Age of Pirates 2 COAS and GOF - JLB version

[ChezJfrey]

Found one crucial line missing from the battle interface code (it was a new attribute needed for 2.8), and now I am successfully sailing at sea in POTC.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

That's some pretty cool stuff you're doing there, @ChezJfrey!

POTC SendMessage(&worldMap, "llssf", MSG_WORLDMAP_CREATEENC_MER, type, nationShipName, islandName, kSpeed);
COAS SendMessage(&worldMap, "lsssff", MSG_WORLDMAP_CREATEENC_MER, nationShipName, from, to, kSpeed, timeOutInSec);

Do ships in CoAS actually sail FROM and TO specific places? That is SO AWESOME!
@NathanKell once tried to make that work in PotC, but the game engine wouldn't let him.

 

[ChezJfrey]

That's some pretty cool stuff you're doing there, @ChezJfrey!


Do ships in CoAS actually sail FROM and TO specific places? That is SO AWESOME!
@NathanKell once tried to make that work in PotC, but the game engine wouldn't let him.

I just reviewed the code for that message. If string, non-empty values are supplied, it will try to find locators in the world map model with the label.group name "quests" that match label.name with the supplied value. If found, yes, it will position the random ship on the world map near the start you supplied, and aim it toward the end point on the world map. If they are empty strings, or values not found in the locators, the ship will be random.

 

[Talisman]

I just reviewed the code for that message. If string, non-empty values are supplied, it will try to find locators in the world map model with the label.group name "quests" that match label.name with the supplied value. If found, yes, it will position the random ship on the world map near the start you supplied, and aim it toward the end point on the world map. If they are empty strings, or values not found in the locators, the ship will be random.

So this must be how COAS generates quest ships that you have to find on the world map and makes sure that they are in the right place or sailing to the correct place for the quest.

Interesting

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I just reviewed the code for that message. If string, non-empty values are supplied, it will try to find locators in the world map model with the label.group name "quests" that match label.name with the supplied value. If found, yes, it will position the random ship on the world map near the start you supplied, and aim it toward the end point on the world map. If they are empty strings, or values not found in the locators, the ship will be random.

Ah, so it's for QUEST ships. My thinking was to use it for regular ships too, so single ships and fleets have a departure and destination port.
If they do, then by attacking them, you might be able to interrupt town economies.
I think Sid Meier's Pirates! had a system like that. Of course it wouldn't be easy to make that work, but it would definitely be a cool feature!

 

[ChezJfrey]

Ah, so it's for QUEST ships. My thinking was to use it for regular ships too, so single ships and fleets have a departure and destination port.
If they do, then by attacking them, you might be able to interrupt town economies.
I think Sid Meier's Pirates! had a system like that. Of course it wouldn't be easy to make that work, but it would definitely be a cool feature!

It is used for both purposes.

In the back-end code, the locator labels in the world map with group "merchant" are used for the case of blank to/from in the message for random selection against, while the locators with group_name "quests" are used for any time the to/from are sent in that message. That message is called from the moddable code, so if the values sent exist in the model within the "quests" group, it will be found and is used for any ship that sends message MSG_WORLDMAP_CREATEENC_MER to create a world map ship. It's just the label group in the model that is used for the 'quest' of the merchant...the code creates a Merchant ship for that message. If one wants more varied quest points, I presume the locators just need added and appropriately labeled within the group, then add those to the mod code for sending in that message.

In COAS, looking at the world map locators, each colony name exists with a locator in the 'quests' groups, along with some specific shores that are indeed particular to quests

 

[pedrwyth]

GOF & AoP COAS Files: https://mega.nz/#F!WtMDgRxK!hbeUg86kGLlQAqvWRNwTqg

Fairly tested on WinXP, Win7 and Win8, with no known issues to this point. It is also Large Address Aware, to boost the app's RAM ability, if needed.

you can give this compilation of the engine source a try and feel free to provide any feedback;

I thought I must be doing something stupid because I couldn't get the modules to load in any flavour of the AOP2 family - and in a way I was. I was trying to use windows 10. Moved my external drive (on which I mount all my suite of storm engine pirate games) back to my windows 7 machine and hey presto - no problems all flavours load up nicely. Meanwhile back on windows 10....

Any suggestions (other than don't use windows10 ) @ChezJfrey ?

 

[ChezJfrey]

Just so I understand...you've got the executables sitting on an external. You plug it into a Win 10 machine, mapped as say P:\ drive and launch them from there and that is the log you get? If that's the case, and it doesn't work in 10, I will have to see if I can figure out the problem. But, the only Win10 machine I currently have in the house is my wife's work laptop, so I can't yet say how I'm going to investigate.

Have you tried launching them from a directory on C:, such as C:\PirateStuff\start.exe, with the modules folder in there? Does that work on Win 10?

 

[pedrwyth]

Just so I understand...you've got the executables sitting on an external. You plug it into a Win 10 machine, mapped as say P:\ drive and launch them from there and that is the log you get?

Yes - actually all files for your recompiled exe and all the original AOP2 (or mod if trying a mod) too - so what is working in windows7 directly moved to the windows 10 machine

If that's the case, and it doesn't work in 10, I will have to see if I can figure out the problem. But, the only Win10 machine I currently have in the house is my wife's work laptop, so I can't yet say how I'm going to investigate.

Have you tried launching them from a directory on C:, such as C:\PirateStuff\start.exe, with the modules folder in there? Does that work on Win 10?

Yes the result and log is the same. No change if I use full path names either.
The only thing that does change behaviour is pointing it at the AOP2 modules (yes I sort of know it wouldn't work but anyway..) when it does appear to load most of the (wrong) modules. Here is a system log from that.

