The water got better
Before we talk about anything else... isn't that water just 10x better?
Another big update
We aren't stopping! This week you'll discover two new islands, delivery missions, Steam leaderboards, and lots of general improvements. Leaderboards are a great passive aggresive way to say to your friends, "I'm the best pirate ever". It's also a good way to show strangers on the internet that you aren't to be scuffled with.
On a side note check out these new sliders! No more toggling through volume levels.
While this update doesn't bring any new side quests it does bring a whole new dynamic quest system. Delivery missions are available from time to time and can be acquired by speaking to Generalstore owners. The pay is decent and a lot of the time the destination is near where you were heading anyways.
What about future updates?
Our focus is primarily on content right now but that doesn't mean we aren't looking to improve gameplay or the user interface. Next week we'll begin fleshing out brand new UI for the game (no more ugly paper panels).
New content & features
- New island: Niragua
- New island: Danier
- Added controls menu, you can now change the gamepad deadzone and interface detection mode
- New enemy ships: 7 Brigantines, 8 Naves, 7 Galleons
- Delivery missions are now available if you talk to Generalstore owners
- Implemented Steam leaderboards for the following: "Gold collected", "Gold spent", "Travel distance total"
Minor changes
- Water reflection quality drastically improved, most notably on the high setting
- Ship fires grow to normal size and holes fade in instead of just popping in to existence
- Implemented new sliders for future GUI
- Replaced volume buttons with sliders
- Reduced the speed that time passes on islands to an extremely low rate
- The arrow above the player in towns isn't shown in the water reflection anymore
- Repositioned the main menu and pause menu buttons
- When primary quest GUI is disabled the gold GUI now shifts to the right side of the screen
- New quests are no longer set as your primary quest automatically
Bug fixes and performance improvements
- Map data is now cached when the game is first launched instead of being parsed every time you open the map menu
- Island updates were being written to the wrong data structure, may have lead to serious issues for some users
- Resolved crash on the generalstore sell menu that would occur if you sold everything you could
- Gameplay/Video settings save when changed but Audio/Controls require you to press "Apply Changes"
- Island saving no longer is triggered when loading a saved game
- Reduced island save files to 1kb instead of 64kb which should speed up saving drastically
- Reduced memory usage by 64kb per island
- Pausing no longer flickers when it is first activated
- Removed legacy synchronous saving from new game creation
- Pressing "B" on the controller exits the quest GUI menu now
- Lost Lovers side quest no longer lets you interact with the final trigger twice (can't turn it in more than once)
- Player could still use ship battle GUI when prompted for a response to an action
- Player gold is added properly in random events
- Quest logic loop bug fixed
Balance changes
- Grapeshot has a 75% (used to be 50%) chance to kill a crew member
- Changed the travel speed of every ship to be a bit faster (Example, Schooner used to be 125%, now it's 130%)
As always... stay salty sea dogs!
Team Lead / Lead programmer
Sebastian Nigro (Seabass)
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Artist / Visual design
Daniel Marques (Thirteen)
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Audio / Web / Programmer
Chris Anselmo (Topher)
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