What will we do with the drunken sailors?

Users who are viewing this thread

I don't really know why this wasn't posted here, though I assume they assumed this forum is dead (and it kinda is, so I get them). Anyway:

Hello,

New administration has completed revising of the Blood & Gold: Caribbean! project, the results are below.

First of all, we investigated the whole development’s roadmap. It’s worth noting that the team behind relaunching of the project (Blood & Gold) did fulfill their promises.

Here’s the list of what’s been done:

– City locations for different factions
– Natives faction
– New captivity system and multiple ways of escaping
– Caravan trading
– Smuggle trading
– Criminal missions
– Underground horse races
– Storyline
– Multiplayer
– New system of controlling player’s faction
– Card game
– Brothel system – including protection tacker, diplomatic options etc.
– Naval sieges

In in its current state the game should be considered feature complete. On the other hand, feedback from users is not positive enough and they may disagree with this statement.

We’ve taken this situation into account, our analysis has shown the following reasons for that:

– Incompatibility between the engine and the visual ambition. Models and especially textures were created with an excessive quality, that Warband engine had trouble supporting adequately.

– Too much of in-game content. The game takes up to 2.25 GB of RAM, which is too much for its stable work and can cause constant crashes on lower-end PCs.

– Lack of focus. The game tries to be a tactical simulator, an economic strategy game, an adventure, an action RPG and a naval battle simulator all at the same time. As a result, players looking for more ships in naval battles and those players who’re looking out for economy and trading in this game will be equally unsatisfied.

– Incorrect promotion. The game is not part Mount & Blade series, but tried to attract its audience. The difference in interface, balance and the setting frustrated the players who wanted the things as they were before.


We came to the following conclusions:

– The new administration has factually no complaints against the old development team. A very complicated and content-heavy project was based on the outdated technology. The problem in this case lies with the management who took decision regarding the game’s concept and its engine.

– Further development of the game on its current engine is not possible. Adding even a little portion of content (like a new ship) would lead to complete instability of the application. The game could only be worked on without having any new content added into it. But even in that case, with years, the game’s code turned into a mess after many different programmers got their hands on it. Things such as code optimization and refactoring would require many months of work.

Snowbird Games investor can offer players the following:

– A brand new project about naval battle, based on a newer engine. New team is already doing some experiments with Unreal Engine 4.

– A farewell project based on Warband/Caribbean technology. This is a small spin-off game that will be available at a very affordable price, with loyalty discount for all Blood & Gold owners. The project is being developed by a third party team, ORGS Studio.

– Next week, Blood & Gold players can expect a new update which would include the promised achievements, as well as fixes for some gameplay bugs (like troops hovering in the air after the walls are destroyed).
source: http://snowbirdgames.com/blog/?p=2676

The bold parts make me entirely unexcited about prospect of new 'Caribbean!-like' projects. The charm of the game was not about being one of those things, but about possibility to play any of them, at all times, even if it lacks polish. Game of naval warfare lacking the M&B's feeling of freedom will have strong competition and I doubt it will break through, even if M&B's niche of the market may be too tight with money for devs'/publishers' liking (and I don't blame them at all).

Imo, the most alluring thing in M&B games is being in shoes of that single dude on a horse with all the world revolving around and this B&G achieved nicely, I didn't feel like some guarding spirit of a single fleet, I was immersed in a role of a captain, swinging on the ropes and trying to keep my balance on deck covered with blood, playing cards in taverns and managing my estates in spare time. Even if it was tedious in the long run, I really liked that there were certain things 'closed' behind the need to walk to someone and chit-chat with them. To me the game world felt easy to jump straight in for short sessions and get immersed with since few first minutes, something no other 'game of pirates' achieved.
 
Do not look here said:
The bold parts make me entirely unexcited about prospect of new 'Caribbean!-like' projects.

it is not that they added to many layers, it is they tried to do it with a small team which resulted in a shallow game all around. The old discussion about quantity x quality.

B&G was fun for a few hours (~20h), which was OK with the price tag. I worked on a personal specialized mod that I played for about ~40h later on too  :mrgreen:. If you look at my list of features you will probably notice I agree with their analyse of the game hehe
https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,359263.0.html

Interesting news about a new game (smaller). And that they may create a new Pirates using Unreal in the future.

 
The main problem in my opinion was the formations in land battles.  Otherwise B&G is mostly fine, the only other two major problems I can think of are ai getting stuck on the sides of the ships in boarding and the lag on the world map every so often (the long pauses as triggers and scripts try to run at the same time). 
 
Mostly it was fine, I really tried to like the game, especially when it was still just "Caribbean!". I liked how you had so many drills and formations there, including fire by rank and volley fire. But later on they replaced the whole thing with map and the groups of troops randomly put around. I wish they returned the old system. Naval combat was a bit arcade with canister shot having the same range as cannonballs... Come on!
I am surprised they came forward and were so honest about their mistakes. May be wait a bit for Bannerlord and base the new game on its engine?  :lol: 
 
Ya, the Caribbean land battles were fine.  I have no idea why they changed them because they worked.  The B&G formations do not work and should have been reverted back.  You also can't hold f1 to get the placement banner.  Change these two things, and the game is fine.  It probably wouldn't take a lot of work either.  Just copy the formation codes from WFAS and voila.
 
I feel like they focused too much on 'paid mod' comments and tried too hard to cut all the ties with M&B. Still, most of their stuff worked, imo, there was nothing fundamentally wrong with the game (even if kalarhan wouldn't agree with me :razz:), just the fact that it was piled on top of already overburdened engine was a big problem.

Edit: By the way
3) One of the main issues — pre-written economy conditions. We think it wasn’t a good decision design-wise. In the upcoming update we’re going to add a randomly generated system for natural resources. In addition, the welfare if cities will also be randomly generated from the start. Thus, players will have a new economic reality with each new game.
Now just make it so the Brotherhood tavern party doesn't die out with the faction and I can die happily.
 
Personally I agree with all complains about the new land-combat system. I like the map feature, but I truly miss the old formations and random maps. Right now it gets old very quickly, there is no variety, no tactics. I wonder if it would be possible to get all that back through modding.
 
Articulo34 said:
r somebody with almost 0 knowledge of coding (learned some Javascript 10 years ago) how hard would it be to get it done?
Check the game PDF for modding,  as it uses a different form of modsys.  This could be a task for a couple hours or 50, it will depend on you and how fast you can learn.

Best place for questions would be their own forum.

For my mod I didn't use their modsys,  instead I exported the basic one (Warband style),  as it was faster and I was changing a lot anyway.

Good luck!
 
Good luck with the their forums! I asked for this exact thing there - 236 views, no answer... I even resorted to asking on the Steam forums and all I got was another sympathetic reply from a desperate soul like myself. I have no experience in mods either - the farthest I went was text modding and importing a NW musket into WFAS  :lol:
 
gogs2 said:
Is there anywhere published doc how to make mods?

basic doc comes with the game, as well the game source for modding. Check your game folder.

The Forge has guides, tutorials, etc for MBScript, which is similar enough to what they used for Caribbean! to serve as reference while learning the basics.
 
Back
Top Bottom