Mod Release Open Sea Mod and Realism Settings

[stljeffbb]

Hello everyone....first post...wonderful, wonderful mod here! One of the best I've ever seen for a game, and so much dedication after all of these years, taking an old game and making it beyond ordinary! Cheers to all who have put work into this project....

So, I've noticed the one hour + one day timescale in directsail....I've searched the forum, and I've looked through a lot of the C files, but I've not found it yet....I wonder, if I wanted to change the timescale from one hour + one day in directsail to something else, where in the code would I find this? Sorry if this has already been answered somewhere else, and thanks for any replies...

Regards,

Jeff

 

[Thagarr]

Ahoy Jeff, welcome aboard mate!

Thanks for your kind words, I agree our modders have done a fantastic job, and they just keep getting better at what they do!

I am not much of a coder myself, but I did learn a bit when I put together the History and Tutorials PDF manual which you can find in the Documentation folder if you have Bulid 14 installed. You can also download it from the link in my signature. On page 130 of the manual is the Direct Sail documentation, I believe you will find what you are looking for on page 132.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Can;t readily find it; would've expected it to be in PROGRAM\WorldMap\DailyCrewUpdate.c or PROGRAM\CCCdirectsail.c .

 

[stljeffbb]

@ Thagarr....Thanks for the welcome and the tip!

Indeed, p. 132 shows the TIMESCALAR_SEA function, and I might mod that as well....however, I'm looking for the place in the code that makes the game move forward in time one game day each game hour (ex: the game will give you a date like Friday 16 November 1500 10:59, and then at 11:00, the game day will move to Saturday 17 November [when at sea in Directsail mode]...I understand this was done to help make the travel from one island to the next approximately the same amount of time as using the WorldMap, however, clumsy sailor that I am, I find it hard to get out of the San Salvador port with a barque (free playing Devlin opera) sailing against the wind, and it has taken me GAME hours (and thusly GAME days) just to get out of port, doing my best to tack...

@ Pieter Boelen....thanks for looking....I will continue to look as well and report back if I find it....I have scanned quite a few C files with no luck yet

I've done some mods and coding before, although at best I'm a hack (as opposed to a hacker )....if I can find where it can be changed, I hope to tinker with it (although I have the sneaking suspicion it is not an integer)


P. S. Also one of the best coding tutorials I have ever seen! Fantastic job Thagarr (and of course all who have contributed)....


Jeff

 

[stljeffbb]

I do believe I hath found it (woohoo!)...

The one hour + one day modification can be found in \Bethesda Softworks\Pirates of the Caribbean\PROGRAM\BATTLE_INTERFACE in the file LogInterface.c and the code is near the bottom of the page:

Trace("== Directsail added a day to sailing time");
WaitDate("", 0, 0, 1, 0, 0);

...whereas the first zero from left represents years (crashes the game), second zero represents months, third zero (default = 1) days, fourth zero hours (but it only moved time forward about fifty-eight minutes for some reason), and I presume the fifth zero minutes (but I did not test this)....changing the 1 to a 0 produces the desired result...no time warp!

I was able to find this by realizing that the new code by Screwface was key (as I set Directsail to the “old” settings to see what would happen, and indeed no + one day was to be had), so I did a search for ACCURATE_NAVIGATION and only two files came up, the one previously mentioned and CCCFunctions...

So, now I've figured this out and it is a matter of tweaking to my liking...however, when testing yesterday, I noticed how rather low-res the moon is, so now I will set out to make an improved moon!

Regards,

Jeff

 

[N3H3C]

I do believe I hath found it (woohoo!)...

The one hour + one day modification can be found in \Bethesda Softworks\Pirates of the Caribbean\PROGRAM\BATTLE_INTERFACE in the file LogInterface.c and the code is near the bottom of the page:

Trace("== Directsail added a day to sailing time");
WaitDate("", 0, 0, 1, 0, 0);

...whereas the first zero from left represents years (crashes the game), second zero represents months, third zero (default = 1) days, fourth zero hours (but it only moved time forward about fifty-eight minutes for some reason), and I presume the fifth zero minutes (but I did not test this)....changing the 1 to a 0 produces the desired result...no time warp!

I was able to find this by realizing that the new code by Screwface was key (as I set Directsail to the “old” settings to see what would happen, and indeed no + one day was to be had), so I did a search for ACCURATE_NAVIGATION and only two files came up, the one previously mentioned and CCCFunctions...

So, now I've figured this out and it is a matter of tweaking to my liking...however, when testing yesterday, I noticed how rather low-res the moon is, so now I will set out to make an improved moon!

Regards,

Jeff

Yeah the moon always bothered me. I think the skybox in general is pretty low res aswell, I can't wait to see what you will come up with

 

[Thagarr]

I do believe I hath found it (woohoo!)...

