Ahoy mateys!
It's been a while since I've posted any news here, so I thought it was time to share one of my current projects with you.
Most of us at PA! believe that the stock POTC was fairly good, but it left a lot to be desired. One of the most glaring issues the game had was the poor quality of some of its ship models. While they worked well within the game's atmosphere and gave it some character, they just weren't realistic in many ways at all. In fact, some of the ships look like they were just made up based on loose historical knowledge.
However, we recently discovered that one ship was not so randomly generated as we thought. As it happens, the stock frigate appears to have been based on a real 18th century frigate of the Russian Navy! None of us saw that one coming, and if you don't believe me, check out these images here to see the striking resemblance yourself.
Now, as admirable the efforts of Akella's modellers may be, unfortunately their interpretation of this elegant vessel was not very accurate. The texture was very close, but the model itself just didn't do the real ship justice. Still, I was inspired by the mere fact that at least one of the stock ships had a real-world counterpart, and wished I could so something to improve the model.
It doesn't stop there, though. The same site linked to above provides the plans used to make the wooden model featured in the photos. That, plus the photos, is more than enough to rebuild the frigate to a much higher standard. So, having tampered with some of the game's models for some time (and more recently upgraded the stock 'Corvette' model), I decided it was time for me to take on a much more demanding project, and began work on this immense upgrade for the stock frigate.
UPDATE: The model is now finished and included in Build 14 Beta 2.3! See below for a comparison of the new model with the original frigate:
