• New Horizons on Maelstrom
    Maelstrom New Horizons


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The future of Build MOD

PotMaster

Powder Monkey
Hi, how is it going with the Build Mod project. When I downloaded the mod the first time I was thrilled and excited about the mod, so vivid and it seems to have infinite replayability. Will you continue working on the mod even after Hearts of Oak is released, is there a chance Build will come to a stop by that time?

We appreciate the work you do on this mod, I love this game.

Wishlist:

More better, special swords.
More guns
More stories, more quests
Improvements wherever improvements can be done

Yeah, basically, my wishlist is further improvement, if it can be considered a wishlist.
 
We continue working on it as long as there are people willing to do it.
We're developing it independently from Hearts of Oak as mostly it are different people doing it.

And as long as HoO is still in a very basic state of development, PotC makes for good testing grounds to try new stuff as well.

I've never understood the added value of "more weapons" because they all end up being quite samey, but looking ever so slightly different.
It is quite easy to add them though and I know there are a whole bunch "out there" that could be added.
All it takes is someone to decide it is worth doing and who is motivated enough to make it happen.

Beta 4 WIP will include a brand new Storyline, an extension on the Hornblower quest and improvements to many of the other ones.
What more gets done depends primarily on what the different modders care to work on.
We've got ideas aplenty and also some cool features that are meant for a Bartolomeu storyline extension.

And we've got many other improvements in the pipe line.
Have a look here for the main ones we've got in mind:
Build Beta and Brainstorming | PiratesAhoy!

From my side, I am most interested in sorting out reputation and fame so that you can play the game both as a good guy and a nasty one and being famous actually has positive effects as well.
With officer loyalty to play into that as well, of course.

So plenty still to be done; but it all takes time and effort.
In the end it all depends on what the individual people here actually contribute.
If more people join to add the things they like to see, then more gets done.
Simple as that. :cheeky
 
As Pieter has said, as long as there are people willing to work on New Horizons, it will continue to be developed. :onya

We have been working on it for well over 12 years. While there is a chance things may slow down a bit after Hearts of Oak becomes more developed and ready to add quests, once we finally get a digital copy POTC available for purchase legally, there will likely be a lot more interest in modding POTC again.
 
Also, the following links may be of interest:
Mod Release - Build 14 Beta 4 Internal WIP For Testing | PiratesAhoy! - You can find the latest internal test version here
Build Mod Bug Tracker | PiratesAhoy! - List of known issues that still have to be addressed some time
Build Testing List | PiratesAhoy! - List of new stuff currently in the Beta 4 WIP that we require feedback on so that we can tweak them further
Build Beta and Brainstorming | PiratesAhoy! - List of all future improvement ideas for Build 14, some of which have already been started on
Build 15 Brainstorming | PiratesAhoy! - Same, but for Build 15 (aka. "far and distant future")

So as you can see: We have been doing quite a lot with yet more to come.
But it all depends on the people making it happen.
 
I've been thinking, why are people so dedicated for 12 long years, I mean why do people do this? I sometimes wonder about that myself, I too have projects that I do and it's not easy to tell why I do them, maybe it has a deeper psychological issue to it, why we do all the things we do. I THINK I do them because I like doing it, but do you guys think we do all of this for the community for some other reasons than what is obvious?

What I mean, we're spending 12 years doing things for FREE. So money is obviously not the reason, then it must be a deeper psychological reason. I think some people do it for acceptance, other people maybe because they are braggarts, other people do it because of the learning, the knowledge and experience. What else is there to it? I watched a video with Steve Wozniak and he spoke about that what we do for free has something to do with acceptance and he was referring to the open source community.

Do you do this mod to be accepted? I know that personally, I began my hobbies because I was extremely interested in them, it's not for acceptance. But that doesn't mean that people can't have several reasons to do it, there may be a whole lot of it. Because if you go and visit a company and you tell them that you will work for them for free for 12 long years, there has got to be something to it.
 
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Simplest is obviously because we DO like it. And a hope to make other people happy by doing what you like to do.
A sense of accomplishment when you leave things better than before.
A wish to play a game that doesn't exist, so you MAKE it the way you want it to be.
A desire to do something creative and constructive with your spare time, rather than just watching TV or so.
And also ye olde "because we can". ;)

Certainly doing this for as long as I have done has given me quite a lot of experience on a wide variety of things.
Programming; making installers; promotional efforts; team work; human nature; the list goes on.
 
Exactly, that "sense of accomplishment" doesn't fall into the category of acceptance, it falls into the category of re-assurance. Re-assurance is almost like acceptance, the only difference it needs constant treatment.

It's quite interesting, the better a product is, the more reassurance the designer behind it needs. Be careful when you visit a very competent painter, a designer, a good engineer or similar talented people, behind all that talent are things that you don't want to see or pay attention to.

When I look at how beautiful this world is designed, I certainly hope there are no gods out there, because he have to be absolutely mad to be able to imagine a beautiful world like this. The only way to imagine something beautiful and become a good painter, is if your mind is filled with shit.

I hate to say it, competent and talented people are bad people, it's just that simple. The difference between good and expert is madness.

When I review my own talent in programming, I have to declare myself absolutely mad, because I am very talented there, but something in me wants to say 'no' i'm not mad, how could I be, you have to be rational to solve programming tasks.
 
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Nothing wrong with some good, old-fashioned madness. With a method to it, of course.... :rolleyes:
 
I just do it because its good practice for programming in a not-to-high level progamming language (which I like the most :p) and it gives instand rewards. If you make a game from scratch it takes a year or two before you got something which is remotly playable. This is already playable so you can just add whatever you want and see what changes and how it changes things. It's a good way to fail easy and get lots of experience in how systems interact with each other.

Also cleaning up code from others and trying to figure out what they where trying to accomplish sometimes has it's charms, because by looking at the code of someone you can often get an idea about how this person was. I'm now at the point I can sometimes see which part is written by who just by how it's coded. and thats nice to see.
 
I gave up a creative job for something else. Modding here not only fills that empty space but as @Levis says
gives instant reward. In the architecture business you also had to wait for years to see the result.

And to quote @Pieter Boelen I'm trying to make the adventures I would like to play myself.

If you spend 4 hours every night watching TV no one asks why but if you DO something...
 
I'm a Builder. Always have been. Always will be. I used to build cars and motorcycles. I used to build oil refineries; retired now. The last game I obsessed on I spent 11 years working on. I have only been obsessing on this game for 5 or so years. Getting too old for this stuff, but still doing a little every now and then. I am here so I work on it. There really isn't anything else to say.
 
Partly to fix or add something so the game is more enjoyable for me. Partly in the hope that if it makes the game better for me, it will make the game better for others as well. Partly because it's another sort of problem-solving game - someone points out something that isn't working properly, so the challenge is then to figure out what's wrong and maybe even what to do about it. And partly because it's not exactly hard physical work, so if I can fix a problem or add something interesting, why not?

And then there's just the satisfaction of doing a bit of work on the code, or even just a dialog file, then playing the game, seeing the difference in the game world and thinking "I did that".

The only "acceptance" factor is that other people are playing the same game so if I'm going to change something, it's nice to check first that other people are going to like the change I'm proposing.
 
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