Here are the download links if you don't want to register on his forums. They should work, I logged out of his forums and clicked them and it worked.
Pirates of the Western Sea Full Game Download Link (19,152 KB)
Natuk Shareware Version (roughly 1/3 of the game) 8.6 megs
I'm wondering if anyone feels like giving these two older games by Tom Proudfoot a try or has tried them before. I know that Toady One used to frequent the Proudfoot forums circa 1998. Best of all, the games take up under 30megs of space.
In Natuk, you control a group of 8 orcs, ogres, and trolls of various classes on a quest to kill the current powerful orc king and take his throne for yourselves. It also has a percentage based difficulty setting, which means if you're kicking orc bandit ass left and right you can increase the difficulty not only for a challenge but better EXP rewards too. Here is a better description of Natuk by Tom himself, along with the shareware link:
http://www.proudft.com/smf_forum/index.php?topic=4.0Pirates of the Western Sea was to be the sequel to Natuk but was left unfinished before the developer, Tom Proudfoot, moved onto other things. While lacking a story other then the main story and a few assorted side quests, it's a very playable high seas trading game with excellent strategic combat. It's my favorite game of this type. If you like games like "Caravan" then you'll like this game.
Pirates of the Western Sea is free to download and is a fully functional game. Here is the link to Tom's description on the forum:
http://www.proudft.com/smf_forum/index.php?topic=7.0The games are classics in my book. Also, Tom released a Natuk patch recently to fix a scrolling bug on newer computers.
Tom still has Natuk CDs for sale at 15$ a piece, there is contact info on his Natuk forums. However, Natuk has a free shareware demo for you to try. I bought a CD a year or two ago after I tried the trial and I received it successfully so I can vouch for him. Tom has said in the past that he will release Pirates of the Western Seas as open source for future development once all the Natuk CDs are sold out. I have no idea how many are left, but that would be sweet to see.
Also, Proudfoot forumer Skeletony has made a few new character icons for use in PoWS and Natuk. You may want to check them out. If you want to read the Proudfoot forums, you'll have to register. When his forums were open to all they were hijacked by viagra and xxx spammers because Tom doesn't check the forums very often. There isn't much to see there except the new icons and some help playing Natuk.
Some bugs in PoWS due to being unfinished:
1: Spell Menu scrolls too fast on modern computers (still usable)
2: Can't throw items like in Natuk despite it appearing in the interface.
3: Many recruitable player characters recruited from Taverns start with an icon that makes no sense, IE a half elf priest recruit I found named Mellibo looks like a little green guy with antennae. (no effect on gameply and you can reassign them new icons if it bugs you)
4: Ship cannon's fire if you have ammo and a cannon and your ship is broadside the side the cannon is mounted, but don't have any effect.
Also, my favorite enemies to fight are swarms of norkers due to the sound effects. {(nork nork nork) deathblow (NOOORK)}
EDIT: Screenshots! Right now I'm playing a Bard who worships Explinde. Funnily enough he lost both hands in the first city before you get your ship. A giant weasel bit one off in the goblin or kobold caves and a skeleton chopped the other off with a rusty sword. I could have a priest have them grow back but it is amusing to me to imagine him dual wielding his fencing weapons and playing his instruments somehow. His skill in fencing went down to 0, so he can't hit anything, but he can still play a rousing Song of Discord.
A battle in one of the caves that are dotted along the coastline. This one was inhabited by some trolls who kicked my ass once I chose to go into quick combat mode, where your group is controlled by the computer. I was even on the lowest the difficulty could go, 50%. Quick combat is good for fighting hordes of easy things though.
This is the aiming menu. You can choose what your characters aim for and how they use their secondary weapon. It also allows you the feint, which will make enemies easier to hit or if you do a very convincing feint you might take their next turn away. It allows you to beat with a weapon, which makes enemies willpower bar go down. The less willpower something has, the less it's able to fight. It's useful if your weapons can't penetrate an enemy's armor or if it's been diseased, which steals willpower as well. There is a bard song that lowers it on all enemies slightly (so spam that sumbitch) and willpower will also go down from being hit normally.
Equiptment screen:
Next we have some screens related to trading goods. Note that I would have taken a loss if I had sold the crossbows in this port, since they are from the same country. If I sailed to another country I would get a better price, as long as they pay well for weapons also. Basically trade goods have a country of origin, and certain countries like each other's goods as well as liking certain types of goods. For example Wrayland loves Costan Silk, while the Costans like lumber, especially from Wrayland. However, Wrayland ports will pay less for silk from Helghkor, because the two countries don't like each other's trade goods. There are navigator guilds in the capitols of Wrayland, Costa, and Explund that will give you trade reports on each country which shows how much value the country has for each trade good, as well as what country's goods they prefer. The navigator's guild will also look over the goods on the boat for a fee and tell you directly where each good would make the most money. This is extremely useful and made the game a lot simpler to trade in once I figured it out.
Here is me sailing around with two other ships nearby:
I bought these crossbows in the country Explund.
Here I am pondering whether to sell the crossbows. Notice I would take a loss because the port is in the same country as the items came from.
Here is some stuff do with the skills each character can learn. Skill cost to increase vary by class, but they are all possible to raise for all classes, it's just prohibitively expensive to raise magic as a warrior, but possible.
These are the skills for Maggalundo, a human Rogue. He is using a knife type weapon that adds to his knife skill, so it is white. His hiding skill is darker because he is wearing armor that affects his skill in a negative way. Note his icon is one of the bugged ones. I could change it, but I was lazy.
Here is the complete list of skills on a screen that shows who in my party has the best skill in each.
