytes changed for common encounters such as the guards when you come into towns. (Working on a multi-music mod pak that will allow you to select what kind of music you want to hear in the game)

*New playing card backs, new coins, and over 100 new loading screens incorporated into the game
with a wide variety of different screens (mostly germane historical paintings) for towns, forts,
taverns, brothels, governors, churches, stores, shipyards, etc. These screens are also different
for each nationalities ports. In addition. multiple boarding, cabin, and death loading screens
will be seen depending on where you are and how large the encounter. This adds a level of
attractive historical immersion never seen before in COAS, rather than the same boring pictures
over and over again.

*This mod introduces new more realistic Weather and sky/horizon modifications. You will notice
less fog except at times when it should be there. The ocean movement, transparency, color,
and skies have been overhauled for a bluer, lighter, cleaner and brighter Caribbean look and
feel.

*Surrender now works again. It is not enabled in mod options so you must toggle it on in the mod
options menu when you start your game: for best results in game-play set to
“Surrenders Occasionally”

*Direct Sail is enabled. You can sail from one side of the map to the other without needing to
to go to the world view map. You will rarely encounter any ships in the open sea, but if you
come close enough to enemy harbors (long way off but they can still see you), the harbor ships
will chase you long distances. There are seams in the map sheets so there will be little one
second long transitions from sheet to sheet when you get to the edge, but you will never go to
the map.

*Saint Ashley’s 8 ship max mod is part of the mod so your character can control up to eight
ships in his/her fleet. The max ships that can be encountered in an enemy fleet is 10 ships
which potentially allows battles of 28 ships to occur if you walk into a battle between two
opposing fleets plus your fleet. The most I’ve encountered thus far in testing is 24 ships.

*Hundreds of entries in dialogue and INI description files have been rewritten to correct spelling errors, language flow, and better more comprhensive descriptions of everything from nations, to ships, to items and weapons. This adds a lot more depth to the game. Ship descriptions are no longer names of ships, but what class and/or type the ship is. So instead of seeing “Greyhound” in your telescope, you will see English 6th Rater.

****New Capability Work still being done: Always more to do and I have been working on these all
for a while.

– Redoing the officers aboard ship. Almost put this in but some of the animations aren’t right. The Dutch officers look awesome. Can’t wait for you to see them.

– Importing new locations. Been working hard on this one and am very close. I have over a dozen new colonies ready to be put into the game. I have successfully built a map with them and they have buildings, however people and locator work is still ongoing. I have a working Colony on Dominica in the test version but it still needs more work.

– Even more items. I am working on another batch of about 20 items. I keep thinking of new stuff that would be neat to have in the game.

– Striking flags when enemies surrender.

– I am reworking the ballistics, ranges and cannon sizes to period correct…so 3, 4, 9, 12, 16,
24, 32, 36 pounders. I just don’t have it ready to go yet. (Almost ready!)

– Waves at shore location instead of just flat sea.

– Adding another faction(s). Either a different pirate faction or Danish, Portuguese, Genoese, Etc.
If I can add one successfully I can add more. Even if they don’t have colonies, their ships
would still trade at friendly ports and you could run into them at sea. (have had some success but there is a crash problem in a lot of encounters – its not ready)

– Flags and rigging ships to period. I added lateen sails to ships replacing spankers incorrect
for the time period. These have no rigging. So they need rigged. Also many of the PO:TEHO ships
have no mizzen shrouds/ratlines and one of the sloops has none on the main. Someone who knows
how could assist by adding shrouds.

3) RECOMMENDED SETTINGS & CONSIDERATIONS:
——————————————-

Because I have modified many of the base files for stability and improved performance,
(to include the start/engine and config exe files, these are included in the mod so have wide
screen, zooming, camera view, and sounds already set to better defaults than stock COAS.
I think you will enjoy these new settings.

If you are using a small screen and want fullscreen rather than widescreen you will have to
manually set your engine INI file. Simply open with a notepad and change 0 to 1 on the
fullscreen default entry.

Realistic ship encounters no longer have any real meaning in this mod as it always has realistic
ship encounters. In fact some people may not like that they can’t get their favorite warship
because she’s only found in your nation’s convoys. If you want one so badly you may have to
attack your own nation and ask for forgiveness later.

I highly recommend you toggle off the show information about ships in your options so that you
don’t have the huge ugly health bars cluttering up the screen.

I recommend using “In Between” for cannon settings in mod options at the beginning. It makes for
more balanced game play initially. Once you feel powerful and levelled up you can try
“realistic” which will bring down your cannon lethality and the enemies on you. Keeps you from
becoming cannon god.

Starting ship: Several of the characters have better starting ships. For example, Laurens de Graff because he was such a huge deal in his time gets a galleon (the San Francisco taken at Cartegena) and a little more coin than usual. Most of the characters do not get a starting ship or much money however and start with the Barco Costero – basically a coastal sailing boat. Check the different characters if you want to start with a little better ship. Remember it will be beyond your skills though so you will have degraded abilities and level up slower until you get something equivalent to your current skill level or level up to the abilities to fully use the ship you have. Remember you start with a little bit of cargo you can sell off for a little extra coin.

4) BUGS:
———-

Known bugs:

– First I want to report that there is no more glitching or flickering because I finally got my flag mod complete and working correctly. Masts will fall much less but do still occassionally cause crashes. Much more rare now. Continue to quicksave often during battles (F6).

– Mast bug. Some of the PO:TEHO ships masts were designed to shatter in the 2.8 engine and are
not compatible with COAS. So you may occasionally have ships that have a mast floating in the air
while the lower part of the mainmast has been shot away. It doesn’t cause a crash or instability
it just looks bad. Doesn’t happen often.