Nice bit of sleuthing there mate, well done!

Sorry I couldn't be of more help. From what I saw while I was searching, I am pretty sure that you are not the only one who was looking for this. I believe it has come up a few times over the years but no one was able to track it down.

Akella did do a pretty good job with the astronomical parts of the game, far from perfect to be sure, but pretty cool for what they were actually able to squeeze in. I do agree though, they could have done a much better job with the moon, anything that you can do to help remedy that oversight would be greatly appreciated!

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Congratulations on finding it! If you ever figure out a better way to handle the timescales, be sure to let us know.
Nobody is actually happy with having to add this one day, but it's the best we've been able to come up with.

New moon sounds good too. You know where to find the file for that?

 

[stljeffbb]

Congratulations on finding it! If you ever figure out a better way to handle the timescales, be sure to let us know.
Nobody is actually happy with having to add this one day, but it's the best we've been able to come up with.

New moon sounds good too. You know where to find the file for that?

Hello Pieter....<chuckle> Yes, I did find this after a small search, and I submitted my graphics modification as a very small mod in the downloads section, awaiting approval...

I give out a small chortle because, well, I guess I have realized my casual modding over the last decade-plus has helped me to understand how to anticipate a bit better where I might find things....especially in an "older" game like this....these file structures are in my sweet spot, as it were...you know how it is (ha ha, speaking of the Devlin opera and that certain pirate embedded therein ...but don't spoil it for me as I have not played it yet); you play a game, and something about it isn't "quite right" for your tastes, and then you want to tinker with it to get it "right", so you spend a bunch of time under the hood trying to get it right....problem with me is I'm "casual"...I learn enough to "be dangerous" as it were, but I'm rather fickle, and when a project gets too big and I prefer to play as oppose to mod, I just kind of drop it and move on....I can't tell you how many "big" projects I've started (and always lone wolf efforts, probably much of the reason why they fail), but then I get kind of overwhelmed (because I have quite a few "big projects" in real life already) and have to, sadly, bail....blah blah blah

BUT, I tend to be good at smaller, contained projects, and the moon was a relatively easy one, although I'm still thinking about how to get more of a hi-res texture in there!

Regards,

Jeff

 

[stljeffbb]

I do believe I hath found it (woohoo!)...

Nice bit of sleuthing there mate, well done!

Sorry I couldn't be of more help. From what I saw while I was searching, I am pretty sure that you are not the only one who was looking for this. I believe it has come up a few times over the years but no one was able to track it down.

Akella did do a pretty good job with the astronomical parts of the game, far from perfect to be sure, but pretty cool for what they were actually able to squeeze in. I do agree though, they could have done a much better job with the moon, anything that you can do to help remedy that oversight would be greatly appreciated!

Hello Thagarr....thanks!

I do agree about Akella's efforts...I bought PotC almost right when it came out...I logged many, MANY hours on Seadogs and really enjoyed many aspects of that game, but for some reason was not as excited about PotC initially....I'm glad and pleasantly surprised to see this community here, and it's funny how these things work: I bought as a Christmas gift an Xbox 360 for my stepsons (I've always been a diehard PC gamer; no need for that console "fluff" he he), and I picked up Sid Meier's Pirates for my wife, but as I recalled with my PC version, I just didn't like so much how you would really not die, and how you lose your ship and a pirate ship just happens to come along, rescue you from your deserted island, and make you captain on top of it....I then remembered Seadogs being better in this respect, then decided to take another look at PotC, typed in "Pirates of the Caribbean mods" into google, and ~voilà~ two weeks later I'm totally sucked in with New Horizons Build 14, once again sailing the Caribbean seas!

:will

A bit of postscript...while Sid's recent Pirates is a solid and fun game, really, Pirates GOLD from 1993, for me, was a deeper game overall, and it sits on my shelf along with my original copies of Civilization (yep, the first one), Gary Grigsby's Pacific War, Sim City (yep, original too!) , Birth of the Federation, and Myth, just to name a few....of course my wife wants me to get rid or ALL of them, but I reserve claim to ius primae repono...

:hmm

Regards,

Jeff

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Hello Pieter....<chuckle> Yes, I did find this after a small search, and I submitted my graphics modification as a very small mod in the downloads section, awaiting approval...

Brilliant! It's approved now and will be included as well in the next modpack release after Build 14 Beta 2.1.

