Snowbird Games released another update for Caribbean! on Steam.

Update notes — April 24

Hi everyone, New update 1.049 is now available.

Update notes:

Added:
- New visual effects for the land location ‘Marsh’.
- Some new voice lines for units.

Fixed:
- AI’s inability to climb back on the fortress after falling from it during sieges.
- Canceling of ‘anchor ship’ orders after boarding fights.
- Incorrect renown requirement for the ‘Grey eminence’ trait.
- Script errors during naval battles in some cases.
- Incorrect AI behavior on the ‘Marsh’ location.
- Some text fixes.

Snowbird Games released another update for Caribbean! on Steam.

Update Notes

Added:

- Two new locations for land battles: ‘Marsh’ and ‘Chapel’.

Fixed:

- Problems with AI behavior on recently added locations.
- Trade Galleon textures during boarding.
- Incorrect display of a larger number of traits at the party screen.
- Irrelevant descriptions for some of the traits.
- Too high ‘renown’ requirements for ‘Lucky leader’ and ‘Sea devil’ traits.
- Exceeding of a ship’s maximum ammunition after installing upgrades that can decrease cargo hold capacity.
- Lack of alternative conclusion to the first dialogue with McGonagall.
- Sieges now consist of only one phase.
- Inability to select troops on the tactical map in the second story battle.
- Inconsistency between the ‘renown’ amount shown before a battle and the amount received after it.
- Ability to use cannon while riding a horse.
- Some text fixes.

Another patch was released for Caribbean! on Steam last week. Here are the changes.

Another smaller update today as we continue working on greater things.
 
Update notes:

Added:

- Two new locations for land battles: ‘Fort on the hill’ and ‘Canyon’.

- Opened gate doors model for one of the siege locations.

- Ambient occlusion for ship models in sea battles.

- Collision meshes optimization for ship ramming in sea battles.

Fixed:

- AI freezing on the ground level of towers during sieges.

- AI attempting to attack his enemy through walls during sieges.

- Incorrect spawn of the defensive troops on one of the locations during sieges.

- Inability to walk upstairs in the tower on one of the siege locations.

- Tactical map displayed incorrectly when firing a cannon.

- Script error caused by bartender talking about captains already hired by the player.

- ‘Traveling merchant’ unit missing his weapons.

Snowbird Games released another update for Caribbean! on Steam this week.

There will actually be only one 'note' in today's update. However, it's a pretty important one.  This week we've decided to improve the tactical map for land battles. Judging by your feedback, controlling armies in a separate screen was a bit confusing, often disorientating and, as a result, it didn't always fulfill its mission successfully, which was to provide more interesting tactical options in battles.

Snowbird Games released Patch 1.050 for Caribbean! on Steam.

Hi everyone,  Some small fixes this week, as we're focusing most of our time on creating a content update. At the moment it seems this task may take a while to finish, so please bear with us for now (and don't panic!). We'll try our best to pay attention to smaller problems like these in the meanwhile.

Snowbird Games released Patch 1.040 for Caribbean! on Steam.

Snowbird Games released a new patch for Caribbean! on Steam this week.

Hi everyone, Today we're releasing another update. This week we've mainly focused on improving naval battles: the game mechanic had a number of exploits from which we tried to get rid of. As a result, naval battles became more challenging, AI got more dangerous and chainshots are now more useful.

In addition we made some changes in the trading balance — in particular, the traits "Trader" and "Entrepreneur" are now reworked.

We'd also like to bring up the loot subject. We saw a lot of complaints that the "Sutler" trait wasn't working. It's not supposed to increase the loot's amount itself — it only increases the food percent in the loot that you find.

Snowbird Games released another patch for Caribbean! on Steam this week.

New update 1.020 is now available for download.

Update notes:

- Food is now highlighted differently from other goods.
- Added new music.
- Player's troops can now be trained and be upgraded to more advanced units.
- Ships no longer start reloading their cannons after boarding fights.
- Increased probability of higher rank ships appearing for sale.
- The tavern scene was made brighter based on players’ feedback.
- Fixed location for the ‘sneaking into town’ option.
- Fixed logical error that prevented players from buying property after the first encounter with Zendar Van der Graaf.
- Fixed parties being stuck on the map.
- Fixed empty town with no garrisons.
- Fixed bug with taxing upon sneaking into towns
- Fixed zero prices for used ships.
- Fixed morale bug.
- Fixed falling from masts during boarding.

Snowbird Games released a new patch for Caribbean! on Steam this week.

The first post-release update for 'Caribbean!' is coming today. A little clarification: right now we're focusing on things the community considered the most critical for our game.

Update notes:

- The classic M&B troop control system was combined with our new order system. You can either control troop types with hotkeys or give out orders for selected troops with the mouse.
- Returned old loot system. Loot won't be accessible in as large amounts as before, but players will be able to lay their hands on a set of old boots and hats from defeated bandits.
- Changed player icon on the tactical map, now the player is marked as an arrow which depends on player's view direction.
- Dramatically decreased ramming damage which previously could cause flagship's sinking upon boarding.
- Added new siege location.
- Added quick-access button for player's 'Storage' in a town if he has any property there.
- Bartender in the tavern now gives a hint on where you can find companions.
- Removed additional damage to player's crew during boarding which could lead to illogical loss of sailors.
- Fixed a bug which caused loss in boarding if the player had low HP even after he won the fight.
- Fixed a bug which caused 'NO_STRING' messages to appear in the shipwright's menu if a shipyard didn't have ships for sale.

We'll keep working on two directions: fixing the most unpleasant bugs and filling the game with new content as well as more diverse gameplay.

It has been almost a week since Caribbean! was released.and Snowbird Games posted the tenth status update on Steam this week. The update is about negative reviews.

Let's discuss something. First of all, we want to draw attention to the fact that 'Caribbean!' does not contain the words "Mount & Blade" in its title. And there's a reason for that — mainly because our game is not a continuation in Mount & Blade series. Yes, some traditional features known to M&B fans are not in the game, but at the same time we added a lot of new things which were never before seen in those games.

Sure, a good portion of negative reviews is justifiable. But is our game that bad? We'd like to think it's not. In any case we'll do our best to change your mind with an upcoming set of updates in the near future

RPGWatch staff member Fluent published a new sixteen minute video that explores how you can customize your character in the recently released pirate game Caribbean!

Hello! In this video, I preview the character customization and character building aspects of the newly released RPG/Strategy/Open-world game, Caribbean!, for the PC.

You can find more information for the game here on its Steam page - http://store.steampowered.com/app/293...

This is NOT Early Access, it is an officially released version of the game, although there is still some polishing and balancing to be done, and the developers are very open to player feedback. So, make sure you get on the Steam forums and give your opinions after playing it for awhile!

Snowbird Games has officially taken Caribbean! off Early Access, and has released version 1.0 today on Steam. The game is 15% off. and will cost new buyers $16.99.

Today we're putting out the release version of 'Caribbean!'. On this occasion we'd like to say a few words about the new things you'll be able to find in the game since the last update and what you can expect in the future.

Snowbird Games announced the release date for Caribbean! in a new update.

Perhaps we should have announced the amendments in our plans in a bit more delicate way and without causing panic. That’s why we decided to dedicate this announcement not to the current development, but to where it’s headed next.

To start, the list of features we showed earlier is mostly our work plan for the year ahead. What we meant to communicate was that these parts of the game won’t be present in the game on release. The release version will be that solid foundation that we’ll use to expand our project further on. Those who played Dune 2 might remember: for a building to stand firm, it must be built on a concrete platform.

This concrete platform is necessary for getting a technologically stable game. We’ll know for sure that it works without troubles with the engine and any additional optimization.

Secondly, there are game elements that have horizon of development. There are game elements that we can work on for an unknown amount of time. And things that can take an unknown amount of time, can also require an unknown amount of budget. In this case it’s better to divide the development into stages, without trying to achieve everything at once.

Bearing this in mind, ‘Caribbean!’ is going to be released on February 20th 2015. Here’s what’s going into the release version:

• Naval battles — significantly changed based on players’ feedback.
• Boarding fights.
• Brand new economy and production system.
• New ranking system.
• Completely reworked quest model.
• Field artillery.
• Order and control system for armies in battles.
• Brand new world map.

As we mentioned, this is not the final list of features the game will ultimately receive. Right after the release, we'll start working on naval sieges — something we wanted to do from the start but couldn’t implement due to technical problems and restrictions. This will be the first content update we’re planning to add in the game. We’ll stress this one more time, it’s going to be a free DLC, and not paid content.

Snowbird Games released a new Beta patch for Caribbean!today on Steam.

New Update Now Available in Beta

The update we talked about in Status Update #9[snowbirdgames.com] in great detail is now available for everyone in Steam's beta branch.

To try it out you’ll need to choose 'Caribbean!' in your Games library, click on ‘Properties’, go to ‘Betas’ tab, and then select ‘Public beta’. After this Steam should update your game.

Here's what you'll find inside (short version):

1) New faces and character creation

2) New global map

3) New rank system

4) Taxes and smuggling

5) Quests

6) New hire screen

7) Updated naval battles

Enjoy and let us know what you think. We'll be pushing the update to main branch next week.

Two days after the last update about cut content Snowbird Games posted the ninth status update for Caribbean!. The update is about whats included on release.

Following the last status update, we thought we'd share the list of main new things that you'll definitely see in the game pretty soon. While we're at it, we also wanted to stress that these additions won't be the last this game ever sees — we don't plan on stopping the development after we ship the 1.0 version.

Snowbird Games posted the eight status update for Caribbean!. The main point of update is about what the developer calls the cut procedure, or less content in the game.

Here are the details.

Today we’d like to share the details on the ‘feature cut’ procedure we mentioned not long ago in our small announcement. Rejecting some of the features is always unpleasant for development teams, as the game won’t be as huge, pretty and awesome as they imagined it to be.

So why is this procedure needed? Mainly, it’s needed for saving the project and getting it out of the endless development cycle. Or save it from a possible disastrous launch. We won’t give examples from games of the past year here, but we’re sure anyone can name some troublesome moments from 2014 related with unfortunate releases.

Snowbird Games announces that Steam trading cards now available for Caribbean!.

A quick heads-up: Steam trading cards for 'Caribbean!' are now available.

If you don't know what that is — you can collect these cards, craft badges of them and as a result add some Caribbean flavor to your Steam profile (profile backgrounds, emoticons). If you don't care for that, you can just sell them, so it's a win-win.

Snowbird Games posted the seventh status update for Caribbean!.

It’s time for a new status update. Right now we’re preparing the biggest update we’ve ever released till this point, so you can expect a lot of changes. For this reason, we decided to shift the update’s release to January to give us a little more time to make it even better.

First, we added a new renown system. Now it’s split into military renown for soldiers and trading (or administrative) renown for entrepreneurs. It’s becoming a very important part of the game and it defies what you can acquire: which troops, ship upgrades and building types will be available to you.

Military renown should be pretty clear, it didn’t change much from what there was before. Trading renown can be considered as a total amount of all your assets: your ships, your money, goods in your cargo hold, value of your property and so on. If you are a billionaire, you’re a celebrity of Caribbean.

So things will get a little tougher. Some troops will be harder to get, cannons will disappear from free market, and you’ll need to pay taxes for your property and goods in your cargo hold.

It has been a while since any news for the Mount & Blade spin-off game Caribbean! had any news posted, and in the latest update the developer talks about the Multiplayer. 

Initially, we only thought of 'Caribbean!' as a single-player game, because at its foundation was our attempt to convey the feelings that gave us Sid Meier's Pirates! in its time. But taking something as template doesn't mean full copying. Mount & Blade's genom, that we got together with its engine, obliged us to focus on a good fighting system as well.

That's why the game's concept sounded like this:"economic strategy + naval battles + war strategy + roleplaying". This is a good, massive foundation upon which we can build so many ideas. So many, in fact, that we have more planned ideas than we can possibly implement. Trading routes? River expedition into the depths of America? Searching for the secret Maia towns? Advanced control of generals and fleet? We'd like to do all of it.

Multiplayer was left for later, as it requires a different approach. And not just different, but an entirely opposite one.

For us the perfect blend of roleplaying and strategy means playing at a pretty slow pace. You can sit and think as much as you like. You can send your squadron to loot a town and drink some tea while your ships cross the Caribbean sea. Multiplayer's having none of it: everything is fast paced, there's a lot of emotion and tension involved and compressed into 5-10 minutes sessions.

Traditional multiplayer, such as the one we did in 'With Fire & Sword', isn't very interesting to make at this point. We think it's time to try something new, but what would it be exactly? Maybe some sort of team deathmatch with set goals? Goals that could be different for each team or maybe for each individual player?

A lot of people ask to add multiplayer. Some of you ask to add co-op. Could you tell us what you mean by 'co-op' for this game?

Before we dig too deep into this, here's an official announcement. If by co-op you imply an ability to play the single-player campaign, but with friends online, we won't be able to make it happen. This game would be titled 'Mount & Blade Online' and our studio of 10 people is not the one for this job.

But perhaps you'd like to suggest your idea for a fun multiplayer mode without resorting to creating another WoW-killer? Let us know what you think.

Snowbird Games posted the fifth status update for Caribbean! on Steam. They also included a new video with the update that shows the changes made.

Update notes — October 17th

Today we're releasing an update where we change things up a little in land battles. Please watch the video below for instruction on how to use it and and let us know what you think.

Update notes for 0.910:

- Added new options for controlling armies in land battles. NB: Before battle starts, players have 60 seconds to place their troops. To access the battle planning interface, press 'Backspace' button.
- Added new boarding location - frigate.
- Improved AI for enemy armies.
- Added 3D icons for available actions at boarding scenes.
- Changed balance for crew sizes during boarding.
- Gunners are now divided by their nationality. They also have a personal weapon and ability to fight in close range.
- Added assault cavalry units.
- Changed balance for player's starting army.
- Added separation of all single-type troops by squads in land battles.
- Removed items purchase from village elders that caused an error earlier.
- Fixed a bug with sudden ships sinking after battle start.
- Fixed a bug with incorrect additions to ship crews.
- Fixed balance and bugs in 'Old Jorge' quest.
- Fixed a bug that prevented ships repair in the sea.
- Fixed a bug with smoke caused by shooting with some weapons.
- Fixed a bug with long-barreled guns which AI tried to use as shields earlier.
- Fixed a graphical artifact in the launcher.
- Fixed a bug with moving sailors from other ships to flagship.
- Fixed a bug with ships display after its purchase in the harbor.
- Fixed a bug that prevented hiring troops in captured towns.
- Fixed polygon errors in officer armor sets.
- Fixed a bug with ships HP after being upgraded.
- Fixed a bug with ships hull HP.
- Fixed bugs in global map's physics.

Snowbird Games posted the fourth satus update for Caribbean! on Steam.

Status update #4

Since the last status update we've focused on these three elements: adding new boarding locations with frigate, developing strategic control for land battles and content's optimization.

1. Frigate.

Frigates are pretty big ships, ancestors of cruisers. For boarding fights with frigates we added a multideck element, though in a simpler form, to really highlight the size of a new ship. We intentionally removed its more realistically looking version and an access to the captain's cabin, so that it wouldn't hurt fights dynamic.

By the way, we noticed that when you go for boarding from larger ships, there can sometimes be jamming near the jump ropes. We did some changes in AI, so this situation should get better.
 
2. Strategic control in land battles.

This is a pretty ambitious task we are still working on. However, we'll add the first working version in the upcoming update.

The general idea is to make the player a commander and let him control his army. It begs comparison with Total War series, but it's important to keep in mind one distinct difference: in TW players hire full troops, when in M&B series players work with individual units. This puts some restrictions on functioning of AI, army formations and even pathfinding. We'll see what we'll end up with, but for now land battles seem to have become a bit more fun.

3. Content optimization.

Though it's more of a content cleanup. During the development the game got an incredible amount of unused scripts, textures, models, locations and so on. Much of this content was left from 'With Fire & Sword', that we had to give up for gamedesign reasons. Some things we were just too afraid to touch, as Mount & Blade engine could always need them to work properly.

It's a very dull job that can't be delayed any longer. City screen loading times and some cases of game crashes clearly show the engine reached its limit. So for the upcoming update we won't be really focusing on new content, but will instead remove the old one.

That's it for now. We hope the update arrives pretty soon, it's very interesting to hear your opinion on new land battles.

Snowbird Game Studios announced a new content update for the Early Access version of Caribbean today, and released a new developer log video.

Caribbean! / Content update + Second video devblog

‘Caribbean!’, an early access title on Steam, receives a huge update that includes new options for city management, new economy and trading systems, brand new ship models for boarding fights and the first changes to naval and land battles.

To highlight the most important additions and changes in detail, the studio prepared a new video development blog: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuvrAKw7sPg

Full changelog is available on the official site: http://snowbirdgames.com/?p=1143&lang=en

'Caribbean!' will also be available for purchase at the discounted price (-35%) on Steam throughout the week: http://store.steampowered.com/app/293010

Developed by Snowbird Games and based on Mount & Blade: Warband's engine, ‘Caribbean!’ is a sandbox pirate RPG that blends the most engaging melee system and firearm combat with naval battles, detailed crew and fleet management.

Set in 17^th century Caribbean, where unspeakable riches drew many European powers and pirates into a great fight, the game lets players decide their own role and create their own pirate adventure.

You can help shape ‘Caribbean!’ for the better, as it is in continuous development and available at a discounted price until the game's release.
Head to the game's Steam hub for more info: http://steamcommunity.com/app/293010/discussions/ Official website: http://www.snowbirdgames.com

Snowbird Games has released a new satus update for Caribbean! on Steam.

