Release/all

Puzzle Pirates is under constant development. Major releases have historically come about once a month, but have been gradually increasing. Most releases are given a code name and a summary announcement from one of the Ringers.

Following is a list of release notes for each release since the game's launch.

Contents
2010:	January - February - March
2009:	January - February - March - April - May - May - June - July - August - September - October - November - December
2008:	January – February – March – April – May – June – July – August – September – October - November – December
2007:	January – February – March – April – May – June – July – August – September – October – November – December
2006:	January – February – March – April – May – June – July – August – September – October – November – December
2005:	January – February – March – April – May – June – July – August – September – October – November – December
2004:	January – February – March – April – May – June – July – August – September – October – November – December
2003:	December

2010-03-11

Weftovers

From the Release Notes:
Fix bug with sound library causing some players to be unable to start/login the client. Fix bug causing some orders requiring Designs to fail to be properly placed. Fix bug with the poker buy-in screen causing the table to not render.

2010-03-10

Straightening Some Warps

From the Release Notes:
Fix bug with black markets being unable to sell black boxes Fix bug preventing Forts from having managers Fix bug where skellies and zombies would sometimes fail to darken the sky

2010-03-09

Weave It To Cleaver

From the Release Notes:

New crafting puzzle: Weaving New Attraction building: The Black Market Black markets sell black boxes with random prizes inside New Limited Edition Portrait Backgrounds: Adrielle's Lucky Swirls, Corkskooner's Celtic Castle, Damayi's Fortune Gate, Kiziak's Luck, Pishkirlin's Good Omens Imperial Outposts now award trinkets to "dedicated hands" (subscribers & pirate badge holders) similarly to the Brigand King trinkets New type of item: "Design" - Some items can be made at normal shoppes but require the orderer to supply an appropriate Design item New items at the trading post: Shako Hat Design, Cockade Hat Design, Imperial Banner Design, Explorers' Banner, Brass Telescope, Rogue Class Ship Designs Removed the move counter from Alchemistry. Show missions for crafting puzzles on their free days to pirates that aren't subscribed/don't have labor badges Allow palaces, forts, and attraction buildings to have managers Add several new player-created Cursed Isles scenes Improve performance of Bumblebeard Fix some graphical glitches with Bumblebeard Don't allow bots to be ordered to Treasure Haul Fix issues with audio under 64-bit Java Fix bug where parts of scenes would sometimes fail to draw Fix formatting for some numbers in poker Fix a bug where Pirate News Page slowness would lock the entire client Fix some bugs with deluxe labor badges Fix a bug in labor calculations related to exceptionally large amounts of reserve labor Fix a bug where if you left the ship too quickly after setting sail on a swabbie transport voyage, the swabbies wouldn't correctly take their stations Fix bugs preventing proper snow thaw

2010-01-20

She Buys Sea Shells (And Other Things) By The Sea Shore

From the Release Notes:

Add new Attraction building: The Trading Post Trading Posts sell various goods (currently chromas and Brigand King eggs) in exchange for various trinkets and Pieces of Eight The value of a given type of trinket at Trading Posts changes over time based on how many have been used in purchases Merchant brigands are more inclined to ship to islands with Trading Posts Pirates at low to mid performance levels on duty stations now contribute more to the ship's functionality Swabbie skills and performance have been lowered so their contribution is the same as before Swabbies now arrive to replace players that leave ships in all skirmish types except blockades. This functions the same as before in battle, with one for the first player, then one for every third New limited edition narwhal figurehead for manufacture at furnishers Newly delivered limited edition vessels now come with custom adjectives in their names The rowboats on all newly delivered vessels now let you leave the ship (some older ships have working arrows, but the rowboats themselves aren't clickable) Pirates cashing out of a poker table with more than their last buyin go into the victory pose The bar shelves below decks on war brigs may now be dusted Merchants now more accurately estimate the cost to ship their goods to different islands Allow more rotations of the tropical potted plant (this also means the ones on frost class sloops may now be dusted)

2009-12-22

Job Board Bugfixes

From the Release Notes:
Fix a bug where sorting the tables of job offers could sometimes lead to the wrong boat receiving your job application. Fix a bug where blockade job offers were getting lost.

2009-12-18

Job, Job, Job Your Boat

From the Release Notes:

Overhauled the "Voyages" tab on the notice board Voyages are now shown in sortable tables with columns for the ship, officer, jobber pay, etc. instead of giant description text. Jobbers may sign up to auto-apply for voyages of specific types (e.g. sea monster, pillage) and their application will be sent if any vessel starts hiring for that type of voyage. Added "Manage Jobbers" control on board vessels (on the helm and nav table) to specify the officer in charge and a short mission statement for the voyage. Added a "Hire Swabbies" button on the manage jobbers dialog to hire swabbies to your vessel without posting a job offer to the notice board. (Note that swabbies are still automatically hired as normal when you do post a normal offer) Moved the "Call all hands" button onto the Manage Jobbers dialog. Make the color range on the voyage configuration difficulty slider more accurate Show the max crew, not just the count of pirates aboard, on /vwho results Fix some recipes listing their labor requirements sorted inconsistently

2009-12-10

But What About Flame-Painting?

From the Release Notes:

Immediately after client update: Painting the hull of a dhow, baghlah, or xebec no longer leaves an all-wood racing stripe. Ice on ships is no longer strangely colored based on the hull's paint Adjust the color of gold paint on ship hulls. Do not show all-hands messages if you have DND on. Always display all-hands message to the person that sent it even if they otherwise wouldn't see it. After the next reboot: Fix issues with persimmon familiars not being recolorable & not being able to recolor familiars to persimmon. Allow snow furniture to be placed in the lobby scene outside houses. Puzzle sessions under a minute no longer count towards competitions. Restrict the new Atlantis & Cursed Isle trinkets to the normal color palettes for those.

2009-12-08

All Hands to the Paintbrush

From the Release Notes:

Allow players to recolor and rename familiars for the normal fees and with the normal restrictions without filing a petition to involve an OM. Allow ship hulls to be painted just like railings and sideboards. Improve performance of scene rendering in certain situations, especially scrolling. Add a button on the Vessel tab to allow officers to request all hands (or some subset) to come aboard their vessel. Adjust the rate random dragoons board from the water in Atlantis. Reduce the number of dragoons boarding from Gorgonyxes and Archelons in Atlantis. Adjust monster spawn rates in Atlantis. Added new prizes for both Atlantis and CI: New trinkets and (rare) Atlantean and Indigo Chromas. Reduced the price of Imperial Outpost maps. Adjust recipes for several products (See Hermes' post here) Add new style of gift wrap in the palace shoppe. Add new holiday trinkets in the palace shoppe. Add new holiday portrait backgrounds: Ariastess's Candyland Inn, Damayi's Tropical Christmas, Dexla's Candied New Year, Greylady's Holiday Welcome, Molasses's Cozy Maiden. Bring back the Candy Cane trinket. Fixed a bug related to using up labor hours. Fixed a bug where Explorers' Halls would still sell maps after they've gone dark.

2009-11-23

Imperial Bugfixes

From the Release Notes:

Fix bug causing graphical lag when navigating in imperial outposts Fix bug preventing the creation of new trophy boxes (Fixed at next reboot) Fix bug where ships sometimes couldn't enter imperial outposts (Fixed at next reboot) Fix incorrectly translated Imperial ship names in German (Opal). Adjust payouts in imperial outposts - change most of the commodities into pieces of eight and adjust how much is set aside for the ship owner/operator. (Changed at next reboot)

2009-11-19

Colonel Bug's Formidable Garrison

From the Release Notes:

New limited edition portrait backgrounds: Amethethon's Waterfall Walk, Cassopia's Mermaid Map, Harlech's Commodities Market, Halech's Still Thirsty, Trollsb's Cursed Isles Disable job posting while off-ship at an expedition Lower the commodity payouts from Imperial Outposts Automatically move 10% of the PoE earned by defeating an Imperial Outpost to the ship's hold In building records for Explorers' Halls, don't claim the money spent purchasing a map went to the hall (since it didn't) Fix bug where certain rare boards for Imperial Outposts would break Fix bug that sometimes caused no trophies to be displayed for a pirate Fix some missing translations

2009-11-18

Exploring the Transcendent

From the Release Notes:

Add new Attraction building: The Explorers' Hall Explorers' Halls sell charts to new expeditions nearby, currently specifically: Raids on Imperial Outposts The tyrannical Empire has started encroaching on the piratey high seas. Attack the outposts, sink their defences, and fight the soldiers to plunder their supplies Count "Learning" as poor, not fine when calculating blockade pay Split Able into Able and Proficient Split Aspiring into Aspiring and Obscure Add new experience levels beyond Sublime: Revered, Exalted, Transcendent New bronze cannons and helm available for manufacture New figurehead available for large vessels Don't allow greeter pillages or ships being transported by swabbies to enter expeditions Fix a bug that caused some shop orders to not show

2009-10-06

Reputation

From the Release Notes:

Pirates, Crews, and Flags now each have 4 types of Reputation, viewable via the pirate, crew, and flag pages. Each category of reputation may be earned through various in-game activities. Different activities earn different amounts of reputation. Additionally, activities performed more recently are worth more reputation than past activities. Conqueror - Earned by fighting brigand kings, defeating skellies and zombies, fighting (and sinking) other players' ships, blockading, and attacking flotillas. Explorer - Earned by visiting the Atlantis Citadel, visiting the Cursed Isles, Completing expeditions, and travelling around the ocean. Patron - Earned by hosting tournaments and event blockades, as well as participating in tournaments and bakeoffs. Magnate - Earned by purchasing items and portraits and earning loot from sea monsters. New shoppe portrait background - Weavery New limited edition portrait - Greylady's Tailor

2009-09-16

Now With 50% More Deluxe

From the Release Notes:
Fix issues with deluxe labor badges not allowing the extra labor they should. Fix message given when placing an order for a shoppe; point towards the correct place to see and deliver it. Various sundry tweaks to translations.

2009-09-15

All That Glitters Is Gilded

From the Release Notes:

New Deluxe Labor Badges: lasts as long as a regular labor badges, but allows 72 hours of labor per day. New Items for Manufacture: Fighting dummies (Swordfighting & Rumble versions) - ye can associate these with a particular pirate and fight a dummy dressed and armed like them Buccaneer hat Furniture that can replace existing items on ships: Gilded cannons and helms Figureheads: Sea Serpent, Gryphon, Mermaid Include hours spent foraging in labor reports. Offline labor is now allocated more reliably to top-paying jobs. On subscription oceans, if a pirate doesn't use their offline labor hours, they are now provided to other pirates on the same account. Combine all of the shoppe/vessel commodity management interfaces onto one tabbed interface to make it easier to switch between them. Use a smaller icon for furniture on the product pricing interface to fit more at a time. Put shoppe recipes on their very own panel, accessible to everyone. Shopkeepers can find it on the shop management radial menu, others will find it where the management radial would be. Orders may now be placed on behalf of your shoppe with any appropriate shoppe on the island (ones that make commodities or the same shoppe type) - the cost will be paid from the shoppe's coffers. These orders will be deliverable by any manager at your shoppe from the Manage Orders interface. On doubloon ocean, any doubloon delivery fee will still need to be paid by the delivering pirate. Managers must now pay full price even at their own shoppe - they should generally use the Order for yer Shoppe mechanism to pay straight out of the shoppe coffers. Log to the building records when someone works at a shoppe either on reserve labor or on anything else not covered by escrow. Combine employee payment records in shoppe logs. Combine foraging records in vessel logs. Adjust the gold nuggets needed to manufacture dive helms. Small adjustment to cursed isles chest distribution to gunners and fighters. Cutters now have in-scene bowsprits to match their icon. Increase the reward for defeating the Atlantis Citadel Bug Fixes Fix bug with wrapping of certain item names (e.g. Poniard) on the Completed Orders panel. Fix bug where overfull skellie/zombie fights would always eject the first people in. Fix some boochy behavior with typing prices into some of the commodity interfaces.

2009-08-05

We're Painting the Parrots Red

From the Release Notes:
Fix bug with some parrots being shown with incorrect colors on pirate pages. Fix bug that could result in employees showing up repeatedly in reports. Make the "warnspot" chat message reflect how blackspots really work. Fix various typos in the spanish translations. After tomorrow's reboots: Fix bug requiring a current subscription to equip the box set's backsword.

2009-08-04

Pillaging is Hard, Let's Go Shopping

From the Release Notes:

Revamp shoppe purchasing interface. Provide up to 2 hours of labor per puzzle completed for in-game/active labor if the hours are available and the puzzle isn't booched. Play a celebration sound when ye are awarded a trophy or complete a mission. Add new furniture items: pedestal and female pirate bust. Add persimmon to available colors for prizes from Treasure Chests. Display an ahoy panel of completed orders that allows their delivery. The ahoy appears when the order is completed or at logon. Bugfixes: Fix division of booty at server shutdown. Fix that some /who panels still auto-closed. Fix that eights paid for jobbing on trade voyages weren't written to the vessel log. Allow certain rewards to be received and redeemed without logging out. Fix bug that would consume labor hours when immediately abandoning a crafting puzzle.

2009-07-08

Trading: Keep it in the Family

From the Release Notes:
Bugfixes: Fix that trades weren't allowed on family servers. Fix logging of pay from reserved labor. Fix several Spanish translations. Fix that some pirate names couldn't be said after logging back in on a family server. Fix the large font on Mac OS X.

2009-07-02

Speak Somewhat Freely

From the Release Notes:
Add several words to the family server white list. Bugfixes: Fix the small dog in portraits. Fix that rats given out in the tutorial mission could be placed on islands. Fix several Spanish translations. Fix editing flag news. Fix issues where stalls/shops would inappropriately apply labor to reserve.

2009-07-01

¡Por las barbas de Neptuno!

From the Release Notes:

Add new family ocean, Crimson. Add new Spanish ocean, Jade. Add Reserve Labor in Shoppes & Stalls. This allows employees to perform work ahead of time (either online or offline) which will be automatically applied to any future orders made at that stall/shoppe. Buyers purchasing from a shoppe with sufficient labor to cover their order will see the delivery time as "Immediate" and will indeed be able to pick up their order any time after placing it. Allow flag & crest tapestries to be hung on the side of larger ships (such as in place of the white ones which are there by default). Add captain's bandana hat for sale. Add pirate bust furniture that can be inscribed with information about a pirate. Add large display case furniture that holds up to 80 trinkets. Add new color: persimmon. The color isn't available for production in cloth, paint or enamel yet. Show blockade job offers on all islands. Move the Vote on Booty button to its own ahoy panel. Display counts of chests foraged and chests available on buried treasure expeditions. Allow non-subscribers to make hearty invitations. Sink a portion of a vessel's eights along with the vessel when it goes down in Atlantis, blockades and flotillas rather than adding it to the sunken treasure. Give out the rat and furni with the tutorial mission. Highlight ships with a bright blue outline on the Where are My Vessels display. Stop playing the intro music in the gunnery puzzle for if it's reentered soon after it's been exited. Add a note that by logging on, you agree to the Terms of Service. Teach Sea Monsters to attack ships off the edge of the board (but not those in safe zones). Add rose, lavender, mint, light green, magenta, lemon, peach, and light blue as colors for gems on rings. Bugfixes: Fix inflated values being shown for total eights from chests. Fix the bilge clear sound. Fix a bug in generating shop labor reports that could sometimes misreport labor remaining in queue. Fix a bug where bots on tutorial missions constantly booch. Fix Bumblebeard taking over the top right panel of the map. Fix Barnabas getting a woefully underskilled crew against some ship types. Fix bonus moves returning if used when entering the citadel. Fix multiple waves attacking at the end of foraging rounds in rare circumstances in the gauntlet.

2009-06-10

Fixes by Land or by Sea

From the Release Notes:
Fix the Party Boat portrait background name. Fix a problem causing clients on some machine to fail during startup. After reboots: Fix some problem with German names for Brigand King vessels and Barbarians.

2009-06-07

Party by Land or by Sea

From the Release Notes:
After reboots: Add two limited edition portraits: Nova's Party Boat and Kirppu's Garden Party. Fix inheritance mission not starting properly.

2009-06-03

Bugs from the Deepest Depths

From the Release Notes:
New sounds for the swordfighting, bilge, carpentry, sailing, gunnery, and navigation puzzles. Updated background for swordfighting. Reduced the probability of getting swords, gloves, and mugs in Atlantis and the Cursed Isles. Bugfixes: Fix skellies and zombies misreporting the number of eights won and giving maps to the wrong player. Fix chests being counted more than once in the eights summary.

2009-05-28

Bugs from the Deep

From the Release Notes:
Bugfixes: Fix NPPs going on drinking binges. Fix men-at-arms selections for fights being disregarded in Atlantis and the Cursed Isles. Fix puzzles failing to register after a round in blockades. Fix skellie and zombie missions disappearing soon after the skellies or zombies spawned. Fix that items from skellies and zombies always went to the first pirates to enter the fray.