– Occasional CTDs going into Gentlemen of Luck encounters and punitive encounters. The same problem sometimes occurs when encountering regular convoys as well(mainly Spanish). This can effect the treasure quests when a pirate captain recruits you to help him go after an enemy convoy. I have ruled out it being a ship problem and know its one or two officer characters causing the problem. Almost have it solved. Usually all you have to do is reload the game a few times. Not that big of a deal. Almost have this one fixed.

– Character list mis-match error at sea. Almost fixed.

– New items can be memory intensive on some machines. You may have difficulties seeing all the
pictures of the new items all of the time if you have an older PC.

– Lighting: Every now and then you may get undesirable lighting effects. I was going for a very
Caribbean flavored lighting and color. Some people will like it others will not. If you don’t
like the lighting at a particular time simply use the enabled bracket keys ][ and change until
you like how it looks.

– Large battles: What can I say. It’s much better than it was but still happens. Still some
occasional mast crashing issues, but nothing like in the other GOF mods. I recommend you
quicksave F6 often during large scale battles.

– Eight ships in inventory sometimes causes a crash at the port controller when you want to
give a ship. So ensure you save before doing this. A simple shuffling of your ships around
and changing one of the captains will allow you to give a ship even if you have eight in your
fleet.

– Sound: I almost have this one fixed. You will notice that the sound is better than ever. Still have the sound bug occasionally in ship encounters but it will usually only occur for a few seconds at the beginning of the battle and it will correct so that you have sound for most of the battle.

– Horsepower/RAM: Should be obvious, but with all of the new content this game requires a decent
computer to run quickly. If you don’t have a good computer the game sometimes lags – especially
between location setting transitions.

5) DISCLAIMERS:
—————

IAW USC 107 no part of the media content contained here is to be used for profit. Much of this
content belongs to third parties used with their permission where able to contact them and
obtain it. None of this content is legal to use for profit and it is offered here for
educational purposes.

Of any game mod that has ever existed, I think I have done more to provide an educational
experience of this period in history than any other game. All media is provided to enhance
that education experience and historical ambience.

WARNING: There are some depictions of mild nudity in the game as seen in historical paintings.
All nudity is classically tasteful, but for kids or parents that do not want this exposure
I felt it was necessary to bring this out. This nudity appears in brothel transition screens and
in some paintings on the walls in various locations. Again it is very mild and artistically
tasteful.

6) CREDITS and Ackowledgements:
———————————–

Movies: The following movies and Television shows were used for content.

– The Seahawk (music)
– Against All Flags (loading screens)
– Roman Polanski’s Pirates (music, character Captain Bartholomew Redd)
– Babylon5 (music)
– Batman Begins (music)
– Master and Commander (music)
– Orlando (music)
– Cutthroat Island (music, items, and loading screens)
– Black Sails (loading screens)
– Pirates of the Caribbean (items)

Games: The following games and/or mods were used for content.

– Pirates Oddysey: To Each His Own (ships, characters, weapons, sounds, a few loading screens)
– Assassin’s Creed Black Flag (Loading screens and swords)
– Caribbean (a few sound clips – the “no” death)
– Secrets of the Far Seas (ships, characters, weapons *most of the new weapons)
– Voyage Century Online (Ships, music, sounds, and a couple weapons)
– Sid Meier’s Pirates (a couple of loading screens)
– Witcher2 (music)
– Colony Wars – Red Sun (music)
– Medieval Total War2 (music)
– Pirates of the Caribbean (characters and weapons)
– New Horizons, POTC Build mods (ships, characters, weapons, and some code files)
– Age of Pirates: Caribbean Tales (Characters, weapons, and some code files)
– Pirates of the Burning Sea……some ship models made by POTBS modders and converted
for
use in the Storm engine by PA! modelers and used with their permission.

Developers and publishers:

– Akella
– Snowbird
– SeawardRU
– Playlogic
– Bethesda
– Blackmark Studios
– Gamer Studios
– Ubisoft
– Firaxis
– Atari
– Psygnosis
– Time Warner
– Warner Bros.
– Metro Golden Meyer
– Universal
– Disney
– Starz
– Sony

Modders and Modelers:

– Modernknight1
– Galeon Love – Assisted with new surrender code and provided many new ships & Weapons.
– Johnathan Aldridge(Belthorne) – much of the core mod code work is due to JA. What great work!
– Saint Ashley – The 8 ship max mod is his doing. Awesome enhancement!
– Luke159 – Responsible for most of the damage and cannon behavior numbers.
– Hammerman777 – assisted with some sourcecode changes to allow more characters.
– Officerpuppy
– Craiggo
– Nixarass
– Firebat
– Darkhymn
– Phillipe
– Jan Marten: Many items from MOTCS(The German Edition) were used. My thanks to Jan despite his stubborness to keep his work to himself. Feel free to use whatever you want from me Jan.

– Pgargon – Many of the fine newer models in the GOF mods are Pgargon’s fine creations.
– Rider88
– Remus77 – Remus77 is responsible for the fine POTBS imports such as Poseidon and Trinity.
– Bava – Most of my reskinned ships look so good due to Bava’s excellent wood plank textures.
– Armada
– SeaNorris
– Nightwatcher
– KrisWood
– Yo Ho Ho(Rese) – Many of his models are older but still excellent models.(The Dutch warships)
– Hylie Pistoff
– Damski
– GhostofDeath
– Metazot: This fine character and texture modeller/artist is responsible for most of the detailed character models produced in the Corsairs/Seadogs games/sequels.

