Rise of Piracy 
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Development Update - May 2025May 8, 2025 - Community AnnouncementsAhoy again everyone! Today's update is mainly focused on polish and test feedback. Major improvements have been implemented in terms of Localization, Stability, UI, Bug fixing and QOL features. I'm quite happy with the state of the game currently especially around Localization. There is plenty of room to work with now and it was in a nice space to park. I worked around the localization system for the majority of this patch, but moved on to more critical issues and gameplay items for about half the time. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41557572/9e2fd20e4214cd14fc77a536f49f2630bdd9d3b7.png Main Items A full list of the issues are available on the discord, but here are a few of the main issues listed off. Redone the tutorial flow so that its faster to get through, less invasive popups/etc. Improved localization coverage. Redone some Audio extensions. Improved Custom Scenario workflow. Removed Intro & Customize formation stages of game start. Fixed issue with default shot-powers. Fixed issue where oars would remain in soldiers hands after a landing boat was intercepted by cannon fire. Redone how the ship navigation grids are generated. Removed outdated navmesh components. Fixed issue around builds with new "addressables". Removed some tutorial steps that were over-explaining. Added a new library to improve performance. Redone some code that was generating alot of work for the "Garbage collector". Fixed issue with default localization items not being properly parsed. Added language selection to options screen. Improved UI in Character Creation screen. Improved UI in Tutorials and Scenarios screens. Improved wording around some Campaign and Scenario descriptions. Redone the Character Traits. Improved Notifications across the board. Improved Popups both appearance and how they're called in code. Trade and Encounter screens rewired & localized. Redone the General Island transitions. Redone the Drydock transitions and Upgrade screen toggles. Improved the way some controls were implemented. Game Mechanics Rundown Today's mechanics rundown is focused mainly on the Fleet-to-fleet combat! One of Rise of Piracy's main features is the ability to build and manage a large fleet of powerful warships and trading vessels; upgrading and curating your fleet to your play style. Your fleet will stay with you wherever your journey takes you throughout the campaign. Shipyards at major islands contain an assortment of ships available to purchase. Improvements and upgrades to each individual ship can be done at most drydocks you'll encounter. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41557572/baae0e5da5d5a44d9b2bf7036e881c26affe7639.png Your first encounter Your fleet will appear in the formation you have set in your fleet screen. It's a good idea to keep your trade ships to the rear, faster ships on your flanks, and stronger ships protecting your flagship near the center of your fleet. When the battle begins, the enemy fleet will begin to approach and spread out, engaging the closest vessels whilst trying to...Development Update - March 2025Mar 25, 2025 - Community AnnouncementsAhoy Maties! As with the previous patch, today's update is mostly focused on test feedback and polish. Over the past few months, some decisions were made to improve on certain aspects of the game that were causing confusion and struggle around the more complex game mechanics. This patch also brings the beginning of Localization support in Rise of Piracy. This was always a job I was planning on tackling after Early access but we've decided now is the best time to add it. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41557572/97c837201118df777f908ab8c66971d0755fa252.png Main Items A full list of the issues are available on the discord, but here are a few of the main issues listed off. Improved mouse interactions on Tutorial. Fixed major path finding issues causing wierd pathing in some situations. Improved LODs for new ships. Improved LODs for Barracks, Armory and some other buildings. Fixed issue with multiplayer server list browser. Added red lines for bombard orders and more visual feedback on targetting. Fixed up some issues of clarity on the campaign tutorial. Fixed up some wording issues across the board. Advisor wording updates. Fixed issues in Captains Log not reporting correct entities discovered. Fixed some issues regarding overlapping text on the Formations screens. Fixed some y-index issues for surrounding circles and feedback items for the campaign map disappearing under water. Removed debug information when in build for some of the island information. Fixed issues with Loading screen fonts not supporting some special characters. Fixed some spawning issues on Campaign map - respawning ships having items enabled by default that should be hiddenn. Fixed some overlapping UI elements after the character redesign. Fixed some UI Elements not fitting correctly on Treasure maps, Diplomacy screens after localization started. Added some safety and extension features for the Localization work. Game Mechanics Rundown I'd also like to go through some of the mechanics in the upcoming patch notes going forward. Here is a brief rundown of what you can expect for your first time starting up Rise of Piracy. Creating your Character {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41557572/10d12d48b818a0bf2f64977c68fe875a22598c76.png I'd recommend everyone start with the tutorials before beginning a campaign. After choosing from one of the campaigns, or any of the Scenarios available in Rise of Piracy, you'll create your character. You can choose from 5 different classes. Each with their own strengths and weaknesses to suit your desired play style. Piracy is a choice - you can play the game your way, and create your own story. The available classes to choose from are Admiral, Trader, Brawler, Explorer and Pirate. Admirals are suited to those who want to have a strong military fleet to command, with buffs to every ship by default under your control. Traders have buffs to protection, speed and commodity costs. Brawler is for players who want to focus their strength into a powerful flagship. Explorers have speed b...Development Update - January 2025Jan 20, 2025 - Community AnnouncementsHi everyone 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. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41557572/7f477fe828d23b012bafd8413861ee5da9897a1a.png 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. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41557572/358c0504a8ed9327b34f64e830b200b342451a8d.png 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 T...Development Update - November 2024Nov 26, 2024 - Community AnnouncementsHello again all Since the last update progress has been fast. The test effort has grown & there has been a lot of polish especially on the UI side. More features have been cleaned up to game ready state. Some major bugs have been identified & fixed up, which has led to further improvements on various systems - especially around Boarding, Deploying crew to land, and Character Creation and Selection. The new artwork is making appearances in the improvements to the Character related screens. Your character in game can now have hand painted portraits, based on some real historic pirates and fictional characters. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41557572/49d88c5547ae8f7e6e289a2df33c08261f3e3d1d.png The command system for ships in your fleet has been redone - instead of large intrusive items showing above every selected ship, you will now see a nice icon above ships in a deployment state, that can be mouse-over'd to reveal a radial menu with a more intuitive deployment screen. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41557572/601ee34233f60b2e0b1b3aa711f331ab2ccdf123.png The same has been done for Reinforcing ships and Boarding operations, with more details available on mouse over. A new audio system has been implemented over the past few weeks to accommodate the new layered tracks in development. This has been a joy to work on & is one part of the project that really needed some TLC. Some large issues were found since the last patch that required some engine updates. Working on these issues has led to improvements to the overall stability of the game, as well as providing the opportunity to include some new quality of life improvements. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41557572/3ec95eba3c7f17fa6a87ff7994deb1c4ed54d803.png A new, more intuitive flow through the Main menu has been implemented also, the flag creation and customization is currently being cleaned up to allow for a more fluid transition through the character creation and selection flow. Main Items As always, a full list of the improvements, fixes and features worked on during this patch can be found on the Discord, but here is a summary of the more important items. Flagships command can now be switched easily in RTS mode. Redone the deployment UI and added support for less intrusive overlays. Rebuild the global event system. Improvements to the enemy AI. Improvements to ship aiming. Added a new ship - Prince Rebuilt Wind system. Improved Night time Cannon fire lighting Replaced placeholder systems for Armory and Barracks Improved Line of Sight checks logic. Redone Audio Manager. Redone the Control Group, Selected Unit and Alert UI's. Added Oars to the troops in landing boats. Added tooltips for Custom Scenario across the board. Rebalanced a bunch of Scenarios. Improved some Tutorials. Rebuilt system around NavMesh dynamic generation. (Part of a major bug) {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41557572/9dd04979d8aa5882a3521d060ff328e247061a76.png Upcoming The test effort continues to expand & we are working through and exhaustive list daily. The Audio work tha...Development Update - September 2024Sep 2, 2024 - Community AnnouncementsHello everyone! There has been a lot of work done over the past few months that I'm excited to share with you. We've also decided to increase the frequency of updates to every 2 months, from every quarter. The primary focus of this update was polishing, bug fixing, and actioning feedback. I'm very happy with how this has been going. Massive shout out to the testers! There has also been a fair few QOL and some accessibility support added. After returning from TwitchCon in June, I had a list of bugs waiting for me. Most of them were handy enough to fix, but some were pretty major and some even potentially game breaking. I'm delighted to have those fixed up & hoping we can catch them more often with the increase in update frequency. I've added some accessibility support this patch - adding colorblindness support & subtitles where applicable. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41557572/43bc1b910ec73f985e0761320bde40cb700a66d1.png Some tooling to assist in the Artwork updates has finally happened, and the new artwork is now available in the campaign, and character creation screens. I've added some quality of life improvements, including some changes to controls and how they are represented, contextual instructions and visual prompts. Main Items Here is a full list of the main items that were worked on during these past few months. There is a much more exhaustive list available on the Rise of Piracy discord for those interested. Added accessibility options for Colorblindness and Subtitles Alot of bugs fixed - Full list on the Discord. Multiple Campaign QOL fixes. Campaign Minimap improvements. Instant Contextual feedback on every screen & gameplay state. RTS Mechanics improvements and QOL fixes. Map beginning & Intros were worked on heavily. Rebalanced multiple aspects of AI, including targetting & bonuses. Rebalanced the mission generators on the Campaign Map. Redone NPC logic across the board to make state transitions safer & more predictable. Some graphical updates improving water, reflections and clouds. Added Directional Radars to some player states. Redone the Reinforcement system. Added footprints to the soldiers/characters. Completely rebuilt the wind system & added more FX. Iterated on the Avoidance logic to make it more reliable. Fixed major issues regarding character double-reloading and ignoring maximum range. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41557572/ea4933136ca2b37c1467dbaee6678ace61862d92.png Upcoming We will continue to test heavily over the next few months generating work items & working through issues. I still need to update some of the Tutorials. There has been some improvements to the Faction alliance code, the privateer mechanics must be updated as a result. More audio improvements are coming. The additions this patch have made working on this aspect a bit easier, but I still need to clean up and improve on audio across the board. Thank you State of the game has improved greatly thanks to the testing. Looking forward to more bug reports! TwitchCon was amazing. ...Development Update 6.26Jun 26, 2024 - Community AnnouncementsHi all! This quarter has seen a lot of improvement and rework. Some of the main focus points from the Upcoming section of last quarters' update was achieved and I'm delighted to share the progress with you. The control and camera systems in Rise of Piracy had been in place since practically day one. They were relatively smooth to begin with, but after years of chopping and changing - they became clunky, had moments of jank and were prone to failure. The original system was completely ripped out, and a replacement was created. This was a huge chunk of work, but I'm very happy with the result. The movement of the various cameras, the transitions between them, and the overall control from the player perspective feels great now. Jumping between RTS controls of your landing parties, back to first-person Sailing to blast enemy vessels feels a lot more satisfying now. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41557572/8a55bdb01d2fb3c67bfac1a6afb42017393ce06d.png Ship avoidance, and terrain avoidance was also reworked. I'm still not entirely happy with the decisions NPC's take from time to time, but it has definitely improved ten fold from where it was. The chances of your ships colliding and sinking one another was a pain point in previous iterations. The changes that I have added this patch have made the chances of an accident between friendly vessels much less likely. In the event of an upcoming collision, or a path intersection, the NPC's will now plot paths to avoid each other. Still not perfect, but definitely a lot better than previous iterations. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41557572/835e59efe477ac30a8d2cbffc866baa35663f01a.png Some sandbox options for creating custom scenarios were also added this patch. As well as a lot of bug fixes and feedback actioned. Quality of life improvements, and inclusion of alot of new ships. New artwork has been added to the game also. You've probably met one of the new captains already from the update artwork. Around 30% of that artwork has already been included in Rise of Piracy, with many more selectable characters and NPC mayors, captains and people of interest appearing through your campaign. Voice lines! Some amazing voice lines were adding this patch. The land battles now really do feel a lot more like a pirate raid than any RTS battle. I plan to have more voices added, but the framework is there and the voices that have been added so far add a huge amount to the atmosphere of the game. Main Items Here is a full list of the main items that were worked on during these past few months. There is a much more exhaustive list available on the discord for those interested - discord.gg/kBq6C2bBZh Massive refactor of all camera functions and states. Large amount of test feedback and bugs fixed. Sandbox improvements. Custom Scenarios. Campaign Minimap. Collision avoidance and Terrain avoidance redone. New Ship Models. Inclusion of some new artwork. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41557572/7f767281118eac7ff53af257676b4bfc5c9c74ad.png Upcoming Alot of planning has g...Major Update 3.24Apr 5, 2024 - Community AnnouncementsHello again everyone! For this quarter I focused on improvements to the existing systems that have been causing confusion and instability. The main focus was around the Drydock and Marketplace mechanics. As Trading and looting items is one of the core ways to get rich and build your fleet and armies, it was important that I spend some time rebuilding these systems. I added a few new features and rebuilt these two mechanics from the ground up. It is now much easier to traverse and manage your ships inventories and crews, as well as purchasing items and hiring crewmates to fill them. Testing has intensified and a great amount of bugs were reported and fixed as a result. This is a non-stop effort and I appreciate all involved. Reflections within Rise of Piracy bugged out early last year and was neglected since. I finally figured out what was wrong there and fixed it up. This has made a great improvement to the visuals within the game and its something I'm very happy with. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41557572/3411f8c45893553db4e4742896a80c920d8ba783.png Tutorials were improved, and a dossier / encyclopedia was created. The dossier will make it much easier to find information on all the various mechanics, without having to complete an entire tutorial. I have enlisted some help on the artwork within the game. We have worked towards improving the visual feel of everything UI related. All of our tradable items now have proper artwork associated with them, and many other bits and pieces have been improved upon. Everything Loot related has been improved and a lot of the systems that were in place have been redone. This will effect how you capture ships or prisoners, and how you gain resources if victorious in a fight. In the case of defeat or retreat, the punishments have also been re-imagined. I also invested a bit in tooling over the past few months. These were mostly around generating scenarios and re-balancing. Main Items Here is a full list of the main items that were worked on during these past few months. There is a much more exhaustive list available on the discord for those interested - discord.gg/kBq6C2bBZh Redone the spawning on the battle maps. A lot of the bugs reported by testers were actioned. Redone Drydock & Marketplace. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41557572/c9d3ce2a609e7a768305630ef599ef5382eec228.png Added a dossier / encyclopedia holding all the tutorial information - hopefully will get that cleaned up a * bit more before release. All the tradable items and perks have proper artwork now. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41557572/f1aa12d006d2bee7d92535caf1ae7ca453ed80c0.png Redone the Loot Screen / Return to campaign screen. Prisoners & Pressing captured units to crews, also capturing ships & end game logic/data stuff was all * redone. Re-added win condition to the campaign map. (contains placeholders) XP / Bonus system was re-balanced a bit. Added Abandon Ship logic & non-occupied ships claiming mechanic. Fixed some options screen stuff. Missing options, broken prefere...Development Update: 2023 Development ReviewJan 21, 2024 - Community AnnouncementsHi all! My name is John - I am the developer behind Rise of Piracy. As this is my first steam announcement, let me first thank you all for following along with the development so far! Over the past year we have hit a number of major milestones. We started working with a publisher, added a tonne of features, refactored and cleaned up basically every aspect of the code base, and filled in some missing mechanics. Rise of Piracy is on its 3rd development iteration and is in a very good position now. We are in a closed testing phase with thousands of issues/bugs and suggestions being actioned in 2023. Ideally I put out a major patch every 2-3 months, packed with improvements to the base game and QOL. I will try to put out a steam announcement with each of these patches in the future. As Rise of Piracy now enters its 5th year of development - I am excited to see it coming closer to an Early Access release. Here are some of the major elements we have worked on in 2023: The Ships and Characters AI has all been worked on heavily. Changes and improvements to these systems are much easier now. We have added a new pipeline for adding and improving ships within the game. Our publisher is cleaning up our pool of ships and creating beautiful models for you to hire and command in Rise of Piracy. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41557572/6ed13186b96cc5f2dd6957282cb697d29401a383.png Our animations for the soldiers have all been redone. The system that was in place initially was clunky and difficult to change/manage, so that has all been completely revamped. I'm very happy with where that is now. I feel like the soldiers and civilians move in a much more convincing way. There is still a lot of improvement possible with these animations but for now I feel its in a great spot. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41557572/5c05330d4e8f0f3d7a9595ff94d7c26e6adfdf51.png We have redone some illustrations within the game, improving the UI across the board. We have also started to clean up the legacy parts of the code & modernizing the UI so that everything is presented in a more user-friendly way. We have fixed hundreds of issues every iteration, thanks to our testers. Interactions with Mayors of Islands and captains of other fleets has been redone completely. Special missions and options are available to allow for cleaner action/reaction and consequence driven mechanisms. I am constantly improving on the Audio aspect of the game and trying to make real ground on that in the coming months. Many of the mechanics and features within the game have been crafted in part by the community feedback, so please do let me know what you think of the current progress, and the updates you receive. I have tried to keep the community across a number of social media platforms up to date with everything going on and have neglected steam quite a bit. It is something I am trying to improve upon this year across the board. Please do feel free to reach out any time to me on Discord, or by creating a steam discussion post with...
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