2009-05-27

Bounty from the Deep

From the Release Notes:

New Expedition: shipwrecks. New Furniture: rowboat bed and ship's bell. New limited edition pet: cougar. More evenly award performance-based chests. Calculate the doubloon surcharge for items involving purple, black, and gold cloth and enamel from the amount of each commodity of that type used. Include the amount of evenly split treasure on the SMH division summary. Add Atlantis and Cursed Isle specific map icons. Remove the item requirement from skellies/zombies. If no one is fighting them, skellies/zombies will now get bored and start leaving one at a time. Allow mugs, postcards and postage stamps of portraits to be created through Zazzle. Highlight curse words and stopwords in the chat interface. Give referrers a bandana for referring a new player instead of eights. Adjust high end rumble AI to be less extraordinarily skillful at surviving with a nearly full board. Bugfixes: Fix chests foraged near the end of a gauntlet round not counting. Fix thralls in the Cursed Isles not following their new master if their current master leaves and extra, inactive thralls showing up in fights. Fix crew and flag fame calculations. Fix calculation of shipwrightery scores in abandoned games. Fix bug with competition rankings booching when not participating in every puzzle Fix bug that prevents a disconnected pirate in an atoll from being able to set sail after reconnecting. Fix improper dumping of the booty and hold in non-sinking blockades and flotillas. Booty is now dumped and the hold is now kept in both situations. Remove eights from a ship's booty when it's sunk in a non-sinking blockade. Rename Atlantean Princess Statue to Atlantean Priestess.

2009-04-22

It Looks Like You're Trying to Play a Puzzle

From the Release Notes:
Active client update: Fix missing translations for Rigging tutorial on the Puzzle Board Add the ability to close out Bumblebeard when he's giving his mission cancellation speech After reboots: Fix bug with tutorial missions thinking they were canceled after having finished normally

2009-04-21

Rigging

From the Release Notes:

New Puzzle: Rigging. Note that performance-based trophies will not be enabled initially, and will be turned on once scoring has stabilized somewhat. Navy missions and crew creation now allow rigging experience as an alternative to sailing in their requirements. Additionally, for crew creation - rumble is allowed instead of swordfighting and any duty puzzle experience is allowed for non-established server crew requirements. Include crew restocking cut on job notices. If you're on a vessel, default to vessel chat regardless of chat-circleness. Bugfixes: Fix a bug that could result in not logging a pirate transacting with a ship's coffers. Fix bug where placing an Enthralling maneuver while there are more thralls on your boat than pirates would cause boochiness.

2009-04-07

The Phantom Atollbooth

From the Release Notes:

New seasonal pet available in the Palace Shoppe: rabbits New egg-competition winners - egg furniture items available in the Palace Shoppe or through various events New colors of cloth, paint, enamel, and clothing: lemon, peach, light blue Cats are now available for purchase in a new color: blue-grey When defeating brigands, you sometimes gain information about other goodies they knew about, such as buried treasure or juicy merchants When set to the trade voyage type, do not ramp up difficulty of future brigands based on winning New "Evading" voyage type; this is the same as a trade voyage, except without paying jobbers per league. You can also change to this type at any time, however once it's on, you cannot turn it off until you're at an island Adjust brigand payouts based on firepower of their vessel Update German translations of some color names for improved consistency Update sound library to hopefully fix skipping or stopping sounds Brigands in melees are now more willing to give up the ghost when hopelessly outnumbered instead of dragging out fights Fix bug that would sometimes spawn woefully under-skilled brigands

2009-03-18

Taste the Rainbow

From the Release Notes:

Many changes to brigand spawning; things should be a lot more consistent. Adjustments to might calculations; the firepower of vessels is now considered. Lessen effects of older battles on the ramp in pillaging. Increase minimum crew numbers for brigand vessels. Adjust the impact of duty navigation performance on brigand spawn. Alter how payouts from brigand vessels are calculated. Adjust route difficulties to smoothly transition instead of abruptly changing at islands. Display route difficulty on Yer Known World; darker leagues mean more dangerous waters. Various visual tweaks to the chart interface Change the default crew cut for new crews to 20%. Make the Monkey Boat a little less aggressive towards vessels with high-value cargo. Show vessels' helmsmen & crew counts in the results of /vwho. In Cursed Isles, assign a share for the booty divide after each swordfight win, plus one more when leaving the isle. Slight adjustments to the contents of chests in Cursed Isles Only allow small ships (those with a single mast) to be used for greeter pillages. New limited edition portrait backgrounds for spring: Sharktail's Blooming Meadow, Happyharlot's Spring Garden, and Bootlegpatch's Twilight Garden (will be turned on at a future date) Swabbie Ship Transport costs have increased - you now get more swabbies for a better manned boat and faster service from one island to another Adjust the spawn distribution of some Atlantis boards Bug Fixes Fix various timing bugs in spades and hearts. Fix bug in poker involving side pots with multiple folds and all-ins. Fix timing bug in drinking involving drunkenness. Fix bug involving vessels sinking while being hijacked. Fix colorization of foamy mugs in portraits. Fix various bugs with brigands that could spawn in places that they wouldn't encounter you on the sea.

2009-03-05

From the Release Notes:
Active After Tomorrow's Reboot Fix silver Cursed Isle zombie maneuver token removing far too many zombies. Now it should remove approximately as many as the gold token turns into thralls, as it was intended.

2009-02-10

From the Release Notes:

Active After a Client Update Fix bugs producing invalid settings from saved parlor games configurations Active After Tomorrow's Reboot Lower the difficulty of zombie rumbles Smooth and slightly increase brigand payouts for medium and medium-hard brigands. This is the first change from the pillaging feedback. There will be more changes to pillaging in future releases. Note: There was a bug in the new payout calculation, so it was rolled back after the release. It will reappear in a subsequent release. Lower the maximum number of participants a player can require in a tournament Fix bug with Turbo TD having 30 second moves Fix bug with Classic drinking going to 1000 points Fix bug causing cursed chalices to appear in Atlantis Fix hair sticking out from High enlightened masks

2009-02-04

If A Homunculus Sees His Shadow, Does That Mean Six More Weeks of Cursed Fog?

From the Release Notes:

Portraits and New Items New limited edition portrait backgrounds: Damayi's Cupid's Party, Damayi's Pirate o' Love, Happyharlot's Valentine's Day, Roseash's Lakeside Snow, Merethif's Winter Cabin Returning seasonal portrait backgrounds: Valentine's Day Heart, Valentine's Day Swan Limited edition white elephants are available in the Palace Shoppe Seasonal Valentine's Day trinkets are available in the Palace Shoppe New seasonal valentine furniture available in the Palace Shoppe: Rose wreath Flower trinkets may now be held in portraits Mugs may now be held in portraits Solid or greater experience in drinking allows foam in the held mug New clothing available for tailors to manufacture: plain knickers for ladies New starter clothing, also available from tailors: patchy pants and solid shirts for both genders New Player Experience New tutorial mission for first-time pirates Make navy gunnery mission only require Apprentice instead of Narrow in the 3 basic duty puzzles Make navy vessels better understand their available duty stations Tweaks to the pirate creation interface Allow pirate creation during initial game download when launching from the web page Cursed Isles New sounds on the Cursed Isle Cultists and Enlightened Ones now wield weapons of their own making New Cursed Islanders have been spotted in frays: Vargas and Homunculi Adjust bot AI for rumbling New Cursed Isle loot is available for plundering Miscellaneous Tweaks Decreased the number of dragoons boarding from sea monsters New titles assignable to crew members Scale blacksmithing scoring with difficulty level Restrict what html is usable in trinket inscriptions/wrapped present text Warp to portal arrows if necessary instead of complaining that they are unreachable Use antialiased text throughout the game Flotillas now only blockade an island after at least two weeks of existence, versus one before Always show the 'To home' button, even when at home (and tell users as much if they try to use it there) Don't require officerhood to see vessel lock status from the docks Adjustments to mugs in drinking: Fix skull mug to properly only penalize by 40 pts on PLAYING the special, not drinking it Stein - Make it +15/-10 instead of +15/-5 Horn - On playing specials, lose 10 points Bug Fixes Fix bug with foraging scores in puzzle competitions Fix bug with inconsistently aged bandanas from item tutorial mission Fix bug with vessels sunk between the time they pull into the CI cove and the end of the turn Fix bug in ship placement coming out of cursed isle gauntlet - previously never placed to upper right of primary exit point. Fix bug with the notice board's inn button when the inn is your home Show "Board" instead of "Apply" on the jobbing board when a pirate is already jobbed into that crew Add missing layers for dreadlocks & long-straight hair in portraits Fix misaligned buccaneer jacket sleeves in portraits Fix timing issues with some messages relating to scoring and drunkenness; this includes timing issues causing incorrect scores to be displayed game-end involving tankards

2008-12-16

Ghost of Gunnery Past

From the Release Notes:

Add a speed slider to gunnery to set a desired speed; the puzzle will run at either that desired speed or the speed based on your rating, whichever is higher. New player-made holiday trinkets available for purchase in the palace shoppe Prefer still-fighting zombies to those that have already been defeated when applying the zombie defeat and control bonus move in the Cursed Isles. Add more island scenes for the Cursed Isles. Vessels taken over in Atlantis and Cursed Isles now show with a red outline. Reduce the weight given to gunnery and defence of the ship in Cursed Isle payouts, and better spread out the number of chests given to everyone puzzling. Make one-on-one fights against saboteurs unrated. Monkeys in male portraits are no longer double-jointed & able to hide their arms complete behind their backs. Zombie thralls lack the dexterity to wield swords and now go into battle with sticks. When awarding sea monster charts, be more likely to hand out Cursed Isles maps than Atlantis ones. When seeding gems to a market, set the price to an average of the existing gems at their lowered price and new gems at their normal price. Navy ships now better understand what stations they have available when selecting where to go for a mission. Randomize the order of items in skelly/zombie wagers. Wait a bit before playing entrance music in sinking situations so the music doesn't overlap with the danger whistle. Sounds in skirmishes caused by distant ships are now quieter. Don't play vessel ambient sounds while standing on a cursed isle. Add a notification when logging on while a reboot is pending. Clarify messages for different ways saboteurs can board vessels. Bugfixes Fix bug with booty division screens coping badly with wardrobe changes (especially removing certain hats). Fix the border on crew chat for certain cases, such as large-font mode. Fix blue-screen in reconnecting after a disconnect in the Cursed Isles. Fix a huge number of punctuation and grammar inconsistencies. Fix misalignment of animation when labor is applied to an order. Adjust graphics on playing cards to better line up. Fix dock interface to stop it truncating vessel names so prematurely. Fix bungalow outdoor scene not allowing snow pirates and similar furniture.

2008-12-03

The Frogurt is also Cursed

From the Release Notes:

Turn on holiday trinkets, furniture, backgrounds. NOTE: Festive Firs and Holiday Wreaths will not be able to be produced or ordered until the next ocean reboots. Minor fixes to puzzle competition page layout. Fix performance problem when running on java 1.6.0_10+ on Windows. Fix a problem with pirates being unexpectedly logged off as if they were idle. Fix problem with not all dragoons/zombies being pulled into the ship-takeover fray in Atlantis & Cursed Isles.

2008-11-21

Rusting Old Ironsides

From the Release Notes:
Fix bug where brigand ships in non-sinking flotillas never sank Remember the side of a Sea Monster encounter ships left from when re-entering

2008-11-20

Applying the Swabbie-Prod

From the Release Notes:
Fix swabbies not taking stations when ordered to do so Fix swabbies not making it back to the ship when leaving the Cursed Isles

2008-11-19

Cursed Isles

From the Release Notes:

Cursed Isles Add a leader board to show rankings during puzzle competitions In puzzle competitions, don't consider puzzle sessions started before the competition Allow people to win more than one prize during a performance bracket competition Change border around battle navigation view on sinking battles Add chests hauled to the score board in Atlantis Don't swap ships between safe zones when exiting & reentering sea monster skirmishes Skellies/zombies no longer take: regular sea charts, mostly-used whisking potions, injury repair potions Let people trash sticks Fix booch where gorgonyxes and archelons didn't drop dragoons on player vessels when pulling up next to them. They were always intended to transfer dragoons in addition to their normal attacks. The number of dragoons spawned normally has been dropped to compensate. Fix problems with some male clothing and monkeys in portraits Fix problems with sometimes displaying stale duty reports Fix bug with reconnecting when aboard a now-sunk vessel Fix booched non-scaling border around battle navigation view

2008-10-14

Monster Mishmash

From the Release Notes:

Playing poker at high-buyin tables now requires some poker experience Pirates ordered to navigate may change a ship's course. Brigand Kings holding islands display their power on the blockade board. While in a safe zone, vessels no longer generate special maneuver tokens (double-move, etc) Navy vessels no longer appear on radar or display a might ring, since they cannot be attacked. Hearties' names are now underlined when shown with just their face as well as with their full pirate. When all 4 cannons are filled in the gunning mission, the cannons are fired to allow them to be filled without leaving the puzzle. Atlantis treasure awarding now better takes into account how long pirates were in Atlantis. Vessel Speed indicator now indicates speed as a percentage of the maximum speed of the vessel. Layout change to the palace shoppe's top area. Increased time before users are auto-logged-out after idling. Autumn Leaves will be reappearing for the fall. New limited edition portraits: Bootlegpatch's Night of the Living Pumpkins, Ickessler's Skellies, Merethif's Fruit Manor, and Nordenx's Dragoon Kin. Bring back Halloween portraits: Ye Dread Dead, Jack O Lantern, Nordenx's Skull Island. Bug Fixes: Fixed layout problems with Notice Board news page. Fixed problems with the whisk to home/houses button on news page. Fixed bug where a brigand king taking over an outpost could cancel already-finished orders in a shoppe on the outpost. Fixed bug that sometimes sent errors to chat while in foraging practice mode reminding them (repeatedly) that they cannot get commodities. Fixed bug with intro mission navy payouts. Fixed bug in drinking where inaccurate final scores were sometimes reported. Fixed bug where users whose chat circle has disappeared while on board a vessel didn't go back to vessel chat mode automatically. Fixed sound bug in Java 6 on Macs.

2008-08-28

Chucking the Mushy Bananas

From the Release Notes:
Send a notice to the vessel when the forage offer changes. Don't allow pirates without the ability to forage to take forage offers. Bug Fix: Fix garbled text in labor reports.

2008-08-27

Fruits of yer Labor

From the Release Notes:

New Puzzle - Foraging - clear the crates to collect the fruit, gems, and gold. Replaces the old click-to-forage mechanism. Fleet Officers and above (and deed holders) can create foraging offers to pay their crew for the commodities they forage, and these can be posted to the notice board. Only fleet officers and above (and deed holders) can now conduct trading voyages or set the vessel to be transported by swabbies. Sound changes Added drinking puzzle intro song Added intro music Added intro music for most types of buildings Added ambient sounds while on docks/vessels Increase number of sound levels on the volume control Rapacious bands of monkeys have been sighted on the oceans. Early reports indicate they target ships battling amongst themselves while heavily laden with commodities. Gem sales prices now begin much higher and slowly drop in price. Carrying large numbers of gems on your vessel (25 or more) can attract the attention of gem thieves who may sneak aboard and take a portion of your stash of gems. Gold Ore has been replaced by Gold Nuggets, which are 1/10 the size and value and 10 times as easily found. Existing recipes have been switched over to use 10 times as many nuggets as they did ore and existing ore has been broken into nuggets. Performance enhancements intended to address some of the recent lag issues Tweaked Treasure Haul scoring Allow the newer colors to be used on trinkets and wrapped presents from the palace shoppe. Allow pets to join pirates in portraits. Bug Fixes: Fixed a bug that allowed furniture to sometimes leave behind a prop when rearranged in certain ways. Fixed bugs with puzzle competition countdown timer and disconnects

2008-07-31

Bumblebeard Begins

From the Release Notes:

Add ocean-wide duty and crafting puzzle competitions. Prizes are awarded for performance in the individual duty or crafting puzzles, or across multiple types of puzzles in a single competition. Debut Bumblebeard in his new role as puzzle tutor. In the introductory missions, Bumblebeard will now appear to help new players along. Add a league tracker showing the number of leagues between the last island and the next one coming up while on voyages. Include locations within a ferry ride of your current or home island in buttons on the noticeboard and to find spots for challenge missions. Allow items to be placed on clear portions of bar segments. Require Java 1.5 or greater. Allow managers to buy display-only items from the rack. Restrict /gift to subscription oceans. Bug fixes: Fix full score being given for loading only the cannonball in gunnery.

2008-07-02

Bug Hunt: The Adventure

From the Release Notes:
Bug fixes: Fix inability to start tourneys with certain stored game configurations. Fix swords dusting to foils instead of sticks. Fix the chat entry bar not appearing in scenes in Adventures. Fix finding the right adventure after following an Adventure invite link.

