Pirate Twist · published
Two updates went out quietly last month. v1.4.1 and v1.4.2 were both live within days of each other and neither got a post, because at the time they read like housekeeping. Looking at them next to what landed this week, they do not. So all three come ashore here, and if your last voyage was v1.4.0 there is a fair amount below you have not seen.
I drew four cloud shapes by hand, cut them to silhouettes, and hung them over the whole sea. They are not scenery pinned to the corners of the map: they cover it, and they travel.
They drift on the live wind. The same wind line you steer by is the line they follow, and the harder it blows the faster they run. Watch the shadow cross your deck and you are watching the wind you are about to sail into.
They come in broad banks rather than tidy puffs, so the light on the water reads like weather instead of like polka dots. I lightened them twice after the first pass, because overlapping banks stacked into something closer to night.
A dead calm has no shadows at all. Flat light on flat water. If the sea has gone blank and bright, the wind has left you, and that is its own kind of warning.
A player screenshot showed three islands filling one screen. They were not overlapping, but two of them sat close enough to read as one landmass, which flattens a stretch of sea into a wall.
The scatter now guarantees open water between shores, so islands read as separate places and there is a real channel to take between them.
Reported plainly in General Discussions: "you've got your bow and stern mixed up when raking." Correct, and it had been that way for a long time. A shot that chases a ship from behind goes in through the stern; head-on is the bow. The game had the two swapped.
So the big payoff, the one raking is built around, was quietly paying out on head-on shots while the hard stern shot underpaid. Both are the right way round now, and the banner names the end you actually hit.
This cuts both ways, and it is a nerf as much as a fix. Enemy captains work your stern on purpose. When one gets behind you now, it hurts the way it was always supposed to.
Also from the board: "autozoom is annoying and non functional." I like the push-in, so I did not remove it, but it was pumping in and out through the whole duel and that is fair to call annoying. Its travel is halved and the fight now plays at one steady framing.
And it is yours to switch off: Settings, Gameplay, Combat Auto Zoom. Off pins combat at the wide frame for good.
You can ram a fire ship now, and you will pay for it in fire. Sometimes that trade is worth it. Usually it is not.
Pirates keep the rule of the road. Two ships closing on a collision course give way like sailors instead of shouldering through each other.
They also ram each other again, bow first, never a scrape along the side. Sit in the right place and let two of them settle it.
Enemy hulls are solid in every state now. They used to go soft depending on what the captain was thinking about, and you could sail clean through one. They also stay off dry land.
Two barrels ride the swell on the main menu: Send Feedback, which now points at this game's own Steam discussion board, and Wishlist.
Both fixes above came from one player writing them down on the discussion board, which is the whole reason that board is worth reading.
Keep it coming, here or in the Discord. ⚓