PotBS Companion Blog

Yarr, thar be tweetin'.

2012-03-13T01:15:00.000Z

I've just set up a Twitter feed so that I can interact with users of the site in a smaller, more informal way. Perhaps you'd care to follow @PotBSCompanion - there isn't much on there at the moment but I'll get it sorted..!

I'm still working on updates when I can - essentially, I'm rebuilding the entire site, the original one was built in a bit of a hurry and without too much planning or thought for design (I'm a programmer, not an artist), and I have a better system to put everything nice and ordered and easier to work on - I just have to convert all the pages. I'm going to try and post some in-progress screens to the afore mentioned Twitter page.

On another note - Thanks to everyone who helped with the survey. I wanted to make sure that the time I was spending was going to go into the right areas.

Thanks for your continued visitation and support of the site, now login and create some societies, will you? :)

New Ship Added - Centurion

2011-12-21T10:48:00.001Z

I've just been alerted to another new ship appearing in game, the Centurion 3rd Rate. I've added it to the database but it needs filling in with pictures and its stats. To edit content in the database, log into your account (or create one for free) and you'll see an edit button.

Thanks, and Merry Christmas!

San Fernando & Updates soon - I promise!

2011-12-05T21:29:00.000Z

I've been made aware of a new ship, the San Fernando which you can get from the Treasure Aisle and was introduced in October/November.

I've added it to the listings, but at the moment it has no stats.... Perhaps someone would be community minded enough to fill in the details?

I know I keep saying this, but major site updates are on the way! Hopefully I will get to finish them off over the Christmas break and get them up and running in time for 2012.

The site is now 3 years old and the changes I have should bring things right up to date...!

Time Flies!

2011-07-22T19:27:00.000+01:00

I just wanted to write a quick entry because i'm aware that I've not been posting regularly.

I'm still working on new features and new styling for the site when I get the time, but real work has to come first or I don't eat :-)

In the meantime, you may have noticed I added a Facebook like box and a Google plus box to the top of the main page. It'd be awesome if you thought the site worthy of being liked or plussed.

I'll try and update more later!

Additions to Ship List

2010-12-19T20:37:00.002Z

I've just added the Deliverance Mastercraft Frigate and the Conquistador Mastercraft Frigate to the ship list.

I've added in the statistics from the game screens, but I don't remember where the link to the hidden OS speed and wind modifiers are, so if anyone has access to those, please be so kind as to add in the information.

Sorry for the omissions!

Ship Combat Skill Planner - Updated!

2010-12-14T23:14:00.003Z

The new changes for Power and Prestige are out - and have been for a while it would seem, and those changes made the current skill planner somewhat useless.

So, in order to make this part of the site far less useless i've updated the database with the new skills and images. Sorry but I haven't had time to look at putting in the skill descriptions and effects yet, but I will get around to it when I can!

Feel free to go ahead to http://www.potbs-companion.net/skills to partake in some lovely skill-building goodness!

Let me know if anything still doesn't look right.....! If you don't tell me, I can't fix it!

New Look Blog

2010-11-12T17:25:00.000Z

Has it really been FEBRUARY since I did any updates to the site? Sorry about that, i've been a little bit snowed under with other work.

I have had a few minutes spare though to see what new things Google and Blogger have been coming up with, and I thought i'd make use of some of their new templates and widgets to refresh the look of this blog. I hope you'll agree that it does look somewhat fresher than it did previously.

Actually, I have a fairly substantial design change for the main site in the works, but I haven't had a chance to work on it probably since about... well, February apparently! I will reveal some more later but right now I can't say when it will be finished and ready to go live.

The site isn't dead - in fact with Pirates going F2P more people are starting to come back to the site, which suggests more people are playing the game again, so keep letting me know your thoughts and i'll try and get some new stuff on the site soon!

Skill Builder Extended to AvCom

2010-02-07T15:33:00.000Z

The skill builder has now been extended to include the three avatar combat schools; Fencing, Dirty Fighting and Florentine.

It works in much the same way as the ship combat skill builder, although as per game rules - some of the skills cost more than one point to obtain.

