Solved Storyline Period Changes

[Hylie Pistof]

One of the things I like about the earlier storylines is the soldiers uniforms. The later soldiers all look the same.

Assuming a starting age of 20, playing for 40 years would make one 60! The longest I have played was for 27 years, making me 47 when I retired.

EDIT: Hmm. I never have finished either the Assassin or Bartolomeu storylines......

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Assuming a starting age of 20, playing for 40 years would make one 60! The longest I have played was for 27 years, making me 47 when I retired.

This is the code that is supposed to be executed after 40 years:

        case "becomes_oldman":
            if (isEntity(&characters[0]))
            {
                GetCharacterPos(GetMainCharacter(), &locx, &locy, &locz);
                CreateParticleSystemX("blast", locx, locy, locz, locx, locy, locz,0);
            }
            Log_SetStringToLog(QUEST_MESSAGE3);
            pchar.model = "skel1";
        break;

Eg. it turns you into a skeleton and displays the text "You became TOO old to resist the curse of the Aztec gold..."

Since you are probably the person who manages to play the longest, I think it is safe to say this never happens.
Should we want it to happen? Should we change the year to earlier? Or should we get rid of it altogether?
Going by the films' logic, this makes no sense anyway. Only way to get cursed is by taking a coin out of that chest. And then it is instantly.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Hehe. That's a cool idea! If it was removed no one would miss it, but if it was made shorter, like 30 years, it would be a cool thing. I would have kept on playing that game but a new patch came along. I was really just playing to see how long that game could last before dying.
Or better yet, how about an Ancient Mariner at 30 years and the skeleton at 40?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I like that Ancient Mariner idea. At least that is a sensible reference to a famous poem.
(As opposed to a stupid and incorrect reference to the PotC films. Clearly the people who made the game did NOT understand the curse.
Refer also to that old man on Martinique and his way-wrong account of the whole thing. )

Any thoughts which character model to use as "ancient mariner"?

 

[Armada]

Also, putting the Standard storyline in 1750 would place it in Colonial Powers. Then we'd have TWO storylines that offer free play there, because Jack Sparrow does too.

On the other hand, with all the "English vs. French" stuff going on in it, could there anything be said for moving it to "The Corsican" instead?
There is no free play available there, because Hornblower is no good for that.

So we'd get:
Early Explorers: Devlin
Spanish Main: Assassin and Bartolomeu
Golden Age of Piracy: Tales of a Chevalier
Colonial Powers: Jack Sparrow
Revolutions: Master & Commander
The Corsican: Standard

Or is that going a bit far?

If we ignore the free-play issue for a moment: My main point is that the Sea Hawk storyline looks as though it was meant to be set in a mid-18th century time frame, though clearly the soldier and ship models don't agree with each other. The stock game did include older ships of course, such as the Galleon and Caravel, but the bulk of them seemed to be much more modern.
Perhaps if people want the more modern ships but also want to keep the current soldiers, would it be possible to make a special case which overrides the time period for this storyline?

Going back to the free-play argument: The Sea Hawk storyline appears to be the most popular option for free-play (judging by what many players have said), because everyone knows how to avoid the main storyline.
Some of these players have become accustomed to certain types of ships being around (frigates, corvettes, ships-of-the-line, brigs etc.), but because of the changes to encounter chances, these ships are far less common in this storyline for reasons of historical accuracy. And that's me being lenient with the changes.

As for free-play in "The Corsican" (shouldn't we rename this to "Napoleonic Era", or something?), I don't think the Sea Hawk storyline would fit that time frame.
If anything, Master and Commander would be much more suitable for it. The film is set in 1805, is it not?
Heck, even the Jack Sparrow storyline is out of place in its current time frame. The Dauntless, Endeavour, Interceptor and Providence are all typical Napoleonic ships, but Disney in their infinite wisdom decided they belong in the 1740s or thereabouts (is there an official time span?).

A possible solution? Move the Chevalier, Sea Hawk, Jack Sparrow and M&C storylines forward by one time period each.
So then the free-play options would look like this:
Early Explorers: Devlin
Spanish Main: Assassin and Bartolomeu
Golden Age of Piracy: Tales of a Chevalier
Colonial Powers: Standard/Sea Hawk
Revolutions: Jack Sparrow
The Corsican: Master and Commander

It might sound extreme, but technically it would make sense. Any thoughts?

 

[Skyworm]

To me this makes sense.

