Updates - Victorian Clambake

Steampunk Brand X - A post mortem of my first game.

Evan Massie — Tue, 14 Mar 2023 21:14:55 +0000

My canceled first intended commercial title of three years development time is now available to the Clambake Crew on Ko-Fi

- This "game" is a mess -

Steampunk Brand X (A working title that never got replaced though many other names were pitched) is an example of what happens when a solo developer with no prior development experience spends three years working on a game without setting a clear scope, beginning with fundamentals, or adequately playtesting and taking feedback. It was baby's first magnum opus.

Ego Overcame Reason.

Nothing was finished properly before the next idea became the primary focus of development.

- The framerate wasn't sorted out.

- The HUD was built before the screen resolution or art style were clearly defined.

- Drag and drop was mixed with programming.

- There's inconsistencies galore to the art-style.

- The controls are a catastrophe

- Everything "feels" off, sluggish, delayed, or inconsistent

- Animations rarely follow any principles of good animation

- There's no beginning, middle, end, introduction, or tutorial

- So what got this started? -

Sunless Sea coming to Steam Greenlight in 2014. It was a beautiful narrative game about sailing a fictional underground ocean recently posted to Steam Greenlight, the only problem to me was that I didn't enjoy reading. I wanted engaging gameplay. I wanted the world brought to life with emergent gameplay instead of multiple-choice narratives. I wanted Dishonored in the world of Sunless Sea but I didn't know how to even begin making a 3D game so I went with 2D and drew inspiration from games like Thief, Guns of Icarus, Sid Meiers Pirates, Skyrim, Minecraft, and various platformers.

I wanted to follow Failbetter's lead to Steam Greenlight and release my own work. I wanted to run a financially viable game development business rather than take a traditional career path.

Steampunk Brand X was going to be a rags-to-riches air piracy game about a gentleman saddled with his fathers debt given 30 days to pay it off by any means necessary. It was going to be an open world RPG with real-time time mechanics that had multiple characters following their own paths with their own goals that would change the world so that you felt like a single person in a world that's already alive. You could become a pirate and take down an empire or side with an empire and wipe out the pirates, both sides would have strong and well written characters with moral gray area rather than "Good vs bad" and you were just a pawn trying to survive in a world bigger than you.

There would be sidequests, mansions to loot using stealth mechanics, rich businessmen to work for by doing grunt work, airships to plunder in steampunk sky combat, resource trading, port takeovers, a stock market, and a newspaper that reported daily on the major events (Which may even feature your own actions if they were impactful enough!)

There was complex lore, faction politics, competing philosophies, sword combat, diving, fishing, nightmares, assassins, thieves, pirates, soldiers, moon phases, tides, steam pipes with tensity mechanics, boarding, crew management, ballroom dancing, romance, vehicle sections, emergent gameplay, an aquarium to keep pets, ship upgrades, home decorating- it was all too much.

It felt like I had infinite time and because I felt capable of doing anything, it only made sense to say "YES!" to every idea that crossed my mind and if anything didn't work I could just "iron-it-out" later, change it, or remove it.

No harm done, right?

Wrong.

Ideas are not valuable without excellent execution.

I had created a time sucking toybox without defining development milestones and then expected that an entirely finished product would just instantly gain huge levels of fame and acclaim without doing any marketing whatsoever. My expectations were completely at odds with reality.

- So what happened? -

After approximately three years of development work I knew I needed to finally address core mechanics like screen formatting and save systems. So I started a new absolutely tiny game that would be done in two weeks; The Caribbean Sail.

Fast forward two months and The Caribbean Sail took over as my main project, the community that enjoyed the game supported it and me. I used the profits to host the website, upgrade my computer, buy my first car, and save for everything I would need to expand Victorian Clambake later on.

There was a lot of conversation over the years with my friends about what would happen to Steampunk Brand X but with experience comes perspective. Every time I looked back at Brand X the more flawed it became in my eyes until I couldn't stand it and completely dropped it in 2019.

