WIP 1652

[Imperial]

1652​

This project is currently in brainstorming phase, we are currently assembling the team and our resources before any actual development takes place. So please bear with us on this, we are not daydreaming here nor we are about to undertake something bigger than us, we do not want to promise bringing something that we cannot build.

So, if you wish to join the bandwagon, applications are up on different positions.

List of planned features

Main features
Mod project will strictly follow how the original game was set.
No bad quality models or textures. I want to acheive the highest quality possible within the engine's limits.
Large variation of ships (and here we'll need modelers), no more "Fearless' ", "Greyhounds" or "La Licorne's", for the sake of immersion breaking elements like these, we'll have ships respecting their countries of origin, for example, there will be no Fearless, since it does not meet our requirements in quality, there will be no Mermaid Grief and any other ships like those.
Lots of weapons and blackpowder weapons. (I'll handle them)
The whole game is being retextured by LordMalacath, everything from cities to flora. He plans aswell to add a more jungle like feel to the jungle scenes outside the towns.
No stability breaking features. The .ogg files are being slowly converted by me in .mp3 files. I'm currently researching a way to have the cannons execute different firing sounds randomly, so that there is more variation when blowing a broadside into your enemy. Something like this Link

Whole new soundtrack based on Bach, Haendel, Pisendel and Vivaldi.
The Aztec Quest will now be a treasure hunting Quest.
Relics to come around. (Aztec and Mayan relics that can fetch you a lot of gold)
No more Flying Dutchman. The Quest will be altered.
No more skeletons, you'll have the undead now in the caverns.
Military officers that you can enroll in your crew (only if you have a letter of marque)
Mercenary officers (will need proper dialog, and I don't know yet how to implement this)
Ranks given by your Governor-General.
More life in the towns. (more objects and the usual buzz of the 1600s)
Cannon caliber based on the nation who built that ship. (Need to check if I can restrict what types of cannons can be sold in each Shipwright) - Example: You capture a Dutch ship, but it has a different calibre compared to an English counterpart. So, if you lose your cannons in a battle, I see it rather difficult getting cannons on your ship.
Smugglers as in AOP:CT


Secondary featuresLarger towns, I plan to acheive this by merging different .gm files together.
More variation, I hope that .gm files like 'Redmond", 'Isla Muelle', ' Concecaio' and others are cross-compatible between POTC and COAS. Even if not, I'll do my best in acheiving this. One question though? How the hell is land collision based between walking NPCs and the like?
Unified decks on ships during boarding scenes. No transitions between the deck and the cargo hold. Only transition here will be for the Captain's cabin.
Harder game. I plan to set the difficulty of the game to something more difficult. The game is too easy I want to give the players a hard challenge here, within the limits of fun of course.
Ambient sounds for cities. (Instead of a random song playing in the background)
Rougher sea and weather. (Also, more Caribbean, since the sea in COAS looks like we're in Northern Europe)

The other list (AKA: Daydreaming here)
The Islands of Tobago, Grenada, St. Lucia, Montserrat, Nevis and St. Kitts, St. Eustatius. (I'm looking into the code and models of AoP:CT for this). I surely know that the islands will be a pain in the ass to insert.

Things that are being done currently

Example
Ships for the English
Lugger (COAS) - Coastal patrol
Brigantine (COAS) - Small ship for organizing patrols between islands, moderately armed
Brig (COAS) - A well balanced ship for the average trader or Post Captains of the Royal Navy.
Barque (COAS) - The perfect choice for a merchant who seeks fortune. Moderately armed.
Corvette (Surprise)
Military Corvette and Heavy Corvette (COAS) - A fast interceptor
Pinnace (COAS) - A big cargo hold and a sturdy hull. What can be better than this?
Heavy Pinnace (remodeled COAS Pinnace with more gun ports) - Will be used in military patrols
War Galleon - Will be remodeling the Heavy Galleon a bit to make it look like the Ark Royal.
Frigate (COAS) - Never liked the '800 century texture on this one.
Heavy Frigate (the old POTC model for the Arabella and the Salamander) Fast and well armed.
Light Warship (The carrack looking one from COAS) - Not enough to blow a Fort up, but enough to bring hell to an enemy convoy.
Battleship (Lineship from COAS and Dauntless from POTC) - Enough to blow towns up if you set them in squadrons.
Man-o-War (COAS) - Rare. All I say is rare. B
Heavy Man-o-War (overhauled POTC model)

LordMalcath did a terrific job on doing what I asked him (adding ranks). Now I'll see to make that coat a big longer on them.

