"Just got back from CES...I wanted to throw some kudos to the guys at Flying Labs. I am arguably the last person on the planet to think Pirates and that whole genre are cool, but from my first 30 or so minutes of exposure to Pirates of the Burning Sea, I can’t say enough good things about it."

Come Sink us on Testbed this Thursday! by Rhaegar
Since Sunday’s event on Testbed we’ve made some significant improvements to the new camera and adhoc rules based on your feedback. Fraxl will be posting a devlog tomorrow with details about those changes. In the meantime, we’ve decided to schedule another event for this Thursday, so that you can tell us if these changes have hit the mark.

To make things more interesting, a group of FLS staff will be sailing the PVP zones on Testbed ready to be sunk by take on all challengers! We’ll be online this Thursday, August 21st from 3:00 – 4:00pm Pacific / 11:00pm – Midnight British Summer Time. Staff in attendance will include Taelorn, Snap, fraxl and Rhaegar.

This event is open to players of all nations and levels. The Auction Houses on Testbed will be stocked with all the items you could want (including outfitting) and we will be handing out doubloons on the docks of Port Royal. New characters can also be leveled to 20 if they choose. If youve never played on Testbed before, check out this thread to learn more. We hope to see you there!

The Tragedy of Texturing by BSharp
Texture Mapping
I’ve always thought of “Texturing Mapping” as a task with the worst name in computer art production history. The title itself makes the act of painting a model sound about as romantic and creative as throwing a bedspread over a mattress. Clearly, the task was named by an engineer whose knowledge of art fell short of understanding that texturing is, in fact, the closest that 3D production comes to the highly skillful, passionate, and personal act of painting...

Cooking with STYLE by ktatroe
Things have been a little quiet in the web site recently. A few months ago, we introduced a new User Content system to (eventual) rave review, but most of the work that’s been done since has been behind the scenes (Aether’s had us all write so many devlogs recently that the devlog admin got a much needed overhaul, for example), with little to show on the outside.

But that’s all going to change soon: We’ve been working on a complete overhaul of the Pirates of the Burning Sea website...

Introduction, and the QA Process by Nutch

I started as the Software Test Lead (STL) at Flying Lab Software on September 18th, 2007; an easy date to remember as it’s my sister’s birthday. That’s right, just four short months before our January 22nd launch, talk about diving in the deep end. Software testing, and the processes and procedures therein, is what I know. I can talk all day about the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), black box vs. white box, and agile vs. waterfall. In the past 15 years I’ve tested just about every type of software you can imagine, in many different industries. I did my best to hit the ground running, learning as much as I could about the people and the processes that make Flying Lab Software what it is. In fairly short order, and with the assistance of some great co-workers, I was able look at the testing processes in existence, and tweak them a bit to get them flowing smoother...

Mat Staltman, character lead animator on Pirates of the Burning Sea, informs us of new changes in character clothing, ingame animation blending and avatar combat in his (illustrated!) devlog. A brief, linked introduction follows:

Luxury Clothing and Animations by Mat
Hi. My name is Mat Staltman and I’m the character lead of Flying Lab. Ken Osuna, the former character lead, has moved around internally to focus on other tasks, which opened up the opportunity for me to take over for him. I’m still animating, as well, so I have an exciting opportunity to see many aspects of the art creation process for Pirates of the Burning Sea. I’ve been with Flying Lab Software since April 2005, and I am very proud of the game we shipped. I’m especially happy to see how much Pirates has grown and improved with every patch. It’s really an exciting place to work.

Today I’m here to share information about new features coming your way in the avatar customization department...

Testbed Event this Sunday! by Rhaegar
You’ve read about the upcoming PVP changes in 1.7, as well as the other exciting new features. Now is your chance to test them out! We’ll be deploying 1.7 to testbed very shortly, and this Sunday we’re holding an event to encourage everyone to log on, test the new features, and have a chance to win some prizes at the same time!
People who log in to Testbed between 11am and 1pm Pacific (7pm – 9pm British Summer Time) this Sunday (August 17th) will be automatically entered into a raffle to win Pirates of the Burning Sea game time cards and t-shirts. You don’t need to do anything special to enter the raffle, but the longer you play, the higher your chances of winning. After the event, please visit the Testbed forum to give your feedback about the new features!
This event is open to players of all levels. Players who already have characters on testbed will log in to find a pile of money to buy ships at the auction house. New testbed characters should ask FLS staff on the docks of Port Royal for their doubloons. New characters can also request to be boosted to level 20. We look forward to seeing you there!

...Pirates of the Burning Sea version 1.7 hits Testbed today, and we'd love to get your input in on all this before we push it to live...We realize that there’s bound to be a wide array of opinions on this set of changes, and we fully expect to tweak them based on your feedback. So we’re hosting a special Testbed PvP event to give as many players as possible to take part and express their opinions based on direct experience with the new mechanics. The more people participate, the more we learn about how to maximize the fun, so I encourage all of you to get involved!

PS- If you’re the charts and graphs type, you can see a visual summary of some of the other responses by downloading this handy one-page report: Download and View Feedback Summary (194 KB PDF document)

SOE Maintenance Wednesday by Rhaegar
SOE will be carrying out some essential maintenance tomorrow – Wednesday, August 13, between 3:00PM and 4:00PM Pacific (11:00PM and Midnight British Summer Time), that will impact your ability to log into our website.