There's no longer any desire in me to pick up development but I wanted to share my story as a warning and showcase a large portion of what eventually lead to my professional career as a developer... even though it's rough story to tell.

- Conclusion -

It may seem like I'm treating a clearly unfinished project unfairly but it would have never been finished due to the lack of development strategy. There was no solid development cycle. There was no minimum viable product. There was no target audience beyond "Steampunks" and my own friends.

Could it be salvaged? Maybe. If playing it didn't churn my stomach, if it wasn't so utterly bogged down with poor decisions and low quality work, if I started from scratch only taking a few good ideas and cut out heaps of ancillary features.

As it stands, it's not a fun game made well nor is it emotionally provacative.

Looking back now? The result was a disasterpiece but I don't allow myself to see it all as a waste of time. I learned nearly every rookie indie lesson the hard way from this endeavor and the dedication to this project taught me how focus and effort result in high quality results.

I've also learned the importance of downscaling and focusing on small well made experiences rather than sprawling mountains of garbage.

I hope you learned something from my mistakes and if you do try to play the game, I hope you enjoy it.

The Caribbean Sail V1.7.1.1

Evan Massie — Thu, 03 Sep 2020 23:14:28 +0000

Ahoy there lads!

My lovely game has been cursed with inconsistent framerate issues which randomly pop by and I think that I have finally fixed the issue once and for all- and you don’t even have to buy a better toaster to play on! I changed the internal settings to alternate the synchronization method which has made things significantly more reliable.

There was another bug from the depths of hell sent to rain torment on my peace of mind which caused crew names to duplicate inexplicably. After months of ceaseless searching I've decided to just say "The outcome of exerting the time and energy to see this bug fixed does not outweigh the consequences of not seeing this bug fixed." so now it's a feature! In the rare event that this bug attacks your precious save file, you'll encounter the new event of finding a stowaway aboard!

There have also been some exciting things happening on the Discord channel, climb aboard and say "Ahoy!" if you're curious!

https://discord.gg/clambake

Three announcements are over the next wave so stay high and dry for a few more days!
- Your Captain, Evan

The Caribbean Sail V1.7

Evan Massie — Tue, 16 Jun 2020 21:45:46 +0000

Fantasy Toggle - Full Release Changelog

+ Fantasy Mode Toggle added
+ Profile mode indicators added
+ Discord shortcut added to main menu
+ Difficulty choice added
+ Landlubber difficulty added
+ Crew recruitment added to Landlubber difficulty
+ Helpful tips guide updated
+ Names automatically carry over after death
+ Game Over screen added
+ 2890 user written bottle messages moderated and manually implemented
+ Crew soul system added
+ Seven new professions added
+ Nine very unique ships added
+ Steamship type added
+ Boiler and fueling mechanics added
+ New introduction borders added
+ New fantasy mode storyline added
+ Three new fantasy side storylines added
+ New opportunities added
+ Opportunities won’t repeat themselves if declined except for careening
+ Bribe opportunity price randomized
+ Treasure hunting added
+ Tarot reading added
+ Fate added
+ Luck added
+ Curses added
+ Boomacle barnacle added
+ Ammunition system added
+ Grapeshot ammo type added
+ Chainshot ammo type added
+ Smokepot ammo type added
+ Firework ammo type added
+ Laser ammo type added
+ “Massie’s Melody” shanty added
+ “The Trooper and the Maid” shanty added
+ “Bound for South Australia” shanty added
+ “Eddystone Light" shanty added
+ “Whiskey in the Jar” shanty added
+ “Where am I to go?” shanty added
+ “Blow ye winds” shanty added
+ Treasure map item added
+ Plank item added
+ Leeches item added
+ Ship’s cat item added
+ Wind salts item added
+ Whale vomit item added
+ Viricium item added
+ Magical teapot item added
+ Iron box item added
+ Puzzle box item added
+ Logbook item added
+ Astrolabe item added
+ Conch item added
+ Youth water item added
+ Devil’s pipes item added
+ Eyeless idol item added
+ Making crew walk the plank option added
+ Crew revival is now possible
+ Magical defense shield power added
+ Fog weather type added
+ Starlight weather type added
+ Abyssal weather type added
+ Ship encounter information screen adjusted
+ Unique flee messages for new ship types added
+ Combat firing arc can now be adjusted using the mouse wheel
+ Airship enemy type added
+ New lucky and unlucky events
+ Visible fish combo meter added to fantasy mode
+ Flying fish added
+ Crystal fish added
+ Kraken added
+ Physics enabled kraken and tentacles added
+ Two unique boss fight songs added
+ Foggy fishing weather added
+ Megalodon enemy added
+ Meat reward physics object added
+ Four unique new ports added
+ Three new port songs added
+ New conversationalists added in new and old ports
+ Skill tree now always accessible by pressing the “P” key
+ Reef crossing speed is now based on the “Navigation” perk
+ Mermaid encounter added
+ Floating chest encounter added
+ Albatross encounter added
+ Flying Dutchman encounter added
+ Walrus event added
+ Mutiny artwork updated
+ The eighth sea added
+ [Mystery] events added
+ [Mystery] system added
+ [Mystery] destination added
+ [Mystery] hint added
+ Eleven new achievements added
+ More particle effects added absolutely everywhere I could fit them