There isn't much else to say right at the moment on this - so why not go and take a look?

Active Nation Selection Update

2010-02-06T17:32:00.000Z

In accordance with the latest game patch, which now allows an account to have several captains on the same server but from different nations - you are now allowed to do so here.

If you have captain profiles set up, you can now edit them and move them onto a server even if it already contains a captain from another nation. You can create a new captain on a server in the same way.

Unlike in game, where you have to commit to a nation each map - here, there is no such rule (or no reason for one) so you don't have to do anything else.

If you don't have captain profiles set up or a login to the site - what are you waiting for? It doesn't cost you anything and it gives you the ability to access all areas of the site.

Site Feature: Skill Builds (beta)

2010-01-31T00:37:00.000Z

Something i've thought about for a while is a way you can plan and view your captain and swashbuckling skills outside of the game, and share them with others.

When the game was launched, someone wrote a tool to do this, I don't know where the link is now, but I believe that its out of date.

Anyway, I had a nudge from a commenter on this blog and I decided it wouldn't take long to come up with something similar to the game interface.... several hours of programming and photoshopping later it turns out that it's a bigger job than I imagined :-)

Anyway though, i've created a page for ship combat skill builds for the privateer (mainly because my main character is one!) and i'm pretty happy with whats there, so I thought i'd open it up for others to have a look at.

You can access it here. You can also share your builds with friends, by copying the URL given on the page.

Let me know what you think! I'll add the other things in time - it takes a while to create a database of all the skills and cut all of the icons out of a screengrab unfortunately, so don't hold your breath...!!!

2009 Statistics Roundup

2010-01-28T22:22:00.000Z

I just thought i'd leave a quick thank you note and tell you how the site did in 2009.

We had 170,000 page views from 26,000 visits. So thank you :)

It turns out you like the ship statistics section the most, but why not check out some other areas?

We have the unrest page - which gives you information how the RvR is going, which ports are being contested and when the next port battles are.

There is the societies page which gives you a listing of the active societies in game, and information about them written by the society leaders themselves. You can also visit the tavern to find out a bit more about some of the captains you sail with and fight against.

Of course you can go to your cabin where you can set up your own captains profiles, manage your society and a few other things. Why not edit your details and tell us your favourite ship, just for fun?

I'm informed that there is no skill build system online, as the one someone made a while ago is now out of date... I'm having a little mess around so watch this space to see if I come up with anything!

Database Cleansing

2010-01-28T00:06:00.000Z

Over the past year, many people have created sign-ins to this website and added their captain data, and for supporting the site - thank you.

I know however, that some people will have moved on while others remain, and in the interests of those that are still around, we will now be restricting the captain list available on the site to those that have been logged in in the last 90 days.

In turn, if this leaves a society with no members, that will also be inactivated.

If your account is deactivated - don't fret. It isn't lost, its just hidden from the site and you can still log in as normal. If you do, everything will be switched on again and all will be as it was. Similarly, if this now means a society once again has members then it will be reactivated (though that might take a short while till the system updates again).

Hopefully this will mean a more relevant site for those still using it!

I am aware that this may leave some leaderless societies, if this is the case you will have to contact me on an individual basis via the PotBS forums so that I can manually fix that, at least for now. We'll see if it becomes a problem.

Thanks for listening :-)

More Society Stuff!

2009-08-10T21:14:00.000+01:00

So I decided that the way the society and tavern index pages looked wasn't really very user friendly. I mean, so you got a list of societies and captains but you didn't get to know anything about them without finding what you were interested in and clicking on it.

The new look pages, rather than giving a block of listings with just a picture and a name attempt to counter this problem by providing some more useful information. The society listings now show you some useful and interesting stats about the groups, and likewise with the captain listings.

Theres also some extra goodies on the society pages for the leaders to edit - there is now a specific place for a web link back to your own pages if you have one (I do ask that you return the favour with a link back to www.potbs-companion.net), as well as a new option for setting the 'focus' of your organisation - whether you're casual, PvP, economic, and so on. This should make the site more informative as well as being a useful recruitment tool.