One golden stripe (Ensign)
Two golden stripes (Lieutenant)
One golden and white stripe (Captain)
Two white stripes (Major)

Some links to some resources

http://brethrencoast.com/Pirate_Ships.html
http://www.thepirateking.com/ships/ship_types.htm
http://arc.id.au/Cannon.html

We're 'a lot of people', trust me on that.

Current team size: 3
Me and LordMalacath, a delightful person that I work with and who occasionally writes reviews on mods for a magazine as a second job.
Vrijnek, a modeler and a texturer.
Haar3D, he ripped some models from POTC: At World's End (but I have yet to receive a reply from Disney on using their models on this 'no-profit' project.
We currently have HQ models of Jack Sparrow, Norrington, Will Turner, Cutler Beckett and others.
Some locations that we can use aswell, but require converting and locators to be placed.

We need: additional coders (I can't do it alone), modelers, texturers (the amount of work to do is..without an end as I see it), lore writers (people to re-write the conversations and the descriptions of the ships, items, relics and other stuff).

 

[Pieter Boelen]

We've got a model sourced from PotC: AWE in the PotC Build Mod as well. We never did get any complaints from Disney on that one, so I think you're good.
I sincerely doubt they would ever reply. We tried to contact them back in the days and we were ignored too.

Model files are indeed interchangeable between PotC and CoAS, but some slight adaptation work might have to be done.
CoAS is very similar to PotC and a lot of things are interchangeable between both games; especially knowledge of the game mechanics.

"Collision detection" between characters and ground is handled with the "walk patch", the .ptc file in the location model folder.
See here for a lot of useful tools and tutorials: http://www.piratesahoy.net/threads/ftp-akella-modding-tools-and-help-files.12623/

Do I understand you are working together with people from Dezeeroovers.net? What happened with the German Edition modpack then?
Are you trying to make another modpack for AoP 2? Seriously, how many different modpacks do we need for it? We're going to have:
- Combined Modpack
- Gentlemen of Fortune, based on the CM with more stuff, but also never got a finished, stable release
- German Edition modpack
- Moderknight1's Eras mod
- Your 1652 modpack

While on PotC, we simple put ALL content in the SAME modpack. Dividing everything just seems like such a tremendous waste.
It dilutes all efforts, spreads all the people who might want to contribute far too thin. And the end result is all not what it could have been.

When CoAS was originally released, I tried to support the modders as best I could.
But they hardly ever took my advice and suggestions and things were just getting divided and eventually abandoned.
That was such a tremendous shame. Still is, in fact. Which is pretty much the main reason why I have given up on CoAS as well.
Because originally we DID intend to move modding to CoAS. But now it isn't worth it anymore because all attempts at a focused effort of some kind have failed.

I'm rather confused, I've got to say. But if there are any specific things you need help with, I'll always try to point you in the right direction if I can.

 

[Jan Marten]

Pieter sorry, this has nothing to do with us.
I am somewhat perplexed.

 

[Imperial]

Wait, don't put words in my mouth that I never said.

While I did mention that LM likes to review mods and the such, I never mentioned a cooperation between us and the German Edition. I think that what I said was of the likes of "LordMalacath, since he knows German prefers to stay on German forums". Since I personally know the guy, I made him create a profile here with my phone, but I haven't seen him logged up.

As for the mod, I do not wish to create another modpack, that's for sure. I've thought about going on with the development of GOF, but since a lot of stuff should be removed, I prefer starting from point zero and going on from there. Plus. since I had a rather long pause from modding, I forgot almost all the basics of modding. It would amaze me if I'd be able to go flawlessly through files without saying "And what was this?".

Some screens will come soon. I want to remember though that progress will be sporadic, since we do not have much time and we usually dedicate two to five hours a week to this thing. If it wasn't for Master and Commander (the movie) I wouldn't remember about this place. Talking with people around, I dragged LM in here, as we are both interested in these type of games. (Shooters and alike are not for me anymore)

I would personally like to cooperate with the German community, but I feel that they are rather on themselves and the language barrier would make it impossible for me. They have a nice mod, but I never understood why they never asked somebody to make a translation for it. I'm not pinpointing nobody here, I just feel that the community behind AoP is divided in three main groups, english-speaking people, germans and russians.