- Countless bugs removed
- Online bottle message functionality removed [AND THE GAME CRASHING BUG CAUSED BY IT]
- Whaling difficulty reduced
- Previous achievement triggers adjusted

[Note] This log was written by memory and looking at checklists while playtesting.
Many small changes were not mentioned and some additions may not be in the log.

The Caribbean Sail V1.6.9

Evan Massie — Mon, 15 Apr 2019 22:21:33 +0000

Another patch to delay obsolescence.
I finally added the Discord rich presence.
Three achievements are new.
Did some bug fixing too.
Enjoy the new features with much effervescence!

The Caribbean Sail V1.6.8

Evan Massie — Fri, 29 Mar 2019 21:45:54 +0000

Here we are lads! These are the final touches before I begin work on the Fantasy Toggle expansion.

Normally I spice up the patch notes with humor or poetry but if I tried to do that with this update log, it would be a full novel. I wasn't expecting this patch to be the size of a bloated whale and take an Atlantic crossing's worth of time to complete.

These are the new features!
+ New voyage preparation screen
+ Tutorial reset button
+ Helpful starters guide with tips
+ Pub design overhaul
+ Pub shop to buy rum
+ Rum barrel item to improve morale
+ Drunken screen and music distortion effects
+ Nation relation
+ Button in pub to view your relations
+ Very good or very poor relations determine whether or not you'll be welcomed or attacked when approaching ships
+ Worst possible relations with the pirates will cause pirate ships with red flags to spawn
+ Red flag item
+ Opportunity button in pub
+ Three opportunities (for now) and a lot of "none available" fluff text
+ Barnacles
++ Wait barnacles?
+++ A WAY TO SCRAPE OFF BARNACLES THAT AREN'T ON YOUR SHIP!
+ Pray button for the Missionary
+ Compass item to avoid storms
+ Tool prompts while sailing for the sextant and compass
+ Ability to sell items in port from inventory tab
+ Unique captain sprites for each faction
+ Staying anchored while sailing eventually cures seasickness
+ Whaling is slightly easier and the dead whale spawn rate is lower
+ An immaculate flute song available on only one day of the year
+ Right clicking "FIRE" or pressing "B" in combat will fire all loaded cannons
+ Rain puts out fires started by greased shot
+ Drowsy Maggie shanty available in port. It might be my new favorite
+ Letter of marque description changed to clarify its purpose
+ Bug fixes. Many bug fixes.
+ Particle effects
+ Particle bubbles
+ Particle bubble popping
+ Popped bubble particle effects
+ Probably more that I can't even remember

Be on the lookout for bugs as you enjoy the new content and let me know if you encounter anything I need to make a silent V1.6.9 patch to resolve before I back everything up and begin creating Fantasy Toggle.