2008-06-26

Release the Sharks

From the Release Notes:

Add new furniture items from the sea: wall-mounted sailfish, wall-mounted tigershark and shark jaws. Add new furniture items that give a home that perfect pirate ambiance: drinking vessels, pirate flag, loot pile and potbelly stove. Bug fixes: Reduce memory usage in Adventures to prevent mid-adventure hangs. Fix chat not appearing in Adventure scenes. Fix paintbrush getting stuck when painting in a room with magenta. Fix inability to save pirates in Adventures.

2008-06-19

Apply the Brigand-Prod

From the Release Notes:
Bug fixes: Fix swordfights and rumbles not starting on pillages and in Atlantis. Fix parlor game settings not being stored between games. Don't allow the ship's wheel item in shoppe portraits. Allow pirates with Officer, Senior Officer and Captain badges to battle nav from the puzzle board as well as pirates with Pirate badges.

2008-06-18

Bound for Adventure

From the Release Notes:

Beta version of Puzzle Pirates Adventures available for intrepid pirates to explore. New "Puzzles" tab on the notice board to show pirates the path to puzzling greatness. New furniture: Wall map, ship's wheel and dart board. New paints and enamels: rose, mint, lavender, magenta and light green. New clothing: female sleeping hat. New permanent shoppe portrait backgrounds: Distillery by Ickessler, Iron Monger by Nordenx and Shipwright by Albini. Display icons on a pirate's page for the houses they own or are roommates in. Award mugs from chests in Atlantis. Bug fixes: Fixed sea monsters getting overly aggressive and double-ramming in Atlantis. Fixed treasure haul refusing to give out more chests after a gem was swapped next to a chest. Fixed a timing issue that would allow clients to walk on water.

2008-06-03

It's not easy being light green

From the Release Notes:
Two new clothing colors - Light green & magenta. Directing some new players to Malachite. Limited edition pet: the Mala-cat (a light green cat). Limited edition portrait background: Phillite's Spring Festival. New trophies for art contest winners.

2008-05-06

New Ocean: Malachite

From the Release Notes:
New Ocean: Malachite Bugfixes: Fix problem where island overview maps could become confused between different oceans. Fix layout problem on pirate pages for pirates owning many marketplaces.

2008-04-30

Scraping off the Barnacles

From the Release Notes:
Performance: Fixed two problems on client that would cause memory footprint and processor usage to increase significantly over time. Fixed some problems on server that would cause periodic lag. Bugfixes: No longer show navy crew pages. Fix problem where items on Opal (and less likely other oceans) would sometimes age at an irregular rate, especially around reboots.

2008-04-23

Deploy the Bug Zapper.

From the Release Notes:

Bugfixes: Fix carpentry puzzle hanging during Sea Monster/Blockade/Flotilla situations. Drinking appearance altering potions now works again. Treasure Haul now properly awards PoE for treasure hauled. Properly deactivate "Clear Charted" button on charting panel when it's not available. Fix various checkbox text that was being truncated. No longer show the rank & title options on the crew panel to those who cannot use them. Fix chat shortcuts not persisting across logins. Fix problem where bilge sounds continue after leaving bilge puzzle. No longer kick players out of the crow's nest & swordfight/rumble when they enter a fight from that location. Fix problem with java 1.4 users not being able to login. Fix held trophies not showing up in portraits. Fix navy pay sometimes not being awarded.

2008-04-22

Pay no attention to the release behind the curtains.

From the Release Notes:
Transition to new release system. This should not result in any visible changes. Scuttling now causes Brigand Kings to attack the NEXT available weekend - this is one week sooner than previously. Bugfixes: Fix bug that restricted screen recentering to once during a pirate's walk. Fix bug that caused the screen to scroll the wrong direction when walking from the edge of the screen.

2008-03-11

Real Pirates Wear Lavender

From the Release Notes:

New vessel type: Xebec New colors of cloth & clothing: rose, mint, lavender New furniture: Fancy sink New limited edition portrait background: Damayi's Lucky Pirate New limited edition portrait background: Benzene265's Window New egg-competition winners - egg furniture items available in palace shoppe or through various events. Allow bands and gemstone rings to be displayed in portraits There is a new tab on yer pirate page showing all yer booty. Easy-screenshot feature - use Ctrl-P or /print (from chat) to take a screenshot and save to your desktop. Quick-chat allows the use of the function keys to quickly chat commonly used phrases. Yarrr! Use battle-nav icon when viewing bot battle-nav skill. Upon startup, if the configured client size is larger than the screen's actual size, attempt to drop to a saner resolution. Give rag tops/bottoms distinct names. Sort assignable crew titles alphabetically. Sort color options when painting a scene alphabetically. Underline names of hearties in scene view. View recentering is now faster and has a shorter delay after your pirate moves. Adjust boxing background to clarify the bottom row of the playing area. In Atlantis, monsters will no longer spawn directly next to player ships or safe zones unless they can find no other available location. Bugfixes: Fix bug where boxing included the ability to defend (rumble is unchanged). Fix bug that tied up attempted wagers against someone on the same computer until reboot. Various internal cleanup and bugfixes.

2008-02-05

Is That A Starfish On Your Face, Or Are You Just Happy To See Me?

From the Release Notes:

Reports from those plundering Atlantean ruins indicate that new types of riches have been discovered. Rumors are that some particularly seasoned adventurers have recovered living creatures from the depths. Some poor souls who have lost their vessels in Atlantean waters have found starfish clinging to them when they washed ashore. Apothecaries can now brew a new potion to remove these stowaways from pirates who dislike them. Tailors have learned to craft new clothing: Chainmail New limited edition portrait background: Captainada's Valentine Arch Returning seasonal portrait backgrounds: Valentine's Day Heart, Valentine's Day Swan Seasonal Valentine's Day trinkets are available in the Palace Shoppe. New items available in portraits: Trophies ye've won may be displayed, as can a new item for those experienced in treasure haul. New one-handed option for rumble: Boxing. Minor adjustment to the blackjack's sprinkle pattern. Pirate info has been reorganized, removing the info button, and combining its content with yer own pirate page. Removed clothing purchase requirement from the mission to get yer free portrait painted. Adjust seeding in double-elimination tournaments to avoid repeat matches until as late as possible. Add buttons to the palace tab to conveniently access the shoppe & portrait room. Sort color options alphabetically when ordering products. Carpentry sessions now require fewer pieces placed before they count towards your ratings. Brigand Kings now set news when they win an island. Pirates playing from the same computer can no longer play wagered nor rated games against each other. Various bug fixes: Fix bug that didn't show the first-time-greeter dialog when dutied on by a greeter pillage. Fix bug that didn't keep PVP records if an involved ship had no crew. Fix bug involving multiple royals scuttling a Brigand King at the same time. Fix bug causing sailing to not give a new board after clearing one. Fix bug causing the palace shoppe interface to jump to the first page after purchasing an item. Fix bug that would cause the client to close immediately upon startup on some Linux systems.

2007-12-12

A Frigid Wind Blows

From the Release Notes:

A new Brigand King arrives from the frigid north: Brynhild Skullsplitter New enamel colors available for manufacture and use in mugs and furniture. Swords can NOT use these new colors. Seasonal items available in the palace shoppe: Candy canes, Santa hats. Seasonal furniture now available for manufacture by furnishers: Festive fir, Holiday wreath, Frosty fir. Bows & ornaments can now be custom colored this year. Revamped notice board: New Pirate News page Events & Island Events consolidated into a single tab Returning seasonal portrait background: Under the Mistletoe New limited edition portrait background: Nordenx's Longships Disable memorization of league points during greeter pillages and swabbie ship transport. Disable foraging on during greeter pillages and swabbie ship transport. Make Brigand Kings follow regular sea lanes when looking for nearby islands to blockade. Brigand Kings now manage shops and palaces they own. Allow on-duty greeters to toggle greeter chat with the '/gmute' command. When vessel deeds change hand, they now record the new deed-holder to the vessel logs. Warn shop owners who set their wages above their charged labor rates. Make league points more visible so they can be seen below the selected course. Make portrait previews less grainy. Add a chat tab to puzzles in addition to having chat in the location-specific tab (e.g. while puzzling on a vessel) Vessels now remember islands they've been within a league of, and return to there if abandoned, rather than their original port. Display a summary of winnings at the end of a pillage. In distilling, allow players to continue a CC12 for as long as they can maintain the perfect streak. New menu option in the Yohoho Tools Scene Editor to output a full-scale rendering of a scene. Bugfixes: Fix internal maintenance task that would sometimes lag the ocean. Fix issues with scene changes (exhibited many symptoms: repeated access denied messages while trying to board ships, winding up in strange scenes, etc.) Fix issues with sounds causing lag for some people while puzzling. Fix graphical glitches with the bet panel in poker in higher resolution windows. Fix carpentry station count on merchant galleons. Fix for issues with duty puzzles failing to restart.

2007-11-06

Norse by Norse-West

From the Release Notes:

Vikings! New ship: Longship New furniture: Carven chair, carven bench, carven table New clothing: Viking helmet, overlord helmet, valkyrie helmet Allow ship-wide orders like "More/fewer pirates to treasure haul/sail/bilge" through the duty icons on the dutier list. Enable Mac OS keybindings on the full screen chat panel. Allow a vessel's proposed course to be displayed at the same time as the existing course. New limited-edition portrait - Pinky77's Green Night. Bugfixes Fix booched zombie trophy names. Fix position of enemy count in rumble. Fix issues with carpentry maneuver box moving. Don't allow bid tickets filled or commodity orders delivered to vessels configured for greeter pillaging or swabbie ship transport. Fix missing graphics on top puzzler lists when viewed in a web browser. Don't let participation in event blockades keep flags from being able to change their relationships. In flotillas, don't deploy supply ships while in retreat mode.

2007-10-24

Zombie Obedience Lessons

From the Release Notes:
Let zombie hands be held in portraits. Only have zombies/skellies send tells that humans outnumber them once, rather than every time an extra person joins. Fix bug with zombie mission not registering as completed.

2007-10-16

Piratey Potpourri

From the Release Notes:

No longer protect ratings in blockades, flotillas and seamonster encounters from dropping. Count all navy missions towards the prerequisite for the palace drinking challenge. Don't remove the treasure chest divvy panel after a delay; wait for it to be explicitly closed. Add "Expand All" button to treasure chest divvy panel. Don't allow players to chart to sea monsters if vessel locks would prevent them from entering. Allow players with the Antediluvian Conch trophy to still hold the conch in portraits. Don't steal focus for the Ahoy panel announcing sunken treasure. Increase maximum hearties per pirate to 250. List the station type when announcing someone abandoning a duty station. Changes to Skelly frays: More pirates can sign up for the skelly fray than there are skellies. When the fray starts, if there are extra pirates, the skellies will randomly pick a subset of the players, and refund wagers to the rest. Skellies force a short break between the end of a fray they win and when pirates can vote to start a new fray. Skellies no longer spawn immediately after a reboot, but rather at some random point after that. Minor improvement to the appearance of eyepatches. Improve graphic performance under Mac OS. Support Mac OS shortcuts for copy, paste, etc. Flotillas now remain for 15 minutes after being defeated. Make the islands Brigand Kings blockade more predictable based on their flotilla location. Brigand King fleets now leave the board during blockade round breaks. Include the defender in flags shown on the initiate blockade dialog, and show the power of any Brigand Kings involved in the blockade. Add dividers in the tailor interface to better differentiate between genders. Adjust vessel job posting algorithm to be more consistent and reasonable. Show better information about a vessel's current status on /vwho when in multi-ship battles. Returning Halloween portrait background: Jack-'o-Lantern. New Halloween portrait background: Ye Dread Dead. New furniture for manufacture: small pumpkin, large pumpkin Bug fixes: Fix bug with sea monsters sometimes not leaving behind treasure. Fix bug with Commmand-Q behavior under Mac OS. Fix bug causing duplicate news to sometimes be shown. Fix bug that sometimes caused an old duty report to appear, only to be updated a moment later. Fix bugs with Dragoons not being properly removed from vessels. Fix bug where some people didn't show up on the duty station list. Fix bug causing incorrect online status reports for hearties. Fix bug that could prevent players from entering certain buildings. Fix bugs caused by server reboots between blockade rounds. Fix bug causing some hung poker tables. Fix bug causing strange behavior with multi-ship ramming. Fix bug where sea monsters were always drawn as surfacing to players entering the skirmish. Fix issues with carpentry appearance at certain screen sizes. Fix bug with displaying fist/hook patterns on the challenge negotiation panel. Fix bug with manuever indicator moving around the carpentry board. Fix bug where actions on scene items were sometimes drawn incorrectly. Fix bug where the arrange furniture screen could be such that some items were inaccessable off the top of the screen. Fix bug causing some players to get erroneous "Access Denied" errors when accessing certain info pages, crew/flag management controls, etc. Fix bug occasionally causing vessels leaving sea monster encounters to become stuck in limbo.

2007-09-19

Of Bugs and Monsters

From the Release Notes:

Gift badges are now available - you can purchase these at the palace shoppe and trade them until they are unwrapped. While wrapped, they do not provide any privileges. Condense treasure haul results (eights and chests hauled) onto duty report. Condense treasure chest contents onto Ahoy panel rather than through chat messages. At breaks in blockades/flotillas/sea monsters, divide half the eights treasure hauled since the last break amongst the pirates aboard. Dragoons aboard a ship leaving Atlantis will wait around and assault that ship if it returns. The longer a ship waits before returning, the fewer Dragoons will have the patience to wait to assault it. Minor rearrangement of Dragoon battle panel. Show exactly how many days are left before Sea Monster Maps dust. Orders to players will now show in an Ahoy panel to prevent their getting lost in chat. On Mac OS, correctly handle quit events and Command-Q by logging out. No longer announce to vessel chat when treasure haulers leave their station. Replaced sound for Citadel rising. Dragoons will now appear slightly less frequently. Fix bug where players were unable to watch dragoon frays. Fix bug where treasure haul ahoy would disappear over time. Fix bug with some shipwrecks remaining on battle board after having been completely hauled. Fix bug where players without a bravery badge could chart to a sea monster spot, then get stuck off the boat. They can no longer chart to the location. Fix bug where multiple Atlantis score panels would sometimes appear on the Vessel tab. Fix bug where the Island tab would sometimes show in place on Shoppe or House. Fix bug where some players were sometimes added twice to a battle against the Atlantean Citadel. Fix bug where Dragoons would sometimes follow the ship outside of Atlantis.

2007-09-11

Project Gorgonyx: Ahoy Spam Assassin

From the Release Notes:

Keep dragoon status ahoy from stealing focus after it initially opens. Include the station a volunteer is currently working in the dragoon ahoy. Lower the damage from Triketos and Gorgonyx ramming. Link share of treasure won from monsters to time spent in the battle as in flotillas and brigand king blockades. Add activity type for dragoon fighters to the dutier list. Prevent the blockade listing from scrolling down to a random point in the list on creation. Add a sound for the Atlantean citadel rising from the deep. Use vessel chat in rumbles with barbarians at sea. Use game chat for dragoon frays. List the correct color in the description of Atlantean helmets. Reattach women's elbows in portraits with aprons. Allow multiple people to haul treasure at a single booty chest/hold access point. Fix bug with the length of shuns given by blackspots. Fix bug that was causing mass disconnects (primarily on Viridian and Sage)

2007-09-06

Soft-Shell Archelon

From the Release Notes:

New portrait-holdable items for experience in Treasure Drop, Shipwrightery, and Blacksmithing. Increase the likelihood of receiving Treasure Boxes from Atlantean Citadels. When you enter a puzzle, any ahoy tabs you had visible will now come with you. Improved graphics and scoring for clearing a chest in treasure haul. Reduced Archelon toughness. Adjusted treasure creation parameters - more pieces of eight will be sunk with the monsters as well as the initial wrecks in the lair and the wrecks will take longer to be completely hauled. Reduced booty stolen by brigands and barbarians from the booty to 40% from 50%. Increased the minimum pieces of eight prize a treasure chest can award. Enable pillaging of treasure maps from brigands and barbarians. Bug fixes: Fix bug with submerging citadel animation. Fix bug with swordfighting board summary appearance for horizontal strikes. Fix bug where players leaving a ship or disconnecting were sometimes not properly removed from a dragoon fight.

2007-09-05

The Exorcism of Bellator

From the Release Notes:

Fix problems causing ghost and disconnected dragoons on ships and related dragoon bugs. Fix bug with players who have left vessels still being pulled into dragoon frays. Un-blackout remaining atlantean art (sword fighting background, sea monster ship wrecks) Give bravery badge unique artwork. Only allow purchase of one bravery badge at a time. Show blockade job offers for 0 eights and allow people onboard for said offer. Don't let dragoons challenge people who are in an active fray. Allow treasure chests to contain clothes in non-starter colors. Increase the chances of better treasure chests. Increase the value of shipwrecks left behind by defeated sea monsters. Fix bug with pillaging tutorial art.

