Mod Release AoP:CT - Historical Immersion Mod v5.0

[Modder01]

Greetings Captains,
The time has finally come to start plundering yer way through the Caribbean again.

The work on this mod, or it's ancestor, started many years ago with Cyberops in 2007 and the mod was highly praised for bringing an extra dimension to the game. Cyberops's mod had a few problems, had issues in terms of conforming or trying to follow historical accuracy and some content issues in the brothels. Cyberops's mod was merely just an enhancement to the original game and game-play was very similar to the original since the patches and a no-cd allowed to bypass starforce in order to get the original experience without installing Cyberops's mod. However, the glaring issues with the english translation and a many bugs present in the original game were, by a vast majority, fixed by the Cyberops team which made Cyberops's mod popular because it was fixing what the original developers got wrong. Cyberops's Supermod Repack had a long reign of being the go-to mod, besides AOP:CT's english translated version of the Russian mod "Secrets of the Far Seas" which wasn't as popular by comparison.

Back when I was in middle school, I discovered this game and Cyberops's mod. The mod was excellent and I was able to play through the story-line with no difficulty at all. I started studying history in various areas including the age of sail (i.e the golden age of piracy) and noticed some inaccuracies, in various places, in the mod. I also was eager to modify the game past Cyberops's accomplishments and as such I once lurked on these forums as a guest in order to receive help from searching and browsing the forums to mod the game. After my shared computer crashed, I started to pick up the pieces on my new system (now independent of my parent's system). By junior year in high school I joined these forums in order to mod the game to my standards using Cyberops's creation as the basis. Many versions of the mod came out and each improvement, in the updates released, made the game better until the time came to release v4.0. Version v4.0 was the elephant in the room when I was getting too busy to mod the game. I was a bit lax on my restrictions for that mod as the quest I released had a terrible exploit bug that allowed you to complete the quest before the Dutchman could be fought. In that sense I never got it right and the quest seemed empty compared to my previous feats in modifying the game. I also unbalanced the ships by adding new ones, and other game-play problems cropped up, one by one. I left the forums for a few years as I attended personal matters that needed my attention.

Initially, after releasing v4.0, I had thought I had done my best to provide an improvement over Cyberops's Mod, however I felt that the mod wasn't complete by a long shot. Since I was dealing with personal matters at the time I felt nothing of it. I gradually forgot these forums until Chezjfrey sent me a private message in August of 2017; suggesting that there was a way to fix what went wrong in v4.0 and also make the game a lot better. I got hooked again and kept the conversation going. Over time and on the Supermod's original topic we worked on a new version v5.0 which promises to do away with the philosophies of the old and add some new content and fix the places in which I fouled up the last time. As of this moment v5.0 is entering it's Beta testing stage.

About the Beta Test:
Beta testing will be spread over two months and will be play-tested by the community. There will be two iterations of the public test before general release. Each iteration will stop at the end of a month. We who are developing the mod, will have 1 month (or more time if we get bogged down) to fix what we can and then we can release the next public test at the beginning of the following month. After finalizing the changes from the second public test, we will release version 5.0.

How can I become a tester:
You must download the client linked at the end of this post. Also you must post on this topic in order to get credit for the credit roll video I am making for the mod.

Beta Test Client Download Link:
Beta Test Has Concluded and the Mod is Now Released on ModDB:
AoP: Historical Immersion Mod v5.0 (Standalone) for Age of Pirates: Caribbean Tales

Notes:
- This version is standalone, It is not meant to be installed on top of version 4.0 or on top of the original game disk.
- In order for the game to run smoothly on your machine please, find the "README-INSTALL-FEATURES.docx" in the zip folder's directories and read before playing.
- Post all your issues/bugs/etc with the game in this thread so that I can track the problems for fixing... Use descriptive words to assist other testers so that they do not post the same issue.

Current known issues (Beta Iteration 2):
- In game options menu changes not applying in game (changed options from main menu, After Starting a new Game the changes aren't applied. You can force it if you return to the options menu after starting a new game.)

 

[ChezJfrey]

Ship to ship dialogue menu - button mashing CTD bug.

This one is new to me and recently mentioned by you and I'm curious, how do I reproduce this in game? The most common CTDs from the old engine have been eradicated with this newer engine, so I would like to look into this one.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

I DLed it and found that there was no way to specify where it should be extracted to. That's ok now that I know.

Then I found some odd log files. I have not run it yet, just extracted it.

 

[Modder01]

This one is new to me and recently mentioned by you and I'm curious, how do I reproduce this in game? The most common CTDs from the old engine have been eradicated with this newer engine, so I would like to look into this one.