I give out a small chortle because, well, I guess I have realized my casual modding over the last decade-plus has helped me to understand how to anticipate a bit better where I might find things....especially in an "older" game like this....these file structures are in my sweet spot, as it were...you know how it is (ha ha, speaking of the Devlin opera and that certain pirate embedded therein ...but don't spoil it for me as I have not played it yet); you play a game, and something about it isn't "quite right" for your tastes, and then you want to tinker with it to get it "right", so you spend a bunch of time under the hood trying to get it right....problem with me is I'm "casual"...I learn enough to "be dangerous" as it were, but I'm rather fickle, and when a project gets too big and I prefer to play as oppose to mod, I just kind of drop it and move on....I can't tell you how many "big" projects I've started (and always lone wolf efforts, probably much of the reason why they fail), but then I get kind of overwhelmed (because I have quite a few "big projects" in real life already) and have to, sadly, bail....blah blah blah

Fair enough. Actually, I think most of us started out like that, but together we've managed some pretty big projects that we couldn't have done as well on our own.

A bit of postscript...while Sid's recent Pirates is a solid and fun game, really, Pirates GOLD from 1993, for me, was a deeper game overall, and it sits on my shelf along with my original copies of Civilization (yep, the first one), Gary Grigsby's Pacific War, Sim City (yep, original too!) , Birth of the Federation, and Myth, just to name a few....of course my wife wants me to get rid or ALL of them, but I reserve claim to ius primae repono...

Original Civilization? I played that game SO much. Good fun and it was the only really epic game I had at the time; didn't have a good enough computer to run newer stuff back then.

 

[stljeffbb]

@ Pieter Boelen....thanks much! I added an action screenshot so folks can see what it looks like in the game....and thanks for adding it to the new modpack....



Regards,

Jeff

 

[Thagarr]

Modding is something that you have to be careful with for sure, it's a fine balancing act sometimes, and it is easy to become overwhelmed. I have seen far to many get burned out on it over the years, both here and elsewhere.

I agree mate, Sid Meier's original Pirates was absolutely outstanding! I spent many, many enjoyable hours plundering the Caribbean! The 2005 version of course had far superior graphics, but the gameplay was sadly lacking. I also logged many hours with the original Age of Sail, an underrated game that did have it's flaws, but it also taught me a great deal about historical naval tactics.

Sea Dogs mate, now that one brought together the best of both worlds, and gave you the freedom to do with it almost whatever you wanted! And even though the 3D engine wasn't the best, it was the only age of sail game that had one at the time. As much as I love Sid's original Pirates, Sea Dogs has become the game that I use as a standard, and no unmodded game has even come close to touching it in my opinion. It was a genre defining game that stands right up there with classics like Wolfenstien 3D, Age of Empires, B-17 Flying Fortress, F-15 Strike Eagle, Civilization and Railroads! I would have loved to have seen what Akella had in store for Sea Dogs 2 had Bethesda not forced them to cave in to Disney. I still occasionally play it, although it is becoming tougher to get it to run thanks to Microsoft's "improvements" to Windows.

You will not find that kind of in-depth gameplay on a console, period. They are designed for causal quick, mostly mindless gameplay. A lot like society in general now days, makes you wonder which one influenced the other. I have my own opinions on that as well, but that is a discussion for another time.

 

[stljeffbb]

@Thagarr.....yep I hear you! Of course we are old fuddy-duds for the views we hold....or are we wise sages of the gaming age? The only thing I will say is that games today do not leave as much to the imagination...

So, perhaps we can modify the time scale in Directsail to give us some better results....first, I propose to look at the real life counterpart of what we are modding:

First I need to find some distances in nautical miles from one port to another (in real life) to get an idea of how long it might take to sail from one port to the next....

Then, I need to attempt to make approximations on our game map(s) [using DIrectsail 1.1]

...and then, I will need to actually do some tests in game to get an idea as to how long it takes in real time to get from one island to the next...

Then using the data collected, do some multiplication to arrive at the APPROXIMATE time scale that will work well....I am aware that the one hour + one day idea gave a decent (at best) approximation of time passage...however, because it does appear that we can alter hours and minutes, I think that we can get it a bit more exact...I'm hoping for something in about three hour increments. One last thought for now: if we use some weird number like say two hours and fifty-three minutes, then I think a change like this will make the time warp a bit more random and a bit less noticeable. Very lastly, we might need to tweak the weather a bit to allow for a slightly smoother change between weather types...

Jeff

 

[Pieter Boelen]

You can get some port-to-port distances from this site: http://www.searates.com/reference/portdistance
I recall using that back when I was in school, doing a voyage planning report of some kind.

Smoother weather changes? Have you tried Build 13? You should! The weather changes were 100% random exactly on the hour.
That was nasty, but it was the best we had figured out at the time. I'm quite glad Maturin and Screwface managed to add some sense and progress to it.

 

[stljeffbb]

You can get some port-to-port distances from this site: http://www.searates.com/reference/portdistance
I recall using that back when I was in school, doing a voyage planning report of some kind.

Smoother weather changes? Have you tried Build 13? You should! The weather changes were 100% random exactly on the hour.
That was nasty, but it was the best we had figured out at the time. I'm quite glad Maturin and Screwface managed to add some sense and progress to it.