From Corsair’s Harbor: A lot of modders work, material, and assistance came from Corsairs Harbor. Many Thanks to CH and BGT! I could not have done this mod without you guys.
URL: Corsairs-Harbour.Ru

– Ostrov
– Monbar
– BigPimp
– Navarra
– Lord\Goodman
– Mr. Sandman
– Ostrov
– Sonik
– Thomas Boyle
– Dan Leopard
– Bonavendture Penkroff
– AG
– Disya
– Cry Wolf
– Island
– Peresvet
– Buryatushka
– Kotiline
– Nordik
– Sphinx
– Agemon
– Etienne
– Spacecrack
– Nikk
– Sea Boss
– Ingmar
– Alex the Great (lots of his characters are in New Horizons as well and I don’t think he ever got credit) Thanks Alex!

ARTISTS:

Most of the artists whose work is seen (primarily in loading transition screens) have long passed and their paintings sit in museums. However, both the living and the dead must still be acknowledged for their beautiful and inspiring work which is a large reason I spent so much time on this game and mod… I wanted it to look like a living and moving painting….and it sometimes does! All of these images were acquired from free sources online.

– William Van de Velde (Elder and Younger)
– Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom
– Ludolf Backhuysen
– Isaac Sailmaker
– Aart van Antum
– Samuel Drummond
– Richard Endsor
– Charles de Lacy
– Claude Joseph Vernet
– Simon de Vlieger
– Peter Monamy
– Leslie Arthur Wilcox
– Bonaventura Peeters
– Jan van Beecq
– Abraham Storck
– Reinier Nooms
– Gregory Manchess
– Angus McBride
– Franz Van Mieris
– Gerard ter Bosch
– Larry Vincent
– Jan Horemans
– Giuseppe Rava
– August Laux
– William Gilkerson
– Montague Dawson
– Arnold de Lange – His gorgeous contemporary ship paintings rival the Dutch masters.
– Lazerman – Thanks to Lazerman425 for his fine cave paintings seen in the transitions. Look him up on DeviantArt

If I’ve left out anyone I am truly sorry and glad to include anyone I’ve missed.

I must acknowledge the National Maritime Museum, Greewich, UK, The Nederlandische Scheepvaart
Museum, Amsterdam, NL, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., USA. Also many of the new textures that appear on the reskins of English ships came directly from photos I personally took of models in the US Naval Academy Museum collection at Preble Hall, Annapolis, MD USA.

MUSIC:

The music is mostly classical but there are a few odd movie, TV and game music clips as well as classical fusion pieces. I would like to thank Freddie Hangoler and Dante Amerisi for allowing me to use their creative modern classical fusion pieces in the game and would encourage those interested to look up their names on google and find their videos…very creative and interesting.

I would also like to thank Xavier diaz-latorre for allowing me to use his fine lute renditions of Bach’s music. Please look up his YouTube videos, they are brilliant!

I highly recommend you take a listen to Alison Balsom’s videos on YouTube. Her EMI recordings are unbelieveable and I own them all. She is a very talented musician that has done some really
original things with pieces not arranged for trumpet.

Last if you haven’t listened to Collegium 1704 you’re missing out. Collegium 1704 conducted by Vaclav Luks offers some of the most perfect baroque music available today. Their renderings of Zelenka’s works are superb and without equal.

I tried to use music that was fitting for the locations. Where possible I used ethnically germane composers… so Wassenauer for Dutch towns, Purcell, Avison and Handel for English, Lully for French, Nebra for Spain… I would also be remiss if I did not give Sedulius credit for the base music mod that I built this one on top of. Only about one fifth of his original music is still in the current music modpack however.

– Antonio Vivaldi – I would estimate that a third of the music in the game is Vivaldi
– Johann Sebastian Bach
– Giuseppi Torelli
– Georg Phillip Tellemann
– Johann Baptist Vanhal
– Jan Dismass Zelenka
– Johan Adoloph Haas – the opening video music is by Hass
– Charles Avison
– Sylvius Leopold Weiss
– Unico Van Wassanuer – music heard in the Dutch towns
– Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
– George Frederic Handel
– Henry Purcell
– Jean-Baptiste Lully
– Tomaso Albinoni
– Johan Fredrich Fasch
– José Blasco de Nebra
– Tim Wright – Colony Wars track
– Hans Zimmer – Batman Begins track
– Adam Scorupa – Witcher2 track
– Christopher Frank – Babylon5 track
– John E. Keane – the Hornblower track
– Christopher Gordon – Master and Commander
– Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou (also known as Vangelis) – Dies Irae theme heard while fighting and the Conquest of Paradise track in Spanish towns and at sea.

Groups and individual musical artists:

– Collegium 1704 – Vaclav Luks
– Alison Balsom
– Izhak Perlman
– Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields – Sir Neville Mariner
– I Solisti di Veneti – Claidio Scimone
– Academy of Ancient Music – Christopher Hogwood (AWESOME!)
– Trevor Pinnock
– Phillipe Jarousski
– Nigel North
– Gary Posner

================================================================================================

MULTIMEDIA:

I would like to acknowledge Docema and the Movie docu-drama “Broadside” for entertainment, education and the little film snipets I clipped out of the movie as part of my opening introductory film clip.

I would also like to acknowledge the films Broadside, Master and Commander, Cutthroat Island, Black Sails and Against All Flags for still shots I took for boarding and boat transport transition loading screens.

I am working on new movies for when the flags change.
================================================================================================

If I’ve left anyone out I’m truly sorry.

Last and not least are thanks to my family and their patience with my tinkering with this game.

And….my beta testers.

