Mod Release Open Sea Mod and Realism Settings

[Armada]

I don't want to make the Open Sea Mod the "standard" in ANY game mode for at least one reason: the map texture doesn't look so good.
If something can be done about that, we could have it included in Realistic Game Mode if we think that is a good idea.
Anyone care to do some texture work on that map?

Which map are you talking about, and what is the standard equivalent? I could potentially take a look at it.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I had been thinking of having the Open Sea Mod be automatically a part of Iron Man Mode.
However, as we'll be adding separate InternalSettings.h toggles as well for all the Iron Man aspects, you could also play Realistic Game Mode with the Open Sea Mod.
Does that make any sense?

What about those limited Fast Travel and Sail To Shore Locations mods? Those seem to confuse beginning players quite a bit.
Should we take those out of Realistic Game Mode?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Which map are you talking about, and what is the standard equivalent? I could potentially take a look at it.

See attached.
Let me know if I need to post the TGA versions too.

 

[Skyworm]

Are there any realism settings that should be taken OUT of Realistic Game Mode so that less people have to revert back to Arcade?

Now that's difficult to say, for I really don't understand why anyone would use the Arcade mode at all

But I can guess of course ...
I think it is mainly because of ship's speed and handling. I think, who plays in arcae mode is just too impatient for real sailing speed and ship handling, and would be much happier with a motorboat-game rather than this. But, he may be fascinated by pirates, so he wants to have pirates speeding around in motorboat-fast vessels that look like cool pirate ships.

But if this is so, it does not help, because we shall not take realistic ship behaviour and sailing speed out of realistic mode just to make more people play it, because then those who like realistic mode will go.


But perhaps there might be a trick. It is used by at least one other age of sails game, that is PotbS. The sailing model there is similar to ours here, means different ship types have different good and bad sailing points, and they won't sail directly into the wind (well, in fact, they can sail directly into the wind there, but at such a slow speed, that it doesn't make any sense doing so ... different from our arcade mode).
But - they use a fixed and strong wind speed all the time. So, wind changes direction, but never ever it's decent speed. Thus, ships will always move possibly fast when just sailing into the right direction. There is no calm in that game.

But I am really not sure if I would like to have that here ... because I very recently had an interesting battle in which a calm played a certain role. So, even a calm can add to fun in the game, at least for me. Not always, only on very rare occasion, but it can.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

But if this is so, it does not help, because we shall not take realistic ship behaviour and sailing speed out of realistic mode just to make more people play it, because then those who like realistic mode will go.

Indeed, there's no point in taking THAT out. That was the whole point of the mode in the first place! Before we added more stuff to it....

But - they use a fixed and strong wind speed all the time. So, wind changes direction, but never ever it's decent speed. Thus, ships will always move possibly fast when just sailing into the right direction. There is no calm in that game.

Might be able to put some code in the Arcade Game Mode to prevent complete calms. Not sure if I want to though.
Definitely NOT what I want for Realistic Game Mode though.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

I had been thinking of having the Open Sea Mod be automatically a part of Iron Man Mode.
However, as we'll be adding separate InternalSettings.h toggles as well for all the Iron Man aspects, you could also play Realistic Game Mode with the Open Sea Mod.
Does that make any sense?

What about those limited Fast Travel and Sail To Shore Locations mods? Those seem to confuse beginning players quite a bit.
Should we take those out of Realistic Game Mode?

Combining OP and IM would work for me as long as there are toggles for the world map and spyglass. I want SOME information. That said I normally use the common or superior spyglass and hardly ever the best one, whatever it's called.

Fast Travel on land is not needed unless one just wants to jet through the game in a speed run. There have been times when I wished I did have that Sail To option. I have missed the deadline for smuggling operations due to bad weather.

 

[Skyworm]

Hello!

I had been thinking of having the Open Sea Mod be automatically a part of Iron Man Mode.

A good idea I think.

However, as we'll be adding separate InternalSettings.h toggles as well for all the Iron Man aspects, you could also play Realistic Game Mode with the Open Sea Mod.
Does that make any sense?

I'm not so sure. Realistic Mode also has world map travel available. And the world map travel does not use the adjusted smaller scaled islands and big distances. I think this can be very confusing, if one is not well informed about that. I would leave open sea for players who know about that.
Do I understand correctly, that even in Realistic Mode, without Iron Man and Open Sea, you can directly travel from one island to another, just the islands being bigger and the distances between shorter than in open sea?
If so, I would leave it that way. It's not good to confuse players with inaccurate maps, and that's what it would look like if one does not know why it is so. Perhaps enable Open Sea with a switch, to encourage people to try it.

What about those limited Fast Travel and Sail To Shore Locations mods? Those seem to confuse beginning players quite a bit.
Should we take those out of Realistic Game Mode?

I remember this being very ... unusual not to have the Fast Travel and Fast Sail available, just because I knew it that way from stock PotC. It's difficult to say ...
With limited Fast Travelk and Fast Sail you encourage players to directly sail to certain points, who would never ever have done this otherweise. And maybe some of them realize this way, that direct sailing can be fun, and try it more often. This way it worked for me.
On the other hand, some may quickly be disencouraged and frustrated of Realistic Mode when they don't find their precios quick travels, and switch to Arcade without further trying, But that I don't knwo for sure ... perhaps there are some Arcade players out there who could better explain what they do and why they do it.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Based on what I gather so far, here is my suggestion:
1. Keep both Arcade and Realistic Game Mode as-is
2. Add separate toggles for the various Iron Man Mode aspects in InternalSettings.h
3. Add the Open Sea Mod into the main code with a toggle as well
4. Keep Iron Man Mode, which will have ALL realism options enabled
5. OPTIONALLY: Move limited Fast Travel and Sail To Shore Locations to Iron Man Mode

What else?