Now is a great time to update your society listing and check your text, and invite your in game members to the site to build up your numbers. Likewise, if you've got a captain profile then you might want to edit it and fill in the 'back story' box - its just a bit of fun, so you can write a little story about how your captain came to be who they are.

Let me know what you think of the new pages!

Society Ranks

2009-08-08T01:24:00.000+01:00

A brand new addition to the site is the ability for society leaders to control the access, or 'rank' of each society member.

In the game, there are three ranks of character - Member, Agent and Leader. On the website however, we have six. They are: Inactive Member, Alt Character, Member, Agent, Leader and Founder. These extra ranks should help organise and understand who is around and who is not.

If you are a society agent, leader or founder you will be able to carry out promotions (up to your level) and demotions within your society - simply go to your society page (there is a direct link from your cabin, or you can find it under the societies menu) and you will see a list of members you can affect to the right hand side, with the options you can use on them.

Additionally, it is no longer possible for a captain to join a society without being approved by its leader or one of its agents. A new member is now put into an unapproved status and the leader/agent will see a list of members awaiting approval on the society page. From there, an agent can approve the new member, or ignore it. A leader has the option to deny a member, which removes them from the society completely.

Leaders - now is the time to get your society memberships up to date, the next features in the pipeline are the society economy tools!

What would you like to see?

2009-07-29T22:20:00.000+01:00

The PotBS Companion website came into being in December 2008, and barring a few interactions of the game forums, the content has mostly been dreamed up by me. What I think would be useful, or cool, or what bit of programming I was curious about at the time (I kind of use this as a place to test new ideas).

Now, it hasn't escaped my attention that since January 1st - 15,000 people have viewed 88,000 pages on this site. And it also hasn't escaped my attention that comparatively not many people comment on this blog or contact me on the forums.

I really want to know what you think of the site, what you like, what you don't like, and what you'd like to see added. Its your site as much as it is mine, I just look after it for you.

I can't promise I'll take all suggestions and make them happen, but if something is popular enough, do-able, and I find the time. Hell why not? Leave your comments here!

Fix for Image Uploads

2009-07-29T22:02:00.000+01:00

Just a quick note to let you know that i've uploaded some modified code to handle the cropping resizing of images when you update ships, captain profiles and society emblems.

All images go through a two step process when uploaded; first they are resized so that we can retain as much of them as possible, and then they are cropped - captains and society emblems are made 100x100 square, while ships are made 200x200 for the smaller images, and we try to make a nice larger image of 640x480. (Remember when your desktop was only that big? :-))

Anyway - There were a couple of problems with the code I had put together and I my tired brain couldn't work out where the mistake was. Firstly, by resizing images to width and then cropping to height, meant that different orientations of images that were of such a size that the first resize pass left them too small in one dimension, and the crop would then add a piece back onto the picture to make it the right size. This is now fixed in two ways; firstly, the resize pass works out what orientation your image is in and adjusts the way it resizes to suit, before cropping and leaving the right sized leftovers. For captains and societies, the resize is allowed to grow your image though that will result in loss of quality, so I recommend uploading ones of a size greater than required.

For ships, the solution has been to not allow the image to be 'grown' - if we can't attain 640 x 480, the system gets as close as it can without adding more onto the picture and we keep it at that. In all cases, cropping now keeps the centre of the image, rather than the top left, and discards the rest.

You'll also notice that ships get a banner at the bottom of their images; this is not for any copyright purposes because the images belong to the game, FLS and whoever modelled them. The banner is there in the hope that next time someone is googling for images of a sailing ship, these will appear, direct traffic to the website and in turn to the game, helping out our server populations :)

The banner was broken though - because if the image can't be made 640 wide, the right hand side was truncated. It looks messy and amateurish and doesn't help at all. A new banner only has content on the left side so should appear correctly in all cases.

Sorry for the boring theoretical image handling post, but I thought people might have noticed and wondered whats going on. New uploads will work better, old uploads will remain as they are - in time, i'm sure they will get replaced.

Unrest Charts and Event Logs

2009-07-25T22:42:00.000+01:00

A while ago I was tinkering with the XML feed API that Flying Labs provide, which allows us to pick up game data every 10 minutes.