This means that during the hour-long maintenance window, individuals will not be able to log in to our forums or submit user content. This will not impact your ability to log into the game.
We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience.

PotBS Meet Up at Gen Con Indy: UPDATE! by Aether
It’s that time again! The Flying Lab Software gang is packing up and heading out to show off Pirates of the Burning Sea at this year’s Gen Con Indy! For those of you attending the show, you will be able to find us in the Exhibitor Hall in booth #1033!

But wait, there’s more: In addition to our booth, we will be hosting a Pirates of the Burning Sea fan gathering and you are invited! Here are the details:

Gen Con Indy Meet Up!
Thursday, August 14th 7:00pm
Jillians
141 S Meridian St
Indianapolis IN 46225
317-822-9300

We can’t feed the lot of ya, so bring yer own coins!

Don’t forget to wear your PotBS shirt! Be ready for some fun & games brought to you by Theresa and Danicia! Yes, this means PRIZES!

For more information and to register for this event, stop by the Pirates of the Burning Sea Meet Up Site, which you can find by visiting this link.  We’ll see you at Gen Con!

Server Transfers Deactivated Monday the 18th! by Aether
On Monday, August 18th we will be discontinuing our current server transfer process in order to develop a new system that will give our customers more freedom, flexibility and choice when they wish to transfer their characters.

This new system is currently in development, and we will keep everyone apprised of our progress. In the meantime, we will be honoring transfer requests that come in before Monday the 18th. Any requests submitted after that time will be required to wait until the new system is in place.

We appreciate your patience while we work to create a transfer process that is more suitable for our customers.

Population Balance Incentives by isildur
Population balance is a problem that any online game with multiple persistent teams faces. I can remember being steamrolled by the ‘Albion zerg’ in Dark Age of Camelot, outnumbered 2 to 1 and barely holding on in keep sieges. It’s not a new problem, but it’s one we took explicit steps to mitigate. That’s one of the reasons our port battles have a population limit, and our ad-hoc PvP battles have an even smaller population limit: even an outnumbered side can still win individual battles.

Unfortunately, population balance problems aren’t simple, and those solutions don’t address many of the other issues that arise from an outnumbered nation...

Welcome to 1.7 by Misha
We will soon push 1.7 to Testbed and I wanted to give you an overview of some changes it contains...

...We're going to do the following things:
1) Advertising - Gasp! Yes, you heard right, we're going to start doing constant advertising for the game. By "constant" I mean that we're not going to do one blitz for a few weeks, we're going to be advertising each and every month forever.
2) Free Trials - As part of the advertising, you'll be able to click on ads and get into a free 14 day trial.
3) New web site - the web site has been under redesign for quite some time, and is being split into a marketing site and a player site. We're going to do a much better job for both sides than in the past.
3) Buddy keys, which worked pretty well for us in the past.

We've been waiting on 1.7 because of a lot of things, but primarily for the new tutorials because all of this has been focused on new users.

So, when does all this start? 3.5 weeks.

Off-Peak Port Battles by isildur
Let’s talk about the way that port battles are scheduled. The current system is that when a port reaches the required amount of unrest, the battle for control of that port is scheduled for 24 hours later. The intent of this system is that the battle takes place during the play hours of the people who force the port into contention. When it was designed, the idea was that ports would enter the contention phase ‘organically’, as a result of nearby PvP activity.

That isn’t, however, the way ports enter contention in the live game; they are intentionally forced by motivated attackers. This leads to the unfortunate side effect of allowing sufficiently motivated players to cause battles to be scheduled in off-peak hours, when few defenders will be able to respond to the threat. This is borderline griefing; it’s not really against the rules, but it’s certainly not a positive game experience for the targets...

Character Transfers and Off-Peak Port Battles

The issue of off-peak port battles, or nightflips, is a source of great frustration for our community. While we have worked to implement mechanisms we hoped would mitigate the issue, we have also spent much time discussing alternative solutions. We've been proceeding cautiously because these solutions could introduce larger problems in other areas of game play, impacting an even wider range of players.

The good news is that we have reached a consensus on a plan, and will be sharing this with the community to get your input as soon as tomorrow.

With that being said, we are temporarily suspending character transfers. If you are experiencing a complication as a result of this, you are asked to file a support ticket with the details so that we can work with you to resolve the issue.

We look forward to hearing your thoughts on the matter.

Check Out the New MOTD Layout!

When next you launch Pirates of the Burning Sea, you are going to see a host of new features that will make learning more about what’s happening with the game that much easier.

Community Specialist Rhaegar has organized all the most important game information into one handy, tabbed location!

There are certain to be some things you would like to see added, so make sure to let us know what you think! Thanks Rhaegar!

PotBS Meet Up at Gen Con Indy! by Aether
It’s that time again! The Flying Lab Software gang is packing up and heading out to show off Pirates of the Burning Sea at this year’s Gen Con Indy! For those of you attending the show, you will be able to find us in the Exhibitor Hall in booth #1033!
But wait, there’s more: In addition to our booth, we will be hosting a Pirates of the Burning Sea fan gathering and you are invited! Here are the details:

Gen Con Indy Meet-up!
Thursday, August 14th
6:00p – 9:00p
Loughmiller’s Pub