 

[Skyworm]

Might be able to put some code in the Arcade Game Mode to prevent complete calms. Not sure if I want to though.
Definitely NOT what I want for Realistic Game Mode though.

Well in Arcade Mode you won't need it. It would be sort of a trick to make Realistic Mode a bit ... faster. But on the other hand, it takes realism out of Realistic Mode, which does not sound like a good idea at all. But ... when playing PotbS, I don't really miss those calms or wind speeds below 5 knots ... so I just thought I should throw in the idea. But we still don't know why Arcade players prefer Arcade Mode above Relistic Mode...

 

[Hylie Pistof]

True, the world map never got adjusted and takes some practice to use. This encourages more direct sailing.

What else? Play testing?

 

[Armada]

See attached.
Let me know if I need to post the TGA versions too.

No offence to the guy that made the new map, but it kinda reminded me of something...

Spoiler: Show image

Anyway, I'll see what I can do. If I can modify old Corvette textures right down to the last pixel, then I can do the same here.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

No offence to the guy that made the new map, but it kinda reminded me of something...

He made it to be working, not to be pretty.
But you do understand why I wouldn't want to have that enabled by default just yet, eh?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I have tried to get the Open Sea Mod included in the main game files. See attached for the result.
Extract to your main game folder. For testing purposes, the mod is enabled by default in this file.
It can be switched off at the top of PROGRAM\InternalSettings.h.

Had to recode all instances where the player receives or loses an Archipelago Map for the newly added "map_scaled" item that is to be used with this mod.
Also had to recode a whole bunch of regular #defines into ints and floats so that the Open Sea Mod can override them.
This, as well as all the added if-statements, could have very weird effects on the game if I didn't do it right.
Therefore, please test and let me know if it works as intended when ON and OFF.

There might be some of my other game fixes in those files, but those don't exactly hurt, now, do they?

If this DOES do what it is supposed to, I'll go on with the next step of adding separate toggles on various realism settings.

 

[Skyworm]

Good evening!

Therefore, please test and let me know if it works as intended when ON and OFF.

There might be some of my other game fixes in those files, but those don't exactly hurt, now, do they?

If this DOES do what it is supposed to, I'll go on with the next step of adding separate toggles on various realism settings.

Unfortunately, there seem to be problems with it.

First thing I did after installing it was just rying to load my savegame of the actual career, in which I wa sin Iron Man so already used that Open Sea. "Trying to load" it is because that caused the game to crash. It is not a problem with a particular savegame, I tried at least three of them. No idea what's wrong though.

2nd thing to try was to start a new career, choosed the stormy start of Seahawk, and find myself as usual on an island with a wrecked ship. From a look at the map, I'd say Open Sea Mod working.

This both was with Open Sea active.

Then deactivated Open Sea in InternalSettings.h, and tried to load both careers - Seahawk worked, my old career again crashed.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I didn't make that file for savegame compatibility, I'm afraid. Not entirely sure which part of my changes would be so crash-worthy though.
Any clues in the log files (compile.log, error.log and system.log)?

Anyway, if it both works properly on a new game, that is the most important part sorted.
Probably some time before the final Beta 2.4 release, I'll make some changes that will require a new game anyway.

Note that errors with this could not be entirely obvious. For example, I had accidentally set all lines to int before and that had some really bad results.
I did fix that, so now it should work, but there might be weirdness hidden around still. Hope not though; I should have coded it right in the end.

 

[Skyworm]

I admit, I never ever used these log files. Will try to find them.
Found them. Will it help to send them you, or do you need a savegame?

And please clarify:
I need to get that crash, and then look into the log files because then they report what happened?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

They're in your main game folder after the error occurred.
We've got error logging enabled by default these days to simplify troubleshooting.

 

[Skyworm]

Yeah, found them. Here you go.

I will now just start a new career, and see if that Open Sea is doing what it should do.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Looks like you've got the same error.log that I'm now getting when loading a savegame:

COMPILE ERROR - file: TownFantoms\TownFantoms.c; line: 107
invalid index 1859 [size:2]
COMPILE ERROR - file: TownFantoms\TownFantoms.c; line: 107
invalid index 1857 [size:2]
COMPILE ERROR - file: TownFantoms\TownFantoms.c; line: 107
invalid index 1858 [size:2]
COMPILE ERROR - file: TownFantoms\TownFantoms.c; line: 107
invalid index 1114 [size:4]
COMPILE ERROR - file: TownFantoms\TownFantoms.c; line: 107
invalid index 1852 [size:4]
COMPILE ERROR - file: TownFantoms\TownFantoms.c; line: 107
invalid index 332 [size:18]
COMPILE ERROR - file: TownFantoms\TownFantoms.c; line: 107
invalid index 1091 [size:4]
COMPILE ERROR - file: TownFantoms\TownFantoms.c; line: 107
invalid index 1166 [size:4]
COMPILE ERROR - file: TownFantoms\TownFantoms.c; line: 107
invalid index 332 [size:18]

I'm not quite understanding what TownFantoms.c has to do with the Open Sea Mod.

 

[Skyworm]

Who knows?

Unfortunately, I was mistaken when I told you that from the look at the map, Open Sea was working. It is not. I have Open Seas on in internalSettings.h, and I do use Iron Man Mode. But, Map is the original one, not the one with the small islands and big distances.

Edit:
From the distance to enemy ships that allows saving the game, it seems Open Seas is active.