Chase Speculaas - Live the life of a pirate ~ Simulated pirate battles

 

The Chase Speculaas interview

Second Life, June '08 - Jolly Bonny Anne, Ship's log: [2:56] GaiaGirl Pearl: Ahoy Admiral ~ how's the cannons on the Corsair? [2:56] Chase Speculaas: good, good [2:56] Chase Speculaas: I fixed all the problems we found at our last session [2:56] Chase Speculaas: and owned a brig [2:56] Chase Speculaas: lol [2:57] GaiaGirl Pearl: well, the Corsair will be popular - the brig was a hard act to follow :) [2:57] Chase Speculaas: hehe [2:57] Chase Speculaas: two years ago it was! [2:58] Chase Speculaas: Now I'm just rushing to outdo Zik Cortes [2:58] GaiaGirl Pearl hopes you don't berth for that long next time :) [2:58] Chase Speculaas: I've already made a deal actually, for my next project [2:59] Chase Speculaas: should take only 2 or three days... less if I'm lucky, to script a special mod someone made for the brig [2:59] Chase Speculaas: It'll practically make the brig another ship altogether... a smallish galleon [2:59] GaiaGirl Pearl: cool - you can do that? [2:59] Chase Speculaas: make a mod? [2:59] Chase Speculaas: yeah [3:00] Chase Speculaas: He made the hull... I'll have to remake the rigging, but basically it's mostly a shell for the brig. I'll also include tweaked scripts that will make it slower than a brig, with more HP [3:00] Chase Speculaas: There won't be a balance issue... on the whole it will be relatively weak because of a really high profile [3:01] GaiaGirl Pearl: balance as in top heavy? [3:01] Chase Speculaas: balance as in game balance [3:01] Chase Speculaas: It won't overpower other ships at all [3:01] GaiaGirl Pearl: ahhh right [3:01] Chase Speculaas: Now... the next ship I make after that though, a frigate... that'll be unbalanced as hell [3:01] Chase Speculaas: ...if I ever get around to making it [3:02] GaiaGirl Pearl: do your ships go up against this Zik Cortes? or just amongst other SPD ships? [3:02] GaiaGirl Pearl: you will get around to it - its in your blood now :) [3:02] Chase Speculaas: back when I thought I was going to give up on all of this [3:03] Chase Speculaas: His ships are compatible with mine, but he has a hard time getting any battle group to let him or anyone else actually use them [3:03] Chase Speculaas: They tend to be overpowered [3:04] GaiaGirl Pearl: there's a photo I did of Endeavour [3:05] Chase Speculaas: sweet [3:05] Chase Speculaas: Can you believe that is the real scale? [3:06] Chase Speculaas: it seems so small... I was wondering about it yesterday, wondering if maybe I had used the dimensions of the replica and not the original [3:06] Chase Speculaas: but nope... 32 meters about was right [3:06] Chase Speculaas: everything just seems small in SL [3:07] GaiaGirl Pearl: Im amazed 30-something men went to sea for a few years in that [3:07] Chase Speculaas: yeah [3:09] GaiaGirl Pearl: have you read Cook's journal? was reading that the other night [3:09] Chase Speculaas: nope [3:09] GaiaGirl Pearl: its online [3:10] Chase Speculaas: I just thought... since you sent me pictures... [3:10] Chase Speculaas: lol [3:11] Chase Speculaas: completely random, yeah [3:12] Chase Speculaas: hehe, confused silence At this point GaiaGirl checked out Chase's random texture gift [3:15] GaiaGirl Pearl: lol [3:16] GaiaGirl Pearl: when is the Corsair going on the market? got a price yet? [3:16] Chase Speculaas: Gah... I'm just not sure about the price yet [3:16] Chase Speculaas: it'll be more than the brig, less than 2000 [3:16] Chase Speculaas: so... somewhere between 1400 and 2000 [3:17] GaiaGirl Pearl: sorry to be thinking mercenary on what must be saturday night - Im almost finished the webpage and am still fact finding - sori lol [3:18] Chase Speculaas: no, not a problem [3:18] Chase Speculaas: I expect to have this thing completely finished and packaged by tomorrow [3:18] Chase Speculaas: (already 2 days behind schedule, because I've been lazy, and because I keep finding new problems) [3:19] GaiaGirl Pearl: not lazy - a perfectionist - but then you have to be with something as intricate as this [3:19] Chase Speculaas: hardly a perfectionist [3:19] GaiaGirl Pearl: how long did it take to build? [3:19] Chase Speculaas: you know how many problems there still are with the Brig [3:20] Chase Speculaas: about two weeks... ridiculously fast compared to the others, which both took many months [3:20] GaiaGirl Pearl: well - the brig is fine for what it is - it must be version 5 or 10 by now anyways [3:20] GaiaGirl Pearl: as the SL technology improves so will the builds [3:21] GaiaGirl Pearl: just had a thought - the price to come onto SL and RP pirates is much cheaper than buying a pirate video game [3:22] Chase Speculaas: I know [3:22] Chase Speculaas: I've thought about that dynamic a lot [3:22] Chase