victorian Clambake
Small update that should have been there for a while now.
One time tutorial windows have been added for things that some people have missed. This should help make people better shoppers, liars dice players, naval combatants, and solve all the problems in the world.
The last update frustratingly did not fix the one bug in the game, I changed a line of code that will either cause more crashes, fix the bug forever, or do absolutely nothing.
Habits must be hard to break because here we are, one week after weekly updates ended and i'm pushing an update. This should hopefully resolve the game crashing bug a few of you have encountered.
The short version: Rarely some data would fail to be retrieved or decoded from one of the online features and it would cause a crash.
The long version: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!
Apart from that you can also catch clams in your net near reefs and a small bug where people would only encounter one type of ship was resolved.
Glad to see so many new sailors! The bottle messages have been swarming the ocean and I'll need to work on a new way of collecting bottles to show players, until then- you'll probably see bottles only near the start.
It's finally here! You can finally ram any ship in the game at full speed with the Raft! You can also ram using any of the other ships but I know what you real hardcore players were waiting for- and yes, it probably will sink your Raft if you attempt it. Simply click "Full Sail" while in combat to initiate the ram, and if you get cold feet hit "Half Sail" to pull back. The acceleration speed of your ship is determined by that ships maximum speed and the damage is determined by the size of your ship... and theirs.
I've had a few reports of a rare bug that crashses the game when it fails to retrieve online data, I've tried to ad an extra safety net but can't be positive it will work since I can't recreate the bug myself. If anyone encounters this bug please paste your crash log on the forum or email it to "ContactClambake@gmail.com"
Christmas is close and the seasonal easter eggs are in so don't forget to down a pint of dice at the pub and listen to the holiday banter after the 23rd.
YO HO HO!
Yet another miracle of pixel art and code wizardry has been performed and in about a days time I've been able to bring you another update!
Three new ship variants have been added as random encounters for your pleasure and torture! The Cutter: a small and quick vessel. The Schooner: a large and fast ship with few cannons... and The War Galleon: a massive ship with unreasonable hull integrity and enough cannons to sink anything in a few seconds- to give players a sense of accomplishment. Trying to bring it down with a frigate has been the most fun I've had while playing yet. I can't wait to improve on the combat even more.
Another update to make use of those new ship types, changes the "Avoid" button to "Flee" in those awkward situations where your ship wore an English flag to a Spanish party. The final change lowered the spawn rate of crates... also I think some more particle effects got added to the game somewhere.
Enjoy your new enemies! :D
It's not a big update but I found the time to implement the most interesting thing you can give someone; An unopened box.
While sailing you'll have the chance to encounter a box that you have the choice to open. Inside may be an item you've already seen in the game or it may be the new "Medicine" I added which will improve the health of your crew! Unfortunately medicine in the 1700's didn't exactly cure people...
On another note, last week I was interviewed by Gamelyst about The Caribbean Sail and independent development! Here's a link to the article: Bam
On another other note, IndieDB is holding the voting period for the top 100 indie games of the year! If you'd like to show your support then hop on over and give us a vote: Wha-Bam
Now, you may be asking yourself "What happened in V1.5.4?" Nothing and don't worry about it.
As the holiday season approaches and the most unavoidable enemy (our families) take away our most precious and valuable asset (our time) the content updates are going to slow down, don't be too surprised if I can't push one next week.
As for this week, I'm attempting to bring challenge back to the Atlantic by stat balancing. The career and ship stats have been wildly unbalanced since the first week I began working on the game. The entire list is too long and boring for a patch log and probably won't be the final balance patch, so climb aboard a ship and fire some feedback at me.
While not a content patch, this will significantly impact the way you play and for some- make it far more enjoyable.
Let's get straight to the updates.
The default names auto clear while your unique names can be changed without being completely rewritten. French and Spanish ship's captains are less shy and will talk to you now. When apples spoil they are no longer thrown overboard but are added to your inventory instead so you can force your crew to eat them anyway! The sloop's hull integrity was debuffed to balance the small hitbox that made it almost impossible for enemies to hit. A badge link to the Victorian Clambake twitter account (@Tophat_Scallop) was added to the main menu- plugo plugo.
