I tried to do that, but what I don't like is that they wear Personal Soldier uniforms. They should be wearing British soldier uniforms - I'm supposed to be governor of a British colony, not a personal one.
You can't be governor of a British colony. The only way you can control a colony is to take it over for yourself, which means it's Personal. In any case, as far as the game is concerned, the governor of Port Royale is still "John Clifford Brin", a character who is given a different name and outfit depending on period but is still the same character. There are a couple of ways to change the governor. One is a function called 'SetTownGovernor', though as far as I can see from looking at the code, that simply turns the town's actual governor character into a clone of the "new governor", then removes the "new governor" character. Thus, 'SetTownGovernor("Redmond", CharacterFromID("Artois Voysey"))' would turn "John Clifford Brin" into a clone of Artois Voysey, then set Artois Voysey to location "None". So don't try using this to set yourself as governor!
Another way is to set the town's "gov" attribute directly to the character ID of your choice. I did that in "Ardent"; it's possible for you to fail to prevent an invasion of Port Royale, in which case the story's villain becomes governor. I've no idea what would happen if you set the town's "gov" attribute to your own ID, which is always "Blaze", but it would probably do nasty things to the game.
And so the game doesn't recognise you as governor, it still regards "John Clifford Brin" as the rightful governor of Port Royale.
Strangely enough, the port guards don't fight back when I attack them. But they're the only ones to respond this way in Redmond - every other soldier attacks me. The guys by the mansion attack me. By the church attack me. What's really weird to me is why they are so aggressive despite me setting for them the exact same code I did to the cave animists in the other Freeplay, which ended the way I wanted (that is, no one attacks me even if I hit them!).
No, what's weird is that the port guards aren't similarly aggressive. Soldier AI groups tend to be reset when you leave a location, so that if you've upset them, they don't keep trying to attack you next time you visit the town and for ever more. So you've set them to be friends, then you leave the area, they revert to their standard settings, and then they defend themselves. The question then becomes, why aren't the port guards doing the same? As for "Animist_soldiers", that's not a regular soldier group so it isn't reset the same way. Having said that, AI sometimes does odd things anyway. The best rule is, don't hit any soldier, including your own, unless you want to risk him getting annoyed and hitting you back!
Incidentally, does it actually make sense that a governor collects taxes from his own colony? Or do these taxes go straight to the King? I'm not familiar with this.
In reality, the governor's job is to rule the colony on behalf of his king. Depending on exactly how the king or country has defined the job, he might get to keep some taxes for running the colony, while the rest go back to the home country because that's the point of having a colony. If the governor starts pocketing the taxes for himself, that's embezzlement and he's in big trouble if anyone finds out! But being a governor is a position of major responsibility so he probably gets a nice big salary.
Didn't Jack get his compass either from Tia Dalma or the captain of the Wicked Wench in the movies? I'm trying to make this Jack the Jack from the films, or at least make things feel a little bit like that's the case...
Jack met Gibbs in Tortuga after Barbossa's betrayal, which means he didn't have the Pearl at the time. But the Jack I'm editing has the Pearl, which means it's either before Barbossa's mutiny (meaning I should make Barbossa the first mate), or after COTBP (which means Gibbs has to be my first mate).
In the storyline, at least, Jack does indeed get the compass from Tia Dalma. You never meet another captain of the
Wicked Wench. Depending on what you do right at the start, either you get it from a governor as a reward and then Cutler Beckett lets you keep it, or Cutler Beckett gives it to you himself.
Don't make Barbossa first mate. In the storyline, Jack needs to go to some effort to find Barbossa, who initially isn't interested. Barbossa only wants to join you when you have the compass and most of a map, as he has the last part. And, of course, if you're going to make Barbossa a first mate, you're going to have to figure out how to make him steal the
Black Pearl... (Alternatively, just play the storyline which already does all of this.
)
Apparently this is what seems to happen: when an Officer is "activated" (that's to say you put him in one of those four boxes in "Passengers" thus making him follow you around), his skills and perks are "scrambled". Any triggers that assigned his perks beforehand are ignored, and the game then randomises them. This is whether or not said officer is "questchar".
That can't be right, otherwise officers would have their perks scrambled every time you swapped them around in the "Passengers" interface. I've had characters who start off as NPC passengers who can't be assigned as officers but can be assigned perks. Then later they become officers, I can assign them to one of the four squares, and they still have the perks I gave them while they were just passengers.
The only way I've managed to make it work, is by putting "SetOfficersIndex" in Start Storyline, which makes them automatically "activate" in the very start. Then their perks are assigned in both_reaction.c - this means the perks I want for them are assigned AFTER this "randomisation".
This won't be possible if I want, for example, 8 officers and I want their perks to be pre-determined, because then only 3 of them will have these pre-determined perks...
Any way around this? This is all so strange.
See what happens if you assign them as passengers and then set their perks. Instead of 'SetOfficersIndex', use 'AddPassenger(PChar, CharacterFromID(<insert_character_here>, 0)'. (If you put 1 instead of 0, the character is a prisoner.)
It's not about Norrington "following me around the map", but a trigger that would make his ship appear next to me and attack me at certain dates. Such as in the Mergilio Hurtado quest where the Montanez appears right next to your ship.
Mergildo Hurtado doesn't appear on a certain date. He appears when you arrive at Barbados. You can take as long as you like to get there. That can be arranged easily enough for Norrington as well. You already know how to make an enemy appear next to you - 'Group_SetPursuitGroup'.
What you seem to be suggesting to me at this point, is to change Jack's time frame from after the events of COTBP, to before Barbossa's mutiny because then I won't have to worry about setting Norrington to attack me or Anamaria...
What I'm suggesting is not to do much with Jack Sparrow at all.
FreePlay Jack Sparrow gets "UncursedPearl", which is the ship before it was cursed but after it had been burned by Cutler Beckett. So that would indeed be before Barbossa's mutiny. Norrington doesn't need to attack you, Anamaria can remain wandering around Tortuga, Gibbs can stay in the tavern, and you can try to figure out how Gibbs got the compass...