[Incidentally Windows 10 doesn't like the exe much - sometimes it just screamed "virus detected" and removed the file, sometimes a warning of unknown file do you really want to run this and when you choose to run it anyway the whole machine has to restart - but mostly just this none loading of modules.]

EDIT

the only Win10 machine I currently have in the house is my wife's work laptop, so I can't yet say how I'm going to investigate.

Funny you should say that because I tried MY wife's windows 10 laptop and it's fine - so forget this it must be something odd in my windows 10 setup (although, of course, I don't have any idea what). So false alarm sorry

ENDEDIT

 

[ChezJfrey]

Well that is terrible. I can't promise a timely resolution, but if or when I get a chance to somehow obtain and play with a Win 10 on my own (since I can't really do it on my wife's lapop, which is our only Win 10 at the moment), I will try to figure out the problem. As for 'untrusted', well, that requires some money from me to pay a Cert Authority and signing the code, which I am not yet prepared to do, so that will remain so for awhile. I can assure you that as far as I have modified, I am not doing anything malicious, unless of course the original developers inserted bad things that I have not yet discovered in the code, LOL

I will take note and see what I can do.

 

[pedrwyth]

Well that is terrible. I can't promise a timely resolution, but if or when I get a chance to somehow obtain and play with a Win 10 on my own (since I can't really do it on my wife's lapop, which is our only Win 10 at the moment), I will try to figure out the problem. As for 'untrusted', well, that requires some money from me to pay a Cert Authority and signing the code, which I am not yet prepared to do, so that will remain so for awhile. I can assure you that as far as I have modified, I am not doing anything malicious, unless of course the original developers inserted bad things that I have not yet discovered in the code, LOL

I will take note and see what I can do.

Well not so bad if you saw my edit above. It was a clean install onto my wife's win10 laptop - no warnings etc. So fingers crossed it is just abberant behaviour on my machine and nothing you need to look at.

Just to wrap this up - on mine when they occurred the "virus" alert was via my virus software, the warning and reboot/crash part of windows itself but since my wife's running the same virus software perhaps those too are symptomatic of my windows 10 install. I was happy enough that the dire warnings etc were spurious, it comes with the territory, others may be less so.

As for the none reading of the dlls it is just plain weird behaviour - I guess i'll be doing an in depth comparison of settings, permissions etc between the two I have access to when my wife's not around but really am at a loss as to what or where - and kicking it doesn't seem to help.

EDIT Cleared the problem with loading dlls. Reinstalling Microsoft Visual C++ redistributables did the trick ENDEDIT

 

[ChezJfrey]

I think that's what @ChezJfrey is trying to find out. NOT easily done though, that's for sure.

Naw, it was cake.

Yep, New Horizons just about there... -

New Horizon working in 2.8 engine and also DirectX 9. Another side-effect is that the fighting mechanics of 2.8, with the parry and such comes along for the ride, so there are apparently more fighting moves than originally, so I am told as I am not familiar with POTC other than my brief encounter with it while setting this up to work with Storm 2.8.

More screen shots and link to follow.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Exciting news, @ChezJfrey!

Having the advanced fighting system from CoAS will be pretty awesome.
Have to admit the stock PotC system is perhaps a bit too simple.

 

[ChezJfrey]

Much changed in the world map approach for labels from POTC/NH. I opted for the last two New Horizons outstanding features (ship flags and map labels) to rectify the labels/icons first as the flags will undoubtedly be tedious...boy was I wrong...they will both suck away immense time, LOL Not difficult, just time consuming.

Anyway, labels is done and now the last is ship flags. I enabled them all so I could see the results as I went:

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Looks impressive, @ChezJfrey!

Do you mean the ship flags in 3D Sailing Mode?
I can imagine that being tricky; the way that was added to the game was by somewhat hacking the general game engine.

 

[Talisman]

I opted for the last two New Horizons outstanding features (ship flags and map labels) to rectify the labels/icons first as the flags will undoubtedly be tedious...boy was I wrong...they will both suck away immense time, LOL Not difficult, just time consuming.

Looks impressive, @ChezJfrey!

Do you mean the ship flags in 3D Sailing Mode?
I can imagine that being tricky; the way that was added to the game was by somewhat hacking the general game engine.

If @ChezJfrey means the ship flags in 3D Sailing Mode - then it will be interesting to see if the "Graphical Anomalies" that POTC New Horizons has appear or not.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

He's got access to the game engine itself, so he may have managed to implement it in a completely different and much better way.
If so, I doubt the same issues would apply any longer.

 

[ChezJfrey]

If @ChezJfrey means the ship flags in 3D Sailing Mode - then it will be interesting to see if the "Graphical Anomalies" that POTC New Horizons has appear or not.

Just out of curiosity, what do they look like? Anyone have a screenshot example? I've never played NH, so don't know what these anomalies are.

Also, the world map swivels around as you turn...is this intentional and how it works in New Horizons, or do I need to insert the setting to make it static North up?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Just out of curiosity, what do they look like? Anyone have a screenshot example?

There are some good screenshots in this thread: Engine Limitation - Graphical Anomalies | PiratesAhoy!
The most obvious one is probably the one in post #26.

I've never played NH, so don't know what these anomalies are.

Do you have access to the stock PotC game? If not, would you want it?

Also, the world map swivels around as you turn...is this intentional and how it works in New Horizons, or do I need to insert the setting to make it static North up?

It does indeed work that way in PotC. The only way to stop that is by pressing 'Tab' to disengage the camera from the player ship.

If you could add a setting for North Up though, that would be pretty awesome!
I much prefer "North Up" displays myself.

 

[Talisman]

Just out of curiosity, what do they look like? Anyone have a screenshot example? I've never played NH, so don't know what these anomalies are.

Here are some old screen Shots: