Hello everybody

[gylfe]

Hello all,

I just signed up for the forums, although I've been coming here on and off for a few years. I just wanted to say hello to everybody and thank you to everybody responsible for the awesome mods for these great games.

I got PoTC back when it first came out, I played it a bit here and there. Mostly I had it installed on my laptop and would play it when I would go on vacation or have to stay over night somewhere. I learned about the build mods after one of the first releases and haven't played the game without one since.

I know there are a lot of things in this forum asked and answered and I hope I won't prove to be a pain in the ass with these, but I do have a couple of questions that I could not find answers to in the search function:

1. Of all of the games that are similar to PoTC, which is the best one? I found one thread where someone asked this, but they just told him that the first thread he opened regarding that was sufficient and closed it lol.

I love the idea of PoTC, the sailing and world map parts of it are nearly perfectly what I like. The melee leaves a lot to be desired. With the game being over ten years old now, or pushing it at least, I was wondering if there is anything out there that is basically an updated version of it. I see that there is AoP and CoAS, but I can't really find anything comparing the games. I've also tried to read various reviews, but you know how they can be. Basically what I'm looking for is a game that is almost just a good update to PoTC with the melee fixed or at least improved. It would really help if the game is heavily modded such as PoTC =D. I know that there are a lot of factors and all, I'm just looking for an idea. Being low on cash I can probably get one new game to fix my urge for something new, I'm just looking for some expert opinion based on what my interests are. Oh, the sandbox type game play is very important to me, I enjoy a story but when I really want to do my pirating I want to go and do what I want and when I want to do it.

2. Is it possible to have multiple installations of PoTC on one PC?

I have a legit copy of the game and everything, I'm just trying to install Build 13 and Build 14 on the same PC. I seem to be getting a lot of crashes and various other things with Build 14, but I would like to continue with the saves I already have going. I think most of the crashes and all can be accounted for by different threads I found that exist already, I just figured I would install a copy of Build 13 and play that when I don't feel like dealing with the instability. Edit - Every time I try to install another copy of the game and run the setup.exe from the cd it just tries to uninstall my current copy.

Sorry my first contact with all of you is firing some questions at you (that are probably asked a lot and get annoying). I do want to let you know again how much I truly appreciate the work that you have done on the games and these forums as a source of some great information.

 

[Jack Rackham]

2. Is it possible to have multiple installations of PoTC on one PC?

Sure, just give them different names. At the moment I have one clean stock POTC and 5 other modded versions on my PC.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Welcome to the forum, mate! I'm glad you like our work!

As for your questions:

1. The best similar game is definitely Age of Pirates 2: City of Abandoned Ships. That is actually a pretty good game without modpacks, but of course we have been modding it as well.
It is basically the second unofficial sequel to PotC (Age of Pirates being the first) and is based on an updated version of the same game engine.
You can find our modding work for it here: http://www.moddb.com/mods/gentlemen-of-fortune
There were some stability issues with the later modpacks there though and I haven't really been keeping up with those, so I'm not sure which modpack version for CoAS is the best at the moment.

2. Make a copy of your Build 14 game folder, then de-install the game. When you reinstall, make a copy of your stock unmodified game folder (possibly on an external HD).
If you want to install any different modpack version, just make another copy of that stock folder and install the modpack on top.
I do that all the time and actually have about 20 different game installs on my external HD for testing purposes. Works fine.

As for your Build 14 instability, are you using Build 14 Beta 2.3? I thought we had enhanced the stability quite a bit with that release.
Not perfect, but better than before in any case.

 

[Skyworm]

Heya there!

As for your Build 14 instability, are you using Build 14 Beta 2.3? I thought we had enhanced the stability quite a bit with that release.
Not perfect, but better than before in any case.

I did play Build 13 before I upgraded to 14. Build 13 was a lot more stable than 14, I could play it for hours without rashing. But 14 ist the far more interesting game overall. I'd just advise to save often, especially before critical situations like boarding a ship or something like that.
Beta 2.3 ist a lot more stable than Beta 2.2 of course.

Personally, I'd not ike to go back to 13 once I played 14 ;-)

Oh yes, and ... welcome aboard Gylfe!

 

[Hylie Pistof]

mate!

The only other pure sailing game that I know of is COAS. It has better melee but can sometimes be a bit buggy.
Stability in POTC depends on your hardware. I had nothing but ctds with build 13 and build 14 runs very well. I have been steadily upgrading over the years too.

 

[gylfe]

Thank you all for the warm welcomes and the very useful information! I found the numerous saves on each profile was causing the crashes in my game, following the advice of another post I limited the saves to three per profile and haven't had an issue since.

I have a profile for each character (Jack Sparrow, Barbossa, Will Turner, ect.), in my Barbossa profile I had over 30 saves. Limiting them has been the trick.

I actually thought of making a copy of the installation, but I thought it would cause problems with the registry. It seems I should've just tried it =D

I will definitely check out CoAS to tide me over until the next big release. I really appreciate the info and the opinions on what game to try.

Edit - I just also wanted to say that I love how you give so many options in your mods, it is really a player specific experience. It seems that every option is available to tailor the game to the way that you enjoy it. I love this because there are so many mods for so many games out there, but for some the mod is just broken to me due to a simple option or two that the developers thought would be fun to include. I really think this is one of the things that give this project so much life and longevity. As you come up with new ideas and projects for the build you give the player the option to retain the old style of play, or even retain the stock game style.

After making PoTC the truly great game it should have been for me I will trust your work on CoAS and pick it up. Honestly, when I got this game and played it for the first time I was really impressed. As I played it more there were a lot of things that just didn't sit right with me. When I found Moddb so long ago and started searching for different mods for games that I had PoTC was one of the last I thought of due to its relatively low popularity. When I saw the build mod and gave it a try it really made the game for me. I think it may have been called something different back then, I can't say for sure. I think I have some of the first work of this mod burned onto a cd and stored away with my laptop that has a busted HD.

Anyway, again thank you for all you've done so far. I really look forward to future work and hope that you guys get a contract like the guys from that Unreal WW2 Eastern Front mod (I forget the name) and so many others like the Mount and Blade Napoleonic Wars team. I think with the backing and financing of a bigger game company you guys may make the best pirate experience ever offered =D

Edit 2 - CoAS is on the way =D $8.99 from Amazon, new and factory sealed.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

We did originally have a different ModDB profile for our PotC Modpack: http://www.moddb.com/mods/potc-build-mod/
Because Build 14 is SO different from the earlier releases, we decided to give it an actual name, "New Horizons", and make a new profile for it: http://www.moddb.com/mods/new-horizons
But our modpack has always been named the "Build Mod" since well before we ever had a ModDB profile.

Different installs don't cause any registry issues. The only registry entry that the game makes is an "Installed" flag or something. I think.
But since our modpack contains a No-CD crack to simplify playing the game, it doesn't need any registry entries at all.
You could install the game on an external HD, take it to a friend's place and play it straight from there without installing at all.