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Pirates of the Black Cove

Patch 3 - patch notes

Hi all,

the 1.0.3 patch is now live on Steam, other portals will follow. We will update you as soon as the other portals have it up.

French and Spanish languages are now available. Here's the rest of the changelog for 1.0.3:

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Version 1.0.3 (Patch 3) 11.8.2011

Features:
- Configurable keymap: My Documents/Nitro Games/PiratesOfBlackCove/Keymap.xml
- Added command line option "-windowed", which forces the game to start in windowed mode
- Support for German, Spanish and French languages

Breakers:
- Fixed a crash when leaving world scene
- Bloated savegames will now load

Missions:
- Fix for Corsair FM6 possible crash when killing some of the ships before mission ships start moving
- Fix for Buccaneer FM7 (Paddy Paws)
- Pirate FM 7 Chiefs Chowder: If the whaler is outside of the map it travels back to the map
- Monkey cannon works
- Buccaneer fm6 fix - after exiting from land before mission zone is captured
- Buccaneer fm7 fix - fail after killing petes ship
- Corsair fm1 - Steal the Luxury Ship from Port Cancun bugfix

Misc:
- Settings are now properly saved
- Characters won't get stuck into LZ signs/firestands/roadsigns/lamps
- Buildings should now drop items only to accessible positions
- Fixed issue where speech bubble would jump strangely when sinking a ship with mortar.
- Fixed issue where player ship info would show too many empty unit slots if last row was full.
- Fixed Resolution change popup not to go under other windows!
- Correct flag for Black Cove ships
- Selecting a dead hero now shows units under its command
- Cannons of cannon towers no longer disappear after re-entering a town
- Reset radar & healthbars after resolution change
- Multiplying artifacts no longer multiply when selecting them from inventory
- Now there's 15 badges visible on character screen, instead of them being only 13
- Santto Domingo -> Santo Domingo
- Fixed clipping ingame messages

Cheers,
Mattias and the Nitro team
Click to expand...

Version 1.0.3.7713 (Steam Hotfix) 12.8.2011

- Fixed achievement "Gatherer" to be possible to achieve.
- Fixed achievement "Ship Tycoon" to be actually possible to achieve.
- Final mission crash fix
- Crash fix for collectables on loaded saves
- Fixed path finding problems when character crossing the bridges
- Fix for sea level musics
- Made horizontal scrollbar in load game menu invisible in localized versions also.
Click to expand...

Patch 3 is 1.1 gig and only available to Steam? And still absolutely no mention of either of the previous two patches, or an official download link! You guys really need to do something with your QA and PR departments! By the time you actually get the game working, no one is gonna care enough to notice! From what I am reading on your forums from Steam users, I want no part of those Steam patches anyway! :rolleyes:
 
Thagarr said:
Patch 3 is 1.1 gig and only available to Steam? And still absolutely no mention of either of the previous two patches, or an official download link! You guys really need to do something with your QA and PR departments! By the time you actually get the game working, no one is gonna care enough to notice! From what I am reading on your forums from Steam users, I want no part of those Steam patches anyway! :rolleyes:
Click to expand...
and I thought a 101mb patch just to get the disk working for Silent Hunter 4 was bad.

You continue to justify my pessimism on this product


BTW once upon a time - long long ago - there was a space 2d game that saved its entire state on every save
yes - something akin to a full core dump was the actual save

needless to say - nobody kept more than 10 saves
and even the second save took a DOS script to handle.
(Just imagine the small size of the drives back then)
 
The first patch was about 980MB and the second one was about 20. SO yeah 1GB before the third patch and another 1 for 3.. 2GB of patches. Personally I have been playing without the 3rd patch and I have seen a TON of bugs that the original version had fixed. It stopped crashing and having random weird bugs for me. Except for one that the game freezes every now and then of course. But the point is... it failed my expectations. I was SOOOO looking forward to it and yet I don't see myself playing further than where I am. The game begins with 3 characters which I am guessing 3 story lines... but it feels boring, empty , slow and above all, it lacks customization. I am guessing there will be 3 or 4 factions so that makes 3 units each factions it will be 9 to 12 different units that all will always be the ones that attack on the front the gunners on the back and some heavy weapons like cannons or rockets. And each faction seems to have 2 ships. The big and the small. I will skip the fact of the player being able to control one ship.. and focus on the lack of choices!

Really what where they thinking! I mean its obvious the game was made more of a cute pirate game rather than a simulator that gets closer to reality. But its far too easy. I was majorly disappointed on how to capture ships. No more need of hiring crew. You just catapult unlimited pirates and randomly you capture the enemy ship be it you have weakened it or not. Well enough with my blabering. The ones that want to try it go ahed, there are peopel that actually loved this game. Who knows maybe a future update will make it more appealing and attractive (if you think they release patches of 1 giga i guess they might end up with a different game if fully patched).
 
weltall said:
i guess they might end up with a different game if fully patched).
Click to expand...