A dynamic map of the game world, with unrest points has definately been done before and done well (though it may get done again!) - but if you're in game, you can access the maps anyway.

What if there were a way to find out where the action is happening in near real time without having to scan the logs to see which towns are having big changes in unrest on your server?

Well now there is. I'm just testing it so please let me know via the comments or official forums whether theres any faults or innaccuracies, or whether there is some gem of information you can't find that this system could provide.

Without further ado - go along to the PotBS Companion and click on the link for 'Unrest' on the main menu. You can bookmark and go directly there via http://www.potbs-companion.net/maproom/unrest.php - but be aware this link, and the information on it is subject to change!

You may also notice on the front page that you can now see a list of site related events; if this works out well, it will be expanded to include game world events relating to unrest and port captures/battles, and maybe converted to a feed for you to follow. As usual, I appreciate any feedback on the feature!

I'm now going to see if I can go and find some unsuspecting ships to sink....!

Ship Overview Screen

2009-07-23T00:21:00.000+01:00

I've been tinkering about with the site and added a whole new page called ship overview. This is now the default page you get taken to when you click on a ship link in the shipyard.

Instead of showing ALL the stats for each boat, it just gives you the basics. If you still want the full stats there is a link on the page to take you there, but its really intended to give people a quick insight into a ships capabilities at-a-glance.

You will also notice that when you edit a ship, you can now upload upto 3 images of it, which will be displayed on the new overview screen and I may add a ship gallery later :-)

As usual, ship editing including image upload is available to those people who are logged into the site. If you do upload images, particularly large ones - be aware that submitting the edit page can take a while as the program generates the small and large images from your source.

I would greatly appreciate any comments you may have on the new screen and whether you think the change is positive or negative; and particularly constructive comments about how to improve the user experience. If you don't tell me, I won't know!

Leave a comment here, or catch up with me in the usual ways! (Official forums)

Class Specific Ships in 1.17

2009-07-21T19:43:00.000+01:00

It has been announced by FLS that the upcoming 1.17 patch will contain a new level 50 ship for each class, playing to their strengths.

In anticipation of this, the Macedon, Vengeance, Khan, Bloody Dagger and Hyperion have all been added to the database.

Since little is known about the exact qualities of these vessels - there is no data available, but should you find yourself in possession of any one of these ships then please feel free to update the database!

For the uninformed - the PotBS Companion ship database is a community effort, and anyone can update the information on a boat that is innaccurate (sometimes, patches change the handling qualities of the ships). If you would like to participate, simply create a free account or login, and in the shipyard, you will find an edit button which will take you to a ship update form.

Additional benefits of the site to registered users are that you can create profiles for each of your captains and for your society - giving each of them their own web page; and a great way to find and interact with other players.

Society Registrar Changes

2009-07-08T00:12:00.000+01:00

Hot on the heels of the new updates to the captain interface is one for editing your society as well.

Just as before with the captains, you can now go back to the information you entered for your society and change it as your society develops and grows. While you're there, why not upload your flag/emblem for all to see?

All captains faces are now on display in the tavern and on their page, and all society flags are viewable in the registrar and on their own page.

One other thing - you can now filter the tavern and society indexes by server and/or nation to make the list easier to digest.

At the time of writing, 166 captains across 35 societies on all servers are represented - why not add yours and see if we can add more this week?

Welcome to the Tavern

2009-07-04T16:02:00.000+01:00

Yarr, and welcome to the tavern. The newest part of the PotBS companion.

As a captain, you can now log in and edit your details, set your back story and upload a picture of your captain.

In the tavern, you can now see the other customers and get more details about who they are, where they sail, what their stories are and who they are 'related' to.

Every captain now has his own little part of the Internet! Click on a captain's name or image to see his or her page.

This is just the start of the tavern and you can only change your own details and view those of others. Soon though, you will be able to add friends and foes to your profiles - but only captains who are registered on this site! I am also working on a couple more tools for society management, so watch this space.