The ships encountered in the PotC-Movies look much more modern than one would expect in the announced time frame of 1740. Well, except the pirate ships .... but that's Disney.

Also, the ships encountered in the Seahawk storyline would better fit in colonial powers than in golden age.

And last but not least, Master & Commander fits much better in The Corsican than in Revolutions. According to the books od Patrick O'Brian, 1777 is much too early for any Master & Commander story. When Aubrey got his first ship the Sophie, the battle of the nile already has happened, wich was 1798. So I would say around 1800 would be a good idea for Master & Commander. (In fact, I was surprised to see it start at 1777 here in the game)

And I think I would like the fact that we have a free play-option in any timeline.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

The soldiers aren't seen in any of the storyline videos, I think. Not sure how many people would be concerned with different soldier models.
Technically I do like the idea of the main storyline to be set in the Golden Age of Piracy. The idea with Colonial Powers is that piracy is in decline.

Would we want the USA and Steam Frigates to make their appearance in the Jack Sparrow storyline?
Or are we going to have to put those in ONLY the last time period? That seems a bit restricted...

Also, moving storylines around would require us to modify the flag textures again. UNLESS I can get Pirate_KK's work on the flag code to work without additional issues.
But by the looks of it, that remains a not-so-short-term project.

Can't remember now why we called "The Corsican" that. I think it was a name that Thomas the Terror came up with.
Maybe he did that to not specifically reference Napoleon? Or to do it in a slightly less direct way at least.

This would be so much easier if we could select our starting date. Here's to hoping we'll get to that some time soon-like-ish....

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Side Quests!

The Bart O Port side quest in the Sea Hawk storyline would not fit and would need to be moved. And what about the Animists? Angelique Moulin? I would like to see Toff's Daughter in all storylines, but that sword needs to be toned down a bit.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Indeed if we do put the sidequests in the other stories, we'd have to check which ones would make sense and which ones don't.

What I was thinking is to split off all sidequests into one file that we can just pop into the relevant storyline folders.
Would be fairly easy to code, but also quite a bit of work. I wouldn't particularly mind someone else doing it, I've got to admit.

Especially since it's been AGES since I actually PLAYED those quests, so I wouldn't be so quick to recognize what is what in the code.
Actually, going by that logic, Talisman would be the one person who would be excellent to do that.

 

[Uberman7788]

I always thought the Sea Hawk storyline was more of a French and Indian war setting anyway, so I like the idea of it being in the mid 1700s.

 

[Uberman7788]

So I started playing Hoist the Colors and I will say that the whole diversity thing must have come from the time period. The ship diversity, variety, and frequency is even better than before!

If you could make Sea Hawk have at least an optional change to the mid 1700s this game would be perfect. The ships of the mid 18th century and the campaign of a storm start Sea Hawk is all I've ever wanted in an age of sail game!

 

[Pieter Boelen]

If you could make Sea Hawk have at least an optional change to the mid 1700s this game would be perfect. The ships of the mid 18th century and the campaign of a storm start Sea Hawk is all I've ever wanted in an age of sail game!

While we're still figuring out what to do with the final modpack files, you can very easily do this yourself.
Open PROGRAM\Storyline\standard.c and find:

sl.(sn).start.date.year = 1690;

Replace with:

sl.(sn).start.date.year = 1750;

Then start a new game. You'll now have the same storyline in the later time period.

 

[Uberman7788]

And that will actually change the whole period? Spawns, characters and all?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Yep. The game sets the period based on the starting date of the storyline. Change the starting date and everything else changes too.

 

[Armada]

The soldiers aren't seen in any of the storyline videos, I think. Not sure how many people would be concerned with different soldier models.
Technically I do like the idea of the main storyline to be set in the Golden Age of Piracy. The idea with Colonial Powers is that piracy is in decline.

Would we want the USA and Steam Frigates to make their appearance in the Jack Sparrow storyline?
Or are we going to have to put those in ONLY the last time period? That seems a bit restricted...

Also, moving storylines around would require us to modify the flag textures again. UNLESS I can get Pirate_KK's work on the flag code to work without additional issues.
But by the looks of it, that remains a not-so-short-term project.

Can't remember now why we called "The Corsican" that. I think it was a name that Thomas the Terror came up with.
Maybe he did that to not specifically reference Napoleon? Or to do it in a slightly less direct way at least.

This would be so much easier if we could select our starting date. Here's to hoping we'll get to that some time soon-like-ish....