2007-09-04

Sea Monsters: Atlantis

From the Release Notes:

Atlantis Rises from the Depths! Antediluvian Conchs may be turned into maps to Atlantean Outposts. These treacherous waters are infested with sea monsters and Atlantean dragoons. Those of strong heart may brave the dangers in search of riches. When paying brigand bounties (in flotillas and BK blockades), add some extra money to the ship's hold. Split blockade listings on the notice board into three groups: active, pending, and completed. Improve graphic performance in skirmishes. Improve performance on macs. Disallow images in crew/flag news. Remove crews' home islands from job postings. Each turn, if treasure has been hauled, announce the quantity to the vessel. No longer allow blackspots to automatically ban players who have never bought doubloons or subscribed. Show lock status of vessel on the "Where are my vessels?" view. Add a tooltip to the duty station listings on a vessel showing how many pirates are on that type of station, and the total number available on the ship. Change booty auto divide to 50-50 instead of 75-25. Show a tutorial to first time pillagers encouraging them to stay around to earn more money. Treasure Haulers now contribute a small amount to each duty while hauling. Increase brigand/barbarian payouts slightly. Refer a friend page now shows information about recent referrals. Spawn merchant brigs before baghlahs. New Portrait Background: Journey to Atlantis New Limited Edition Portrait Background: Nordenx's God Games Bug fixes: Fix bug with rescheduling blockades not always taking effect. Fix bug with treasure haul sometimes failing to bring up money. Fix bug with booty sometimes being divvied when a vessel was sunk. Fix bug with using the /gift command without a pirate name. Fix animation of the trick flying to the player in spades and hearts.

2007-07-17

Hammer Time!

From the Release Notes:

New Crafting Puzzle: Blacksmithing Big thanks to the Knighfish team and everyone involved in the GCPP for their hard work leading up to this. New Limited Edition Portrait Background: Azmoda1's Sunset in Paradise Changes to trade interface: Show more items at a time and print a chat message showing what each side traded. Make distilling games count towards your rating if you've already moved several pieces. Bugfixes: On doubloon oceans, properly require Captain or Senior Officer badge for various captain/senior officer tasks. Fix portrait graphics for captain's jacket. On Linux, attempt to fall back to a working browser if the configured one fails. Disallow scuttling Brigand Kings if your island is about to be blockaded.

2007-06-26

Pumping the Bilge and Patching the Seams

From the Release Notes:

Add a dismiss button to the scuttle panel. Allow Royalty to scuttle Brigand Kings and provoke an attack, even if they've been recently blockaded by Brigand Kings. Bug Fixes: Fix issues with duty puzzles becoming stuck after finishing a board. Fix issue where sometimes card games wouldn't start. Fix problems with some pirates falling off the puzzle ratings lists. No longer present the scuttle button to royals aboard a ship belonging to another flag. Fix German Barbarian King background. Fix bug where ships could sometimes reenter a flotilla before their ship is finished being sent to port.

2007-06-18

One More Thing

From the Release Notes:
Fix swordfight/rumble backgrounds for German Brigand Kings

2007-06-15

Bugfixes from the West

From the Release Notes:

Log eights paid for swabbie ship transport Ships being transported by swabbies now remember as they pass islands so that a reboot will not send them back to the beginning. Non-battle-ready ships may enter non-sinking flotillas under non-owning officers command. Bugfixes Fixed issue where pets would sometimes stop following pirates. Fixed issue where pirates in certain crews were unable to login. Fixed issue where swabbie-transported ships would sometimes stop mid-ocean. Removed erroneous 2 units of iron in canopy bed recipe

2007-06-14

Treasures from the East

From the Release Notes:

New Limited Edition Pet: White Elephants New Furniture: Exotic Carpet, Exotic Canopy Bed, Drum, Striped Pillow, Patterned Pillow, Pile of Pillows, Large Pile of Pillows. New Trinkets in the Palace Shoppe: Exotic Card, Exotic Coffee, Bangled Bracelet New Clothing: Veil (for lasses), Curled Boots (for lads) Increase bounty and treasure haul pay in flotillas. Some flotillas are now non-sinking; sinking flotillas pay out higher bounties than non-sinking ones Admiral Finius, Azarbad the Great, Gretchen Goldfang, and Vargas the Mad have non-sinking flotillas Barnabas the Pale and The Widow Queen have sinking flotillas New Voyage Types: Flotilla Attack: Show your intentions to attack a flotilla, reduce spawns while en route with good duty navigation (like trade voyages) Swabbie Ship Transport: For a fee, swabbies will transport your empty ship safely from one island to another New Limited Edition Portrait Background: Aryet's Stone Urns with Flowers Retire Valentine's Day portrait backgrounds Pirates now pin their hair up under wigs and diving helms so it doesn't poke out in an unsightly manner Bug fixes: Disallow ships on greeter pillages entering flotillas Never rate the boarding sword fight/rumbles at sea, even if each side has only one player Fix booch blocking governors from adjusting the time of Brigand King blockades Fix problem with entering names for sending tells under Java 1.6 Ensure Brigand King blockades are declared at least a week in advance

2007-05-29

Brigand Brain Transplant

From the Release Notes:
Fix performance issues with flotillas. Fix issue with reclaiming furniture that contains items (such as sword racks, trinket display cases, etc.) Fix orientation of Above-deck Dhow carpentry station. Not technically part of the release but changed just after - increased rate at which pieces of eight are hauled from sunken ships via Treasure Haul.

2007-05-25

Whole Wheat Flotilla

From the Release Notes:
Fix bugs with flotillas. Enlarge holds of cutters that were missed the first time around. Fix bug when hearties log on simultaneously.

2007-05-24

When Brigand Kings Attack

From the Release Notes:

A new Brigand King, Azarbad the Great, has been sighted sailing the seas Based on observations of his fleet, two new ship types are available for manufacture: Dhows and Baghlahs Brigand Kings now gather their might into Flotillas on the seas Brigand Kings have turned their attention to islands, and will blockade and contest for islands Royalty of island holding flags can provoke blockades by defeating a King and scuttling his vessel Attacks against a King's Flotilla can reduce his force, eventually driving him away During Brigand King blockades and Flotilla attacks, bounties are paid: Pieces of eight are awarded for scoring points by influencing buoys Pieces of eight are awarded for damaging and sinking brigand vessels Brigand vessels leave treasure behind when sunk A new puzzle, Treasure Haul, for recovering pieces of eight from sunken vessels New Tournament Styles: Double Elimination, and Single Elimination with a 3rd Place Playoff Prizes can be awarded for 2nd, 3rd, and 4th place as appropriate Changes to brigand ship behavior in battle Changes to ship locking, there are now three states: Personal Use: Only the deed-holder has officer privileges Crew Use: All officers in the crew have officer privileges, but may not enter sinking blockades or flotillas Battle Ready: All officers in the crew may sail into sinking blockades and flotillas Miscellaneous tweaks and bugfixes: Hold sizes for cutters have been increased Merchant Brigs and Merchant Galleons require less effort to manage the bilge Hiring Jobbers & Auto-targetting buttons now on a single line in the vessel tab Sort results from /vwho Improve old salts' estimation of ships with valuable goods aboard Fix problem where sometimes /who would fail in certain archipelagos Remove greenie broadcasts, add automated replacement of it Brigand Kings can only be found on Pillaging voyages Slight change to display of Shanghai points on crew pages Brigands and Barbarians are now marked as such by an icon on their might ring Greeter-pillage per-league pay now paid to greenies from the system rather than from the hold Fixed problem where interface to reclaim furniture and pets wouldn't list homes or stalls of the same type on multiple islands Fixed problem where greeter pillage ships were auto-tagetting inappropriately difficult vessels

2007-03-23

Box, Bots, and Booty

From the Release Notes:
Add a checkbox so officers can toggle auto-targeting of ships. Fix bug where sometimes it was impossible to give orders from the vessel tab, use items in the booty tab, etc.

2007-03-21

Second Star to the Left

From the Release Notes:

New Voyage Configuration options from the ship's helm: Pillaging: The default mode. Allows specification of the type and difficulty of ships you wish to fight. Blockading: Signs the ship up to accept jobbers from its flag's blockade job posting. Trading: Allows ship to set an amount to pay per league sailed based on puzzle performance. Greeter Pillaging: Greeters can run pillages to help introduce new players to the game. Better performance at duty navigation improves the chances of finding the types of brigands and barbarians you're looking for. Ships matching your voyage's desired settings will be automatically targeted. Consolidate all jobbing applicants into a single panel, rather than panels for each applicant. After winning a battle, 75% of the Pieces of Eight won are immediately divided among the pirates aboard. The crew's restock cut of that 75% will be automatically placed in the ship's hold, or into an officer's pocket if no Fleet Officers are aboard. Display a summary of the total value in the booty chest after winning a battle. New monthly portrait background winner: Deadstarr's Secret Cove. New trinkets for sale in the palace shoppe: Various pins, medals, and baked goods. Improved estimated time-to-completion for orders shortly after reboots. It is now easier to repair the most severe damage, and drain the most severe bilge when out of battle. New pirate creation process; new players can create a pirate without needing an account. When they leave, they will be encouraged to save the pirate and create an account. When a ship is "sunk" in a non-sinking blockade, all pirates aboard are now ejected to land. Bug Fixes: Fixed inconsistent ordering of pirates in portraits. Fixed incorrectly colored hooks in portraits. Fixed bug where loaded cannonballs were sometimes lost in a reboot. Fixed bug where islands would not initially report commodities they spawn after a reboot.

2007-02-01

Once More, With Feeling

From the Release Notes:
Fix broken vessel ownership caused by booched crew mergers. Fix rare case where duty puzzles with maneuvers would freeze after finishing a board.

2007-01-31

Oaken Token of Not Broken

From the Release Notes:
Fix duty puzzle sync issues in blockades with maneuvers enabled Fix issues with crew mergers, crews leaving flags, etc. If you have lingering issues from a failed case, such as multiple monarchs or captains, please file a petition.

2007-01-26

Roaches Check In, But They Don't Check Out

From the Release Notes:

Bug fixes: Fix broken chat history behavior Fix bug with rankings dropping in blockades Fix bug with gunnery booching in blockades in maneuvers Known remaining issues: There is still an extremely rare corner case where your rating descriptor may drop due to other pirates performing better than you, even though your level stays the same. Duty puzzles in maneuver-enabled blockades are at risk of sync issues, where the client believes it is doing well, but the server disagrees. This also results in boards not resetting after completing star levels.

2007-01-25

Who Are You And What Have You Done With My Duty Puzzles?

From the Release Notes:

New Bonus Maneuvers for Blockade Navigation Details are available in the documentation about blockades as well as the help files for each duty puzzle: Sailing, Bilging, Carpentry Maneuvers will be disabled in island-contention blockades for this weekend only to allow everyone to try them out in event blockades before islands are on the line. Duty puzzle ratings can no longer drop while in a blockade. Snow furniture has finally thawed. Huzzah, spring has arrived! Return of the Valentine's Day trinkets and portrait backgrounds. New Valentine's Day trinkets in the palace Shoppe. New monthly portrait background winner: Monet12's Old Photo. Fix lifespans for fezes and male diving helmets. Male diving helmets now last as long as female ones. Fezes dust sooner. All existing fezes have been given a complimentary cleaning and are as good as new. Miscellaneous bug fixes and tweaks.

2006-12-22

A Stitch in Time...

From the Release Notes:
Translation fixes Various preventative bugfixes

2006-12-20

Here we Come a-Bugfixing...

From the Release Notes:

Many translation improvements for German language mode. Distinguished translation changed from "Hervorragend" to "Respektabel" Added unique Fleet Officer rank icon. Slight change to the end-of-mission timing for "Play with Swords!" mission. Skeleton tables can now have things placed on them. Can now activate Incredible/Ultimate/#1 trophies on non-established oceans and will do so on Opal. Foreign-language oceans will now appear in their own list on the ocean choice screen. Bug fixes: Fireplaces and tropical potted plants should now appear in their proper colors. Fixed problem where the radial menu for other pirates would include duplicate items after switching language modes in the client.

2006-12-14

Ho Ho Ho, Merry Bugfix

From the Release Notes:

New furniture - Potted tropical plants, and fireplaces are now available for manufacture New items in the palace shoppe - Ye can now buy candy canes as well as santa hats (in both classic red, or fancy colors) in the palace shop New items to be held in portraits - Ye can now show off yer fruitcakes, wrapped presents, and candy canes New limited edition portrait background - Nordenx's Pipe Organ Returning winter portrait background - Under the Mistletoe Bug fixes: Fixed problems where client would get confused and mix languages Clearly indicate foreign-language oceans when choosing oceans Fixed various German translations and art Recovered missing sail bonus messages Removed boochy ratings code from blockades - Ratings will drop again, as that change was broken and needs a lot more testing Turned off #1 trophies on Opal - stats are still too volatile to award these, and existing ones have been removed

2006-12-08

Opal

From the Release Notes:

Added German translations - Oceans have a default language, but you can switch your preferred language for the client on a per-ocean basis from the Options menus. Note that these translations are a work-in-progress and some things (help documents) are still in English and others take up more space that the interface currently handles. Added Opal ocean - a German language ocean. Remove the "Remember password" button for security reasons Your duty puzzle ratings will no longer drop due to your work in a blockade. Bug fixes: Fixed problem where Join Event button was appearing for some who couldn't use it. Miscellaneous small interface tweaks and fixes.

2006-11-07

Get yer Duty Reports here

From the Release Notes:

Added brief pause at beginning of battle to allow dutiers to see their performance during the last league. Duty reports more accessible: Show the most recent duty report during a puzzle when paused. Show the most recent duty report when NOT in a puzzle (in crow's nest, sea battle, wandering the ship) when you press "ESC" or "PAUSE". Crew member list on crew pages now in three columns. Treasure drop tables & challenges may now be unrated. Blockade job offers may now be removed between rounds. Raised maximum pieces of eight job offer per blockade segment. Changed skelly furniture recipes - reduced white enamel, added chalcocite. Reduce old salts chat-spamming the inns. Pets may no longer be placed in crows' nests. Time between skelly spawns randomized. Jobbing pirates returned to crew pages. Bug fixes: Fixed problem where pets were becoming stuck in scenes. Fixed problem with crew page and dormant cabin people. Fixed problem with showing top hearties on hearty list. Fixed problem where free portrait mission sometimes whisked the user to the palace hall instead of a room with a portrait easel.

2006-10-25

Halloween 2006

From the Release Notes:

Halloween Masks - Masks are available for purchase from the Palace Shoppe, and yer name be hidden when ye wear one! Black Cats - Limited Edition black cats are now for sale in the Palace Shoppe! Get them while ye can! New Furniture - New Halloween-themed furniture is available for manufacturing! New limited edition portrait background - Deadstarr's Playing in the Cane! New Halloween portrait background - Blood Seas! Bug fixes for event blockade scheduling.

2006-10-19

Bugfixes

From the Release Notes:

Bugfixes: Crew/flag portraits work properly now - unfortunately this fix loses the currently set ones, so if you were one of the lucky bunch it worked for, you'll have to configure it again. Getting traded a portrait while on the free portrait mission no longer booches the mission. Dormant cabin people are no longer shown on the crew page. Flag creation works again. Construction sites show properly on info pages. Notification of petitions works again. Pages are no longer booched for non-existent flags/crews. Max hearties really raised to 150 this time. Fix for blockade pay issues/never-ending blockades. Added link to galleries even if you don't have a personal portrait. Show founded dates for flagless crews. Portrait captions no longer default to "null".

2006-10-17

Event Blockades and Trophies

From the Release Notes:

Event Blockades - Governors of islands can now start special event blockades with a multitude of options. Blockade Pay - A new system is in place so monarchs can set up normal jobbing offers for blockades and automate payment to jobbers. Trophies - Pirates are now awarded for a variety of exceptional (and sometimes not-so-exceptional) achievements! Note: Trophies will not be awarded for past accomplishments. New Info Pages - The pirate, crew, and flag pages have been given a face lift. Portrait Mission - If ye have bought clothes, check the mission board for a chance to get yer portrait painted for free. Shared Hearties - Ye can now display yer hearties on yer pirate page. Ye have the option of showing all, none, or yer best mates. If ye have a hearty ye want to be keeping secret, mark them as such, and neither of you will show up on either mate's page. If either person marks the relationship as secret, neither will show up on either's page. All existing relationships have been flagged as secret, any new ones default to non-secret. (The limit has also been raised to 150 hearties!) Named Familiars - Those little critters on yer shoulders can now be named, which displays them on yer pirate page. Be careful, though: only the first naming is free. Greeters - Changes have been made to the greeter recruitment process. See the YPPedia page about greeters for more details. Bugfixes: Fixed the carpentry bug! The bug where a sparkly hammer was giving booched duty reports has been squashed! There's still a glitch where carpentry occasionally get stuck at "Nice Work", and we're looking into that one. Fixed problem where rooms would get stuck thinking someone was furnishing them.