Thanks to DarthTuvok, Hammerman777, 44MAG, Hatchet, Kipper, Galeon Love, and Sedulius

================================================================================================

If anyone would like to get a hold of me contact me at [email protected] or PM me on my new website Buccaneersreef.com.

Buccaneer’s Reef RULES!!!

I plan to update this mod once a year and if I have good breakthroughs like a mod combining the latest new items, characters, new locations, and the corrected promotion patch I will put that out as soon as I finish it. I will update the status of all things ERAs on Buccaneersreef.com

MK

END of Read Me file 12/24/2014 Upated 10/31/2015

ORIGINAL READ ME BELOW:
===============================================================================================
AGE OF PIRATES 2 – City of Abandoned Ships developed and published by SewardRU & Akella
===============================================================================================
MOD: Gentlemen of Fortune: Historical Eras Module #2; Privateers and Profit – “The Golden Age”

Primary Modder: Modernknight1(MK) with support from other various modders(credits at end)

Readme – GOF Version 1.5.1 DEV Beta2 ——- 12/24/2014
===============================================================================================
CONTENTS:
———
1. Introduction
2. Content:
New Ships, New characters, New weapons, New items, capabilities and added mini mods.
3. Recommended Settings
4. Bugs
5. Disclaimers
6. Credits:
Games, Modders, Modellers, Artists, Music, Multimedia

1) INTRODUCTION:
—————-
Welcome me Hearties to GOF Historical Eras Module#2. This mod has been a two year development
with the purpose of attempting to simulate the Golden Age of Piracy from roughly 1648-1725.Thousands of hours of my life have been spent on this so a good explanation of my intent and work follows.

The Golden Age is the era that epitomizes the pirate genre and contains all the greatest heroes
villains and characters from the classic era of piracy and most of the greatest characters of
the age of sail. This era is the timeframe originally intended in the vanilla AOP2:COAS, but
over time the previous mods pulled in content from the entire timeframe of the Age of Sail. This
was largely due to the conflicting interests in favored time periods by the different modders
coupled with a lack of historical knowledge.

On top of this was a desire to import content from the popular Pirates of the Caribbean movie
series (supposedly set in 1750 after the age of pirates)as well as content from the Build mods/New Horizons.

So after the dust settled from all of this out of control haphazard modding & importing, the
problem became that we had Royal Navy ships with officers men and weapons reflective of the time
of the Napoleonic wars 1789-1815 (example: say the USS Constitution with Jack Aubrey aboard)
coexisting within the same game space and time as galleons & conquistadors armed with late
medieval weaponry from the Age of Discovery and exploration (1450-1620s). This just wouldn’t do.

The original game start date is 1665 – set during The Golden Age but with all of the cludged
fusion of historical inconsistency becoming so bad that gameplay began to resemble a Pippi
Longstockings movie.

My favorite era has always been the Golden Age as portrayed in the history books & as
romanticized in Howard Pyle’s books & illustrations – Piracy as seen in the great Hollywood
Swashbucklers – Captain Blood, Captain Kidd, Against All Flags, The Black Swan, and Roman
Polanski’s Pirates. With that in mind, that’s why I chose to do module #2 first.

I had maintained my own beta of the CMV and GOF1 mods as we tested that I didn’t keep fully
current with the dev test versions and I began to morph it to my own tastes over time.
I called it Frankenstein and it finally turned into what’s before you now.

I wanted to create different time periods within the game as found in the POTC: Build mods.
However, this was too difficult of a task to implement in COAS.

So my intention all along has been to build three seperate mods that contain three different
eras. Module#1 will be the Age of Discovery and Exploration, Mod#2 is the Golden Age, and Module
#3 will be the last half of the 18th century into the early 19th century.

That all said I want to warn you that if you are expecting the HMS Victoy and USS Constitution,
in this mod, they are not here. There are no late 18th century era ships in this mod as seen in
the Hornblower series or Master & Commander. If that’s the time you’re looking for and want to
play in, with flush deck frigates and Royal Navy characters you will have to wait for GOF
Eras Mod#3 not yet complete – where we will attempt to simulate that era.

GoF Eras Mod2 contains only characters from the Golden Age and 95 percent of the ships, items, &
weapons are from the Golden Age. The 5 percent that are not, – visually coexist well and do not
appear out of place in the Golden Age. Or – they might be the odd obsolete item or an old ship
that could feasibly still be sailing and thus not out of place. There are many historical
precedents for this – just look at John Hawkin’s ship at the Battle of San Juan de Uloa in 1568.
Historians believe the ship was probably built in the 1480s, so she was almost 90 years old.

The only other exception to this is in regards to music. I was looking for a classical flavor of
music that lends to the turbulence and dissonance of this great era so there are many boroque
selections or classical fusion pieces that were composed well after the The Golden Age. If you already liked the music in the GOF mods and the previous version of Eras you will love it even more now. There is a lot more new music and there are a lot of new tracks from movies and games. Many of these tracks water the heavy classical flavor a bit to make the game a little lighter. For me, the music fits and if you like classical music you will love this mod. If you don’t, then you can tolerate it or load music from somewhere else.

===============================================================================================
2) CONTENT:
———–

SHIPS:
======

*New Ships: While many ships will no longer be seen in this mod, 21 new ships were imported.
Besides many of the PO:TEHO ships, there are new ship models from SOFS and Voyage Century. Almost every old ship in COAS has been reskinned by me. Most of the PO:TEHO ships have also been
reskinned. In addition, there are a few ships that I made myself by morphing others in Maya and giving them unique rigs. Ship encounters will be a completely new experience for you. If you consider also that most ships have three skins (which in New Horizons they consider seperate ships) that are possible to randomly encounter, its like having well over 400 ships possible to fight, take, or sail.

