Blood & Gold: Caribbean!

[Thagarr]

It's been a while since I looked up anything on Caribbean! the game from Snowbird studios that was based on Mount & Blade Warband. That is partly because I have been busy, and part negligence on my part. Snowbird however have been hard at work updating the foundations and adding completely new content, and in short, turning it into a whole different gaming experience! I have been taking a quick read through there latest blog posts, the latest of which is titled “B&G: Caribbean! — Blackjack and hookers.” It certainly sounds quite intriguing!

Here are just a few of the things that have changed :

– Addition of the native Caribbean troops.
– Playable female character.
– Ability to take a walk in town.
– All new 3D global map.
– Multiplayer mode.
– Blackjack minigame.
– Quests from governors.
– Special missions, including assassination contracts, some of which require stealth approach.
– New special locations: plantations, mines, monasteries, ruins of Aztec empire.
– Management of the player’s trading caravans.
– Hub for managing player’s business and property in a much more convenient way.
– Completely reworked land battle locations.
– Updated fleet management — ships will have to be kept at bay when you proceed to travel on land.
– Destructible fortifications during sieges.
– New prison escape system.

They have also implemented a new module system, faction control and economy. The best part though, Blood & Gold: Caribbean! is free to those who already own Caribbean! Also, the game is now available on GOG for $17.99!

 

[Thagarr]

And now the official press release!

"Blood & Gold: Caribbean!" is now released! Set in the pirate era of XVII Century Caribbean, B&G is a blend of economic strategy and open-world RPG. The game is based on the significantly improved Mount & Blade: Warband engine.

Steam page: Save 10% on Blood & Gold: Caribbean! on Steam
GOG page: Blood & Gold: Caribbean! -10% on GOG.com
Official studio site: Snowbird Games | Main page | Independent videogames development and publishing company from Russia

Free for all previous owners of 'Caribbean!', Blood & Gold brings community's most wanted features, such as an addition of the Native tribes, reworked locations and strategy map, playable female character, special missions and other numerous tweaks and improvements.

Decide your own role and create your own adventure in Blood & Gold!

You could start out as a mercenary, accept an assassination mission, collect your reward, walk into a tavern and spend it all in a game of blackjack. Pick up a hooker, lend "protection" services to her procurer and get hit with a stool in your face during a street fight.

Get enslaved and sent to work in a mine, escape with your fellow prisoners, beat all the guards, then rob convoys with an army of former slaves. Save some gold, buy your first plantation and get rich by trading sugar.

Marry a governor's daughter, acquire a colony to rule and declare war against Spain. Spend all your savings on cannons, lose 10 boats and a corvette during a sea siege. Rush in first during a breach of the fortress in Havana and die from your own flagship's friendly fire.

Features:

• Reworked version of the original game with a lot of new additions and improvements, free for all previous owners of "Caribbean!".
• Gather your own fleet and army to conquer Caribbean — with detailed management options and a lot customization possibilities on your hand.
• Make use of your business and trading talents by managing your commercial property and convoys.
• Naval battles with controllable ships and boarding fights.
• Special governor and underground missions: assassinations, arsons, seizure of property, protection of brothels and many more.
• With blackjack and hookers: take a break and try to make some money by playing cards.

 

[Flannery]

This sounds very promising. I own Caribbean! so will definitely upgrade the game and try all of these new features ☺

 

[Red Back Dude]

This will be interesting

 

[Baby Face Nelson]

Yea I am buying this

 

[Dat Scharger]

Holy dooley!

Is it "worth" buying now? The negative Steam-Reviews put me off at first, but with this update now...

 

[Flannery]

I think it's very worth it - especially since it also is being readied for modules and modding which will probably result in some extra fun in the time too come.

The game itself does is allot more indepth now, versatile and enjoyable.

Graphics wise it is what you would expect from the limitations of the Warband engine - but it still is good enough for me personally to enjoy ☺

 

[Dat Scharger]

Okay, convinced.

Mine! D:<

I hope, that there are many different types of ships to keep each encounter interesting.

Looks like I found my alternative to Age of Pirates 2 already. Don't care for the graphics, as I occasionally grab my N64.

 

[Dat Scharger]

Damn, this game is hard. Even on easy-difficulty. But I love the soundtrack and improving your character!

The missions are very unbalanced, often requiring you to fight against a respawning army with unsufficient thugs and you're likely to get overwhelmed despite good gear.

And I need to desperately get a grasp on the economy-system, as I'm not making much money with my buildings. Where is the option to automatically sell your products again?

I'll keep trying, but the schizophrenic diffculty is demotivating.

 

[Thagarr]

@GAZ Vodnik, thanks for the feedback mate.

Here is a new press release about the updated module system :

Blood & Gold / New tools and features for M&B: Warband modders

Snowbird Games is happy to announce the release of the updated module system for "Blood & Gold: Caribbean!", bringing new tools and features for M&B: Warband modders, and making B&G itself available for modding.