2006-08-15

Bugfixes and such

From the Release Notes:

Added radial menu option "View Tags" to view the owner of a pet. When buildings are destroyed/upgraded/downgraded - return the pets inside to their owners. When ships are sunk - return pets on board to their owners. Skellies can no longer steal EQUIPPED pets. Clarified text of the "Allow pets"/"Disallow pets" options for buildings and vessels. Bugfixes: Fixed problem with some pets claiming they were too old to wrap. Fix problem where non-officer deed-holders were unable to set pet privileges for the ship or place pets in the scene. Prevent lag from causing equipped pets to get into a state where they stick around partially shutdown.

2006-08-10

Lions and Tigers and Elephants, oh my!

From the Release Notes:
Pets - Now available from the palace shoppe Performing the "Get loot for yer home!" mission will give you a free rat - those who have already performed the mission should be given a free rat retroactively. Palace shoppe has been reorganized into tabs. New portrait background for 2 pirates - Clear Skies. New limited edition portrait backgrounds - Nordenx's series.

2006-07-19

Bugectomy

From the Release Notes:

Small reorganization of the Ye Panel Unwrapped presents now treated as though they were on a rack while wrapped. Bugfixes: Fix problem where some users were being given erroneous cannot-connect errors when in reality, the program was just trying to use an incorrect port. Fix problem where referred players placed in crews are not fully made cabin people and thus register as jobbers. Fix a missing piece of brigand king art.

2006-07-06

Squash them bugs

From the Release Notes:

Access to missions is now available from the radial menu. Added new initial screen to help new pirates get into the game without overwhelming them - new pirates get 3 missions (bilge, sword, and furniture) or can just jump straight to the docks if they prefer. Adjusted barbarian difficulty. Bugfixes: Fixed rumble client to allow shafts to come in just after (but still not just before) a drop. This was how it was always intended. Fixed problem where carpentry would report low scores when the user had been doing just fine. Fixed problem with restarting duty puzzles after league points. Fixed problem where certain users of Windows networking sharing were unable to log into the oceans. Fixed problem with dragging grapple icons on sea battle controls causing server to ignore skirmish moves. Fixed animation of ship on a turning ram and ship ramming involving wind. Fixed colorization of midriff blouse and sash for portraits.

2006-06-21

Those Pesky Summer Bugs

From the Release Notes:
Bugfixes: Fixed missing pirate names with faces. Fixed large ships not being able to shoot twice out a side. Fixed problem with sending email welcome message to new account holders.

2006-06-20

Summer Fashions

From the Release Notes:

A large number of new clothing items, available at the Tailor. Rearranged battle-navigation controls to be more consistent between in-puzzle and navigating-only modes. Referring a friend will now net you a pieces of eight reward. New limited-edition portrait - Usil2's Dusk Sky. New harpsichord furniture. Sounds in rumble when your teammate or opponent is eliminated. Increased max number of hearties to 100. Reclaiming furniture can now reclaim items with others' items on top of them. Those items are returned to their owners. Minor blows in rumble (aka: Sprinkles) will not be applied while your board is shaking. Bugfixes: Fixed barbarian skill assignment bug. Fixed carpentry duty puzzle out-of-sync problem. (where duty reports didn't match your real performance) Fixed bug where furniture vanished from a scene without being removed (as shown in the building logs). This furniture should return to the owner's booty the next time that scene is updated by arranging other furniture. Fixed problem where commodities were not properly removed from abandoned ships. Fixed missing private table message. Fixed problem where refer-a-friend didn't properly place referred players in the referring officer's crew. Fixed bug with rumble shaft patterns sometimes not wrapping properly. Fixed problems that could occur when a pirate was moved while in a parlor game.

2006-05-11

You need Booty to make Booty

From the Release Notes:

Brigand payouts will now increase based on the amount of pieces of eight, pillaged from Brigands, that you have in your booty New sofa furniture item now available Bugfixes: I know we've said this before, but single player mode puzzles should now work again Fixed the "m.unable_to_fetch_place_object" related problems Having a globe furniture item should no longer allow you to have a globe in a portrait

2006-05-02

The Fix for Fixes that Fixed Fixing

From the Release Notes:

Bugfixes: Fixed single player mode fix that did not fix the previous fix Fixed /speak command to send text to the "speak" chat channel Fixed problems with sea battle swordfights when there are only NPPs remaining Fixed a bug where offline pirates may not get their booty share during server lag Fixed Apothecary puzzle from being rated before 20 moves have been made, or a bottle has been filled Many behind the scenes fixes to improve server stability and reduce lag

2006-04-26

First-Aid for Hunting Accidents

From the Release Notes:

Added a 'Create new account' button to the account section of the website Bugfixes: Fixes to defending while in Rumble Team matches Fixed the Refer a Friend button Fixed some problems with poker not dealing out the correct number of cards Fixed Rumble tournament configurations to allow setting a specific Bludgeon to use Fixed problems with the Globe and Globe Table changing color when placed. You may need to remove them from the scene and then re-add them for the colors to be corrected. Fixed problems with ordered NPPs not actually taking a duty station Fixed problems with the Brigand Kings still showing up incorrectly Fixed problems with starting puzzles in the single player game

2006-04-20

Let the Hunt Begin

From the Release Notes:

New Doubloon Ocean called Hunter If you are planked from a vessel or building you will no longer automatically dismiss your puzzle (unless it was a duty puzzle). New furniture (Tub, Globe, Globe Table, Bar Segments, Wooden Bench, Potted Plants) Tweaks to brigand generation, should reduce ping-pong effect Bludgeons are now available for portraits Government deeds are once again tradeable, a warning message will appear in the trade window if one is being traded NPP Jobbers that are ordered to a duty puzzle, or are fired, will now automatically dismiss any challenge puzzles Bugfixes: Fixed the skull in the birds-eye view not being centered properly Fixed navy duty missions incorrectly putting pirates on brigand hunting vessels Fixed some duty puzzle related bugs that occur at league points Fixed a bug where the wrong pirate would get rated for Battle Nav Fixed Bilging and Swordfighting in single player mode Fixed ultra-high rated players being unable to spawn Brigand Kings Fixed bugs with giving out Brigand King trinkets on doubloon servers Fixed problem with missions not completing properly after all requirements are met Fixed drinking related scoring with the chalice and stein

2006-04-06

Will the Real Brigand Kings Please Stand Up

From the Release Notes:

Improved visibility of rumble targetting indicators. Added some additional cheat detection for swordfighting. NPP Rumble AI is now easier for lower levels and considerably harder for higher levels Bugfixes: Fixed bug where non-brigand-king ships would sometimes show up as being in the brigand king flag. Fixed some broken brigand king sayings. Fixed various minor rumble issues. Fixed issue where wrapped items were sometimes unable to be placed on a rack after unwrapping. Fixed problem laying out large fonts on configure house panel. Fixed problem laying out large fonts on mission panel. Fixed problem with old salts claiming brigand kings have been searching for fruits that don't exist on an ocean.

2006-03-31

Bludgeoning some Bugs

From the Release Notes:

The Palace Shoppe will now always display Badges above any other items Bugfixes: Fixed the amount of experience given out for Battle Nav (it should be easier to gain experience now) Fixed ships incorrectly showing up as Brigand Kings Fixed Rumble tournaments that don't have the info displaying properly Fixed problems with Rumble not loading properly in some tournaments Fixed problems with might levels being too high

2006-03-30

Rumblin' Kings

From the Release Notes:

Rumble! - new multiplayer challenge game - Send jabs and blows to knock out yer opponent Bludgeons - Available from the shipyard, these can be used in rumbling to attack yer opponent Brigand Kings - Attack the most difficult brigands, and ye may find one of the Brigand Kings. Beat them and ye'll be rewarded with a prize commemorating yer glorious victory. Sea Battle rating is being retired. Anyone with high ratings or experience will receive a commemorative trinket New Battle Navigation rating, rates yer performance while navigating in one on one battles Might rings are now calculated based on yer duty and fighting ratings Drinking mugs have been rebalanced Gift wrap - wrap presents to give to yer hearties. Eggs as furniture - hide them around yer house, or have yer portrait taken with them. Greeting cards available from the Palace Shoppe New Managers and Roommates are now given the option to decline those positions. Fancy beds can now be bought in a variety of colors Improved OM-petition mechanism Government deeds are no longer tradeable Poker minimum rebuy enforced Officer chat color changed Changed color for league points for charts in pocket Flag news posted when crew joins/leaves flag Give gift subscription time using the /gift command Bugfixes: Fixed a problem where bilge wouldn't report performance properly to the rest of the ship Fixed poker ratings to be more stable Fixed problem with furniture arrangement showing an all-black room Building/vessel records no longer auto-scroll to bottom

2006-02-02

Poker yer Eyes Out

From the Release Notes:

The snow has melted. Poker is now available as a game in the inn and in yer home with the Poker Table furniture. New Limited Edition Portrait background - Sky's Winter Aurora. New Holiday Limited Edition Portrait background - Valentine's Day Swan. Rings and Valentine's Day gifts are now available in the Palace Shoppe. Building and Vessel logs can now be highlighted for copying and pasting. Made flag chat types look more distinct: now every chat has a unique color/shape combination. More sparkles have been added to sailing. Chat now shows system messages about pieces of eight with graphical icon. Bugfixes: Cabin people will get proper booty division on doubloon servers. When merging crews with jobbing pirates from either crew in the merge, the client should now show the proper crew and rank after the merge. Joining a new crew if you were the last member of your old crew will no longer leave you crewless. Setting home island will now work in the port interface. Server should always restart properly after a reboot. Badges can no longer accidentally be bought twice. Tournament participants on intro missions do not delay the tournament due to help screens. Duty Puzzles should always give credit for work performed.

2005-12-09

Snow and Bug fixes

From the Release Notes:

Pirates and snow. You gotta love it! Added a limited-edition holiday portrait background: "Under the mistletoe" Non-subscribers will have their names turn yellow if they've played long enough. Display a confirm dialog prior to setting a place as your 'home'. Send an info message to a player when their rank is downgraded during booty division for not having the right badge. Bugfixes: In swordfighting, fixed display of new target after your targetted opponent was knocked out. If you were alive at the end of a swordfight, your miniboard was shown as others see it. Fixed to show you the board as you see it, because that will cause us less bug reports. Non-roommates will no longer see management controls and invitation requests. Fixed a few TD bugs that have been cropping up especially in turbo or with holes: laggy players would not see the correct round, scores, etc. Skelly missions will again correctly detect when the mission is completed. Fixed certain bungalows to have the rooms in the right place (homes already in bungalows will not be fixed). Fixed a longstanding mutelist bug that caused people you've unmuted to still be muted. Fixed a bug that caused duplicate matey messages for some people. Added some fixes that should help with problems of dismissing the wrong puzzle. This would happen when you were watching a game and your tourney game is about to start, and you click "dismiss", and it booches your tourney game. Fixed a bug that caused a sword you no longer have to be shown when configuring a sword tourney. When painting on a ship or in a shop and buying some or all of the paint on-the-fly, the money to buy the paint must be in the coffers. This is different from painting your house, where you must be holding the money. Altered the error message to indicate this.

2005-11-30

New Sword board summaries

From the Release Notes:

When a player is eliminated in a swordfight, their mini board view will be updated with a full-color version. When the swordfight is over, all remaining players will be exposed at full-color as well. Non-player pirates and skellies will never be full-color. When a swordfight ends, you will no longer be autokicked out of the game, except when sea battling. Relaxed home restrictions: any building at which you are owner, manager, or roommate can be made your home. Anyone can home at an inn, and the island can be set as home too, like the old days. Added some holiday pieces of furniture. They must be explicitely enabled by a furnisher to sell them. Fixed the sorting of the time remaining on the pending order table. Fixed a bug caused full ships to not be able to post jobs when swabbies were on board.

2005-11-24

Extra Stuffing

From the Release Notes:
Fixed an authentication bug that left some people unable to log in. Fixed Treasure Drop to not create 6 or 10 slot games for people who had previously played on ice. Tournament announcements will again include the type of game. Rings (a kind of trinket) can have inscriptions.

2005-11-23

Turkey Turbo

From the Release Notes:

Primary homes: Ye can set a house that you are owner or roommate of as your primary home. The home will appear on your island map with a special green label. Whisking home will take you into the house. New pirates will be given their free shack automatically. Existing pirates will be assigned the best home on their home island. If an island is colonized but has no houses on it, ye may set the island as your home. Treasure Drop has two new options: Turbo and Holes. Turbo makes the animations go really fast and only gives 5 seconds per turn. Holes are randomly placed on the board and coins that fall into a hole will pop out of another random hole. Furniture can now always be reclaimed, even if you do not have access to the place where the furniture is. On the furniture report, there are "Reclaim" buttons that will return all the furniture at that location to your booty. Automated tourneys may be configured by OceanMasters. All tournaments are now "immediate play". Skellies now confirm with the user the total value of the wager- displaying which item they'll take from you. They will no longer take items that they consider low-value. There is a new limited-edition monthly portrait background. Made the pending order panels sort nicely. Captains may change their own titles. Building management buttons will immediately be available when someone is made a roommate or manager. In order to be ordered to navigate, you need to be a subscriber or hold the pirate badge. In order to get the navy navigation missions, you need to be a subscriber or hold the pirate badge. Non-subscribers can no longer open stalls. On doubloon oceans: You must have a captain's badge to create a crew. Your booty division rank is now determined by the minimum of your actual rank and your highest crew badge. Bugfixes: Skelly missions will be listed even if you're not a subscriber (or don't have the parlor badge). After the "Where are my vessels?" report is viewed on the docks, the button will again be enabled. "No tourneys" will not be reported when the list of tournaments is being downloaded. Fixed a bug that prevented the duty report from showing up sometimes. Your game configuration settings are now saved to your preferences after you configure a game. When you next configure a challenge, tourney, or parlor game you will find that the configuration options are initialized to what you last set them to.

2005-11-03

A few post-Halloween bits

From the Release Notes:

Swords and mugs are de-equipped upon logon if ye do not have the ability to equip them. On doubloon servers, ye may now be promoted even if ye do not hold the right kind of badge. Of course, ye will not actually be able to enjoy the privileges of that rank... Pending order and product quote tables are sortable by clicking the column header. Fixed bugs with duty reports not showing up and the puzzle booching if an animation was going and the officer on duty set sail rapidly. Tourney entry fees can no longer be larger than what the creator can afford. Tournaments are defaultly configured to start all matches as soon as possible. Fixed, for real, hopefully, striped clothing turning into rags. Governed islands and owned shops are displayed on pirate info pages. Buttons and pulldowns and such are no longer focusable, which will greatly fix strange UI blunders. Let us know if this irks you. Added a /pay command to easily send pieces of eight to any online pirate. Fixed the bug that caused roommates to sometimes not be able to enter a house.

2005-10-20

A New Look

From the Release Notes:

Yohoho is now free to play, forever, but there are some new restrictions on what free players can do. Notably, parlor and crafting puzzles are restricted except for 'free days'. There is now a form of the noticeboard shown whenever you log in. From this new page you can take missions, jump straight to the inn, or go to your house if you're on your home island. There are new "introductory" missions that take the place of the old intro. The missions can be taken more than once to practice. There are two new hairstyles: pigtails for girls and dreads for boys. There are some new articles of clothing: jerkin and musketeer hat for the gents, and a muffin hat and buccaneer jacket for the ladies. Male pants can now be ordered with a vertical stripe on the side. There are 7 new potions. A new display case piece of furniture has been added to display trinkets. All the new products will initially be disabled at all shops. Managers will need to go in and enable them in order for them to be sold. The scroll position of a list of stalls is now random, to remove an advantage for A-names. Crews may now propose to merge with another crew. From now on, when clothes dust they will turn into rags that are of the same color, except that rags dusting will always turn into one of white, blue, tan, or red. Racks may now be viewed by anyone. Starter islands will now require shacks. Shack and furnisher bazaars now require the correct amount of construction labor to complete. House chat has been added as the default chat mode when in a house. Yellow arrows will now be clickable even if a pirate is standing in front of them! The noticeboard is now the first icon on the island map. When a tournament match starts, if either player has watching turned off, the game will be private and unwatchable in any way, even from the radial menus. Private parlor tables will also be actually private now. There's a new limited-edition portrait background. Bugfixes: Fixed the workaround for Microsoft Internet Sharing so that it should behave better for people affected by that bug. When removing racks or chests from your house/shop, a warning will be issued to explain what's happened to the items or PoE in them. Hearts and Spades will continue to show the user's name and score (but not the face) when a player leaves the game. Brawls of more than 2 people were never rated, but this was not displayed properly in brawl configuration. Now the table interface will make it clear that all brawls are never rated. When ye purchase a house you will automatically enter it. If you reconnect while standing in a chat circle you won't be deaf to it anymore. Chat message length restriction will be checked after mogrifications have been applied.