NOTE: There are no flush-deck frigates or ships in the game that would have appeared or been
built after 1725. If the ship is very close to that date or visually very much like ships in
the same class that would have been around, I make exceptions. Exceptions to this are the
Gentlemen of Luck encounters and a few NPC characters. I have not been able to completely
prevent the leakage of a few later era ships in these instances, but they are VERY rare.

*Pirates, Gentlemen of Luck and Bounty Hunter encounters have been overhauled to reflect
more realistic numbers and ships.

*Ships encounters and behaviors have been overhauled. You will rarely encounter spinning ships
in single positions. Occassionally it will happen but more often they will spin but in a wider
circular maneuver. Convoys now look correct with like classes appearing together and only ship
types belonging to specific nations appearing in their convoys, patrols and ports. This
significantly improves the flavor of the game to a much more historically accurate feel.

*More harbor clutter/ships encountered for a hustle and bustle feel as you enter/exit ports –
as it really would have been.

CHARACTERS:
===========

*All uniforms have been redone to match the appearance of the correct nation during this era.

*New officers: over half of the recruitable officers have been changed to new character models/
textures. Less pirate flavor here and more mercenary/military flavor.

* Over three dozen new characters imported and specially modified. Many of these are Metazot
PO:TEHO characters with my own changes incorporated to give personality and historical flavor
where I desired.

*New Pirates and ship captains. Most of the pirate crews and ships captains have been replaced
with better more authentic models. No more eye patches or peg legs.

*New Brothel characters and brothels will have a better variety of girls available. Most of the
Madames have been changed to the old AOP1 whore models.

*New and More citizen characters that look realistic for the Golden Age. You will also notice
more people walking through the towns than before for a little more hustle and bustle.

*Playable character interface allows for 75 different player choices now.(15 more are in the works). Most of these are real historical figures. No more POTC characters although I did keep and modify a few POTC models changing them into actual historical personalities. New detailed portraits and narratives included with each RPC which is not only fun to look at, but also provides an education on the REAL buccaneers and corsairs of the Golden Age. Among these new playable characters are four new females and two new personalities of African descent. Each nation has a balanced group of characters to select from. More than any other COAS mod ever.

NEW ITEMS AND WEAPONS:
======================

*Breastplates are back in the game and there are a lot of new ones as well.

*New working spyglasses double your choices in this area.

*Lots of new European religious items which would have been found anywhere you went in the Caribbean of the time.

*While I did get rid of some late era blades and some medieval era blades that just didn’t fit
into our time period, I did import over 40 new blades. There are now 81 blades in the game
(thats over 40 new blades and 40 more than in any other GOF mod)

NOTE: There are only a few sabers that meet the pre 1725 cut off and most weapons are cutlasses,
military rapiers and the like. The type of weapons you would expect to find during the Golden
Age. Module #3 will eliminate most of the rapiers and favor many more varieties of cutlass and
sabers.

*There are now 39 pistols and pistol combinations (pairs and braces of pistols) All other GOF mods only had the standard five pistols in game which means 34 new pistols/pistol combinations

*Over 80 new items and 20 existing items revamped or replaced. Many of these new items will
enhance certain abilities in realistic ways in the same way that the books/manuals do. Some of
the bad items have been replaced with other bad items. From astrolabes, spectacles, and gunner’s
quadrants to filthy rags and half eaten meat, there are some really neat new items. Among the
best items are many new treasures and hoards consisting of different kinds of coins, cobs, bars,
jewelry, and sacred items. Some of these items you will see in markets, but most you will not.

NEW CAPABILITIES:
==================

*New intro movie.

*Lower boarding decks now work! You can fight below decks and loot as well during the boarding sequences. I may add more loot locators. Also some shade file work is still ongoing and you will notice the lighting is sometimes too bright for the time of day. Work in progress.

*New flag mod with lots of period correct national flags on all ships. You can potentially have five different flags on your ship at the same time that are correct for your nationality – even for pirates! This one adds a lot of historical atmosphere to the game.

*Many new period correct signs on taverns and other buildings.

*New more realistic period compass taken from original examples. Wind indicator still works but
no radar because that’s just not realistic at all….sorry. I like this one WAY better.

*Lots of new music and sounds overhauled with even better historical music variety germane to
the situations encountered. Lots of new game and movie music as well. Sound bytes changed for common encounters such as the guards when you come into towns. (Working on a multi-music mod pak that will allow you to select what kind of music you want to hear in the game)

*New playing card backs, new coins, and over 100 new loading screens incorporated into the game
with a wide variety of different screens (mostly germane historical paintings) for towns, forts,
taverns, brothels, governors, churches, stores, shipyards, etc. These screens are also different
for each nationalities ports. In addition. multiple boarding, cabin, and death loading screens
will be seen depending on where you are and how large the encounter. This adds a level of
attractive historical immersion never seen before in COAS, rather than the same boring pictures
over and over again.

*This mod introduces new more realistic Weather and sky/horizon modifications. You will notice
less fog except at times when it should be there. The ocean movement, transparency, color,
and skies have been overhauled for a bluer, lighter, cleaner and brighter Caribbean look and
feel.

*Surrender now works again. It is not enabled in mod options so you must toggle it on in the mod
options menu when you start your game: for best results in game-play set to
“Surrenders Occasionally”

*Direct Sail is enabled. You can sail from one side of the map to the other without needing to
to go to the world view map. You will rarely encounter any ships in the open sea, but if you
come close enough to enemy harbors (long way off but they can still see you), the harbor ships
will chase you long distances. There are seams in the map sheets so there will be little one
second long transitions from sheet to sheet when you get to the edge, but you will never go to
the map.