Well,... No :p
But the three patches do fix a bucketload of problems, that's for sure. What they won't do is fix the Appeal Factor -- either the game's cartoony and cavalier approach to the life of an arcade pirate hero is appealing, or it isn't. Some people like the utter lack of realism and some don't, and I for one advocate people liking different stuff :)
In any case, you shouldn't berate a game because it's not something you personally prefer. It's like getting angry at a pie for being a pie and not a creamy cake ;)

However, there are very valid reasons for berating the game, and bugs are indeed a major factor here. There have been three patches so far, and despite what Thagarr said, all three patches are available to all versions of the game. In fact, the third patch came to Steam later than it did for other ddl versions, maybe that's the source of confusion?

Be that as it may, I still, personally as well as professionally, utterly dislike this need for huge patching before the game is what it ought to be, but sometimes you can't avoid it, for various reasons.
But, and this is a big but, making sure that the people who bought the game know that there are patches out there, and where to get them, should be of paramount importance. So far we fail at that.

We live and we learn. I'll make sure your complaints and opinions are heard, so that we can try to avoid making the same mistakes twice.
 
For me huge patches is not the problem. Two Worlds had a humongous patch a bit after it was out and it was an ok game to play. I personally do not dislike the cartoonish feeling but its the lack of choices that will make the player to choose between different things and try them out. But true many people enjoy the gameplay and do not bother with such details as I have seen from different reviews. Aw well.
 
Nitro Games CM said:
There have been three patches so far, and despite what Thagarr said, all three patches are available to all versions of the game. In fact, the third patch came to Steam later than it did for other ddl versions, maybe that's the source of confusion?
Click to expand...

I don't have a problem necessarily with the size of the patches, although at the current rate, the next one should be about the size of the game I originally downloaded. My biggest problem is in how the fact that there are patches has been communicated with your customers! The post I quoted from your forums was posted on the 11'th, a full two days before I even noticed there was another patch. It was NOT available on GamersGate, I checked personally before I posted anything. If indeed that last patch was released to GamersGate and Steam and your other digital distribution partners at the same time, then there is considerable lag in your distribution system! From what I personally know about Steam, it takes forever for anything to filter through their system, but I won't speculate farther on this point.

None of this however changes the fact that there is STILL no mention of the fact that there has even been a patch released, let alone three, on either Nitro's main page or on Paradox's support or news page. But there is a post about giving away a game code for free. This information needs to be posted on your web pages, believe it or not, there are people out there who have absolutely no clue just what a forum is or how to use it, let alone what a torrent is. It's this kind of corporate thinking that led to the creation of Pirates Ahoy in the first place.

**EDIT**

Just out of morbid curiosity, I decided to run the game and see if it would actually update from GamersGate. Well, I ran the game and got the little popup "update available" box, so I told it yes I want to update! It promptly loaded my browser, and gave me a 404 page not found error! Awesome! :onya

]
testbs.png


I had to log in to GamersGate and start the download manually. I guess this should really not surprise me any :rolleyes:
 
Oh yes, we totally suck when it comes to letting people know that "Hey, there're a bunch of patches that make the game work like it should!" No way around that :)

But, let's not dwell on bitter things, for Gamescom 2011 is here! And what better way to celebrate one of the hottest gaming events of the year than by giving away free games?

Indeed, my brethren!

Starting tomorrow, we will give away one Pirates of Black Cove download code every hour, from 9:00 to 17:00 CET, from Thursday to Sunday.

Here's how to win:
We will make a post on our Facebook wall. You have one hour to Like that post. After that, we'll pick a random winner from those who Liked the post. Then we'll make a new post and start another round.
It's fun, it's easy, and plenty of prizes to go for!
Stay tuned :)

Here's the link to our Facebook page: this is the link :)
 
Does the contest have any rules? I'm currently in South America, so would I be eligible to participate?
 
Nitro Games CM said:
Oh yes, we totally suck when it comes to letting people know that "Hey, there're a bunch of patches that make the game work like it should!" No way around that :)
Click to expand...

Perhaps "make the game work better" would be a more accurate statement. I have noticed there has been a big drop in bug reports the last few days on your forums, in fact, it looks like there has been a drop in post traffic overall. I doubt the patches had anything to do with the drop though, more likely people just got tired of the game and uninstalled it completely, wrote off $20 and moved on.