What's next?
I'm going to (try to) bring TCS to Discord! It's an opportunity to spread the piratey gospel even further. We'll need a verified server which means building from scratch. If you want to know the deepest community lore then grab a potato and climb aboard the official Victorian Clambake Discord server.

As always, thank you for the support!
- Your Captain, Evan

Fantasy Toggle - Development Map

Evan Massie — Wed, 27 Feb 2019 21:39:04 +0000

Freedom and fortune are fine for a time, but the devil awaits in the depths of the unknown.

This is the seamap for Fantasy Toggle

I've held back the most creative ideas in favor of maintaining an accurate 1700's sailing experience. That's about to change.

Fantasy Toggle is the final major content expansion to The Caribbean Sail. It will be mysterious, dangerous, fantastic, free, and entirely optional. It will bring that sense of wonder and possibility from nautical mythology to life in the game.

Here's the plan: A toggle will be presented to enable fantasy mode when you select an empty save slot. This will allow people who prefer the historically grounded setting to continue playing without any intrusions from the mythical.

Disclaimer: Like the legends of old, some features may change.

The Charted Features

Though much is planned, many of the events and encounters would be better experienced than explained. Where's the mystery when you already know what you'll find? Instead, here's an overview of the types of content I'll be creating.

New Ports
At least three new map locations that you'll have to discover before being able to set course for them.

Luck
It won't have much impact on the likelihood your crew will become sick and die, but many of the new features had to depend on something. It will reflect your relation with the sea itself and lead to some "interesting" scenarios.

Treasure Hunting
Why trust banks when the ground is a perfectly safe place to keep money? I bury every penny I make from this game behind my house and it hasn't been stolen yet. It is really hard to find a buried penny though...

Unlockables
There will be new professions and ships to unlock. You probably expected that, but what you didn't expect was the power of pistons! You'll be able to acquire a Steamship that isn't dependent on the wind... but you will have to pay for fuel.

Events
As for the new encounters; You'll find sea monsters, ghost pirates, curses, events based off traditional nautical mythology and a few of my own!

Story Structure
Though the current set year of the world will not change, it will be instantly apparent that things are different. Unlike the current main story, many opportunities will present themselves and allow you to decide your own investment in them.

More Shanties
Can you really ever have enough musical alternatives? I won't be satisfied until every inventory slot contains a shanty.

Particle Effects
Do you love particle effects? By George, I can't get enough of them. There will be new particle effects and they will be glorious.

Final Notes
I'm going to push one more patch before I dedicate to working on Fantasy Toggle. As with Route Planning, this will complicate the file too much to push in multiple patches so it all has to be completed as one massive update.

I'd like to complete Fantasy Toggle in four months or less but it's impossible to know how long something will take when you're a solo developer.

It’s been two years since I began work on this game. I promised Fantasy content and I intend to deliver. Thank you for following along!

The Caribbean Sail V1.6.7

Evan Massie — Thu, 14 Feb 2019 00:42:41 +0000

Sometimes you get hooked on a passion project and can't stop yourself

You know that whale you always see? Yeah, that one. You can finally catch him.

Next time you see the whale flaunting his fluke and spewing his spume "Go Fishing" and you'll spot that beautiful blowhole bobbing in the bay.

After attaching your harpoon to him, a new mini-game will trigger. All you have to do is click when the white line is over the red line. If you mess up too many times you'll never see him or your precious harpoon again.

I intended to work on other things this week but once I got started I simply couldn't quit. Making a (comparatively) huge new animated asset, new song, and new mini-game, took quite awhile. Whaling has been requested frequently enough to hopefully make the effort worthwhile.

Apart from whaling, a game crashing bug was fixed... and oh so very many new glorious particle effects.

The Caribbean Sail V1.6.6

Evan Massie — Wed, 06 Feb 2019 01:17:59 +0000

I took off my eye patch and my full attention is back on development.

I've been doing some much needed cleanup within the assets in preparation for work on the expansion. You'd never believe how many cobweb.png and dust.gml files I had to clean off after spending a few months out of the deep resource code...