2005-09-01

Performance Enhancements

From the Release Notes:

No new major features, just bugfixes. Swordfighting tournaments now report "Random sword of this type" correctly. You will be notified how much money you received from direct and indirect labor while you are online. Doubloon exchange buy offers can now be placed at any price, instead of at 90% of the most recent trade price. Furniture will no longer become "stuck" and unremovable when it's placed behind other objects. Shoppes can no longer be sold commodities over their maximum inventory due to processing delays. Pirates can no longer have portraits made while they are wearing clothes they are trying on from the rack. A lag issue with being charged for painting a room without the room actually becoming painted was fixed. Townhouse attics should now be accessible. Note: existing cottages and estates are unfortunately not fixed yet, apologies for this inconvenience Fixed exploit where defenders could cause their attackers to be blackshipped automatically in PvP. Attackers can now disengage from the chase so long as they disengage before their vessel intercepts the defending vessel. Bizarre "jumping" between opponents when using the [, ], a, and s keys to scroll through targets in swordfighting has been fixed, Smoooooth!

2005-08-18

Finishing Furniture Fixes

From the Release Notes:

Wardrobes, sword racks, and mug shelves now prevent aging, as long as the items are kept on them. Fixed some bugs that would lock out furniture placing. The furniture summary has been optimized to place less strain on the server. The "Row House" is now called a "Townhouse", the "Walk-up" is now called "Rowhouse"*. All tutorials are available for review in a tab in puzzles that have them. 'Building Records' is now the last button in the panel. Also, a different message will now be displayed while the logs are being downloaded. A few other serverside optimizations that should hopefully improve performance. The single-player game (for box-buyers) should really and truly be fixed up now. * A typo in the release notes spelling this as "Rowhouse", should actually be "Row House"

2005-08-10

Housing and Furniture

From the Release Notes:

Housing and furniture shops have been added to the game. Your first shack is free, after that you may purchase additional housing. There are 10 different levels of housing. For a limited introductory time, 'shacks' and furniture bazaars require only one hour of labor to complete. This should help governors get things up and running as quickly as possible. Shacks will be required for an island to get greenies, but are not yet required. Two new commodities have been added: varnish and lacquer. The number of loaded cannons is now shown in the vessel status displays next to speed/damage/bilge. The Ahoy panel for new players shows days remaining in free trial, where applicable. News and Events will now be shown on noticeboard even if ye are in a building. Skelly fights now only start when more than 50% of the players vote to start it. Fixed a bug that caused shops to sometimes publish an incorrect 'will buy' quantity for commodities. Fixed some bugs with catching invalid HTML when editing news. Swordfighting in the single player adventure (for box buyers) is fixed. Added an option to hearts to pass left/right/across (no hold). The default team size for brawls has been changed to 3 players. Tailor racks are now limited to holding 2000 articles of clothing. "Watch" buttons have been added to the tournament bracket display.

2005-07-12

Blub, blub, blub.

From the Release Notes:

Pillaging missions will now be shown to greenies without any naval experience. Some drinking configuration changes: Mugs may be disabled for standard-rules games. The number of drinks is now always 3 when playing with standard rules. The option to calculate all board stain bonuses at the end of the game has been removed. The tankard has been altered: now it gets +50 points per piece lost in an opponent's row. When painting, if you don't have the paint available in your hold you can buy it at the current market rate instantly from the painting panel. Fixed some portrait bugs introduced in the last release. External browser pages should now be working for win98 and winME. There are bubbles and splashy water droplets in bilge.

2005-07-08

A few fixes, a few features

From the Release Notes:

Fixed the drinking bug that caused the client to display the incorrect player as the turn holder, often resulting in that player being unable to move. Changed the default drinking end-game condition back to 1500 points and added some more point targets. Some drinking user interface tweaks, including re-adding the right-click to drink. We'll continue to adjust some things in drinking in the weeks to come. Brawls must now be even or the initiator's team must be at a disadvantage. Brawls and swordfighting challenges now have game chat. Some user-interface changes have been made to the parlor table matchmaking system to reduce the "jumpiness" of the scrolling list as new tables are added and old ones removed. Top 10 lists have been changed to "ultimate" lists, and are now only updated once per day, and are linked from the name of the puzzle rather than a user's rating. Changed the way pillaging jobs are ranked on the noticeboard. The vessel's current location is no longer a factor, among other things. /eject has been changed to /plank. /planking is prevented in certain buildings where it could be abused. If you log on and are already in a tournament, the tourney info panel will appear in your 'ahoy' tab automatically. Added a button to return to the tourney join/full info panel from the info panel in your ahoy tab. When browsing tourneys, if you do not join one and dismiss the dialog you will be returned to the listing of all tourneys. A little help icon has been added to all help buttons. Chat limiting (hoarseness) has been removed from most 'private' chat channels, including crew/vessel/etc. In public places you'll still be limited. Building managers are exempt in their own buildings. Bugfix: worked around a problem with chat limiting that happens on Windows. Bugfix: stats on older portraits should be fixed. Bugfix: drinking games will now actually be rated! Various other under-the-hood bugfixes and optimizations which should improve play experience. In swordfights, the list of pirates on a team can now be scrolled with the mouse wheel.

2005-06-29

New Drinking

From the Release Notes:

The drinking puzzle has been revamped. There are now mugs that may be used, similar to the way swords are used in swordfighting. Mugs have a variety of powers and can be purchased at distilleries. Officers may no longer access holds, or take charts or bid tickets, unless they are the owner of the vessel in question. Officers that do not have access to the hold will get the restocking cut of the booty division delivered directly to their pocket, and may buy rum and cannonballs for ship directly out of their pocket. Added a new crew rank called "Fleet Officer" that is between officer and senior officer. Fleet officers may access the holds on any unlocked vessel in the fleet. Brawls and drinking games have been united into the parlor game interface. The old drinking game is now completely gone, but there is a 'classic mode' in the new drinking game. Table games may be configured "local only". When you get challenged to a puzzle, the puzzle type is now shown in the ahoy panel. There is new code to throttle users more sensibly when the server is under heavy load. The "turn-almost-over" sound has been added to Treasure Drop and is now shared by most of the turn-based games. The mouse wheel can be used to change the selected tab in the 'sunshine' widget. There is a new tab in games that describes the game configuration. If a crew changes their booty share option after posting a job, the job is updated. All vessels will be notified of the change. Note that if a voyage was already started, the old booty share option will be in use for that voyage. All npp puzzle challenges will now be unrated except for those against the npps in inns or outside on the island. When booty is pitched overboard when a vessel is abandoned at sea, a message indicating such is stored in the vessel's log. Chat will be limited to a few utterances every 10 seconds or so, to cut down on spamming. The way preferences are stored has been changed to fix some bugs. Bugfix: Swordfight watchers will no longer be informed that their "own" team won/lost when the game ends. Bugfix: Swordfight watchers no longer have a delay before they can dismiss the puzzle. Bugfix: many fallback options are now tried to make launching an external web page work for all users. Bugfix: if vessel A was pursued by vessel B which was intercepted by vessel C, properly clear out vessel A's engagement status. Bugfix: small sailing bug that caused a piece connected to a piece on a platform to drop when pieces below it were destroyed. Bugfix: detect if Mac OS is not the proper version to run the game and pop up a warning, rather than booching. Bugfix: fixed some bogus text when challenging an NPP. Bugfix: game fonts should look better for Java 1.5 users. Bugfix: don't allow building taxes to be prepaid twice when the database is a little slow. Bugfix: stop showing "Internal error" on the in-game web browser when the info pages are being restarted, now a friendlier message will be shown. The button clicking sound has been changed. Isn't it better?

2005-06-01

Cry Havoc and let slip the bug fixing!

From the Release Notes:

Avast ye! We have a few more nice bug fixes, most of them fixing issues above and beyond any introduced with last week's big release. Portraits: royalty from flags with "renowned" or better fame can now hold a sceptre. Cards may be held by experienced hearts players as well as spades players. Fixed a bug with portraits that caused us to disable them for a few days. Fixed the skellies to not create savvy hats. Fixed up treasure drop to speed up animations if you are lagging and another drop has arrived or it's your turn and the last drop is still playing out. Fix it so that the top of the /who ahoy popup should always be showing when it first pops up. Fixed some bugs with wagers and disconnecting players at the parlor table matchmaking interface. Fixed scrolling to show your booty share during booty voting. Fixed apothecary scoring so that new players can advance more easily. Fixed the times displayed in the blockade panel on the notice board. Bugfix: when a pirate owning a stall is deleted, the stall will now be deleted instead of transferred to a manager or the governor. Bugfix: /mute feedback is given if you /unmute a player that was not actually on your mute list. This should help people that claim they've unmuted someone but they still can't hear them. Bugfix: you can no longer mute yourself. Bugfix: duty puzzles would sometimes break if you passed star level 9. Bugfix: previously, if you disconnected after having items decay, you would receive a repeat message that the items decayed again. Fixed. Bugfix: the vessel tab will update to show the new owner if you're on it while the deed is traded. Bugfix: if you add an item to the pot bonus for a tourney and then click on "help" the item will no longer be stuck until you log back in.

2005-05-26

Bugs! What are they good for?

From the Release Notes:

Ahoy mates! Just a quick fix to address some issues from our very exciting last release. Per-drop wagering has been disabled in Treasure Drop. Fixed bug that reported that you left the puzzle when a swordfight started. Don't report anyone leaving after the game is officially over. Sword fight watchers should now see the correct status of all knocked-out players. Fixed spades watchers from receiving a fake hand. Fixed the countdown timer for parlor games to be 5 seconds again, giving time to boot players. Update the flag name in the island tab when a flag is renamed. Close all dialogs when a scene is changed to fix a rare bug in shoppes. Always show payout type in hearts, even if it's not proportionate. Tied games are reported correctly now in Treasure Drop. The scoreboard in Treasure Drop should look better for Windows players. Greeters will now be removed from the list of greeters in /who when they go off duty. Fixed a bug that caused items to be unwearable after almost adding them to a tailor rack. Fixed a bug that affected mates that play on cobalt and viridian, causing them to sometimes see a blank 'known world'. Fixed a small bug in the apothecary puzzle. Returned to requiring only Broad experience to show up on top 10 lists. Fixed it so that newly created alts should find it harder to catapult to the top of the ratings.

2005-05-25

Treasure Drop, Fair Booty Shares, Crew Dormancy

From the Release Notes:

There is a new game at the inns: Treasure Drop. Crew members who have not logged on in 10 days will now be marked as dormant. They will not have voting rights in the crew and will not be listed on the primary crew information page. There has been a giant revamp to the way booty shares and crew cuts work: All crews have been wiped to the new default booty share option: "Even". Ship restocking cuts have been capped at 30%, and the crew's configured cut is now the maximum when dividing booty. Crews may choose from one of a set of booty share options. Any previous proposals to change crew articles that had not yet been passed have been wiped because they are obsolete. Jobs posted on the notice board will list the crew's booty share option. The more jobber-friendly your crew's booty shares are, the better the chances of your job appearing on any particular noticeboard in the ocean. Booty division has been altered. The proposer may only adjust other pirates up or down by 1 battle. The proposer may adjust herself all the way down to 0. The ship restocking cut and booty share option are recorded at the beginning of the voyage, so that crews cannot sneakily change their articles after hiring jobbers. The pirates in the booty division are now listed by rank, sorted by name within each rank. The booty proposal should jump to make your cut visible when the list is very long. The proposal will stay up after it has been approved so that everyone can view it. It will be removed when the vessel sets sail again. A new player-made portrait background is available for a limited time. When a player jumps ship in the middle of a battle, a swabbie is immediately brought on board as a replacement. Thereafter, every 3rd additional player that leaves results in another swabbie coming aboard. These swabbies are extra and will leave when the battle is over. The list of products at the tailor will now start with the first female products when a female pirate opens the interface. Greeters may now change their on-duty status with /duty. Blockade cost and declaration windows are shown on the blockade status tab of the noticeboard for each island. Brigands will now be cowed by the navies of colonized islands: you may have to go further out to find good pillaging. Brawls cannot be started until the teams have been stable for 5 seconds to prevent accidental lopsided teams. If a pirate is playing a watchable game, clicking on them will reveal a new menu item allowing you to directly watch the game. Many bugs have been fixed: The "take job" button will be re-enabled after a failure, so that if you already have three jobs you can quit one and reapply. The governor's cut of stall opening fees are now properly recorded in the palace logs. Don't allow clothing that is currently being worn to be added to the rack. Always allow deed holders to remove money and items from their vessel, even if they have no crew. The vessel report at the docks can now cope with more than 512 vessels in your crew. Swords will henceforth be colored correctly in portraits. Don't count an estate agent as a shop on medium islands. Crews may now clear their public or private statements. The 'disengage' button will be dimmed out if you no longer have the helm in sea battle.

2005-05-02

Fame!

From the Release Notes:

It's another exciting release so soon after Hearts. A new "Fame" system has been added. Active puzzling players will accrue fame for their crews and flags, which then slowly wears off over the course of two weeks. Crews will not be able to join a flag until they have "Rumored" fame, or form a flag unless they have "Established" fame. Flags will not be able to blockade islands unless they have enough fame for type of island they're after: "Renowned" for outposts, "Celebrated" for medium islands, and "Eminent" for large islands. Some Hearts changes: Sounds have been added. Fixed a bug that caused the "shot the moon" text to leave a trail on the game board. Messages will be sent to the chat box recording the direction of the pass at the start of each round. Puzzle Pirates is hitting store shelves sometime this week, you may see pirates sporting a new sword or new hat that only box buyers can have. The link to game documentation on the help panel will once again open up the docs using the in-game browser. Fixed a bug with duty puzzle ratings that should ensure that partial leagues are always counted. Tournament missions are no longer cancelled when you leave the inn. Bugfix: crews can now successfully invite jobbers that applied through the mission system. The layout of the pirate info page has been made nicer. Sword patterns are now displayed when configuring enamels in the ordering interface.

2005-04-26

I ♥ Hearts.

From the Release Notes:

The card game "Hearts" has been added to the inns. Ratings for the 2nd and 3rd place players are adjusted based on their closeness to first place's score, so even if you are losing, every point counts. First place is a full win, 4th place is a full loss. If a player leaves Hearts early, he or she will be replaced by a handy villager. The player that left will always be rated as a loss. The 'proportionate take' payout option pays out the wager based on relative points taken. There is a new petition system for requesting help from an Ocean Master. Clicking 'help' on the ye panel will bring up a panel with links to documentation as well as buttons for complaining about a player, reporting a bug, and the new petition system. Players who time-out making a move in the card games will have slightly less time for their next turn. This will continue until they only have a few seconds each time. This makes the game more bearable for the others, and when the missing player starts playing cards again the time will gradually shift back to the normal amount. Player ordering in Spades has been changed from the matchmaking interface so that the first player on the second team will sit across from the first player on the first team. Tournament listings have been altered slightly so that pending tournaments are always listed above those that have already started. The last trade price is now shown in the doubloon exchange. Doubloon exchange offers now expire after 10 days. At the end of a wagered game, total poe won is reported rather than just the amount gained. (Example: in a two player swordfight with each player wagering 50 poe for a total of 100poe on the game, it would previously report that the winner as winning 50 poe, now 100 poe will be reported.) Swabbies and navy npps will automatically leave a duty station if you try to work there. There are now small informational pages about colonized islands. AFK status is now shown in /who info for a player. Hourglass animations in puzzles and sea battle have been made prettier. Text areas on in-game web pages will no longer have goofy horizontal scrollbars and should wrap words correctly. Pirates will no longer get stuck reading inscriptions on islands. Fixed a bug with refunding wagers for unstarted Spades games. At the beginning of a swordfight, the little red board views of human players will now be correct immediately instead of only updating after a few seconds. Wagers on puzzle challenges are no longer auto-matched for the pirate accepting the challenge. If a ship is out of rum during battle, the swordfighters will not fight as effectively due to their rumsickness. Fixed a bug with closed shops not updating the time until destruction. Fixed a bug that caused trial players to see a blue screen on login. Fixed a bug with entering a Spades game that has just ended.

2005-04-07

You can take it with you, part 2

From the Release Notes:
Allow tournaments to be configured 'for local players only', such that it's only available at the building at which it was created. The entry fee is included in large tourney announcements. Fixed a bug with rematching a Spades game in which there was no wager. Fixed an apothecary bug that happened when quicksilver was used. Added an ahoy popup inside banks explaining why they're closed.

2005-04-06

You can take it with you

From the Release Notes:

Your money is now with you at all times. It is not at risk when you're on a vessel. Banks, transfer fees, whisk burying, and the money report are all things of the past. Tournaments are ocean-wide now. Spades games may have wagers. Ferries charge a small fee for their services. On doubloon oceans, the doubloon exchange has been simplified and the top 5 offers are listed for buys/sells. Currently-held jobs may be inspected and quit while viewing a job offer at a shop. The layout of the personal info page has been changed. Fixed a bug with selecting colors at a tailor that only has one grade of cloth in stock. Fixed a bug with logging "display only" rack modifications. Fixed an exploit that allowed one to temporarily wear an item after trading it.