*Saint Ashley’s 8 ship max mod is part of the mod so your character can control up to eight
ships in his/her fleet. The max ships that can be encountered in an enemy fleet is 10 ships
which potentially allows battles of 28 ships to occur if you walk into a battle between two
opposing fleets plus your fleet. The most I’ve encountered thus far in testing is 24 ships.

*Hundreds of entries in dialogue and INI description files have been rewritten to correct spelling errors, language flow, and better more comprhensive descriptions of everything from nations, to ships, to items and weapons. This adds a lot more depth to the game. Ship descriptions are no longer names of ships, but what class and/or type the ship is. So instead of seeing “Greyhound” in your telescope, you will see English 6th Rater.

****New Capability Work still being done: Always more to do and I have been working on these all
for a while.

– Redoing the officers aboard ship. Almost put this in but some of the animations aren’t right. The Dutch officers look awesome. Can’t wait for you to see them.

– Importing new locations. Been working hard on this one and am very close. I have over a dozen new colonies ready to be put into the game. I have successfully built a map with them and they have buildings, however people and locator work is still ongoing. I have a working Colony on Dominica in the test version but it still needs more work.

– Even more items. I am working on another batch of about 20 items. I keep thinking of new stuff that would be neat to have in the game.

– Striking flags when enemies surrender.

– I am reworking the ballistics, ranges and cannon sizes to period correct…so 3, 4, 9, 12, 16,
24, 32, 36 pounders. I just don’t have it ready to go yet. (Almost ready!)

– Waves at shore location instead of just flat sea.

– Adding another faction(s). Either a different pirate faction or Danish, Portuguese, Genoese, Etc.
If I can add one successfully I can add more. Even if they don’t have colonies, their ships
would still trade at friendly ports and you could run into them at sea. (have had some success but there is a crash problem in a lot of encounters – its not ready)

– Flags and rigging ships to period. I added lateen sails to ships replacing spankers incorrect
for the time period. These have no rigging. So they need rigged. Also many of the PO:TEHO ships
have no mizzen shrouds/ratlines and one of the sloops has none on the main. Someone who knows
how could assist by adding shrouds.

3) RECOMMENDED SETTINGS & CONSIDERATIONS:
——————————————-

Because I have modified many of the base files for stability and improved performance,
(to include the start/engine and config exe files, these are included in the mod so have wide
screen, zooming, camera view, and sounds already set to better defaults than stock COAS.
I think you will enjoy these new settings.

If you are using a small screen and want fullscreen rather than widescreen you will have to
manually set your engine INI file. Simply open with a notepad and change 0 to 1 on the
fullscreen default entry.

Realistic ship encounters no longer have any real meaning in this mod as it always has realistic
ship encounters. In fact some people may not like that they can’t get their favorite warship
because she’s only found in your nation’s convoys. If you want one so badly you may have to
attack your own nation and ask for forgiveness later.

I highly recommend you toggle off the show information about ships in your options so that you
don’t have the huge ugly health bars cluttering up the screen.

I recommend using “In Between” for cannon settings in mod options at the beginning. It makes for
more balanced game play initially. Once you feel powerful and levelled up you can try
“realistic” which will bring down your cannon lethality and the enemies on you. Keeps you from
becoming cannon god.

Starting ship: Several of the characters have better starting ships. For example, Laurens de Graff because he was such a huge deal in his time gets a galleon (the San Francisco taken at Cartegena) and a little more coin than usual. Most of the characters do not get a starting ship or much money however and start with the Barco Costero – basically a coastal sailing boat. Check the different characters if you want to start with a little better ship. Remember it will be beyond your skills though so you will have degraded abilities and level up slower until you get something equivalent to your current skill level or level up to the abilities to fully use the ship you have. Remember you start with a little bit of cargo you can sell off for a little extra coin.

4) BUGS:
———-

Known bugs:

– First I want to report that there is no more glitching or flickering because I finally got my flag mod complete and working correctly. Masts will fall much less but do still occassionally cause crashes. Much more rare now. Continue to quicksave often during battles (F6).

– Mast bug. Some of the PO:TEHO ships masts were designed to shatter in the 2.8 engine and are
not compatible with COAS. So you may occasionally have ships that have a mast floating in the air
while the lower part of the mainmast has been shot away. It doesn’t cause a crash or instability
it just looks bad. Doesn’t happen often.

– Promotion bug. I wrote a new promotion system so that there are more promotions and titles for each nationality. Unfortunately it doesn’t work yet but I’m certain it will soon and will release a patch when it does. However I could not extract what I’ve done without screwing up other stuff so you will not get new titles. You will get promoted but you won’t see a new title and when the governor promotes you he wont call you by a title. Sorry, I didn’t want this to delay me from getting the mod out.

– Occasional CTDs going into Gentlemen of Luck encounters and punitive encounters. The same problem sometimes occurs when encountering regular convoys as well(mainly Spanish). This can effect the treasure quests when a pirate captain recruits you to help him go after an enemy convoy. I have ruled out it being a ship problem and know its one or two officer characters causing the problem. Almost have it solved. Usually all you have to do is reload the game a few times. Not that big of a deal. Almost have this one fixed.

– Character list mis-match error at sea. Not as bad as it was as I’m slowing fixing the characters and portraits index (very time consuming). No issues with gameplay except that you will see the error message.

– New items can be memory intensive on some machines. You may have difficulties seeing all the
pictures of the new items all of the time if you have an older PC.

