Pirates, a naval warfare game inspired by Sid Meier's Pirates
piwodlaiwo.github.ioThen I realized the space bar was shooting. You just can’t see the bullets because they are tiny black dots on a dark blue background.
It's too easy to win as the small boat. You just stay ahead of your opponent and then turn back and strafe periodically.
It would be much more challenging if you added wind and realistic sailing dynamics. If wind direction vs sail orientation mattered to your speed and boat characteristics weren't as simple as smaller = faster then I think it would be much better balanced and way more fun/challenging!
With both small and medium, you can just strafe back and forth in front of your opponent if you're faster than them. With medium and large, you can just circle them and absorb more punishment than them when you're larger than them.
Multi-player would solve the AI problem -- especially if it was more than 1v1 -- and then it would be more challenging.
But I would still request realistic wind and sailing dynamics. That strafing maneuver isn't really possible with real wind dynamics, because you slow down as you swing around and that allows the opponent to catch up to you and return fire. You could have a little arrow in a corner of the screen that shows the wind direction. You don't even have to make the sails movable, you could just have your speed be proportional to how orthongal your sails are to the wind direction in the simplest implementation.
It would add a whole new element to it that would make it much more challenging! :)
By contrast I found winning with the medium boat required the most skill, and lost the first few times I tried.
A sloop’s guns were generally so light the balls would bounce off the hull of a ship of the line. The sheer weight of firepower in return would shred a sloop to pieces. Add on to that the fact that heavier guns can achieve longer range when trained at the right angle, and a sloop can’t really get anywhere near a ship of the line and live to tell the tale.
(if you need this kind of motivation)
Reminds me very much of Overboard for the PS1 back in 1997.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overboard!_(1997_video_game)
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not to discourage your good work, but here's another project worth checking out if sid meier's pirates is your thing. https://tinywind.io/
tinywind.io just added a new game mode and has a PvP and Steam release in the works :)
Also, I've been trying to make a remix of SMP but with a princess theme for my daughters. Been experimenting with making other games to practice building out game mechanics and stumbled into making a game where you manage a Soviet Tractor Factory [0].
I'm interested to see if developing parts of Game A lead to Game B which in turn lead you back to interesting ideas for Game A (or maybe better Game C).
I have hundreds of turns on it now, at least.
But this really points to a deeper problem: in a game like this you have to pick one of two philosophies. Either the idea is to find the one algorithm that makes it work because the game is doing the same thing every time, or the game has an RNG that makes some games winnable and some not. The in between path is difficult to balance. You could for example dynamically adjust the difficulty such that if the player gets hit with a bad string of choices generated by the RNG then the difficulty is temporarily dialed down and when the player is having good luck the difficulty is raised. But I think for this kind of turn based idle game it is more about discovering the player algorithm that works and I see no algorithm that could work here.
I do however absolutely love the vibe of the game. I think with a little more attention it could be absolutely amazing.
Decided to experiment with this repo today, adding multi player, islands that can sink the ships (that the ships cant shoot through), and a few other things to the game. Anyone who wants to join, ill be in here in a multi player room that supports up to 10 people at a time: https://ndroo.github.io/pirates/?join=BP4Q
I also added controls for mobile users, because that was the first issue I ran into. Probably buggy, maybe not secure...but i had some fun with a friend a few moments ago and it wasn't awful.
Thanks for sharing this OP!
The best result I've gotten is 998 tractors after round 120.
If it's a faithful simulator of soviet economy, then you should not be able to win :)
I recently built https://navalstrike.app to scratch my naval warfare itch. Happy to share how I did lightweight p2p multiplayer with a super lightweight server handshake if you want :)
Pirate hunter in the world.
Two suggestions,
- The sailing is a bit too nimble, it's possible to turn naturally.
- It's currently possible to sail over/under the other ship.
maybe it becomes a monthly thing, maybe not.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirates_Constructible_Strategy...
It needs polish, content and more work but the kids like it.
On the Apple 2 it was 2 player only but a lot of fun back in the day. With an added ability to ram ships (pointy front into flat side one if you landed it before they sunk you).
Love this!
Edit: OK, spacebar shoots, but it's hard to see the cannons flying due to low contrast. And it shoots in the direction of the enemy.
Because if not, I’d love to check this out… but never again in my life will I subject myself to that mini-game!
The actually interesting part for me was the historical setting, exploring the Carribean geography, watching the world evolve, all the while trying to keep the ship crew under control :)
Also we still need a proper 2D remake (the 3D-ified game console version from 2004 didn't really age all that well and has too many QTE gimmicks).
A product of my laziness heh
at least put all the questions on the same screen, this "modern" way is ridiculous
[0] https://store.steampowered.com/app/3920/Sid_Meiers_Pirates/