Included in Build Wind Direction and Storm Occurance in 3D Sailing Mode

[Flannery]

Yes this one of the most annoying aspects of game for me personally. And it consumes soon much Og the game time sadly.

Other than that I like it very much as it is now ☺

 

[Black Bart]

I love getting 'be calmed', it is ever sailors lov.....er i mean terror. Your rations go down, you annoy each other as more still time passes by, you eye one another trying to work out who would taste the best, if the winds never return..........

Or as this is PotC you just press the speed up time button (R or G depending on Build) until time zips by at 20x normal speed and you WILL make it to port, even at 1.0 knots.

But yes i agree having some reasonable realism to the trade winds could be fun, but i offer a word of caution, go back and play the old Microprose Pirates! (the old version not the xbox one!) and see what will happen. You won't want to be visiting the western part of the game map very often.....trust me

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I follow the storyline where possible - that's what the author intended I feel. In Hawk early on for example this means following the invasion thread directly - doesn't make any plot sense to me to mooch about until I feel up to going to see the governor about an invasion - it's here and now. Only when the plotline becomes too difficult to accomplish would I turn aside to improve my chances. So for example I do see that when I tackled the Oiseau succesfully I had changed ship but not in close previous saves so I obviously found I couldn't take the ship without (I did capture her and Virgile Boon to serve me).

Hopefully with some of the recent changes made to the Standard Storyline, that should work better now than it did before.

hilst following the plot (or a side plot if it intervened) I would previously have paid my way via smuggling profits wherever I was bound (sometimes having to stop on the way to get a contraband cargo). This may not be achievable with new smuggling (I will find out when I next get to try and play) which I wouldn't like.

The Smuggling System has been tweaked to be more forgiving than last time I tried; it is no longer a "guaranteed safe" or "guaranteed caught" situation.
So hopefully that also works better now.

But yes i agree having some reasonable realism to the trade winds could be fun, but i offer a word of caution, go back and play the old Microprose Pirates! (the old version not the xbox one!) and see what will happen. You won't want to be visiting the western part of the game map very often.....trust me

Isn't that what "tacking" was invented for? At least if there IS wind, you can make headway. That should be better than no headway at all, right?
Might be annoying either coming into or out of certain ports if the wind is often from the same direction.

My thinking would be to somehow work in a "evening sea breeze" and "morning land breeze" system.
That way, by timing your arrivals and departures, you might be able to avoid getting becalmed in the middle of a port.
But that is all very tricky and won't be done any time soon, I'm afraid.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

You miss the point of the current winds completely. The wind is coming head on to you, so you tack to the right. The wind changes so it is heading directly to you. So you tack left. The wind then swings so it is hitting you dead on. Rinse and repeat for hours and days before it changes and allows you to progress. That is the sailing experience in a nutshell.

 

[Black Bart]

It can sometimes feel like it is like that But it is not all the time, or i suspect i'd be complaining about it no end! Or is this in Beta 4 in particular perhaps (as i've not had a lot of time in that). I find the winds are fairly random in direction, but that means you do spend time into a side wind or worse (head wind) which really gets hardcore when the winds drop for seemingly hours to 10 knots or less!

But to further go into the point i was making about Pirates! (old original game), that game simulated the trade winds the Caribbean was known for with lots of currents blowing west and few blowing east, and sure you could tack (you had to!), which was ok in something like a sloop, but if you had any square-riggers in your fleet (you moved at the pace of the slowest/least agile ship) the angles for tacking were very mean and you could spend years of your (game) life just moving from west to east in that game. So much so the best 'perk' to start with was always the doctor perk to give you a longer life so you could achieve more in your game life time!! No joke!

So yeah just be careful what you wish for in this endevour

 

[Pieter Boelen]

It can sometimes feel like it is like that But it is not all the time, or i suspect i'd be complaining about it no end! Or is this in Beta 4 in particular perhaps (as i've not had a lot of time in that). I find the winds are fairly random in direction, but that means you do spend time into a side wind or worse (head wind) which really gets hardcore when the winds drop for seemingly hours to 10 knots or less!