– Lighting: Every now and then you may get undesirable lighting effects. I was going for a very
Caribbean flavored lighting and color. Some people will like it others will not. If you don’t
like the lighting at a particular time simply use the enabled bracket keys ][ and change until
you like how it looks.

– Large battles: What can I say. It’s much better than it was but still happens. Still some
occasional mast crashing issues, but nothing like in the other GOF mods. I recommend you
quicksave F6 often during large scale battles.

– Eight ships in inventory sometimes causes a crash at the port controller when you want to
give a ship. So ensure you save before doing this. A simple shuffling of your ships around
and changing one of the captains will allow you to give a ship even if you have eight in your
fleet.

– Sound: I almost have this one fixed. You will notice that the sound is better than ever. Still have the sound bug occasionally in ship encounters but it will usually only occur for a few seconds at the beginning of the battle and it will correct so that you have sound for most of the battle.

– Horsepower/RAM: Should be obvious, but with all of the new content this game requires a decent
computer to run quickly. If you don’t have a good computer the game sometimes lags – especially
between location setting transitions.

5) DISCLAIMERS:
—————

IAW USC 107 no part of the media content contained here is to be used for profit. Much of this
content belongs to third parties used with their permission where able to contact them and
obtain it. None of this content is legal to use for profit and it is offered here for
educational purposes.

Of any game mod that has ever existed, I think I have done more to provide an educational
experience of this period in history than any other game. All media is provided to enhance
that education experience and historical ambience.

WARNING: There are some depictions of mild nudity in the game as seen in historical paintings.
All nudity is classically tasteful, but for kids or parents that do not want this exposure
I felt it was necessary to bring this out. This nudity appears in brothel transition screens and
in some paintings on the walls in various locations. Again it is very mild and artistically
tasteful.

6) CREDITS and Ackowledgements:
———————————–

Movies: The following movies and Television shows were used for content.

– The Seahawk (music)
– Against All Flags (loading screens)
– Roman Polanski’s Pirates (music, character Captain Bartholomew Redd)
– Babylon5 (music)
– Batman Begins (music)
– Master and Commander (music)
– Orlando (music)
– Cutthroat Island (music, items, and loading screens)
– Black Sails (loading screens)
– Pirates of the Caribbean (items)

Games: The following games and/or mods were used for content.

– Pirates Oddysey: To Each His Own (ships, characters, weapons, sounds, a few loading screens)
– Secrets of the Far Seas (ships, characters, weapons *most of the new weapons)
– Voyage Century Online (Ships, music, sounds, and a couple weapons)
– Sid Meier’s Pirates (a couple of loading screens)
– Witcher2 (music)
– Colony Wars – Red Sun (music)
– Medieval Total War2 (music)
– Pirates of the Caribbean (characters and weapons)
– New Horizons, POTC Build mods (ships, characters, weapons, and some code files)
– Age of Pirates: Caribbean Tales (Characters, weapons, and some code files)
– Pirates of the Burning Sea……some ship models made by POTBS modders and converted for
use in the Storm engine by PA! modelers and used with their permission.

Developers and publishers:

– Akella
– SeawardRU
– Playlogic
– Bethesda
– Blackmark Studios
– Gamer Studios
– Ubisoft
– Firaxis
– Atari
– Psygnosis
– Time Warner
– Warner Bros.
– Metro Golden Meyer
– Universal
– Disney
– Starz
– Sony

Modders and Modelers:

– Modernknight1
– Johnathan Aldridge(Belthorne) – much of the core mod code work is due to JA. What great work!
– Saint Ashley – The 8 ship max mod is his doing. Awesome enhancement!
– Luke159 – Responsible for most of the damage and cannon behavior numbers.
– Officerpuppy
– Craiggo
– Nixarass
– Firebat
– Darkhymn
– Phillipe
– Jan Marten: Many items from MOTCS(The German Edition) were used. My thanks to Jan despite his stubborness to keep his work to himself. Feel free to use whatever you want from me Jan.

– Pgargon – Many of the fine newer models in the GOF mods are Pgargon’s fine creations.
– Rider88
– Remus77 – Remus77 is responsible for the fine POTBS imports such as Poseidon and Trinity.
– Bava – Most of my reskinned ships look so good due to Bava’s excellent wood plank textures.
– Armada
– SeaNorris
– Nightwatcher
– KrisWood
– Yo Ho Ho(Rese) – Many of his models are older but still excellent models.(The Dutch warships)
– Hylie Pistoff
– Damski
– GhostofDeath
– Metazot: This fine character and texture modeller/artist is responsible for most of the detailed character models produced in the Corsairs/Seadogs games/sequels.

From Corsair’s Harbor: A lot of modders work, material, and assistance came from Corsairs Harbor. Many Thanks to CH and BGT! I could not have done this mod without you guys.
URL: Corsairs-Harbour.Ru

– Monbar
– BigPimp
– Navarra
– Lord\Goodman
– Mr. Sandman
– Ostrov
– Sonik
– Thomas Boyle
– Dan Leopard
– Bonavendture Penkroff
– AG
– Disya
– Cry Wolf
– Island
– Peresvet
– Buryatushka
– Kotiline
– Nordik
– Sphinx
– Agemon
– Etienne
– Spacecrack
– Nikk
– Sea Boss
– Ingmar
– Alex the Great (lots of his characters are in New Horizons as well and I don’t think he ever got credit) Thanks Alex!

ARTISTS:

Most of the artists whose work is seen (primarily in loading transition screens) have long passed and their paintings sit in museums. However, both the living and the dead must still be acknowledged for their beautiful and inspiring work which is a large reason I spent so much time on this game and mod… I wanted it to look like a living and moving painting….and it sometimes does! All of these images were acquired from free sources online.