After the first time an enemy surrenders to you, especially when serving the pirates, you can button mash the demand surrender button even when the option is greyed out. Eventually the system will force the enemy crew to surrender. After that happens, eventually if another enemy talks to you or you talk to them they will automatically surrender to you. After a while this causes a recursive error that makes the Game crash to the desktop. The same can be said for demand ransom... Also sometimes when you are talking to enemies you might make them friendly just by talking to them.

I DLed it and found that there was no way to specify where it should be extracted to. That's ok now that I know.

Then I found some odd log files. I have not run it yet, just extracted it.

I gave those files to Chezjefrey, who has yet to look into them, they don't seem to be related to the current issues so they haven't been on the priority list... Also the zip file will become a self-extracting archive once the final version is ready for release on ModDB...

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Ok.

I had a crash when trying to start the game until I remembered to set the screen resolution in the start.ini. Then it worked fine.

I use a Creative Soundblaster sound card and decent headphones so set the sound to MM-1. Running around town all was normal but when I went out into the jungle at every map change the sound would go away and then come and go intermittently. When i made it back to town the sounds got heavily distorted like an old 8 track or cassette tape that was dying. So I set the sound to MM-0 and the distortion went away, but the sound kept cutting out.

 

[ChezJfrey]

Ok.

I had a crash when trying to start the game until I remembered to set the screen resolution in the start.ini. Then it worked fine.

I use a Creative Soundblaster sound card and decent headphones so set the sound to MM-1. Running around town all was normal but when I went out into the jungle at every map change the sound would go away and then come and go intermittently. When i made it back to town the sounds got heavily distorted like an old 8 track or cassette tape that was dying. So I set the sound to MM-0 and the distortion went away, but the sound kept cutting out.

While I don't experience this with the stock sound card, I wonder if some of it is due to this CT derivative is still missing stuff/has misdefined stuff. Just looking into your sound issue, I have found: sound aliases not defined, missing sound files, missing loading textures, models specified for encounters, but no .gm files, missing video files, etc.

Let's try to at least get the missing footsteps, that might be contributing to the issue (along with a couple missing loading screens, just because they were easy to copy):

MEGA

Get RESOURCEupdate.zip

It's relatively small at 3.3 mb. Copy them into the corresponding RESOURCE folders.

 

[ChezJfrey]

I had a crash when trying to start the game until I remembered to set the screen resolution in the start.ini. Then it worked fine.

In addition, I did some testing and found that this type of crash only occurs when running fullscreen mode, in a screen resolution set where the X and Y settings are not supported by your system; this does not appear to happen in windowed mode with any setting I tried. This causes the call to init DirectX to fail.

I have now implemented a pop-up message for this failure, instructing to check your ini resolution and/or settings, then it shuts down gracefully, rather than crash.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

I tried it with the new additions and with the sound set to mm-0. Everything was fine when in town and seemed to be ok when sailing, but when running through the jungle if no one else was around I would hear my footsteps but no music. When others were there, then there would be fight music and they would talk. But mostly we just glared at each other while I was catching my breath between strokes. Not used to that.

 

[ChezJfrey]

I tried it with the new additions and with the sound set to mm-0. Everything was fine when in town and seemed to be ok when sailing, but when running through the jungle if no one else was around I would hear my footsteps but no music. When others were there, then there would be fight music and they would talk. But mostly we just glared at each other while I was catching my breath between strokes. Not used to that.

Good. So far, that looks like it should, according to what I can see in the scripts and sound .ini. The footstep sounds for run_ground were missing, as were the warrior sounds, which are the voice sound bites and I was wondering if your sound/stutter issue that cropped up for you were so many missing sounds, trying to mix with 'real' sound files that existed that maybe caused the later problems as the FMOD pipelines were now all kluged. Sounds like that may have been the case, since what you described is now what I would consider 'normal'.

Normal, because I also found there is no music defined for 'jungle', which are any of the next locations reached after that first 'out the town gate' scene. I'm not sure if that was intentional, so I left it omitted, which is why it is silent out beyond there. There is music defined for a fight scene, no matter if jungle or not, so there is jungle silence if no fight.

Since this is not technically 'my mod' to manipulate as I please, I tend to leave stuff alone unless it is clearly broken. I will let Modder01 decide if those further jungle sections should have music and add them to the scheme settings.