Speculaas: Here's my dilemma [3:22] GaiaGirl Pearl: its fun and realistic because we're playing against other real people [3:22] Chase Speculaas: I think I reach more or less all of the hardcore pirates inside SL [3:22] GaiaGirl Pearl: true [3:23] Chase Speculaas: so I was thinking, to expand my business, it would be a good idea to make a nice website for Speculaas Designs [3:23] Chase Speculaas: to actually attract people from outside SL into SL, specifically to play my game [3:23] GaiaGirl Pearl: great idea [3:23] Chase Speculaas: The problem with this is... well [3:24] Chase Speculaas: Everyone who is already in SL, and buys stuff in SL, has already embraced SL and it's defects [3:24] GaiaGirl Pearl: its still early days as far as a virtual viewer standard surely [3:24] Chase Speculaas: But if bring in new people... they'll naturally include, in their mind, all of SLs defects as defects also of my game. Which they are, if you're coming from out of SL just for that [3:25] Chase Speculaas: And I suspect they would leave very quickly [3:25] Chase Speculaas: I remember in the beta days of Pirates of the Burning Seas MMORPG [3:25] Chase Speculaas: that there would be lag issues and crashing issues, and people would get pissed and say they weren't going to buy the game when it came out [3:25] Chase Speculaas: but those stability and lag issues were NOTHING compared to the lag issues in SL [3:26] Chase Speculaas: I mean... lag isn't an occassional occurence in SL, it's pretty much a constant, especially with several of my ships in the same void sim [3:26] GaiaGirl Pearl: you're right - and the sim crossings can be fatal too [3:27] Chase Speculaas: yeah... sim crossings are pretty much always ugly [3:27] Chase Speculaas: if not fatal [3:27] Chase Speculaas: So I don't know how comfortable I'd be bringing in people like that. However, I think I may make a website anyway [3:28] GaiaGirl Pearl: some of the captains know that if Im on their tail to cross a sim and its pissing me off - he's hanging by a thread and I go to Davey Jones - LOL [3:28] Chase Speculaas: as I try to land a real job in my last year of college [3:30] GaiaGirl Pearl: in the meantime until you get your site google should show up my webpage when peeps search for you [3:31] Chase Speculaas: cool [3:31] Chase Speculaas: thanks! [3:32] GaiaGirl Pearl: Im happy to be involved - they're great ships - I wouldnt have bought them otherwise :) [3:37] GaiaGirl Pearl: would you like a block mounted version of the picture I just sent you - the Endeavour? [3:37] Chase Speculaas: sure, if you've already made one [3:37] Chase Speculaas: maybe one of these days I'll set my office back up again... I sure do miss it [3:40] GaiaGirl Pearl: well it looks like I will be getting my sim soon - the port area will be a showcase of tallships - all yours plus the Port Obello galleon and the Black Sparrow & Pig [3:40] Chase Speculaas: damn, I wish you could find the old Queen Anne's Revenge and the Blackjack [3:40] Chase Speculaas: the guy who made them left SL and his stores are gone, it's so sad [3:40] Chase Speculaas: in my opinion they were the best large ships in SL [3:40] GaiaGirl Pearl: do people still have copies? [3:41] Chase Speculaas: Presumably, though I couldn't find any in world [3:41] Chase Speculaas: on a cursory journey looking for them earlier today   [17:05] Chase Speculaas: (Saved Sun Jun 01 05:22:27 2008) bam! I just sunk Zik's ship of the line! [17:05] Chase Speculaas: (Saved Sun Jun 01 05:22:53 2008) Oh, and actually, I didn't build that cannon, I bought it out and scripted it, lol [17:11] GaiaGirl Pearl: great news about your battle v Zik ~ LOL Im at MetaNetwork Media HQ now, they have office space to rent, I might get one here [17:18] Chase Speculaas: oh, btw, I'm working on that turning modification now... it is going to piss everyone off, but in a good way [17:19] Chase Speculaas: if you slow down or stop in the irons angles, or if you just don't go through your tack fast enough, you're practically dead in the water [17:19] GaiaGirl Pearl: yeah I was thinking about that too - the turning - if I update my longship and others in the longship battles dont update, then their's will eat me [17:19] Chase Speculaas: gtg, I'll be back later [1:21] GaiaGirl Pearl: I know you did a lot of work on the guns - so all that has been sorted? [1:21] Chase Speculaas: yeah... on the other hand, I just finished an update for the brig [1:21] Chase Speculaas: which basically upgrades it's guns to the ones on the corsair [1:27] Chase Speculaas: there's a notecard in there I think [1:27] Chase Speculaas: with instructions [1:28] Chase Speculaas: the cannons are the only sort of time consuming part... shouldn't take more than 15 minutes total though. 10 if you build fast [1:28] GaiaGirl Pearl: TY got it :)