2005-04-01

Foolish bugs removed

From the Release Notes:
Fixed a bug with painting that caused the paint to wear off after a short while. Fixed a bug with new buildings not having their entrance arrows work properly.

2005-03-30

Minor tweaks

From the Release Notes:

Arr, nothing exciting this time, just a follow-up release to address some issues. "Do not disturb" does not apply to your hearties. "Do not disturb" is automatically disabled if you apply for a posted job. The "Do not disturb" icons have been changed. Rearranged the buttons on the "Ye" panel to make them all fit on doubloon oceans. On doubloon oceans, the crew rank badges now once again only age on login days. The labor badge still ages daily. Fixed a bug that let hapless pirates join the fray with the skeletons just prior to them departing the island. When commodities are transferred from the construction site into the finished building, previously if one kind of commodity wouldn't fit completely it was discarded. Now, as much as will fit is added. Fixed a bug with building creation for governors. Fixed a bug with viewing orders in the info panel and having it tell you to press the nonexistant 'deliver' button. Gold ore is now correctly named on the tax rates page.

2005-03-28

Usability, bugs, and networking

From the Release Notes:

Your money is now visible on all the "sunshine" tabs. Added a new "personal" panel. Added a "Do not disturb" mode that may be toggled to prevent anyone from inviting you to job, or request to be your hearty, challenge you, or offer to trade. Pirates may no longer be invited to join a crew unless they are first made jobbers. Made the rack management stuff all fit for tailor managers using large fonts. /who <player> now has links to crew, maybe vessel, and shows current puzzling activity. The crew cut is now called the "Ship restocking" cut to make it easier to understand for new players. Moved some buttons around on the world map panel, added a button to re-center on your current location. Stall upgrade fees are now logged to the local palace/fort if it got a cut. The order interface has been changed around a bit. Ingredients are not shown unless you are an officer or manager at that shop. Colors are remembered between different products. Commodity order quantities will have an initial value of "1". Fixed a bug with incorrectly listed destination islands for navy missions. Some other navy mission fixups. The island is now displayed when listing your own employment contracts. Gold ore can be foraged (extremely rare) Gold cloth, paint can now be manufactured. Chat logging is now per-pirate, per-ocean. Islands will have a limit of 1 inn from now on. Old salts only talk out loud the first time a pirate buys a drink, then they switch to tells. Fixed island overview maps from colliding when playing on multiple oceans. Prevented navy and merchant vessels from ever entering a blockade. Construction sites are transferred when a new flag takes over an island. Prevent HTML from being added to portrait titles and captions. Portrait interface cleaned up to better indicate that the initiator gets one for free. Fixed crew statements so that "&" doesn't continually get expanded into "&" each time they're edited. Crew officer chat now has a new color to distinguish it from crew chat. No shouting on colonized islands. When a pirate is deleted, they will cease to be manager at any shop. Doubloon ocean only changes: Fixed doubloon exchange translation when POE was refunded for trades below the buy offer price. Badges now age every day, even if you don't log on. Up to 10 extra days will be added to existing badges. Officer and senior officer badges may be upgraded to the higher levels, discounts will be automatically calculated and given at the palace shop.

2005-03-10

A few bugs sprayed

From the Release Notes:

Fixed a bug that caused people to sometimes be "walking on water" after switching oceans. Fixed the 'help' and 'etiquette' buttons for new players. Ocean and Archipelago standings were reversed on the backs of portraits. Articles on the tailor rack may be bought for a price of 0. Various fixes to mission bugs. Show sock color in description for male buckleshoes. Added a new couple's background for portraits. Locked vessels are shown to officers in the port interface. Nine new crew titles have been added.

2005-03-07

A Spot of Gardening

From the Release Notes:

Just a couple of little things to mention here as we're spending most of our time preparing for the upcoming box release of the game. The sea battle hand interface has been modified to show the latency inherent in communicating with the server. Moves remain grayed out until the server has confirmed that they were received. Also, the hand as executed by the server is displayed for a couple of seconds when the animations first start. The "Add to rack" interface has been merged with the "Browse the rack" interface and the handling of "Display only" has been fixed so that it does not rely on setting the price to some particular value. Navy missions have been modified such that they require at least five leagues of doing yer duty before they are completed. This is regardless of whether the navy stops at an island along the way. The "Parlor Games" in the Inn now provide a link to a new experimental open source games site recently launched by Three Rings called Game Gardens. Feel free to check out the games made by people on that site and if you're of the programmin' persuasion, you can take a crack at making a game yourself.

2005-02-11

Missions!

From the Release Notes:

We've been working very hard on a number of things that have finally come to fruition. We hope that you're as excited about these new features as we are. Missions! Missions are designed to get new Pirates up to speed on the many aspects of Puzzle Pirates, but will surely be enjoyed by the saltiest amongst ye as well. Check them out at the notice board. As part of missions, the navy system has been revamped. Navy jobs can only be taken by accepting a mission. The old boats that used to be part of each island's navy will be decommissioned, and the deeds will be available in the palace for the governor to reclaim. There is a brand new crafting puzzle for shipwrightery! Tutorials have been added to the carpentry and navigation duty puzzles. Your own performance is highlighted in duty reports. Offline crewmates and hearties are hidden in an expandable panel. The falchion strike pattern has been changed. Skull daggers have been changed into scimitars and scimitars have turned into skull daggers. If you owned one of those swords before you will now have the other, but the pattern will be the same as what you had before. Merchant-class vessels have been made easier for a smaller crew to sail. Tax rates for most shops have been changed, and taxes are no longer as volatile based on island population. Building upgrades will no longer take effect until the order is delivered from the estate agent. Shipyard stalls now sell maps just like big shipyards. Stalls have much higher opening fees, but no longer require you to own a ship or seed them with commodities. Spades tables can be configured with rating ranges. The faces of watchers are now shown in Spades. Occupants are once again listed next to the chatbox (instead of in a tab) while dutying in battle. If a shop has an open job offer, any pirate can work there "on the fly" by doing the crafting puzzle and potentially getting paid for it. Empty inventory groups now hide. The "employment" button that lists your jobs has been moved to the shoppe panel. Some clothing recipes have been changed. There are a few bug-fixes, mostly under the hood, but scrolling on Mac OS should be slightly faster. Pirates are known for swashbuckling and derring-do, but many have been seen just standing around, even posing, at the local palace. Something strange is afoot.

2005-01-05

From the Release Notes:

Welcome back. This is just a quick release to take down the holiday decorations and put up a few nice things for the new year. Enjoy. In-game labor reports have been added. Click on 'employment' in the 'Ye' tab to view your labor for the last 10 days. Shops also have reports on their employees and order stats, replacing the nightly emails. Fixed a bug that caused players lazing about in duty puzzles to continue to apply their last performance to the vessel. Merchants may be carrying fruit around, especially if they only have a very few valuable commodities. Watching pirates are displayed in a panel during Spades games. The P key will pause again, although ESC is still the preferred way. Sound looping issues should be significantly improved. Loads of under-the-hood changes, so keep a sharp eye for booches!

2004-12-15

Happy Holiday Fruitcake

From the Release Notes:

This is probably the last release of the year. Enjoy! Merchant vessels now ship outlying materials to populated islands. Adventurous foragers instead find fruit to sell at nearby markets. The old salts in inns now have more detailed and more reliable information. Key bindings for all the puzzles can be customized in the options panel. Note: the P key no longer pauses puzzles, use the escape key (which has always worked to pause/unpause). Bazaars appear with a yellow label on the island map. Right clicking in a scene will scroll that area to be visible. Additionally, path-finding has been improved. More Spades bug fixes: Fixed more freeze problems. Watchers will no longer be told that they win/lose/tie. Fixed a bug that sometimes caused one to be unable to send tells to one's partner after the game. Interarchipelago maps will start having the right icon again. In the apothecary puzzle, the warning sound will only play once, instead of each time you rotate the warning piece. The quote interface at shops has been changed around and cleaned up a little.

2004-12-11

There were no official release notes for this, but the following post was written in Game Design^[1]:

Topic: Imminent Blockade Change Poster: Nemo

A few things to lighten the load, hopefully filtering some of the burden out of blockades, yet keeping the fun. These are minor changes in one sense, but sweeping in another. You may have already noticed the weekend-only adjustment a few weeks ago. To round out the "blockades shouldn't force people to be unhealthy, or dictate too much of their natural lives" plan, the blockade rounds will be cropped from 12 to 5. Notice: After this weekend's blockade window (12/10-12/04), blockades will follow this schedule, from 24 hours after declaration- 5 rounds of 45 minutes on each hour. A one hour, 15 minute break after the first three rounds, followed by the two remaining rounds, if necessary. Feel free to discuss. I think the most notable point is that the best of five format removes the previous "defenders win ties" advantage. If another defender advantage is deemed needed to replace it, that can be discussed here too.

2004-12-03

Bug fixes and Spades enhancements

From the Release Notes:

We're glad you all like Spades. Hopefully fixed the Spades bug that sometimes caused games to stop working. Changed Spades table creation somewhat: Tables may be marked "private" which indicates that the creator only wants certain players to join. Note that it doesn't actually change any properties of the game, just indicates to other pirates that they shouldn't play that game. The table creator may boot any player from the table. The booted player may not re-join that same table again. Once all four players are in place there is a 5 second countdown, during which the creator has one last chance to boot players and anyone has a last chance to leave the table if they don't like their partner. Added a help button so that ye can view the rules. More Spades changes: Ye can watch games that are in progress. When partners exchange cards during a blind nil bid, the other team sees that cards are being exchanged. Partners may not send each other tells. That is cheating! Note that we cannot prevent all cheating, as partners could be IMing, but we hope that ye all abide by the Pirate Code. Fixed a bug that caused reconnecting players to not be able to chat in chat circles. Gems weren't showing up in markets; fixed. Game chat emotes will be logged correctly. Fixed a problem with the duty feedbacker (the little animation that shows how well you're doing in a duty puzzle) that occurred after disengaging from sea battle. Skellies don't start the fray until half the pirates agree to start.

2004-11-24

Spades!

From the Release Notes:

If there's one thing pirates like to do besides accumulate wealth, it's play cards. We've added the fun card game Spades, now available in any inn. Spades! We thought we'd get this out there in time for some Thanksgiving fun, we know that it's a little rough around the edges, expect us to clean it up in future releases. In the meantime, here are the rules for playing Spades and a discussion of what we're already planning on changing. Bilge scoring has been adjusted to properly reward more points to boards with more pieces on them. Fixed some bugs that caused a few people to have trouble logging in. The default chat history mode for new pirates is now the little half-page history that everyone uses anyway.

2004-11-22

Stars for carpentry

From the Release Notes:

We've actually done a few minor releases since the masqarrrade release, but the notes for the others seem to have slipped away to the underworld. Bugfixes Star levels in carpentry. Tutorials coming soon. Crew buttons are now at the top of the crew panel where they're easier to find in a big crew. Tax rates are now available to shoppe managers in the price management panel. Estate agents transfer ownership when a new governor is appointed. Blockades may now only be declared from friday at noon to saturday at noon, pacific time.

2004-10-27

Masqarrrade! (v1.87)

From the Release Notes:
Fortunately this year, the dreaded curse of the skellies and zombies was not lain upon the Midnight ocean, and so to celebrate we've brought out the masks so that ye can hold yer very own masquerade balls. Who's that dashing pirate over in the corner? Ye better go introduce yerself and find out.

2004-10-21

Double, double, toil and trouble (v1.84)

From the Release Notes:

We've been hard at work here at Yohoho! headquarters and we're happy to present a whole boat-full o' exciting new features. We have added the Alchemistry puzzle! Each player now has a map of their "known world" where they can see all the islands they have visited, and inspect maps and see which navigational leagues they have memorized. A "whisk potion" can now be purchased from the apothecary that allows a player to whisk to any island in their "known world". Paint has been introduced which, using the new paint brush item, can be used to paint ships and building interiors. Paint is ordered from the apothecary. Swords are now made with enamel which is produced at the apothecary. Items now display their usage restrictions in their tooltip. It is now possible to forage right up until the fort is completed. Navy vessels can no longer be attacked. Shoppe news can now be 50% longer. The commodity trading interface has been streamlined and improved. It is now possible to filter the display in various useful ways. Vessel owners can now "lock the helm" and prevent other officers in their crew from doing anything with their boats. Naval vessels can be decommissioned. They will also no longer sail any route that does not contain their home island. They no longer need to serve as an ad-hoc inter-archipelago ferry service because the whisk potion can be used to accomplish inter-archipelago travel directly. Navigation, sailing and bilge have displays that indicate your progress toward the next difficulty level. This is the beginning of improved tutorial systems for all of the puzzles and more interesting behaviors at higher difficulty levels. Items all have context menus that allow you to perform tasks relating to that item (like wearing clothes, previewing maps, etc.). The tailor and iron monger now default to a random color selection rather than always starting with red/red. Various and sundry bugs have been fixed and niggling bits have been twiddled.

2004-08-24

Buggin' out (v1.78)

From the Release Notes:

This release is almost entirely bug fixes. Fixed problem where pirates can still hear the chat in a cluster after they leave it. Fixed erroneous clearing of /mute list when logging off and back on. Fixed problem with bidding in an incomplete fort. Fixed incorrectly reported charge when upgrading a stall that has already pre-paid its taxes. Fixed problem causing an island to become uncolonized when its fort is upgraded to a palace. Fixed display issues in the money column of the shoppe log. Fixed display issues when getting quotes on verbose items in a shoppe. Fixed wagering in brawls. Fixed problem with incorrectly rendering blockade league images. Fixed problem with going aboard a vessel filled with greenies and swabbies. Added the ability for Unix users to specify which browser to use for external web pages. Windows and Mac automatically use the user's preferred browser. The agent interface no longer culls quotes that take a really long time. Banks now transfer ownership when the ownership of an island changes hands. Rack updates are recorded in the shoppe log at the tailor. Flags may no longer rescind war after declaring a blockade. Brawls may now be started even if the initiator's team is down by one pirate. Boats with no pirates aboard now stop dead in the water. The beginnings of our puzzle tutorial system are in place, bilge and sailing have some tutorial information. More to come.

2004-08-02

Get Down, and get funky. (v1.77)

From the Release Notes:

This release marks the release of our own home-brew launcher and patch distribution system. This means that we'll hopefully see less problems during game installations and updates. The installer is smaller and designed to avoid the many issues we've seen over the years with our previous updater, and existing installations will be automatically converted. New game launcher and patching system. Ahoy panels can pop up inside puzzles. Clicking on a button that brings up an in-game web page does not work, but they are still very useful. The shoppe's subtotal and the sales tax are displayed when getting a quote. Shop owners and managers do not need to put any money in escrow when ordering from themselves- they pay only the sales tax. Vessel jobs are now posted ocean-wide and appropriate ones are displayed on each notice board. This will mean that there will be plenty of jobs listed on islands in newly-colonized archipelagos. Final blockade scores are left on the notice board for 3 days. Ocean Masters may now post events directly to the notice board and let anyone instantly whisk out to the event location. Trial users now get 7 non-consecutive days to play the game instead of 10 "sessions". Turbans, male frilly shirts, and female plain shirts all can now have a second color. When doing a crafting puzzle, if your labor is downgraded or discarded due to the shop's lack of funds, a better message is reported. Added a new tournament pot distribution: cascading arithmetically, which pays out at a higher rate to the lower places. The ordering of trading outlets is randomized in the trading interface. The price adjustment panel for shoppe managers is now tabbed. Old PVP battle stats are now purged. Various bug fixes: When a stall is opened the initial transfer of commodities is added to the vessel's log. Bidding is prevented at inactive forts. Fixed another bug with bid tickets sometimes not updating their description after delivering. Fixed skellies to stop appearing on disconnected islands. Other small things that nobody will notice.

2004-07-09

A little bit of love (v 1.75)

From the Release Notes:

This release has the usual assortment of small bug fixes, but we hope you'll enjoy some of the features that have come along for the ride. Training ships and charts are no more. We never turned training ships into what they were intended to be, so they were rather pointless. The puzzles can be learned (and money made) aboard regular navy ships. (Navy ships now unload their cannons the way training ships used to.) Market bids are no longer constrained by the size of the hold from which you are placing the bid. Bids may be placed and checked by any user from any government building. When bids are delivered, as much as will fit is delivered and the ticket is updated to only claim the remainder, which may be delivered at a later date. Bid fees are now variable and calculated based on a percentage of the total bid cost. Governors can no longer subsidize shop taxes. Added some text on the stall upgrade/downgrade panel explaining the tax implications of doing each action. Sales tax is now computed in a new way. See this forum post. Flag officer chat and all other chat is now properly filtered. Shoppe jobs on the notice board now appear in a random order. The sailing puzzle now has progressing difficulty. Some islands have been designated as only being able to support a small outpost colony. When they are colonized, only a fort and one regular shop may be built there. If a new flag takes control of the island, the shop changes ownership along with the fort. Any vessels belonging to deleted crewmates will now have a deed on board so that the remaining crew can properly reclaim it. Several items of clothing have been tweaked slightly, most notably the women's long gown. The options panel should now work for people using Windows 98. Fixed a lot of other small bugs. Ye may now have up to 75 hearties!