And Jan, you don't have to feel "perplexed" as I have never said any such thing.

 

[Armada]

Question: Is the mod intended to be more historically accurate than the base game, like GOF: Eras, or just improve upon its content?
I'm asking because the name "1652" suggests a focus on authenticity, though your example ship list suggests otherwise.

Either way, it sounds like quite a project. I'm sure it will please MK to know that others still care about this game.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Wait, don't put words in my mouth that I never said.

As I said, I'm just confused on what exactly is going on. That's why I'm asking.

While I did mention that LM likes to review mods and the such, I never mentioned a cooperation between us and the German Edition. I think that what I said was of the likes of "LordMalacath, since he knows German prefers to stay on German forums". Since I personally know the guy, I made him create a profile here with my phone, but I haven't seen him logged up.

I know you didn't mention a cooperation. But you did mention their forum. So I was wondering how that works.

I would personally like to cooperate with the German community, but I feel that they are rather on themselves and the language barrier would make it impossible for me. They have a nice mod, but I never understood why they never asked somebody to make a translation for it. I'm not pinpointing nobody here, I just feel that the community behind AoP is divided in three main groups, english-speaking people, germans and russians.

My ideal situation would be for everybody to just work together on the same modpack. I have tried many times in the past to set that up, but it never happened.
We only rarely had contact with any Russian modders. But we used to be doing pretty well with the German modding team, who were active on our forums.
But of course that went right down the drain while I was away at sea, so by the time I returned, the damage had already been done.
I'm still really sorry about that and would quite like things to go back to just actively cooperating. But I have neither the time nor enthusiasm left to set that up.

It does appear that the German modding team manages to get a lot more done on CoAS than we here ever did.
Development on GoF has been shaky at best, with it being pretty much abandoned by most of the people who worked on it.
For quite a long while, the only person still modding for AoP 2 has been Modernknight1 on his Eras mod.
And he's been doing it with pretty much no assistance at all, except occasionally when I might have been able to figure out a thing or two for him.

Basically at this point I am thinking that if we DO want to properly continue modding CoAS, the best would probably to make an English translation of the German modpack.
And then continue modding together from the base they have already created. Content can be used from GoF and the PotC Build Mod.
If we would combine our efforts for real, perhaps modding for CoAS could surpass the heights we have reached on PotC: New Horizons.
I'd definitely like to see that happen.

 

[Imperial]

Exactly my idea, but would Jan approve that? (regarding the translation)

 

[Post Captain]

Large variation of ships (and here we'll need modelers), no more "Fearless' ", "Greyhounds" or "La Licorne's", for the sake of immersion breaking elements like these, we'll have ships respecting their countries of origin, for example, there will be no Fearless, since it does not meet our requirements in quality, there will be no Mermaid Grief and any other ships like those.

I'm afraid you'll have trouble with that, then, unless you have a huge team to model twenty or thirty new vessels in a reasonable amount of time. Even modelling a single high quality ship can take months, and we're short on ship modelers in general.
What's wrong with Geyhound? It's a lot better than the stock models. Unless you just want to eliminate it for ever nation except England?

 

[Imperial]

You would be amazed how much difference can a proper texture do.
And no, I just meant re-using the Greyhound's model, for lets say, a Light Corvette (of course, I'm not looking for historical accuracy in the name, but I want that the stats are reflected on how a small small corvette WAS in the 700s/800s.
The ugly PoTC models like Mermaid Grief, Fearless, Colonial Frigate, Bermuda Sloop etc are all getting jettisoned into the deepest corners of space.

 

[Post Captain]

Eh. If you want variety and only good quality models, it doesn't make sense to me to throw out the good quality authentic ones because they aren't too small. (The Greyhound model is definitely among the smallest of corvettes you'd ever see. It is tiny, even compared to other vessels in the game.)

Best of luck, though.



I completely agree with getting rid of the worst of the old models, just keep in mind that you'll probably need replacements. That's probably the only reason we still have them in NH and GoF.