Ship Changes in Build 1.15

2009-05-29T13:24:00.000+01:00

Calling all loyal captains of all nations; it seems that the shipyards have been busy modifying the handling characteristics of a number of ships. If you have a login and can spare a moment to update the stats on these models, you will be doing a service for all players across all servers who rely on our shipyard to give them the most up to date information. The new Alymer, Poseidon and Hellbrand Indiaman models have been added to the database and are just waiting to get some accurate stats!

If you don't have a login; its easy to do, its free, and your data isn't shared with anyone. So why not register your captains and societies right now?

One last thing; I haven't had much time of late either to play the game or add new features to this website - but just to let you know it is still very much alive and well, and appreciative of those who continue to check and update the ship data.

Do you have a PotBS Site?

2009-02-22T19:38:00.001Z

If you do, i'd like to exchange links with you for mutual benefit. Feel free to leave your link in a comment on this item, orPM it to me on the official PotBS forums (CaptainKipper).

Also, please spend the 50 game doubloons on telling your society mates about this website, so we can get more captains registered and more societies listed!

URL Restructure

2009-02-22T15:44:00.000Z

As usual, i've underestimated the amount of work needed to make this site what I wanted to be (which, by the way - its not even close, yet!) - and the files have all become a little bit disorganised.

To fix that problem, i've reorganised the structure of the site somewhat, theres probably a little bit more work to do on it - but its much better now, with everything in the shipyard being under the /shipyard/ URL, and so on. Not that this affects you, or does it?

Actually - you really shouldn't notice a difference unless you've bookmarked any pages, you might need to update those (for the time being, there are redirects in place from the old page location to the new one for the benefit of search engines but eventually those will disappear). The reason i'm blogging about it however, is just in case you do.

If you do notice a difference - its likely to be in the form of some problem i've created, such as a form not working, or a set of images not loading, etc. If you spot anything that i've managed to break - please leave me a note and i'll fix it quicksmart!

As an aside, i've also put some links to amazon (for UK and US users) in the site; to help support the running costs. At the moment, i'm just testing this out in the banners at the bottom of the page on a random basis (Sometimes you'll get amazon, sometimes you'll get google ads). I'm hoping that showing you some game titles and movies etc will earn some real life doubloons to put toward the running of this site!

Update 27/02/2009: Fixed some links, such as the ship filtering form etc, sorry about that!

A Bit of a Re-design!

2009-02-18T23:48:00.000Z

So, if you've been to the site since I wrote this you'll notice a few things that are a little bit different about it. We've had a bit of a design refresh.

I've looked at the stats for the site, and they tell me that only about 3 visits in every one thousand (0.3%) are using the 800 x 600 resolution or lower; which the original design would fit into without needless scrolling. For the sake of the other 997 of that one thousand, i've widened the site to give more screen real estate which should be especially useful on screens like the ship list and comparison tools. (There are a few visits from mobile devices and i'm not sure what it looks like on your PDAs and Phones, but its really not optimized for that - so, i'm sorry if its not good!)

I've played about with the header a little bit as well. The previous site header was quite large, overly so, I think - so i've trimmed it right down. We still have the PotBS logo, and i've had another go at creating a believable title graphic. I quite like this one. Apparently the ship you can see faded into the title bar is the HMS Victory (Admiral Nelson's famous ship) - Ideally, I wanted a picture a ship rocking over to the side as it unleashed a mighty broadside, however since nobody thought to take a digital camera to Trafalgar, my choices of art were rather more limited. What we ended up with looks alright though, I think. I definately prefer it to the previous site header.

Additionally, i've lightened the main background a bit to make it easier on the eye, and simplified things quite a lot. Less is more, as they say - and I think everything now looks just a little bit more mature and professional, without losing the gamey touch - I hope, anyway!

Its not the last change you're likely to see, there are some other colours I may want to change to see how it looks, I think some of the table backgrounds and headers are a bit dark. But let me know what you think.

Oh - I almost forgot - one other major development is this very blog. I thought it would be nice to document all the features as I write them into the site, and probably the odd commentary on what other things related to PotBS and gaming - it also gives you a place to add your own comments and thoughts on the site.

I'd be honoured if you added this blog to your subscriptions list, and if you spread the word amongst your PotBS playing friends!