Here are some spell lists. Priests start out with their spells uncovered, while mages have to learn theirs but end up with a lot more to choose from. Spells are cast by figuring out the combination words, with each key press as a syllable. For example RMF would spell the spell Rakhmafyr, which is a low level fire spell. A spell with -0 after it would have 0% chance of failure at 100 skill, while a spell with a -50 after would have a 50% chance to fail at 100 skill and -80 would mean you need 180 skill to have 100% chance of casting it and so on. Notice that all the gods grant different spell lists to their priests.
Mellibo the Half-Elf Priest of Explinde's list:
Pugli the Dwarf Priest of Andarn's list (Pugli is a badass)
Mage list (not nearly filled out yet)
Here is a shot of what my ship is carrying
Here is my map of what I've explored so far. I've only been doing one trade route so I've only hit 3 countries. There are I think 7 or 8, including a goblin island, a backwater halfling country known for it's cows you will likely never visit, a mercantile country, a hobgoblin country, your homeland of Wrayland which is your basic human civ losing a war with the hobgoblins, a tiny Island democracy, a military dictatorship secretly run by snake people, and an Aztec type civ way on the other side of the map in an ocean filled with tough dragons where you eventually install the leader of a death religion who can wither people's heads and limbs to sand as King after he joins your party for a while. (Once I withered off all Bort the crazy axedwarfs limbs off and left him naked on goblin island because he didn't suit my party at the time)
Here is a shot of a town screen with it's various shops. I had just visited the tavern and paid to hear rumors.
Some stuff I'd like to get screenshots but haven't yet are the navigator guild, enchanters, alchemy screen, character generation.
Also, I'll show everyone a screenshot how to get the antique armor in PoWS so you can get your boat. It's a pain in the ass to find if you don't know where it is. There is a secret wall in a room off of the library, you have to look with the L button in the right spot. I had to look online to find the anwer myself the first time I played it.
As a quick tip if you play for long enough to start putting together a party, try to get as many people with the same god as possible, and a priest of the god in your party. This is because the bless and greater blessing spells add +10 and +40 to all skills for characters with the same god, even magic or music skill. +40 is really a large amount, especially for a character like Pugli who is a battle priest of Andarn. I keep saying he is badass because he starts with higher weapon and shield skill than he does prayer skill. You'll have to dump all his points into prayer for a while, but with the blessings he becomes a healing shield fighter, and he also has a spell called Righteous Fury which gives him assorted buffs and multiplies his damage 4 times at the cost of being uncontrollably berzerk. Also, all the dwarves I've ever found worship Andarn also, so he gives +40 to all their skills too. If you look at the aiming menu +40 skill would almost negate aiming for an enemy's neck while the +40 to shield will help him block quite a bit. There are a lot of characters who worship Explinde for some reason, so that's a good choice for a bard to base a party around like I did in my current game, with Andarn worshipers (dwarves) for the rest except the backstabber who worships the god of profit. Andarn would be my second choice if I wanted to make an all dwarf party (though I don't think there's enough playable dwarves for that and you'd have to be lucky to find them all)
Another tip is make sure you have a backstabber with good mobility, hiding skill, and knife skill. Do this even if it means your fighters are weighed down with loot and can't move very far. He will outdamage your fighters on the front line but runs the risk of being bumped into while the enemy is moving around, and usually easily squished so you have to position them well and being able to move 5 squares rathe then 3 is a big difference.
Get your priest enough skill in prayer to get Great Bless and cast it first. Then do either a summon then mass buffs, or just start with mass buffs. mass haste doubles how far your characters can move and how often they move, mass armor vastly increases survivability, and mass strength raises everyone's damage a bit. Quickness greatly increases how often your characters move but it tires them out and lowers their willpower quickly, so the mass version isn't that useful because after a dozen turns your whole group will be helpless. If an enemy casts it though make sure you dispel it because they usually have larger pools of willpower (the mountain titans come to mind)
As a final note, there is a named axe called Eviscerator you eventually get that drastically increases the chance of severing limbs that you aim for, and a named longbow called Heartseeker that aims for an enemy's heart if you aim for vital organs. There is also a ring you get as a reward for a quest that is the most overpowered item in the game if you give it to a backstabber because it multiplies your damage after it's already multiplied by backstab. That one is fairly easy to find, but you have to kill some mountain titans on an island for it who are tough and cast spells. Also, if you're spending money enchanting stuff, do rings first, then weapons, then armor. This is because magic rings add however +'s to armor to your entire body. Also, if you ever see anything with special tags, usually in dungeons or caves, they are very rare and valuable. I found some invisible boots once that made anyone who wore them invisible until they took them off. It allowed me to turn a mage I put all the utility skills (alchemy, navigator, seamanship, literacy etc) into a useful backstabber. If you find very fine bracers, very fine cloaks, etc in a store buy those too and enchant em, they are semi-rare and add some extra armor compared to normal. This is especially true of very fine rings, or any kind of ring that adds more armor. This is because they add the armor to your whole body as mentioned earlier. It's almost worth checking every jewelry store for the elusive Very Fine Ring, but not really.
Oh yeah, and polearms can reach 2 squares away, so if you had someone in the back with a polearm you could whack the monsters from behind the fighters. It would have to be your main character probably though unless you want to spend some exp on polearms on a tavern hire, cause I've never seen a tavern hire with polearms skill. Also, the ultimate weapon in the game is a spear (I've never finished the main quest due to too much trading so I haven't got it yet)
You can also buy a country to win the game as an alternate ending.
You mercifully finish off the post.
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Topic: Natuk and Pirates of the Western Sea (now with screenshots and download link) (Read 11019 times)