Bringing numerous technical improvements for the M&B: Warband engine, that were implemented exclusively for Blood & Gold during its development, this system also makes modding much more structured and convenient for modders. Some of the new advantages can be found in this studio's blog post.

Modders will find the detailed 40-page guide with everything they should know on this topic right in the game's main directory.

Here’s an excerpt from the guide’s introduction:

Why we created this system? As you should know, typical Warband module consists several entities – triggers, scripts, troops, items, dialogs, presentations, etc. Because each of those entities are simply Python array consisting from several other arrays, it is very inconvenient to make or track changes in those files. In general, it leads to lot of mistakes and clutters code flow, because not only you have to find function you need in a file which contains more than 100,000 lines, but also you should write you code as an array. This significantly slows down development. Also it is almost impossible to develop module using several programmers/designers and any version control system because all the changes are made to single file it is impossible to apply changes simultaneously even if you are working with different scripts, for example.

Because we have experience developing several tools we decided to simplify existing system by splitting most important entities into their logical elements – for example, every script can be in its own file or menus can have shared triggers without need to copying code thus reducing copy/paste behavior. Also it is possible to simply add your own functions to existing module without the need to modify module itself thus giving abilities to create libraries which can be shared between different modules. And of course it makes possible to use version control systems – SVN or Git for example.

Gotta love a game that includes a modding manual!

 

[con20or]

Mount and Blade Warband is probably my favourite game of all time - i tried this when it was just Carribbean - but then they made it a standalone and added a ton of fixes and features - but haven't looked at it in years. Does anyone play it? Is it any good? 58% overall rating on Steam doesn;t bode well.

 

[Dat Scharger]

Mount and Blade Warband is probably my favourite game of all time - i tried this when it was just Carribbean - but then they made it a standalone and added a ton of fixes and features - but haven't looked at it in years. Does anyone play it? Is it any good? 58% overall rating on Steam doesn;t bode well.

I played it for 43 hours, but quitted due to bad AI (All nations hate you when capturing a city and making peace is impossible because they think they are kicking your ass despite you sinking their fleets left and right) and dull ship battles. No physics, just flat water and destroyed ships drown like a stone. At least it's the only (I think) game so far, where boarding plays with really huge crews.

Land battles are your usual Mount & Blade-quality I guess, never played those games before.

 

[Captain Murphy]

I wanted to like this game. Hell, I wanted to LOVE this game. If you could give an award for the most spectacularly bad execution of a mod=>game conversion ever, this would win. They added mechanics that are almost useless (the trade buildings and such) the 'quests' are even more useless. As stated before, doing any city capture makes everyone hate you and causes an all out war. The AI is ridiculous. I have had battles that had to be closed out with C+A+D because an AI is somewhere that seemingly can't be touched, so the enemy somehow wins the battle. Boardings are a complete crapshoot. I have boarded with a first rate and full capacity of hardened men and STILL LOST against brigs. Land battles can be even more useless with a random AI getting stuck somewhere on the map and causing a stackup of our troops where they are just picked off by the enemy from the fortress. I was really saddened by how that game turned out. I have something like 1-2k hours in M&B in various mods and states, and this was like my dream game. Then they had to ruin it by just not making things work right. The absolute saddest part was that in the beginning, it was actually fun and had a lot of the draw that M&B had, then they added more and more random mechanics and interactions that just made the game boring and repetitive to the extreme.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I wanted to like this game. Hell, I wanted to LOVE this game. If you could give an award for the most spectacularly bad execution of a mod=>game conversion ever, this would win. They added mechanics that are almost useless (the trade buildings and such) the 'quests' are even more useless. As stated before, doing any city capture makes everyone hate you and causes an all out war. The AI is ridiculous. I have had battles that had to be closed out with C+A+D because an AI is somewhere that seemingly can't be touched, so the enemy somehow wins the battle. Boardings are a complete crapshoot. I have boarded with a first rate and full capacity of hardened men and STILL LOST against brigs. Land battles can be even more useless with a random AI getting stuck somewhere on the map and causing a stackup of our troops where they are just picked off by the enemy from the fortress. I was really saddened by how that game turned out. I have something like 1-2k hours in M&B in various mods and states, and this was like my dream game. Then they had to ruin it by just not making things work right. The absolute saddest part was that in the beginning, it was actually fun and had a lot of the draw that M&B had, then they added more and more random mechanics and interactions that just made the game boring and repetitive to the extreme.

Makes you wonder if there isn't any way to convince the developers to sort that out. Or, at least, let someone else sort that out.
The 2003 PotC game was also a bit dodgy in its original state, but the developers left the code open and look what happened!

 

[con20or]

Makes you wonder if there isn't any way to convince the developers to sort that out. Or, at least, let someone else sort that out.
The 2003 PotC game was also a bit dodgy in its original state, but the developers left the code open and look what happened!

Maybe too much of the code is the Mount&Blade code? I'll give this one a miss for now then