Gentlemen of Fortune: ERAS2 2.6.0

[A.H]

Hi folks

I just downloaded and started playing this version of GOF from buccaneersreef.com

It is quite different from all the mods I played, but was anyone from this community related to developing it or is it a total different team?

The changes are quite numerous compared to the usual AOP2 I'm used to.
Inside ships now has an expanded zone with different rooms (similar to POTC)

The graphics are pretty much improved, as well as ship types and character selection.

The music is remarkable.

Cons:
* Frequent crashing even on simple occasions
* Most characters start with strong ships so you don't feel it when working your way up as it did with AOP2's original 3 characters.
* Still a lot of bugs to be found
* Due to heavy content, there is lot of lag on some occasions

* downloading was an issue. Did 3 failed attempts on Mega website before I downloaded MegaDownloader and it was so simple; 11.5 GB though

 

[Pieter Boelen]

was anyone from this community related to developing it or is it a total different team?

You can find the unfortunate answer to that in the forum rules:

Below is a list of topics that have been known to lead to inflammatory discussions on this forum:
- The circumstances as described in this Statement Regarding PiratesAhoy! Policy | PiratesAhoy!
- The Age of Pirates 2: Eras mod

Long story short: It used to be a PiratesAhoy! member, but not anymore.

 

[A.H]

Oh damn.
Well I noticed a lot of concepts in the mod have been taken from POTC, especially the expansion of inside ship decks during fighting.

They used DirectX9 as well, which might be the cause of lag and occasional crashing. It improved however the sea & sky graphics as you see in photo attached.


And Sea Dogs on Steam tried doing that, but all Russian players complained that it was aweful result so the developers had to revert back to DirectX8.

Until now, they have not translated the game after 3 months of failed promises.
What an aweful team they are tbh. Many players volunteered to do translating for free, but developers are ignoring all messages.


Other than that, I did give a try to other games such as Blackwake on Steam. It's real nice MMO naval game but my internet is too crap for it.
Surprisingly it received real high ratings and got many sales.



I hope Hearts of Oak can get a greenlight someday, it will make a killer sales since Sea Dogs is the only one in the same genre. Only difference is bad development team so HoO will definitely rule!

 

[mihai brad]

The game is not playable. Too many/often crashes. And Aop Coas is well know for crashes - but this version beats all records.

Sad, because it's the best i've played till now (same genre, of course)

 

[A.H]

Yes the DX9 is definately the cause from my opinion.
I had a save file where I am standing on harbor facing the sea, and everytime I reload it crashes because the reload opens up a view of the sea, which is a critical part of the DX9

 

[LarryHookins]

I only had one crash in stock COAS. A known problem due to dismasting a ship. That was in 200 hours of play.

When modding games based on the Storm engine, there are some things you should never do, which I found out the hard way modding PotC. Because I avoided them with my COAS and TEHO mods the games do not crash. TEHO will occasionally glitch because of errors in the original code, but I'm fixing these problems as I find them. I'm guessing the crashes I used to get in TEHO about every 20 hours of game play are now gone with a new version.

A lot of the lag you see with the Eras mod is because of the huge amount of added content. All those starting characters you can use can be encountered in the game, and each of them has to be updated periodically. There are over 200 new ships, and that kind of thing uses resources, and I don't know how many added merchant or cargo items. Some of the textures are very high resolution, and that uses resources too. You should get less lag on a more powerful computer.

I played 800 hours of TEHO before returning to PotC New Horizons after 7 years, 250 hours playing that, then 200 hours with COAS. When we got the ability to mod TEHO I went back and have an additional 500 hours since then. That's game time, not modding time. I discovered that stock COAS simply didn't have the excellent side quests that TEHO did, so there was almost nothing to do for sandbox player in COAS. You can tell by the number of hours I've put into each game which one I prefer.

Keep in mind that there has been considerable bad blood between the Pirates Ahoy community and the Eras community. So keep it gentle. You can get help with the GOF mod here, but if you're looking for help with Eras, you'd be better off in their community.

Hook

 

[Pieter Boelen]

And Sea Dogs on Steam tried doing that, but all Russian players complained that it was aweful result so the developers had to revert back to DirectX8.

Until now, they have not translated the game after 3 months of failed promises.

What game do you mean? The REAL Sea Dogs? The English version of that is on GOG:
Sea Dogs

Sad, because it's the best i've played till now (same genre, of course)

You ever tried PotC: New Horizons?

 

[A.H]

Yea I meant TEHO.
Bad development progress.
Trolls will convince you otherwise but let's not get into that argument.

And with regards to the bad blood, it is interesting to hear.
They must be jealous of Pirate Ahoy's neat web design

As for New Horizons, what?!
I am the guy who reports to you all the bugs and glitches... your most esteemed feedback guy... your devoted tester.... what else am I

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Yea I meant TEHO.

TEHO was released in English on Steam quite a while ago. Can't remember when; some time last year?
@LarryHookins posted some feedback on it on this forum somewhere; according to him, it is actually pretty good!

As for New Horizons, what?!
I am the guy who reports to you all the bugs and glitches... your most esteemed feedback guy... your devoted tester.... what else am I

I know you know! That question was meant for @mihai brad.

 

[A.H]

In speaking of that, would be nice to see it on Steam with achievements if you can get permission from Disney.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

In speaking of that, would be nice to see it on Steam with achievements if you can get permission from Disney.

PotC, you mean? Never going to happen on Steam, but we're still holding out some measure of hope for GOG.
If you haven't done so already, see here: Pirates of the Caribbean - GOG.com
They've got all other games in the series on there already!

Probably the Disney license is making the legal issues needlessly complicated.
Shame, really.

 

[A.H]

Yea voted for it. But I hope the greenlight goes for the New Horizons, I did not like the original much; command and mechanics was a bit dodgy compared to the upgraded NH version.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

But I hope the greenlight goes for the New Horizons, I did not like the original much; command and mechanics was a bit dodgy compared to the upgraded NH version.

They can't possibly sell New Horizons, because it is an unofficial mod. Nobody has the rights to it; except perhaps us right here.
So if they release anything, it'll be the unmodded game. Which is fine, because people can get easily get the mod afterwards.

 

[A.H]

Ah I see.. didn't know you can put the mods on the GOG folder as well.
for the ERAS mod on COAS, all I did was unzip an entire file of its own and the game starts from that folder, no need to put in the original COAS folder.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Ah I see.. didn't know you can put the mods on the GOG folder as well.

There IS no GOG version of PotC.

But they release the games DRM-free, so I assume with open PROGRAM folder.
Which means that it should be perfectly possible to install mods on their games.

 

[LarryHookins]

There's a lot of play value in the New Horizons mod. I doubt I saw anything but a tiny portion of it.

I never did find out why all those women were running up and smacking me at Tortuga. One of 'em even did some real damage.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I never did find out why all those women were running up and smacking me at Tortuga. One of 'em even did some real damage.

That's just a PotC film Easter Egg that @Bartolomeu o Portugues and myself added.
They used to be REALLY lethal (by accident), until I changed the code to insta-heal you inbetween slaps.
But apart from that, they don't have any real importance; it's basically a little joke of ours.

 

[ChezJfrey]

Cons:
* Frequent crashing even on simple occasions
* Most characters start with strong ships so you don't feel it when working your way up as it did with AOP2's original 3 characters.
* Still a lot of bugs to be found
* Due to heavy content, there is lot of lag on some occasions

Helps if people actually mention a problem, send me information, as I can't fix what I don't know about. So far, of the 300 downloads, only two people have presented a couple issues and those have been resolved. I myself have played through Peter Blood, and various character to level 15, the Isabella and Blue Bird quests and have not had any crashes. The problem is that I only have one PC, Win7, Intel graphics, so I can't test other systems for issues they might present.

If you are having crashes, do not answer the error prompt, but leave it up. Use 32-bit task manager (this is important if running a 64 bit operating system...there are two task managers and being a 32 bit .exe, need the dump file from the 32 bit version), right click the start.exe process and create a .dmp crash dump. Send it to me.

If you have a problem with a save game, send that to me. I modified and compiled the program. If I get crash dumps and other info, I stand a better chance of fixing than if I'm left in the dark.

Oh, BTW, I was able to replace all the inline ASM in the code as of yesterday, which means I will likely be able to produce a 64 bit version in the near future.

 

[ChezJfrey]

Oh, and if you want to use to Direct 8, I have one of those too:
MEGA

Look for the folder ending in DX8 and get the executables for DX8 there.

 

[A.H]

Since I'm a loyal Pirates Ahoy community member for a little while now, I think it is best I give support for reporting bugs and such to games belonging to this community only, out of respect to the people here, and to avoid any hard feelings by giving support to a game developed by persons that broke away from this awesome community.
No offense though, hope you can understand Chez.