2004-06-18

Market Bidding, Shoppe Enhancements (v1.74)

From the Release Notes:

We've finally added the long-awaited market bidding, as well as some useful features for shopkeepers. Enjoy! This is probably going to be the last time we focus on shoppes and the economy for a while, we'll shift our priorities to things that are more fun for more people. On colonized islands or islands with markets, harvested commodities are now distributed according to a bid system. Bids can be placed from any boat or shoppe, and when new commodities are harvested they are distributed evenly to the highest bidders. Shoppes can now disable or make price adjustments to specific products. Because of this, cowslip has been removed from the requirements for sail cloth. There are a few new articles of clothing: Fancy boots (male and female) A bandolier jacket for the men. and a new Tudor bodice for the women. Shoppes may now be downgraded at the estate agent. Forts may be upgraded into palaces, once a market has been built. Governors may now buy and sell goods from the fort or palace. Building taxes are computed at the beginning of the week and are fixed. They may be pre-paid at any time during the week. All buildings will now have deeds, and governors will have control of all bazaars on their islands. Fixed a bug with not paying laborers when a shoppe ran out of money. Behind the scenes goodness, hopefully fixing bugs with shop destruction and upgrades.

2004-05-26

Job Board, Blockade Status (v1.69)

From the Release Notes:
Just a few small things in this release. Enjoy! Added a job board and a blockade status board to the notice board. The fee to open or upgrade a stall is not subsidized if the governor is subsidizing taxes. Added an option to view the game with larger fonts. The wide-brimmed hat for females was made a little more stylish. Some behind-the-scenes bugfixes.

2004-05-14

Mostly Bug Fixes (v1.68)

From the Release Notes:

This release was intended solely to fix a few straggling bugs still left over from the big blockade release, but the usual assortment of mini-features snuck in. Fixed various bugs with shop/ship records. Added more entries to ship and shop records. Fixed the bug where a cannonball could be used to load multiple cannons. Various other small and behind-the-scenes bugfixes. Medium stalls can now have 1 manager, large stalls can have 2. Added a category filter to the ship/shop record viewer. Shop managers can now see the amount of money in escrow for each order in the Order Management panel.

2004-05-07

Shop and Vessel Records (v1.67)

From the Release Notes:

Added logging to track economic and other activity aboard ships and in shops. This facility should help crews manage their cargos and help shopkeepers track sales as well as provide a record of taxes. Not every activity is logged, so please bear with us as we expand this feature. Removed the one-stall-per-pirate-per-island stall limitation. Now ye may have up to one stall of each type at an island. New round structure for blockades: 3 rounds in a row, then 4 hours off. When a vessel is "sunk" in a non-sinking blockade, the vessel is barred from entering the blockade from then on. Lowered damage from medium and large cannonballs. Found and fixed some more bugs with battle/blockade display. Fixed forts and markets so that the owner can access the coffers. Fixed construction sites so that employees are paid prior the site getting turned into a building. Any money that was not yet picked up by workers will be buried on the island. Fixed a bug with the port interface when there were two ships with the same name. Shanghais for the past week should now be entered into the system, and they'll be counted again going forward.

2004-05-05

More fixes (v1.66)

From the Release Notes:

Fixed battle stats, they should start updating again after today. Fixed a bug that caused sea battle ratings to not get updated. Fixed "target has escaped" messages when leaving a battle. Fixed a booch that affected puzzles and duty reports after unpausing. People in stalls show up in /who. Rum is now consumed in blockades, as was the intent all along. Only subscribers count towards vessel influence in blockades. This was to prevent people from loading up vessels with greenies and abusing the poor lads. Officer bulletin boards on ships can now only be viewed by pirates in the same crew. Fixed some bugs with building upgrades. Brigands shouldn't get placed on rocks anymore. Island map changed slightly to make it easier to use for people who like to click directly on the shops. The usual assortment of behind-the-scenes goodness.

2004-04-30

A Few Things (v1.64)

From the Release Notes:

A few more fixes for some smaller things that were broken from the big Blockade release. Almost all stall storage capacities and labor limitations were wrong. They're fixed now, and existing stalls have been updated. The comparison ordering interface will now show pending orders correctly. Using the keyboard to unpause will now not cause the next mouse click to be eaten. Fixed a few translations, colors, labels, and other small things.

2004-04-28

Bazaar Blockades!

From the Release Notes:

In this momentous release we began the era of Naval war and colonisation on the Midnight Ocean. From hence forth Islands shall be fought over by Flags, ruled by their appointed Governors, and colonised from rustic havens into thriving metropoli. In addition we launched Bazaars, the next phase of the Puzzle Pirates economy, allowing each and every player with a few pieces of eight and the wherewithall to get some commodities together to participate in shopkeeping. Along with that are the usual slew of bug fixes and minor tweaks. Arr! Island Blockades are introduced, whereby a Flag can declare its intent to blockade an island and, through naval dominance of the blockade board, win Governorship. Documentation coming soon, for now this thread has good information. Bazaars are implemented, wherein any officer can rent stalls and conduct business. Newly colonised islands are required to build Bazaars of the various types before ordinary shoppes. This will lead to greater competition in the Midnight economy. Bazaars will appear on the established islands over the next few days following the release. In order to find the best price, all shops now use an Agent ordering interface that searches the island for the best price and delivery time for an item. If you wish you can choose to 'shop at this shop only' at the top of the order panel. All buildings now have a rent due, including shoppes and stalls. The Governor can increase this rent in tax or lower it as a subsidy. Ship to ship and ship to shop transfers are implemented, from the hold or manage shop interface, along with the ability to dump goods to Davy Jones. Shops can no longer buy and sell goods that are not involved in the recipes that they create. Orders placed but not yet worked on may be cancelled, for a 15% restocking fee. Orders with an estimate of longer than 60 days are quotes as taking 'A Long Time'. Shop keepers do not receive the money from an order right away; the funds are held in escrow until the product is complete. Then the shopkeeper receives the funds net of any labour costs. Buildings are now created via a construction site, which is created when the Governor sets down the deed. The site must be stocked with commodities and labour before it begins work on the building. Buildings cannot be placed on top of herbs and minerals, or too near the dock portal. In Sea Battle the pillager must use Grapple tokens to board their opponent. This can be used in place of cannons on a turn. Ships can now ram each other, causing damage to both parties, and larger ships will push smaller ships around. In addition cannons now fire either to the left and right, larger ships can only move three times a turn, and 'auto sails' can be used to avoid micro-managing token creation. Grapples are not used in blockades. Going out of the sea battle board bounds causes damage, like hitting rocks. In addition sailing Tokens now decay after a few turns, currently six. The Island Map was revised to be made more useful. Bank Transfer fees were raised to 15% within the archipelago and 30% between archipelagoes. Time to ship yer money! The terrible skeletons now frequent many different islands, and their curse is more pronounced. Markets will now produce more basic commodities and no longer require labour. You will lose any market jobs. Muttonchops have been added as a male beard option. Yes, we will be adding a way to change your hair/beard etc. in the future. Conquistador armour and pantaloons have been tweaked. The usual array of various other bug fixes and tweaks! In particular we had to make a vast number of fundamental changes to names (which as you might imagine, permeate the entire game) in order to support our new localisation partners. Phew! This one is gigantic, so bear with us as there are likely to be strange problems in the mix. Please report any bugs, after making sure that they aren't in the known issues. Expect a small bug-fixing release on Friday. Thanks for bearing with us the last two months as we slaved away on this monster. We hope to resume the normal schedule of more regular updates from here on out. Fair winds!

2004-02-20

Bug Squishing (v1.52)

From the Release Notes:

Another release mostly to fix bugs. Sorry! We unexpectedly wiped the officer bulletin boards aboard all ships. We understand the inconvenience and we'll fix the problem so that it doesn't happen again. Order estimates were booched. The bug was fixed and it will take 24 hours for them to adjust and reflect the actual time to make things. You will notice that they no longer attempt to be accurate, but rather over-estimate delivery times. Tweaked duty puzzle rating calculations to allow top-rated players to move (both upwards and downwards) more easily. Fixed the hold on the cutter that didn't work. Some changes were made to the sound code that should hopefully reduce problems for some people. Fixed idle message. Fixed news fonts that were causing trouble for some people. The long skirt only needs regular cloth now. Doubled the storage capacity of weaveries. Increased the amount of expert and skilled labor at shops that don't yet have puzzles. Removed unimplemented rating types from pirate info pages. The color that used to be called brown is now called tan. The color that used to be called dark brown is now called brown. And because we love you, there are a few new tourney options: Tournaments will announce how much each winner won at the end. Sword tournaments can be configured to use a particular sword or type of sword, or the old option of "bring your own sword". Added a new pot distribution option: cascading to 3rd, which is exactly like cascading only it will only divide money to at most the players in 1st, 2nd, and the two 3rds. Fixed item awarding in tourneys with no pieces of eight.

2004-02-09

Mac Patch (v1.51)

From the Release Notes:

This release is intended to fix the game for Macintosh users with the latest Java from Apple, but as usual a few other things got to tag along. Enjoy. Added a workaround for rendering problems with Apple's latest version of Java. Officer noteboards have been added to ships. The new-pirate instruction sequence has been improved. When a new player subscribes, the crew that they're in gets a "shanghai" point which can be redeemed for ship renames and other special things. Fixed drinking tourneys to rematch on draws, and no-shows will no longer count as draws. Modified cascading payouts to pay more to 3rd place and lower, and exclude anyone from being "in the money" if they never won a match. (Having a 'bye' doesn't count as a win.) Newbies get extra help panels that show them around the game and explain a few things. Newbies get a "Learning" performance in duty reports if they didn't do so well. :) Chat bubbles are dimmed when you hold down ALT so that you can see arrows and such. Fixed bugs related to abandoned flags: they should go away now. When in a chat circle onboard a vessel, we now default to chat-circle chat. Some vessel and building scenes have been changed around a little bit.

2004-01-28

Mini Bugfix Release (v1.50)

From the Release Notes:

There were a few things with the War! release that warranted a quick update. Fixed a bug that caused memorized league points to not be saved under certain circumstances. Fixed a number of bugs related to crews leaving flags. Crews should now be able to leave, be expelled, etc. Fixed the 'ye hold' column in the trading interface so that it properly updates when the quantity in your hold changes. A few other small tweaks and behind-the-scenes fixes.

2004-01-26

War! (v 1.49)

From the Release Notes:

Times of war have descended upon the midnight ocean, and things will never quite be the same. Flags may ally and also declare wars. Ships may be sunk in battles between warring flags. A state of war does not exist unless both flags declare war. Ships are colored according to their relationship to you: red for enemies, blue for allies. The notoriety ratings for crews are now more accurate and are displayed in the vessel inspector while at sea. Check the notoriety of brigands to see how good they are with their swords! Medium and large cannonballs are now produced at the ironmonger. Sounds have been added to the distilling puzzle. Anyone can practice the crafting puzzles, a job at the store is no longer required. New options have been added to tournaments at inns: Drinking tournaments may be held. Matches may be configured as 'Best 2 out of 3'. 'Cascading' added as the default pot distrubtion option. Items may be added to the pot bonus, they always go to first place. Tournaments may be randomly seeded. Items on the rack can be configured to be 'display only' so shoppers can try them on without being scared by a high price. Managers can now inspect the skill levels of their employees in the employee listing. Pending orders lists now display the island name of the shoppe producing the order. /gwho lists the location of nearby greenies. Non-subscribers can now wear a larger set of clothes, and will be informed *prior* to ordering something that they will not be able to wear it. Fixed shoppe news from overflowing the side panel. Some League points should not longer be impossible to memorize. Chat bubbles are less transparent and easier to read. Fixed a bug that booched a ship's hold if too much stone was added. Fixed a bug with the trading interface that unselected a row when an offer was updated when viewing offers in a filtered mode. Fixed a minor bug with rating calculation in two player puzzles. Fixed a bug in drinking that didn't end the round if everyone was passed out except for players who had left. Fixed a bug that dropped sea battle ratings if you intercepted a vessel with nobody on board. Made some tweaks to gown and corset colours. Expanded newbie help. The skellies should have their nice swords back. The black ship has been broken (and easy to beat) for several releases. It has been fixed up to be really hard again, and then made much, much harder than that. As always, there were a number of other bits, bobs, and bugfixes that were too minor for this list. Increased map lifespan.

2004-01-05

The Great Thaw (Fourth post-launch update)

From the Release Notes:

The snows have melted, and we've taken the opportunity to wash away some bugs in the slush. News flash! Shop managers can now post notes for their customers to see. Governors can post news that will appear on the notice board. Please note: keep the first line short and put a linefeed between it and further news, to avoid booching your shop display. This is a known bug. Email Cleaver for a fix if needs must. Various bits with shop labor have been fixed: product quotes should have more realistic finish times, unused labor will not count against the labor limits for a shop, and hours should be distributed more evenly between the workers. Officers and above can expel Cabin Persons without it becoming a crew issue. Swords have been tweaked yet again. Also, an exploit was fixed that allowed people with fast fingers to "float" sword pieces above the bottom of the board for a short while. The rack bug has been fixed: you may now safely buy clothes off the rack without worrying that it will suddenly get old. Carpentry works on the Macintosh now. Various small things were fixed: Tournaments no longer count round numbers backwards, /vwho works on vessel names with an apostrophe, buying a drink for the villager in the inn only costs 10poe, and Eclipse island now scrolls.

2003-12-19

Winter Wonderland (Third post-launch update)

From the Release Notes:

A little frost on yer doorsteps for this release, along with a few bug fixes and juiced-up swords. Many sword patterns have been changed and the way strikes are handled has been modified. More information is available in this forum post. Rag pants have been introduced to go along with the rag shirts. No longer can you have no sword, you will be given a stick to fight with. Fixed /vwho so that it works with vessel names with hyphens in them. It's the holiday season in the midnight ocean!

2003-12-16

Fixy fixy (Second post-launch update)

From the Release Notes:

Mainly just fixes in this release relating to the pesky problems introduced with the previous release and a few usability improvements. Fixed tournament seeding and a few other tournament bugs. Bug now preserves your text and shows it in the report bug dialog when that pops up. Leaving yer jobbing crew no longer leaves yer real crew. The game attempts to delete old media update files that sometimes linger because Windows refuses to let us delete files for some unknown reason. Going forward, labor throughput tracking data will be preserved across reboots to avoid the 24 hour period of adjustment in order estimation.

2003-12-13

Back into the fray (First post-launch update)

From the Release Notes:

Avast! Launch has come and gone, and we're right back into the fray with new features and the inevitable fixes to old features. Let's get right to the juicy details: Me hearties! Ye now invite other pirates to be yer hearty and hear about when they log off and onto the game. In yer "Crew" tab a separate list of hearties is maintained so that ye can keep track of friends that aren't in yer crew. Automated tournaments! The initial version of our automated tournament system has been released for your competitive pleasure. It is not laden with features quite yet, it only supports single elimination tournaments and does not support best out of three, but it does take care of all the other niggling bits associated with running a tournament and forms a solid platform that we can extend in future updates. If ye get hit by a cannon in sea battle, ye can't disengage for at least two turns even if ye had already surpassed yer disengage turn prior to being hit. That goes for brigands as well. /fwho will now display a single flag's information if it finds an exact match to what ye typed. If there be pirates standing about next to a chat circle when it needs to expand, it will now just drag them into the circle rather than preventing it from expanding. Refineries now track labor throughput by skill level which should allow them to make more accurate assessments of when yer order will be finished. The "Disengage" button is only displayed to the officer that has the helm to avoid accidental disengagements by other officers who misclick when leaving their puzzle. Trial users not online for at least 5 minutes will not have that session counted against their limit. Finally fixed that pesky "disappearing from yer flag" bug. Brigands of all shapes and sizes will now use their cannons. No longer will articles of clothing appear on your pirate snapshot if you tried them on at a tailor but didn't buy them. With this first post-launch release, I'll take the opportunity to express how happy we are to have finally launched the game. Thanks to all of our Alpha and Beta testers for their tremendous help up to this point and for the help they'll surely provide in the future as we continue to expand the game (and inevitably introduce bugs that need findin' and fixin', arr!). In the not too distant future, we'll be re-introducing the test server (ahh, the Azure seas) and major new features will be introduced there so that they can be tested and balanced without disrupting the production ocean (which will hopefully become oceans at some point in the future). We are getting underway on flag warfare, a highly anticipated feature to be sure. Fortunately, we also have a few smaller bits in the works on the side so that you won't see a dearth of interesting new bits between now and the introduction of flag wars. In the meantime, smooth seas to ye!