 

[Modder01]

There are jungle music sections I have them defined at the end of each music_alias.ini file. These sound files should be playing in the jungle... I also have files defined for the caves too... The only alias file that doesn't have sounds for these instances is the original soundtrack since the jungle locations were omitted in the game before the original supermod fixed it and the caves didn't have music because there were no music files for it.

 

[ChezJfrey]

There are jungle music sections I have them defined at the end of each music_alias.ini file. These sound files should be playing in the jungle... I also have files defined for the caves too... The only alias file that doesn't have sounds for these instances is the original soundtrack since the jungle locations were omitted in the game before the original supermod fixed it and the caves didn't have music because there were no music files for it.

Yes, the alias has music_jungle defined. When you first step outside town, that first location is type "land", and a "shore" location type use it. But outside, the further locations, in the other various outside locations, they are defined as type "jungle" and those do not have a case defined in sound.c, so they have no music:

case "land":
            SetWeatherScheme("land");
            SetMusicAlarm("music_jungle");
            break;
        case "seashore":
            ResetSoundScheme();
            //SetTimeScheme("land");
            SetWeatherScheme("seashore_weather");
            SetMusicAlarm("music_jungle");
            break;

Needs a case "jungle": to have music play in those spots.

 

[Modder01]

added:

       case "jungle":
           SetWeatherScheme("land");
           SetMusicAlarm("music_jungle");
           break;

To make it play.

Note to All Testers: I will update the main archive for Beta shortly with the combined changes.

I also noticed some things for the jungle locations. The warriors that spawned in didn't attack me, but did run up to me like they were trying to attack me. The loading screen for the seashore is missing as well (probably a definition for that too since it doesn't show up in the error log which is now gone).

 

[Modder01]

Main Archive Updated to reflect the changes above (including the resource update)...

 

[Hylie Pistof]

I noticed that no one attacked me but thought that was because I was running it on the easiest settings. That was fine by me as the starting sword only did 2-4 damage per stroke.

 

[Modder01]

I noticed that no one attacked me but thought that was because I was running it on the easiest settings. That was fine by me as the starting sword only did 2-4 damage per stroke.

The jungle locations were not touched from the original mod, but I can tell from COAS that the battles in the jungle did happen and that the enemies did attack you. I never knew how to fix it so it was released untouched from it's original version... It's almost as if those fantom characters have no AI..

 

[ChezJfrey]

The jungle locations were not touched from the original mod, but I can tell from COAS that the battles in the jungle did happen and that the enemies did attack you. I never knew how to fix it so it was released untouched from it's original version... It's almost as if those fantom characters have no AI..

It's because the characters have no energy and nowhere in the code does it get set for those particular encounters. Go to my MEGA CTSupermod link I've given you and get Update.zip. It contains a couple more of the missing transition textures (they apparently used some POTC ones, which I have and copied in). Also, there is a LAi_utils.c file. Put that in Programs\loc_ai and that will solve the bandit problem.

 

[Modder01]

It's because the characters have no energy and nowhere in the code does it get set for those particular encounters. Go to my MEGA CTSupermod link I've given you and get Update.zip. It contains a couple more of the missing transition textures (they apparently used some POTC ones, which I have and copied in). Also, there is a LAi_utils.c file. Put that in Programs\loc_ai and that will solve the bandit problem.

The fix works! Uploading a new update to the main archive momentarily.

 

[Modder01]

Note to those weary for iteration 2:
-I have updated the archive to the latest version (since soon after the post previously)
-A month (maximum) time-frame to fix the iteration 1 problems will commence in two days.
-As such the link, though remaining on this thread, will change versions frequently as I work with Chezjfrey to finalize v5.0 for the second common test.

 

[Modder01]

New Update soon to be uploaded:

-Incorporated Chezjfrey’s update to the engine fixing the brothel and ship to ship dialogue problems. This update also fixes the following problems and adds the following features (Chezjfrey's Notes):

1. Changed speak feature to match GOF. Presumably, that one is vetted and works better. The calcs and speak options remain Caribbean Tales.

2. Changed the erroneous 'vagabond' encounter models to match the random selections for bandit encounters. I looked in original CT, and turns out every single model listed in the original for both vagabonds and bandits was also non-existent in the model/characters directory.

3. Copied citiz_12.gm to citiz_14.gm to give that character defined for Martinique, so you don't get that missing model error.

4. Officers will no longer shoot you in the back during a fight (their friendly fire is eliminated) In old CT, if you are closer than the enemy, it was not an accident, they would actually target you due to proximity

5. Flag motion will actually change with the strength of the wind.

 

[Modder01]

The Archive is Now Updated!