Combat has been re-balanced again. I had to plead with each nation to agree on tracking damage down to the decimal so upgrades would scale properly. They agreed on one condition; their ships begin with slightly more health.

A quiet death on land in a warm bed with full belly was never meant for a true sailor! If you're not hungry, you're not dying while resting anymore. Now get back on the Ocean- there are sharks that need to eat!

Some of you have noticed that "Me PiRaTeY gRaMmARGH" isn't quite what it should be. With the help of one Sam Willett, nearly all of the text has now been proofread and corrected. Buy him a round if you ever meet him!

To help guide new players, I made the location halo for Nassau yellow on the map until you make port there once.

The Jolly Riot promo icon was changed to a pair of cutlasses.

A few bugs nobody found were thrown overboard and replaced with particle effects.

Next week will be a feature update!

The Caribbean Sail V1.6.5

Evan Massie — Tue, 08 Jan 2019 22:53:02 +0000

Two years ago to this day, the first version of The Caribbean Sail was made.

This patch is like the first version of the game. Though not feature rich, it’s still important.
You know what that means...

You're on the edge of your seat,
to see what's new and complete;
Some exploits were removed,
and the grammar improved.
Click the new JR cause it's sweet!

The Caribbean Sail V1.6.4

Evan Massie — Mon, 12 Nov 2018 23:03:42 +0000

As we near the end of the year, I'm beginning to create a list of the most important and requested features and implement them before I start working on the Fantasy Toggle expansion.

If you thought naming your crew "The Food Supply" or "Nobody important" was funny, you're going to love naming your ship things like "The Dingy Dinghy" or "Your Spirits" or anything else you can think of!

Speaking of names, were your crew unfortunate enough to have the same name? They'll now be assigned some roman numerals to differentiate each other. This uncoincidentally also fixes the duplicate name invincibility bug.

A common request for keyboard shortcuts has been met. On the sailing screen you can press "F" to fish or "I" to quickly access the inventory or "enter" to leave the logbook. There are some more keyboard commands for port and sailing but the game still isn't fully keyboard navigable.

Finally, Iceland is now cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey.

Make sure to wear your oilskins as winter approaches!

The Caribbean Sail V1.6.3

Evan Massie — Thu, 11 Oct 2018 22:44:39 +0000

It's certainly been awhile since the last content patch but we're back on course.

The world no longer contains eleven identical pubs around the world because some interior decoraters came in and spruced up all the taverns.

Your logbook journal is also more than a single page to write on, now it's 99 pages to write on! You can keep record of your adventure, manually track your quests, create a lot of profane ASCII artwork or whatever else your heart desires.

I know this isn't a huge content update but my attention is divided. There are plenty of suggestions and requests that I'll go through and prioritize but the final feature to complete the original Route Planning checklist is varying the Liars Dice AI around the world.

After those patches I'll hopefully begin work on the free Fantasy Toggle expansion!

The Caribbean Sail V1.6.2

Evan Massie — Mon, 16 Jul 2018 20:53:14 +0000

The pirates got their ship together- their Junk ship that is. You'll now encounter Junk ships of the piratical variety near Shanghai. Corsairs have become more common in the Indian Ocean but getting back to the patch notes; there's a higher chance you'll find Corsair ships while sailing around Cape Town or Calicut because they all want a piece of that booty pirate treasure.

Oh, and about those ships- they now all scale HP a little with your cannon upgrades to make the upgrades less like tactical airstrikes and more like cannonballs again. All of the boss ships also saw some tweaking, but they're recovering quickly.

Finally, apart from all the bugs that keep boarding my game despite being thrown overboard every couple weeks having been thrown overboard again; there's a new sound effect that plays when something is out of your price range- which won't help the deaf very much but they usually have more money since they don't blow it all on shanties.

Mind a short break in the updates as I try to catch up on sleep, it's been nearly two years since I've taken some time to rest.

I'll be up to my nautical shenanigans again soon enough.

The Caribbean Sail V1.6.1

Evan Massie — Tue, 26 Jun 2018 01:45:47 +0000

As usual, if my update isn't a literary masterpiece then it must be a limerick.