Ha ha, yes, I actually played Build 13 for about a week, and indeed, sunny and calm one second, windy and stormy the very next!

I agree, based on the little bit I have sailed Build 14, the weather changes are MUCH smoother (and I noticed this in the code as well)....still, I might tweak it just a bit...thanks for the link, I was hoping for something like this, and I will check it out



Jeff

 

[stljeffbb]

OK, I have compiled the distance in NM and times based on 14 kts and 7 kts to get to each real life based on Pieter Boelen's website tip...this took me a couple of hours, but Pieter's tip saved me just as many hours and more...thanks Pieter!

So, I do see a few "situations"...

1) In real life Cozumel is far far away from all other destinations, so I might not include it in my analysis
2) Eleuthera is basically in the "wrong place"....however I totally understand that Build 14 is an attempt to include as many historical places as possible with the limitations present
3) Three places (Grenada, Turks, and Tortuga) were not usable at the searates.com site for some reason....that is OK, we have plenty of data points
4) Of course, as in antiquity, many times, ships do not simply sail in a straight line to their destinations, even if in open ocean...so, while most of these figures are in straight lines, I would say about 20% are not....still, when I come up with my final recommendation for a timescale, it should still be considered somewhat rough....hey, c'mon and suspend belief!

Next....I will use the Blaze Devlin storyline, buy a clock and a compass, and sail to each of these places (without time warp of course) to get an idea of how quickly in game one arrives from one place to another...

...I better remember my sunscreen!

Jeff

P.S. Attached is the compiled data for distances (NM) and travel times to selected (most game) islands in real life :nk

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Cool, mate! Thanks for working on this.

You know that converting the miles into hours is really very easy, because one knots equals one nautical mile per hour.
So just divide the distance in nautical miles by whatever speed you want and you'll get the time straight away.
You don't need the port distances site for that.

You actually managed to get distances to and from Aruba? I didn't manage yesterday when I tried to do a quick experiment.

 

[stljeffbb]

Cool, mate! Thanks for working on this.

You know that converting the miles into hours is really very easy, because one knots equals one nautical mile per hour.
So just divide the distance in nautical miles by whatever speed you want and you'll get the time straight away.
You don't need the port distances site for that.

You actually managed to get distances to and from Aruba? I didn't manage yesterday when I tried to do a quick experiment.

I did not know that about NM....I need to learn a lot about the sea I see....concerning Aruba...well, I understand the the Netherlands Antilles is no more, and some of the islands have become independent as it were...searates.com has Aruba listed as independent (with its own flag too), but some of the others do not have this (yet)....

Safe travels Pieter!

Jeff

 

[stljeffbb]

OK everyone...I've done a few trials sailing from Puerto Rico to Santo Domingo on "Hispanola"....I'm missing one key element: ship speed. I looked in the code for a way to show this on the screen (like a console) but I did not notice anything....anyway, it took me about fifty-two game minutes (sailing in arcade mode and probably less than fourteen knots) to get from Puerto Rico to Santo Domingo, and I see that in real life, it takes about sixteen hours at fourteen knots...so, it looks to me that the whole one day + one hour idea may have not been too far off...I did some more playing around with LogInterface.c and indeed, the colums do describe what I mentioned..so, it is rather possible to get that relatively accurate....in other words, if the magic number is, say, eleven hours thirty-six minutes, we can do that!

However, I do wonder if we would be better served in a couple of different areas:

1) Instead of adding a day, we could mess around with TIMESCALAR_SEA and change that multiplier...sure the game clock would spin around, but, with that and a bit of tweaking to the weather change file (which IMHO has been greatly improved from Build 13), we could have time slip by nicely...

2) Another thought would be to go back to the "old" method of island hopping and change the distance of change to something like 30000 meters....this way, we could concievably keep the game clock at a reasonable number and allow for more open expanse sailing...

3) I wonder how the coordinates of islands work, and I wonder if we could somehow expand that grid by a factor of two, three, or even four to also arrive at the results we desire while still using the "new" method in DIrectsail 1.1....

I tend to lean towards changing the TIMESCALAR_SEA function and tweaking the weather a bit more, but just my two cents...

So, I wonder if anyone can tell me how to display speed on the screen (code cheat or otherwise)...that would help a lot in a finer tuning of the multiplier....

Off to sail some more!



Jeff

EDIT: OK, I can see that messing with the TIMESCALAR_SEA function will not work too well, as the character levels up too fast, however, I am tinkering around with the idea of increasing TIMESCALAR_SEA to ten, Then skipping ahead three or four hours in time, and also reduce the amount of XP reward for sailing (which is also seemingly conveniently located in LogInterface.c right next to the hour skip code...OR I could just reduce the XP reward by dividing by twelve....hmmmm