Regardless, I can see that my point is either being blatantly ignored, or I am just doing a really crappy job of explaining myself. It would take all of about 2 minutes for someone to add a post to any or all of the pages I have referenced, but the reason it is not being done is purely because you do not want to make yourselves look bad in any aspect at all. That is the typical corporate thinking I was referring to earlier, just in case it wasn't obvious enough. If there is a flaw in our product we will either simply ignore it, fix it quietly and hope no one else notices, or rewrite our specs and turn it in to a product feature! We can't place anything on our official web pages that that might suggest that we are not perfect. It's ok to post those things on places like Facebook and Twitter though, because hey, that's just free advertising for us! :woot

The free game code give away would have been great promoting and a good marketing strategy a couple of weeks ago. Now however, it simply appears to be nothing but a shallow smoke screen to try and gloss over the PR failure that Pirates of Black Cove has been to this point.
 
Thagarr said:
I have noticed there has been a big drop in bug reports the last few days on your forums, in fact, it looks like there has been a drop in post traffic overall. I doubt the patches had anything to do with the drop though, more likely people just got tired of the game and uninstalled it completely, wrote off $20 and moved on.
Click to expand...

So... You're saying that because people have stopped complaining, it's not because we've fixed the issues, but because they've given up? That's... an interesting point of view all right. I'm not sure I agree with it, though :)


Thagarr said:
Regardless, I can see that my point is either being blatantly ignored, or I am just doing a really crappy job of explaining myself.
Click to expand...

No, don't worry, you've explained yourself just fine. And it's a very valid point.
As for the corporate mentality,... Glossing stuff over, e.g. dismissing the impact of buggy code, will just bite yourself on the ass. We don't want to be bitten. We love our asses as they are. Instead, I think you should go with "sheer incompetence" here ;) And yes, that's someone who's working for the Man saying that the information flow about the patches has been handled incompetently. But there's ladders to climb, and all I can do about it is keep yelling really loud to the person above me, hoping he'll do the same.
 
I understand your position mate, I deal with it in my every day job as well. I don't work in the software industry, but the corporate mentality is exactly the same, and I think the incompetence factor may be even higher!! I do really appreciate the candor and honesty with which you have responded to my posts, and I am sure others around here do as well, it is greatly appreciated. It is very refreshing to deal with someone that actually has some integrity in an industry that hasn't shown much of that for the past 15 years or so.

I do apologize if any of my posts have come off as a bit too strong, I tend to get a bit heated when it comes to this subject, as we have dealt with it quite a bit here in the past. If companies would just stop and think for a moment and apply a bit of common sense and courtesy when dealing with their costumers, their costumer base would be a lot more solid, and loyal, and a lot more forgiving when mistakes are made. The software industry in particular would not be dealing with near the piracy problem that they currently are, but that is a discussion for another time. We are all human after all, and most corporations loose site of that fact because they are only focused on the bottom line, and that becomes ALL that matters.
 
I think the way Steam runs itself could actually be the biggest part of the "buy game, play for 15-20 minutes, quit and go back to TF2/BC2/whatever". I've been thinking for a while that the reason so many smaller games get overlooked is because of all the insane sales Steam puts on. I mean, $55 for ALL of THQ's games? That could occupy somebody for half a year, and that little indie game they bought? It gets thrown to the backburner, and right when you start thinking about playing it again - BAM! Another giant publisher catalogue sale!

Chances are, if the buyer only plays the game at release, when it usually has the most bugs, and doesn't touch it again because of all the damn Steam sales, they'll forever associate that developer with a bug-riddled mess. In reality, if they'd just try the game again, they'd see most of the problems have been fixed.
 
I have to say, I agree a whole lot with both Thagarr and Stallion here. Most games that are published today are published in a less than perfect state -- lots of bugs, lots of issues, lots of features missing. Most MMOs are launched with the whole latter half of the game missing, hoping that people won't level up too fast to notice there's no end game content, or even mid game content. Smaller publishers like us are cornered and pushed between the rock and a hard place, having to work our asses off to get the game ready for launch date fully knowing that there are stuff in it we'd want to fix, but end up having no time to do that. Publishers on the other hand have no choice but to resort to crushing deadlines because of intense competition, and if they won't do it, they risk sinking. It's a vicious circle that's extremely hard to break, and nobody's happy that it exists.
Nobody wins.

In this particular case, the issue is exacerbated by not advertising the existence of the patches in the official home pages of Pirates of Black Cove. Although we pushed out three major patches in ten days, it amounts to nothing if people don't know the patches exist. That's not the players' fault. It's ours.

Still, we learn from this. And when it's time to launch Raven's Cry, we'll definitely do better.


As for Steam's awesome deals... They give recognition to games that would otherwise be forgotten, and help people rediscover older goodies. That alone is a thing to support.
Besides, you can hardly blame Steam for being on the players' side by doling out sweet, sweet deals, when your own game is in less than perfect shape and costs more ;)
 
A heads up: One of Romania's top reviewers (LEVEL) reviewed Pirates of the Black Cove and gaved them a 6.5, considering the game a funny, but buggy and boring game. It appears IGN reviewed the game too, giving it a 5.5.
 
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