This update is really quite small,
but it's important so I couldn't stall.
Narwhal art for amusement,
and a frame rate improvement.
You won't notice much change at all.

The Route Planning expansion: Complete

Evan Massie — Sun, 10 Jun 2018 00:31:51 +0000

The massive Route Planning expansion is finally complete and has been added for FREE

After four months of blood, sweat, soylent, and sleep deprived tears; I've completed the first free expansion for The Caribbean Sail.

Feature Log

In all that time I was able to add more particle effects! ...and nine new locations, seven new player ships, four new professions, nine new achievements, twenty two new shanties*, two emergent storylines, new items, new fishes, new weather effects, new enemy types, new events, ship upgrades, a skill tree, profiles, preaching, resting, careening, barnacles, narwhals, the drydock, the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker**, mexican standoff style mutinies- AND THE QUEEN HERSELF!!!

* See the Shanty Off.
** The candlestick maker died of dysentery.

Locations Overview

The world is now open for exploration. Each new location features a unique song, new artwork, trade values, locals to converse with, and surprises along the voyage to them! Travel the globe and visit them all!

London, Britain
Ponta Delgada, Azores
Reykjavik, Iceland
Lisbon, Portugal
Las Palmas, Gran Canaria
Cape Town, South Africa
Long Island, New York
Belém, South America
Kozhikode, India
Shanghai, China
Nassau, Bahamas

Emergent Storylines

Survive a voyage to Nassau and become a Pirate that does as he pleases or become a Privateer for the Royal Navy and receive a letter of marque to hunt those filthy pirate scallywags. Both offer the freedom to go where you want and do as you please but give larger overall goals to work towards that reward you!

Conclusion

Nautical Oregon Trail free roam- what was I thinking? I still don't entirely know, but I hope you enjoy it as much as I love sharing the rich history, fantasy, and culture of all things nautical. There's so much new content that you'll just have to dive in to find it all. Happy Voyages!

- Captain and Developer, Evan

The Caribbean Sail V1.5.8.5

Evan Massie — Tue, 30 Jan 2018 21:38:20 +0000

This is it lads!

These are the final touches and last patch until the major Route Planning expansion is complete.

+ Goods aboard ships now have a small delta of randomness in pricing
+ The British Grenadiers shanty got a bass drop
+ A new crew event that can end in flogging
+ More Particle Effects

- One potential bug

There was a bit more code cleanup but this log is already dry and boring enough. My attention is now on a slew of needed changes to the game structure that will make the new features possible. Thanks be to every one of you kind lads that alert me to bugs, suggest improvements, and populate the Atlantic with toxins- I mean, messages in bottles.

- Your Captain, Evan

V1.5.8.4

Evan Massie — Wed, 24 Jan 2018 01:55:26 +0000

Sing a tow, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, for the British Grenadiers. Enjoy the new "Shanty" available in the one and only London Harbor Shop.

Where's V1.5.8.3 I hear you ask? I flogged it to death after it failed to fix a bug. What about the bug? I flogged it to death also- actually, I've been doing a lot of flogging on account of the new discipline system added to the game. There's only one event that makes use of it now but later crew relations and discipline will be integral to each voyage.

The captains have decided that they would make a better profit selling items at sea than only in ports, so two items and a shanty will always be available aboard ships now!

Fish are a bit more lively after being caught in the net, another achievement was added, the online bug is finally fixed (I'm 80% sure this time) and there are more particle effects!

If all has gone according to plan then this will be the last update to the game before Route Planning. I'll share the full details early February.

V1.5.8.2

Evan Massie — Thu, 11 Jan 2018 01:26:17 +0000

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.

The Caribbean Sail V1.5.8.1

Evan Massie — Mon, 08 Jan 2018 03:44:53 +0000

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.

The Caribbean Sail V1.5.8

Evan Massie — Wed, 20 Dec 2017 01:08:00 +0000

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!

The Caribbean Sail V1.5.7

Evan Massie — Wed, 13 Dec 2017 01:15:22 +0000

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