The biggest update this week is gamepad support. The game wasn't designed to be controlled by a gamepad but there have been a few requests and even I'd like to play it from the couch. I've rewritten as much of the button code as I could do without rebuilding the entire game (No joke). The second hardest part was trying to fit a virtual keyboard in for writing crew names and bottle messages. Xbox controllers work and your PS4 controller will probably work.
So here's how it works: Use the analog sticks to move the cursor and the right shoulder buttons or "A" as a left click on any screen. The d-pad can be used for swapping characters and ships on the start menu, and portion control while sailing. The d-pad can also be used in battle for aiming the cannons and "B" can be used for firing them. You can pause the game any time during play with the "Start" button. The virtual keyboard isn't great but it can get the job done, some helpful alternative keys for typing are "Y" for space, "X" for delete, and the left analog button or left trigger for capitalization.
I know it isn't great but I just didn't consider controller support until far too late- I won't be making that mistake again on my future games. Thank you for the support and I hope you enjoy the updates as development continues!
I've been building a lot of content for the expansions in the background while working on these updates and soon the time will come when weekly updates stop and I begin working on the "Route Planning" expansion. I'll share more details soon!
The first i'll let you all decide on keeping: I changed the Hunger status to read "Hunger 30/30" from "Hunger 30" to clarify what your maximum hunger is.
Making use of those new flags? Fantastic! Now you can go and fool the new Spanish ships I added to the game or just sink them because of the war and all that... New artwork has been added for the Captains cabin and you can now play Liars Dice with English Captains! Tired of all the leaking? Purchase a bucket of Pitch and Tar from the Shop for just four easy payments £9.99! Fling it against the wall to repair a few points of damage- sorta like I do with these updates! The pause key will also pause your adventure now, and dice have a simple animation when lost to better display when a round is lost/won, and you guessed it- MORE PARTICLE EFFECTS!
The feedback has been great and I've paid close attention to all your ideas and requests! I started a forum thread where I can reply to them all in the community hub. On to the updates!
Welcome aboard sailor!
Since the sale and update last week, I've seen an Ocean of new messages in bottles. They always make me laugh when play testing so I've decided to start posting my favorites to the Victorian Clambake twitter: @Tophat_Scallop
Another week another update!
Tired of being a loyal Englishman? No more must you serve the Queen! After raiding a ship you can now take their flag and fly it proudly! Use the new Spanish, French, Danish, Dutch, and Pirate flags to show your true colors or just trick the enemy into letting you board. The way ship encounters work has been changed so you can use your spyglass (Now given to you from start) to determine the approaching ship's banner and then raise your own. Use this to board the French ships or just gain first strike in battle. Pirates still don't care who you are and will attack anyway. Also, more particle effects.
Being such a big and complicated update accounting for so many different combinations of ship types and flags, I wasn't able to ad Spanish, Dutch, or Danish ships yet- but i'm working on it!
There have been quite a few bug fixes this week too. The apples are no longer so terrible they somehow make scurvy occur sooner. You can't surrender your sinking ship. You can catch the fish from the frenzy event in the net. A few other small bugs which I brushed under the rug and hopefully nobody will trip over... I MEAN FIXED! Yeah I definitely fixed them.
-Side note, I'm using Google Translate to have the dialogue of ship captains be in the appropriate language, I'm well aware the translations may be inaccurate so if someone has a correction then call it out in the forums for me. Thank you!
Happy Halloween!
With new Halloween easter eggs and all kinds of dark whimsy, now is the perfect time to play The Caribbean Sail and die from losing your bowels- whether that's from the spooks and scares, or just dysentery again.
- Fixed a few rare crashes and changed the net strength to be more balanced, also set default rations to adequate and most importantly - More particle effects.