Just vote for the better design for the game -- or if that is not possible, the lesser of two evils. That's the way the system is designed to work, and that has worked very well so far

Are you getting any kind of errors in POTBSPatch.log?

Fantastic work! Looks ready to go, to my eye.

Meanwhile, I've merged your two threads into one, so you have a single place for showcasing and/or getting feedback on all your flags and sails. Happy drawing!

This is already in the works, but I don't have a clear ETA just yet.

Moved from "Shipwright Discussion," since that forum is exclusively for ship models being built for inclusion in the game.

To help clarify practice in the British navy:

Most naval ships were rated. The link provided is a list of ratings, and these ratings originally had everything to do with the captain's and crew's pay structure -- and little to do with the ship's class or armament. By about the mid-17th century, the rating system had started shifting more toward a description of the ship than Admiralty structure.

A ship of the line, however, was one given a purpose in the "line of battle." This was a basic ship formation developed by the Dutch in the late 1630's, but perfected, standardised, and first used systematically by the English in the mid-1650's. This would be the dominant means of doing battle at sea for about the next 350 years.

These two concepts intersect -- again, referring strictly to English practice -- in that only certain rates of ship were given a role in the line of battle. In the early 18th century, that role was afforded to the first four rates of ship, i.e. ships of approx. 50 guns or more. Smaller ships -- fewer than 50 guns -- were NOT given a role in this battle-line, even if they might be present in a battle fulfilling other roles (carrying messages, towing damaged ships, diverting incoming fireships, carrying provisions, etc.).

Thus, the notion of a 5th or 6th rate "ship of the line" is an oxymoron by definition: such small ships would not line up with their larger counterparts and fight broadside-to-broadside with the enemy's line of battle. They were simply 5th or 6th rated ships, plain and simple.

Note that later in the century (circa 1760 and beyond), 4th rate ships were phased out of the British line of battle. Thus for later time periods, the term "4th rate ship of the line" would be just as incongruous as "5th or 6th rate ship of the line." Yet, up to that point 4th rate ships were still expected to face off against ships with more than twice their count of guns in the line of battle -- which means holding out against firepower an order of magnitude greater than that with which they could fight back.

I hope this helps untangle British naval terminology of the era. Other countries organised their ships and line of battle along similar principles, but the details differed greatly; e.g. in many countries, any ship of 80+ guns would be considered a "1st Rate." But for PotBS, we roughly follow the British classification, and consider any ship of 50+ guns a "ship of the line" for game purposes.

I've been trying to get the thigh high boots in for a long time. It's a special case item that would need to be handled in the pants slot rather than the boot slot.

That's a damn fine idea. Lemme nag people today and see if we can make it happen by next week sometime...

Some nice work! You'll need to remember two points though:

* Sails need to have some areas that are fully transparent. In these cases, I'd suggest making the orange 100% transparent. You can then color the sail beneath it correctly in-game.

* Remember to avoid gradients and 3D effects. Here, the shields seems to have a "shine" to it, which could not have been sewn into fabric.

Before, each flag or sail would be rated independently on a scale of 1-5 stars.

While that sounds sensible, it did not work. The result was that almost every submission got high ratings -- unless the system was abused and a good flag or sail was deliberately "voted down" by segments of the community. This meant that submissions could not be processed in a reasonable order OR reasonable time.

Now, good content is getting good votes and approved quickly -- and the content that needs the most work is getting sent back just as fast. Yes, there will be times you'll want to vote for "none of the above," but behind the scenes the new system is working better than we could have hoped for.

No actually it's engine restriction given to us by the programmers. We are already at the limit for number of bones we can use with this engine. To really do capes right we would need at least nine more bones, three chains of three, one down the middle and one on the left and right.

Bone limit aside, adding capes is a massive job and we have other things we are working on that will give more bang for the time spent. I personally think bones in the coats would be time better spent. It would get the coat weighting of of the legs and allow more more overlapping action.