 

[Jan Marten]

Interesting. We have never refused to cooperate.
But I only hear allegations.

GOF mod and mod MotCS (German version) are constructed differently.
There are pursued different goals. MK `s Era Mod ore going in our direction.

I say it again. Who needs what, should contact us.
We help as much as possible. But I'm running behind her no.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

And no, I just meant re-using the Greyhound's model, for lets say, a Light Corvette (of course, I'm not looking for historical accuracy in the name, but I want that the stats are reflected on how a small small corvette WAS in the 700s/800s.

Are you opposed to the Greyhound name or the model itself? If I understand correctly, in GoF they have used ship names where there should be ship type names.
Indeed that doesn't help with immersion.

The ugly PoTC models like Mermaid Grief, Fearless, Colonial Frigate, Bermuda Sloop etc are all getting jettisoned into the deepest corners of space.

Which ships are those? Never heard of the "Mermaid Grief".
If the Fearless is indeed the stock PotC ship by the same name, the model is indeed pretty damn bad. If I recall, it wasn't even used in the unmodded game.

In any case, a ship clean-up is definitely a good idea. We did the same on PotC and we got rid of a lot of sub-standard ships back then.

GOF mod and mod MotCS (German version) are constructed differently.
There are pursued different goals. MK `s Era Mod ore going in our direction.

That's why I suggested dropping GoF altogether when continuing. As far as I gather, it was made with good intentions, but never properly finished.
So it isn't a good base to work from, really.

I say it again. Who needs what, should contact us.
We help as much as possible. But I'm running behind her no.

Thanks a lot! We'll let you know if we need anything.

But we'll need to find people to work on AoP 2 first, of course.

Exactly my idea, but would Jan approve that? (regarding the translation)

I think he will. I remember suggesting it before and he didn't object back then either, if I recall.
It never happened, because we don't have the people to do a translation. But if you can find some people and get that done, perhaps we could continue from there?
That definitely has lots of potential! And then we would finally all be on the same track again!

 

[modernknight1]

You would be amazed how much difference can a proper texture do.
And no, I just meant re-using the Greyhound's model, for lets say, a Light Corvette (of course, I'm not looking for historical accuracy in the name, but I want that the stats are reflected on how a small small corvette WAS in the 700s/800s.
The ugly PoTC models like Mermaid Grief, Fearless, Colonial Frigate, Bermuda Sloop etc are all getting jettisoned into the deepest corners of space.

To answer your question....I was an artillery officer most of my career. Started enlisted and was sent to officer candidate school after I made sergeant. Finished as a Colonel with 24 years. The last ten plus years of my career I was mainly a desk jocky but with a very interesting job of being the chief geek in charge of training centers and developing simulations and games for the army....

...I did get rid of a lot of old POTC models for GOF Eras, but there were ones that were correct for the era and cleaned up nicely with some morphing and retexturing. Greyhound is called English 6th rater in the interface and can only be found in English colonies and convoys. I have corrected that naming problem. I did keep Mermaid Grief but she's not seen often and only as a merchantman. She is English Great Bark. Not all ships back then were pretty. Some are not the subject of many paintings because of this. However I have found a lot of evidence for the old Great English Bark used for slaving and large cargo transport. She is not pretty, but how do you like my version? I redid the POTC carracks as well which were really ugly, but I love my versions (last two pics).

MK

 

[Hylie Pistof]

It looks like you fixed the reverse lighting bug on the masts of the Carrack, last pic. I have always liked that ship and soon will be liking her even more.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Those galleons and carracks there are really good!

And that first ship in your screenshots is the "Mermaid Grief"? I can't even tell what model she is based on. You sure that's a PotC one? Ugly for sure!
The texturing does help, but she's still an ugly duck.

 

[modernknight1]

Yeah she is ugly but I think fairly authentic. When I got done scrubbing all the ships all of the nations had a large cargo hauler except the English. They have the Bristol Merchantman/Guineaman which is a good medium sized slaver/cargo hauler, but England needed a large slaver/cargo hauler as well. So I added her back in as English only so they could have that. I think some people will like her. She has actually grown on me. Others will enjoy sending her to the bottom. She was in the first modpack that Jonathan Aldridge put together in the JA mod so we assumed she was from POTC....she could be from somewhere else though??? Not from AOP however.

MK