– William Van de Velde (Elder and Younger)
– Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom
– Ludolf Backhuysen
– Isaac Sailmaker
– Aart van Antum
– Samuel Drummond
– Richard Endsor
– Charles de Lacy
– Claude Joseph Vernet
– Simon de Vlieger
– Peter Monamy
– Leslie Arthur Wilcox
– Bonaventura Peeters
– Jan van Beecq
– Abraham Storck
– Reinier Nooms
– Gregory Manchess
– Angus McBride
– Franz Van Mieris
– Gerard ter Bosch
– Larry Vincent
– Jan Horemans
– Giuseppe Rava
– August Laux
– William Gilkerson
– Montague Dawson
– Lazerman – Thanks to Lazerman425 for his fine cave paintings seen in the transitions. Look him up on DeviantArt

If I’ve left out anyone I am truly sorry and glad to include anyone I’ve missed.

I must acknowledge the National Maritime Museum, Greewich, UK, The Nederlandische Scheepvaart
Museum, Amsterdam, NL, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., USA. Also many of the new textures that appear on the reskins of English ships came directly from photos I personally took of models in the US Naval Academy Museum collection at Preble Hall, Annapolis, MD USA.

MUSIC:

The music is mostly classical but there are a few odd movie, TV and game music clips as well as classical fusion pieces. I would like to thank Freddie Hangoler and Dante Amerisi for allowing me to use their creative modern classical fusion pieces in the game and would encourage those interested to look up their names on google and find their videos…very creative and interesting.

I would also like to thank Xavier diaz-latorre for allowing me to use his fine lute renditions of Bach’s music. Please look up his YouTube videos, they are brilliant!

I highly recommend you take a listen to Alison Balsom’s videos on YouTube. Her EMI recordings are unbelieveable and I own them all. She is a very talented musician that has done some really
original things with pieces not arranged for trumpet.

Last if you haven’t listened to Collegium 1704 you’re missing out. Collegium 1704 conducted by Vaclav Luks offers some of the most perfect baroque music available today. Their renderings of Zelenka’s works are superb and without equal.

I tried to use music that was fitting for the locations. Where possible I used ethnically germane composers… so Wassenauer for Dutch towns, Purcell, Avison and Handel for English, Lully for French, Nebra for Spain… I would also be remiss if I did not give Sedulius credit for the base music mod that I built this one on top of. Only about one fifth of his original music is still in the current music modpack however.

– Antonio Vivaldi – I would estimate that a third of the music in the game is Vivaldi
– Johann Sebastian Bach
– Giuseppi Torelli
– Georg Phillip Tellemann
– Johann Baptist Vanhal
– Jan Dismass Zelenka
– Johan Adoloph Haas – the opening video music is by Hass
– Charles Avison
– Sylvius Leopold Weiss
– Unico Van Wassanuer – music heard in the Dutch towns
– Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
– George Frederic Handel
– Henry Purcell
– Jean-Baptiste Lully
– Tomaso Albinoni
– Johan Fredrich Fasch
– José Blasco de Nebra
– Tim Wright – Colony Wars track
– Hans Zimmer – Batman Begins track
– Adam Scorupa – Witcher2 track
– Christopher Frank – Babylon5 track
– John E. Keane – the Hornblower track
– Christopher Gordon – Master and Commander
– Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou (also known as Vangelis) – Dies Irae theme heard while fighting and the Conquest of Paradise track in Spanish towns and at sea.

Groups and individual musical artists:

– Collegium 1704 – Vaclav Luks
– Alison Balsom
– Izhak Perlman
– Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields – Sir Neville Mariner
– I Solisti di Veneti – Claidio Scimone
– Academy of Ancient Music – Christopher Hogwood (AWESOME!)
– Trevor Pinnock
– Phillipe Jarousski
– Nigel North

================================================================================================

MULTIMEDIA:

I would like to acknowledge Docema and the Movie docu-drama “Broadside” for entertainment, education and the little film snipets I clipped out of the movie as part of my opening introductory film clip.

I would also like to acknowledge the films Broadside, Master and Commander, Cutthroat Island, Black Sails and Against All Flags for still shots I took for boarding and boat transport transition loading screens.

I am working on new movies for when the flags change.
================================================================================================

If I’ve left anyone out I’m truly sorry.

Last and not least are thanks to my family and their patience with my tinkering with this game.

And….my beta testers.

Thanks to DarthTuvok, Hammerman777, 44MAG, Hatchet, Kipper, and Sedulius

================================================================================================

If anyone would like to get a hold of me contact me at [email protected] or PM me on my new website Buccaneersreef.com.

Buccaneer’s Reef RULES!!!

Been a hard year with what Pirates Ahoy! did to me but I am recovering. I forgive those guys completely but I don’t believe all is what they want you to think over there. I know one individual has more than one identity and is more heavily invested than he would have us believe. I frankly think the main reason I was banned was because I was beginning to delete my own materiel which quite frankly gets a whole lot of reads and looks even now. Oh well…what can ya do? I’m not a bad guy or a monster. But they have done a good job villifying me.

I plan to update this mod once a year and if I have good breakthroughs like a mod combining the latest new items, characters, new locations, and the corrected promotion patch I will put that out as soon as I finish it. I will update the status of all things ERAs on Buccaneersreef.com

MK

END of Read Me file 12/24/2014

• This topic was modified 7 years, 10 months ago by modernknight1.
• This topic was modified 7 years, 10 months ago by modernknight1.
• This topic was modified 7 years, 10 months ago by modernknight1.

[modernknight1]

Read me updated starting at the beginning of the first post in this thread 02/24/2017

MK

[Author]

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