Status update #2

We have to let you know that the big July update we announced earlier won't be coming — instead, it's going to become even bigger and land in August. We'll share the reasons behind this decision, as well our current work progress, below:

Boarding. We think that boarding is the heart of combat gameplay, even more important than sea battles. The current version of the boarding fights stopped being satisfactory for us a long time ago, and as a result we're redoing it from scratch.

Graphic quality of the boarding locations was too poor compared to the character models so all ships are being completely redone. Besides the evident difference in textures, we redesigned level geometry: got rid off jamming on decks and unnecessary rooms, made the movement on ships more clear and free for the player. We also added crow's nests on masts, to provide riflemen with additional spots.

Plus we'll try to add some new animations, including the classic boarding jump rope.

Naval combat. The second most important element of the game. We're still torn between which path to choose: making everything more simple and arcady or adding more options for strategy and control. But our internal tests showed that either way we'd need to deal with current small locations. Right now gameplay functions well only with 2 vs. 2 ship battles. Our limit is 12 ships on the scene, and with that amount of ships there's very little room for everyone in the sea. Making the location bigger is a challenge as we have to work around the engine's limitations. So for now our programmer added a 'spyglass' option that many of you asked for. More significant updates in this area should be coming in September.

Trading and economy. Initially it was supposed to be a side gameplay element, but we want to increase its importance in the game. Actually, working on economy takes more time than anything else at the moment as we keep changing some basic things in M&B engine. For example, right now we separate player's personal inventory and his cargo. It's not very convenient and logical to carry not only a set of 12 breastplates but two tons of cacao as well. Another new element is building construction in the towns — there's so much to do here that we won't even dare to promise it done by August.

Strategic map. We got a lot of feedback on geography of our map and its flaws. Apologies for the inaccuracies — that was our first try to befriend realism with gaming. In August we'll do our best to finish the new world map, more accurate and, possibly, far more attractive.

The plans are pretty ambitious for us, and we hope we can implement all of this with no problem. After the August update we'll be ready to switch to the next big step — refining land battles and implementing city sieges.

Snowbird Games has released a new patch for the Early Access version of Caribbean!. Here are some of the changes on from the Steam forums.

Update notes (June 20)

New update 0.802 is available today. Not a big one, but consider it to be a foundation for a huge update in July.

Update notes:

- Added functional for ammunition consumption in naval battles (ammunition can be bought in the harbor).
- Added two new ship models.
- Added new economic model for testing - reset raw material and product types, adjusted production and consumption.
- Sound effects partly changed.
- Removed unnecessary test content.

Snowbird Games has released a new patch for the Early Access version of Caribbean!. Here ar some of the changes on from the Steam page.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun posted a new preview of the Early Access version of Caribbean!.

I race across the open sea, bearing down on an English convoy. I have twice as many ships and nearly three times their crew, so this will be an easy kill, another feather in my tricorn hat. Or it would be, if my crew didn’t pick that precise moment to mutiny, seize control of one of my ships, turn and attack me instead of the English, board me, and pummel me into unconsciousness on my own deck. Pirates. If you can’t trust them, who can you trust?

If you’ve played a Mount & Blade game, you’ll feel right at home in Caribbean! This game is built on M&B’s engine, and is essentially Mount & Blade with pirate stuff added. That’s not a complaint, by the way. I have a massive amount of affection for Mount & Blade despite it being as ugly as butt, despite the expansion that didn’t expand much, despite the sequel that felt more or less the same as the original. I love those damn games, and I love pirate stuff, so all Caribbean! really needs to do to win me over is not piss me off.

Snowbird Games has posted a new update on the Steam forums with information, and an update on their Early Access version of Caribbean!. Here are the details.

Status update #1

This past week has been very busy and intense for our studio. We released a free DLC for our turn-based strategy game, ‘Eador’ and launched ‘Caribbean!’ onto Early Access. But that didn’t stop us from reading through all the feedback on our pirate RPG. A ton of questions were asked, but as it’s difficult to answer to each and every one, we decided to lay our thoughts and plans in this one post.

The main question — “Why would I pay for a mod that’s not even complete?”. The answer is obvious, because ‘Caribbean!’ is not a mod. Just the scope of code work that went into the engine changes we requested has been tremendous.
 
You can look at screenshots of Crusader Kings 2 and say it’s merely a mod of Europa Universalis 4. Both games do share a lot in common — provinces, map, menus. But they remain very different projects, and their audiences aren’t necessarily the same. In the case of our Caribbean project we rely on M&B Warband’s engine but at the same time build a game that’s going to be very different. We don’t want to simply change the character models, we want to create another system for this game’s world.

Snow Bird Game Studios announced their sandbox pirate RPG game Caribbean! is now available on Steam Early Access. Here are the details.