The Sea Hawk storyline isn't hugely focussed on piracy, at least to begin with. The Jack Sparrow storyline, on the other hand...

Good point about the US faction. We certainly don't want them appearing in Hoist the Colours, so I guess it will have to stay were it is. So if we moved the Sea Hawk, Chevalier and M&C storylines as suggested previously, we would have a gap in the Revolutions period. So here's a thought: there are two Devlin storylines, so why don't we hijack one of them and turn it into a free-play storyline for the Revolutions period?

Those bloody flag textures...
OK, I've checked the offending textures (perflg2/3 and perpnt2/3). To accommodate Nathaniel's personal flag in the Colonial Powers period, perhaps we could swap it with the rightmost flag on the perflg3/perpnt3 textures?
That would keep all the Jack Sparrow related flags as they are.

The problem I have with "The Corsican" is that it doesn't describe the period; it describes Napoleon. "Napoleonic Era", though, is self-explanatory.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

The Sea Hawk storyline isn't hugely focussed on piracy, at least to begin with. The Jack Sparrow storyline, on the other hand...

Point. Though you start out Jack Sparrow by supposedly NOT wanting to be a pirate as well.

Good point about the US faction. We certainly don't want them appearing in Hoist the Colours, so I guess it will have to stay were it is. So if we moved the Sea Hawk, Chevalier and M&C storylines as suggested previously, we would have a gap in the Revolutions period. So here's a thought: there are two Devlin storylines, so why don't we hijack one of them and turn it into a free-play storyline for the Revolutions period?

Seems weird to me to have the two Devlin ones not in the same period, since the only intended difference between the two is in the sex of the main character.
On the other hand, maybe we indeed don't need them both and could at least delete the male one for simplicity's sake.

It'd be easy enough to add copies of the Master & Commander "storyline" with different starting ships and character models for other periods though.

Those bloody flag textures...
OK, I've checked the offending textures (perflg2/3 and perpnt2/3). To accommodate Nathaniel's personal flag in the Colonial Powers period, perhaps we could swap it with the rightmost flag on the perflg3/perpnt3 textures?
That would keep all the Jack Sparrow related flags as they are.

Not sure if we want to play around with the flag textures just yet, since we may have to redo the whole system soon.
The more we change, the more difficult redoing it all becomes. And it's being annoying enough as it is...

The problem I have with "The Corsican" is that it doesn't describe the period; it describes Napoleon. "Napoleonic Era", though, is self-explanatory.

I just made the required code changes for that.

 

[Armada]

On the other hand, maybe we indeed don't need them both and could at least delete the male one for simplicity's sake.

It'd be easy enough to add copies of the Master & Commander "storyline" with different starting ships and character models for other periods though.

Either of those would be good solutions, I reckon. At least moving the M&C quest and then making a copy to take its place in the Revolutions period would be ideal.

Not sure if we want to play around with the flag textures just yet, since we may have to redo the whole system soon.
The more we change, the more difficult redoing it all becomes. And it's being annoying enough as it is...

So if we move the Sea Hawk storyline to Colonial Powers, we could temporarily make Nathaniel use a different personal flag, avoiding the problem altogether.
I'm curious, though; what are the differences with the "new system" PirateKK has been working on?

I just made the required code changes for that.

Cool, thanks.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Either of those would be good solutions, I reckon. At least moving the M&C quest and then making a copy to take its place in the Revolutions period would be ideal.

Any thoughts on that additional free play storyline we'll be needing? Any default character and ship model and name that we could use?

I'm curious, though; what are the differences with the "new system" PirateKK has been working on?

It is quite cool, actually. It will allow us to use ALL pirate and personal flags, regardless of period.
But obviously that does require a lot of recoding, so a lot of the flag-related code is very different.

 

[Armada]

Any thoughts on that additional free play storyline we'll be needing? Any default character and ship model and name that we could use?

How about starting as an American character? That's the only nation you can't start the game as, currently.
I was thinking something like the US_Hannah would be a good starting ship, based on what people have said about beginning the game with very little.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

How about starting as an American character? That's the only nation you can't start the game as, currently.
I was thinking something like the US_Hannah would be a good starting ship, based on what people have said about beginning the game with very little.

Good idea. Not sure if Select Storyline supports America by default, but we can give it a shot.
Which character? The only well-known America character I can think of is John Paul Jones.

An American character should probably start out on Eleuthera. Should we then change the starting location of Master & Commander too?