Pirates, a naval warfare game inspired by Sid Meier's Pirates • Hacker News Board

Re: Pirates, a naval warfare game inspired by Sid Meier's Pirates

#71

Post by nkmnz » Fri, Jun 12, 2026, 10:56 PM UTC

alexpotato wrote: post #31

This 100% has the "vibe" of the original game but should include that if you sail "into the wind" it slows you down. Also, I've been trying to make a remix of SMP but with a princess theme for my daughters. Been experimenting with making other games to practice building out game mechanics and stumbled into making a game where you manage a Soviet Tractor Factory [0]. I'm interested to see if developing parts of Game A…

Is it even possible to win the game? I've played it 100 million times in a monte carlo simulation and even applied two heuristics to hit a winning strategy: 1. heavily over- or under-weighted choosing tractor production when paid tasks are available; 2. when a paid task was available in the previous round but not chosen, the weight for this round is reduced

The best result I've gotten is 998 tractors after round 120.

Re: Pirates, a naval warfare game inspired by Sid Meier's Pirates

#72

Post by sfRattan » Fri, Jun 12, 2026, 11:08 PM UTC

alt227 wrote: post #24

Great game! Reminds me very much of Overboard for the PS1 back in 1997. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71accvNZ0aA

I remembered seeing this game as a kid, but the name sounded off... And Wikipedia reveals it was released in North America (NTSC format) as "Shipwreckers!"[1]. It also featured 5-player local multiplayer if you had multitap, according to the article, and I remember most other games of the era supporting at most 4 players locally. I'll have to find this one and give it a try!

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overboard!_(1997_video_game)

Re: Pirates, a naval warfare game inspired by Sid Meier's Pirates

#73

Post by pgt » Fri, Jun 12, 2026, 11:09 PM UTC

How to shoot? I can't figure it out. Perhaps made harder by typing on Colemak.

Edit: OK, spacebar shoots, but it's hard to see the cannons flying due to low contrast. And it shoots in the direction of the enemy.

Re: Pirates, a naval warfare game inspired by Sid Meier's Pirates

#74

Post by tinywind » Fri, Jun 12, 2026, 11:56 PM UTC

iweczek wrote: post #53

JMiao wrote: post #29

my kid has 50+ hours in sid meier's pirates and told me they stare at the world map in their classroom and try to locate towns and ports in the caribbean when they're bored. i will show your game to them, though i am certain the first thing they will ask for is chain shot. not to discourage your good work, but here's another project worth checking out if sid meier's pirates is your thing. https://tinywind.io/

Nice, I still remember that map even though I haven't played the game in decades :) tinywind looks very cool, thanks for sharing.

Thanks for the shoutout! Always love to see people building cool things

tinywind.io just added a new game mode and has a PvP and Steam release in the works :)

Re: Pirates, a naval warfare game inspired by Sid Meier's Pirates

#75

Post by williadc » Sat, Jun 13, 2026, 12:46 AM UTC

iweczek wrote: post #62

toxicunderGroov wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here, using Firefox 151.0.4

on a mac, windows, or linux? I have tested it in both browsers only on the mac but I don't see any reason why it would not work on a different OS since it is only HTML5 canvas

I also experience this on Firefox 151.0.3 on Linux

Re: Pirates, a naval warfare game inspired by Sid Meier's Pirates

#76

Post by IgorPartola » Sat, Jun 13, 2026, 4:06 AM UTC

alexpotato wrote: post #36

alexpotato wrote: post #31

This 100% has the "vibe" of the original game but should include that if you sail "into the wind" it slows you down. Also, I've been trying to make a remix of SMP but with a princess theme for my daughters. Been experimenting with making other games to practice building out game mechanics and stumbled into making a game where you manage a Soviet Tractor Factory [0]. I'm interested to see if developing parts of Game A…

If people have feedback on the game, would love to hear it on the below link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48503530

I don’t see a way to succeed at this game. The issue is that there doesn’t seem to be a way to meet the first 5 year plan and it’s all downhill from there.

But this really points to a deeper problem: in a game like this you have to pick one of two philosophies. Either the idea is to find the one algorithm that makes it work because the game is doing the same thing every time, or the game has an RNG that makes some games winnable and some not. The in between path is difficult to balance. You could for example dynamically adjust the difficulty such that if the player gets hit with a bad string of choices generated by the RNG then the difficulty is temporarily dialed down and when the player is having good luck the difficulty is raised. But I think for this kind of turn based idle game it is more about discovering the player algorithm that works and I see no algorithm that could work here.

I do however absolutely love the vibe of the game. I think with a little more attention it could be absolutely amazing.

Re: Pirates, a naval warfare game inspired by Sid Meier's Pirates

#77

Post by wizardforhire » Sat, Jun 13, 2026, 4:54 AM UTC

Is there an unskipable minigame thats crucial to winning that majorly objectifies women and is beyond obnoxious with terrible animations and sound effects?

Because if not, I’d love to check this out… but never again in my life will I subject myself to that mini-game!

Re: Pirates, a naval warfare game inspired by Sid Meier's Pirates

#78

Post by madduci » Sat, Jun 13, 2026, 6:30 AM UTC

JMiao wrote: post #29

my kid has 50+ hours in sid meier's pirates and told me they stare at the world map in their classroom and try to locate towns and ports in the caribbean when they're bored. i will show your game to them, though i am certain the first thing they will ask for is chain shot. not to discourage your good work, but here's another project worth checking out if sid meier's pirates is your thing. https://tinywind.io/

This is really cool

Re: Pirates, a naval warfare game inspired by Sid Meier's Pirates

#79

Post by flohofwoe » Sat, Jun 13, 2026, 7:53 AM UTC

Unfortunaly only a demo of the ship combat system of Pirates :)

The actually interesting part for me was the historical setting, exploring the Carribean geography, watching the world evolve, all the while trying to keep the ship crew under control :)

Also we still need a proper 2D remake (the 3D-ified game console version from 2004 didn't really age all that well and has too many QTE gimmicks).

Re: Pirates, a naval warfare game inspired by Sid Meier's Pirates

#80

Post by sgt » Sat, Jun 13, 2026, 7:59 AM UTC

I'm actually building a boat game for my 5yo son. We're building it together. I decided on using Love2d as the framework and I'm basically distributing a DMG to family and friends to run it and test it.