Rise of Piracy: Development Update - January 2025

Jan 20, 2025

This update is the first of its kind, being almost entirely driven by player feedback and test results.

Over the past 2 months, over 150 issues have been reported and most of them have been fixed, as well as a lot of QOL improvements & some system rework.

Rise of Piracy

There has also been a large amount of Audio work done, with new layered audio implemented & some parts of the game brought to completion in that regard.

There has been some more UI improvements and artwork completed & included in the game. There are only a few placeholders left to replace artwork wise.

Main Items

A full list of the issues are available on the discord, but here are a few of the main issues listed off.

  • Multiple issues from the settings screen have been fixed up.
  • Multiple awkward tutorial paths that caused softlocks have been fixed.
  • Campaign bugs regarding time controls, and pathing.
  • Wind direction indication and effects have been fixed for Choosing approach vector stage.
  • Fixed issues where units would die if not placed correctly when island created.
  • Added a few new decal items for capital islands.
  • Cleaned up LOD issues and added LODS to some items that needed it.
  • Fixed up cannon LOD and details for in-hull cannons.
  • Redone the Target Line system.
  • Fixed issues with Movement Lines and Target Lines when invalid orders given.
  • Fixed issues with Loading screen and blurbs.
  • Fixed a tonne of typos.
  • Added some fixes around the target lines and bombardment positions.
  • Shortened delay between tutorial steps and reordered a bunch of informational steps.
  • Added layered audio system and global handlers.
  • Redone the ordering for Audio for player states.
  • Fixed major issue regarding runtime navigation generation.
  • Fixed major issues regarding one of the capitals and pathfinding for characters and ships.
  • Redone the SFX for end screens.
  • Redone the Trait Banners.
  • Added SoftDeletion for characters.
  • Redone some of the Custom Flag workflow.
  • Fixed issues around pause/unpause logic messing with time freezing in RTS mode.
  • Fixed some Tutorial screen flows.
  • Fixed some issues regarding artwork Sprites.
  • Added ability to load custom flags into the game.
  • Fixed issues around the cursor lock state when alt-tab used excessivly in Windowed
  • Fullscreen mode.
  • Replaced most instances of GetClosestEntity with a new more performant version.
  • New Game screen redone.
  • Internal Build Settings screen was not great so added some tooling around that.
  • Fixed up some Main Menu flow issues.
  • Fixed some minor Build errors that may have been causing some unexpected knock on effects.

Rise of Piracy

Upcoming

I intend to iterate on the Audio work and bring the campaign map some much needed attention. There will also be more testing and bug fixes. We have already started the UI iterations for some of the major pieces left, including the Campaign screen, Shipyard and some finishing off for the Drydock and Tavern screens.

Thank you

A huge shoutout to the testers. This patch has been great to work on as the issues reported were quite difficult to find, but alot of very handy ones to fix. Alot of back and forth was required on some of the more major issues and I very much appreciate all the extra effort put in.

I feel like the game is in a nice playable state currently and with a bit more polish and testing, we'll be in great shape.

Thanks everyone,
- John