The "New Horizons" mod for the 2003 Pirates of the Caribbean game by Akella is a continuation of the famous Build mod series. Developed as Pirates of the Caribbean Build 14, "New Horizons" continued where Build 13 left off, adding more new content than ever before.
HMS Unicorn
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Description
New ship for Build 14 Beta 2
Too bad there isnt a way to customize your gun batteries. In Pirates of the Burning Sea, the Deliverance frigate (based off the unicorn) is my favorite ship. It is nice with the ability to have a heavy hitting gundeck while retaining the faster firing guns above. I believe it is 16 pounders on the gundeck and 8 pounders above.
The best we can do is represent different gun calibres by using different cannon models on the ships themselves, even though the ship only uses one calibre for all guns. You'll see some examples of that in Beta 2, particularly on the upgraded Corvette model, where the broadside guns are now different above and below deck, and the chasers have longer barrels and a different carriage.
I am definately looking forward to Beta 2, keep up the excellent work everyone!!! I can not believe how far you have brought this game from its beginnings, again, wonderful job everyone.
I still can't believe it either and I've been at it for the past... six years now? Seven?
In addition to the awesome new storyline for Beta 2, we've got something else in the works that people have been asking for ever since we introduced the Select Storyline interface. It is not yet compatible with my Beta 2 code, but I'll be working on that and if it works out, I expect people to be very happy about it. :-P
Will it ever be possible to add cannon recoil animations? I know this engine's capabilities are limited but you did manage to get the steam ship to work properly! Who knows what else is possible!!! :D
Wouldn't that be awesome! I seriously doubt it's possible based on our understanding of the game engine's mechanics, though. One problem would be for cannons with rope tethers modelled to them- you'd have to make the ropes move with the cannon, or it would look strange. However, that could be avoided if we used rope locators rather than modelled ones, but getting the cannons to move - when fired - would be either impossible or very difficult.
With as far as this game has come, I honestly believe that you could do it. Its only a matter of time before that breakthrough in my opinion. So what other ships are in possible development? Im really excited about the HMS Unicorn. :D
Well currently we have a few ships being ported from PotBS (with kind permission of their modellers), most notably the Trinity 2nd Rate. There are also a few small ships and frigates under construction, including a project of mine to upgrade the stock Frigate to look more like the real Russian ship it was based on.
We're also looking at making the HMS Providence from PotC 4, by using the HMS Surprise model.
Oh and one quick question while im thinking about it, whenever I use the HMS Surprise in the game, my frame rate drops like a cannonball, any idea why that might be by chance? This only happens with the Surprise too
That ship is extremely highly detailed, and as a consequence it uses a lot of polygons (over 20 times more than most stock ships!), so the game struggles to display it at a smooth framerate. Ships with similar amounts of polygons, such as the Victory and Constitution, can be just as bad occasionally.
However, since I'm working on the Surprise model currently, I'm trying to optimise it as much as possible before making a HMS Providence version, so I'm hoping that will improve the framerate slightly.
Cannon recoil? I don't see that one being possible. Admittedly, I have see things being done that I considered impossible before (mainly DirectSail, Save At Sea and Different Flags), but in this case I really think the game engine has us stuck; we have not discovered any way of having animation on ship models or to add/remove/move parts of ship models through code.