It has not changed in years and should be 100% random.
I checked the code for it that "Maturin" modded years ago and have been unable to find anything at all to make it not random.
The ONLY thing that plays a role is that the future weather depends on the past weather so it develops over time rather than "jumping between extremes" like Build 13 did.
Which means that if there is a storm, it can last very long. And if there is no wind, the same applies.

But to further go into the point i was making about Pirates! (old original game), that game simulated the trade winds the Caribbean was known for with lots of currents blowing west and few blowing east, and sure you could tack (you had to!), which was ok in something like a sloop, but if you had any square-riggers in your fleet (you moved at the pace of the slowest/least agile ship) the angles for tacking were very mean and you could spend years of your (game) life just moving from west to east in that game. So much so the best 'perk' to start with was always the doctor perk to give you a longer life so you could achieve more in your game life time!! No joke!

That is a bit overkill indeed!

So yeah just be careful what you wish for in this endevour

My wish would be to get something that seems reasonable and realistic.
Years to go from one side of the Caribbean to the other sounds decidedly NOT realistic to me.
Though maybe you'd have to go further North to pick up some winds going the other way. And the Gulf Stream, of course.
But then.... PotC has no ocean currents.

 

[Grey Roger]

While realistic winds might have some appeal, be careful of breaking those quests which have time limits. "Hard Labours of an Asssassin", for one, though that one mostly involves going south and north, not east and west. The "Assassin" storyline has time limits on its early missions plus a modified version of "Hard Labours of an Assassin" which could be seriously affected as some of the targets have been moved.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

You miss the point of the current winds completely. The wind is coming head on to you, so you tack to the right. The wind changes so it is heading directly to you. So you tack left. The wind then swings so it is hitting you dead on. Rinse and repeat for hours and days before it changes and allows you to progress. That is the sailing experience in a nutshell.

We've been through this before and I am not saying you aren't right on that.
But I AM saying that I looked through that code twice and can see NO reason why it should be doing that.

For all I can tell from just reading through those lines of code, if it does do that, it is 100% coincidence.
I can find zero reference to any code deliberately doing that (why would there be in the first place???).
And the code I checked DOES control the wind direction, that I do know for sure.

And as I said before as well, the weather system IS quite complex.
So figuring out how it works and then subsequently tweaking it to no longer behave as annoyingly as it currently does would take me MASSIVE amounts of time and energy.
And even then, there is zero guarantee of success. Because there is always the chance that I AM right and the effect that you describe simply doesn't exist in any sort of deliberate way.
If I recall, I even remember seeing a post of yours on the forum a few months back that admitted it could indeed be based on observation bias rather than an actual error.

In other words: It is in no way feasible to do anything about this any time soon.
I know the issue exists, which is why it is still marked here as "Confirmed Bug" on the bug tracker.
But there are too many other things that require more immediate attention.

As I've been saying forever: The solution with the highest guarantee of success is trying to simulate a more REAL weather system.
Rather than having it 100% random as it is now, have it try to fake trade winds, land/sea breezes and layer hurricanes on top.
If that can be accomplished, then we rule out observation bias AND we'd end up with more realism that you can make use of because there is some consistency about it.
But again, doing that would be MASSIVELY NOT EASY. And that is also very simply not going to be happening until a whooole bunch of other things have happened first.

If you want to see it done sooner or differently, find someone not being me to make it happen.
And if not, then it will just remain here on the Bug Tracker until such time that the opportunity arises to actually DO something about it.
You might as well make your peace with that situation, because I can think of absolutely no other options than what I described above.

And telling me I don't get it and repeatedly complaining about it even after I acknowledged it already a year ago(!)
has the brilliantly counterproductive result that I am beginning to NOT WANT TO FIX IT.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

While realistic winds might have some appeal, be careful of breaking those quests which have time limits. "Hard Labours of an Asssassin", for one, though that one mostly involves going south and north, not east and west. The "Assassin" storyline has time limits on its early missions plus a modified version of "Hard Labours of an Assassin" which could be seriously affected as some of the targets have been moved.

Everything I describe is for the foreseeable future 100% hypothetical and will remain so for quite some time to come.
See my post above for more details (that may admittedly be a bit harsly worded, but imagine being in MY shoes and getting the same things over and over with no end).

We can deal with potential consequences on quests when those actually do become a problem.
Increasing the time limits is extremely easy, so it would be a very simple matter of finding the issue and then fixing it basically right after.

But you are right; it could have an impact.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

I know you will do nothing about the wind as methinks it is hard coded into the engine. When POTC was an arcade game the winds just meant you did more tacking getting in and out of a harbor. Now it means I just furl the sails and wait for the winds to eventually change so I can get where I want to go without just using fast travel.

Since the sailing part of this game is its main attraction to me it is frustrating that that is the most unrealistic part of the game. Only the rare occasions when it all comes together and works well keeps me around at all because then it is still the best there is.

The winds in the Caribbean have been well known for centuries. Columbus crossed the Atlantic Ocean in 20 days and then later spent 75 days tacking back and forth to go from the mainland to Hispaniola.

 

[salonikasurf]

Hylie, I have noticed this as well but more when I have low luck and sailing skills early in the game. I counter it by changing direction just before the wind change at the top of the hour and often the wind changes to be head on then I can change back to by desired course and all is good. I think it is in the game engine - the same as enemy ships that have seriously lower speed and turning stats being able to out-manoeuvre you when you are in a very good ship with all the enhancements. I find that as I progress in capabilities and experience this disappears.

Pieter, I know this is a bit vague but my impressions only. I always play on Swashbuckler and believed that this was the game making it harder.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

The original game never even had difficulty levels; that is a mod added feature.
And the Unmodded game didn't have changing weather during a scene either; only ever upon an island reload.
So whatever it is that is going on, it being the game engine itself just doesn't add up.

 

[Black Bart]

There are a bunch of weather-related toggles there:

// ======================================
// WEATHER CONTROLS - JL
// ======================================

int     MAX_WBALLAST =           25;     // INT - how far the weighting will swing in favor of current trend.. use positive integer between 0 and 50 - 0 is no swing - 50 is major swing.. this is for Windspeed
int     MAX_RBALLAST =           25;     // ^^DITTO for rain
int     MAX_FBALLAST =           25;     // ^^DITTO for fog
float   MAX_ABALLAST =           25.0;   // FLOAT - ^^DITTO for wind angle

int     MAX_WINDCHANGE =         5;     // INT - How much the wind CAN change in one hour - use positive integer between 0 and 20
int     MAX_FOGCHANGE =           5;     // INT - ^^DITTO for fog
int     MAX_RAINCHANGE =         5;     // INT - ^^DITTO for rain
#define MAX_ANGLECHANGE           1.0     // FLOAT - ^^DITTO for wind angle

#define FREE_FOG             1     // BOOL - Allow fog during daylight hours 0 - false 1 - true

Though the 'int' ones are actually set for real in the InitOpenSeaMod function in PROGRAM\NK.c .
Note that the angle chance is in radians, so 1 = 57 degrees.

But I have never yet found anything related to deliberate wind direction settings.
As far as I know, that should just be pretty much random. Though based on the previous angle, of course.

The best possible situation is to have a vaguely real weather system in place with trade winds and storms that change this.
Research is in progress for doing that on Hearts of Oak. But I don't know if it is feasible to try for PotC....

Hylie, have you (i'm sure you have!) tried changing this code to be more changable? Like MAX_WINDCHANGE = 10 etc?

The same for the directional swings also (so use 30/35 in place of 25). That might reduce the effect you are talking about.

I'm trying to think back, and Build 12 didn't have this wind code (iirc), but that was a problem for the realism so i think it was during the 12 to 13 Build redesign the code was first created (i could be wildly wrong on the timelines here!) to ensure a more realistic sailing experience in direct sailing.

If the tweeking of the above does not produce the results you are after, maybe there is other places you could try?

There are a growing number of code tweaks i always add to the Build (going back to Build 13 changes) to create a better game play experience for me, and they have been part of a long running 'balance test' that goes all the way back to Build 12 days, so i completely understand you might need to change some things in relation to this.

Having said that i have just completed (without any CTD) a direct sail from Speightstown to Jamaica in Build 3.1 and while i did have sections of be-calming or wind changes to point close to (and against) my previous direction of sail, i also found on balance i got a lot of variation around that.

It does seem to be more likely to get a head wind near an island, which i suspect IS a hard coded thing, maybe to aid the opening scene of the original game where you had to flee under fire from the French ships in Oxbay perhaps? But we can tack right (and speed up time if not too purist about it)?

I would say the non-storm storm events are a BUG of some kind, they never used to happen like that so some code has gone astray in that section of the game, but atleast we don't have that annoying spinning ship bug anymore after a storm right? That is still fixed i hope!

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I'm trying to think back, and Build 12 didn't have this wind code (iirc), but that was a problem for the realism so i think it was during the 12 to 13 Build redesign the code was first created (i could be wildly wrong on the timelines here!) to ensure a more realistic sailing experience in direct sailing.

I think Build 13 still had the "jumping" weather updates where a storm could whip up one hour and there'd be a complete calm the next.
If I recall, the "smooth weather system" is a Build 14 feature.

It does seem to be more likely to get a head wind near an island, which i suspect IS a hard coded thing, maybe to aid the opening scene of the original game where you had to flee under fire from the French ships in Oxbay perhaps?

Seems unlikely. In the mod, we added a special function call for exactly that in the quest code:

    case "Story_WaitingForEveningInTheShipyard":
       SetNextWind("WNW",30);               // LDH give the player a break on the winds - 17Apr09
//TraceAndLog("Winds set for easy escape");
       LAi_QuestDelay("Story_ReadyToGiveBribe", 1.0);
       LAi_group_SetRelation("FRANCE_SOLDIERS", LAI_GROUP_PLAYER, LAI_GROUP_NEUTRAL);
       LAi_group_SetRelation("ENGLAND_CITIZENS", LAI_GROUP_PLAYER, LAI_GROUP_FRIEND);
       LAi_group_SetRelation(LAI_DEFAULT_GROUP, LAI_GROUP_PLAYER, LAI_GROUP_FRIEND);
     break;

I would say the non-storm storm events are a BUG of some kind, they never used to happen like that so some code has gone astray in that section of the game

What non-storm events are you referring to here?

atleast we don't have that annoying spinning ship bug anymore after a storm right? That is still fixed i hope!

I seem to vaguely remember tracking down and fixing that a good few years ago.
Haven't heard it being reported since, so I assume it is still as fixed as it was before....

 

[Black Bart]

ok well you know the code Pieter, and when changes took place :dof

by non-storm storm events it was mentioned in another thread (i forget which one!), where you get a storm event, then it loads it and there seems to be no actual storm (big waves perhaps) and you can exit to the map navigation screen right away. I'm not sure if this is new or a long stading thing. I've yet to experience a storm while in direct sailing mode (in Beta 3.1 onwards) and only got one when going to map navigation mode.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

I don't touch the code but leave that to others as I can not SEE that stuff.

 

[salonikasurf]

Pieter,
Just started a new game with Feb 6 update - weather was behaving itself nicely. I did not have any instances where the weather seemed to be actively working against me - now up to level 15 and luck at 6.
Game play seems to be better balanced as well and no CTD's at all!!!. Got killed a few times but that was to be expected. I found capturing the Fast Death was very challenging - boarding was not an option as the crew and captain killed all of my boarding party and officers every time. It did surrender and I was able to capture it that way.

It may be that the changing wind direction is an issue if we choose to go around an island clockwise say - the weather then changes progressively against you - had I gone anti-clockwise it would have been helping me.
Hope this helps.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

what i find difficult is how fast the wind change making me change directions all the time

You can try to decrease this value, also in InternalSettings.h:

#define MAX_ANGLECHANGE           1.0     // FLOAT - ^^DITTO for wind angle

I think it may be radians, which means you can safely set that to 0.5 and see what happens.

 

[imado552]

You can try to decrease this value, also in InternalSettings.h:

#define MAX_ANGLECHANGE           1.0     // FLOAT - ^^DITTO for wind angle

I think it may be radians, which means you can safely set that to 0.5 and see what happens.


I do not know the answer to that one, sorry.

oh thanks for your answer i'll try that in internal setting i found them there i didn't know what they do so i left them but knowing that they have connection to it thanks

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Just want to say I just set the wind thingy to 0.5 in a new game and will see if it helps make sailing easier.