By John Walker on December 5th, 2012 at 8:30 pm.
After a successful Greenlighting, Air Buccaneers (which apparently they’re spelling “AirBuccaneers”, but I’m not) arrives on Steam today. The game that has rather won Jim’s heart, and the attention of RPS’s readers, is officially there for even the likes of you to play. The multiplayer airship FPSing is a historically accurate recreation of the floating battles between the Bucanneers and the Vikings to dominate the Ancient North.
Should you play tonight, the developers will be about on the servers, and will be flinging Steam codes into the chat for people to grab, to get the full version of the game. And once Jim has escaped the mad hell of moving house, he’ll be organising some games for RPS readers in the near future.
05/12/2012 at 20:34 TheIronSky says:
“Joke about airborne Somalian pirates”
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06/12/2012 at 17:41 MrLebanon says:
these new spambots kill me
05/12/2012 at 20:47 Leosiegfried says:
Wait so their giving copies of the game to people who already own the game?
Edit : I just checked GamersGate if you bought that game in the indie fort bundle you can use a key on their website that works with steam
05/12/2012 at 20:53 Giant, fussy whingebag says:
Well… the copy I had from Gamersgate has developed a Steam-redeemable key. So I guess it’s to give away to friends?
edit: …I guess you found out while I was writing
05/12/2012 at 20:57 ReggieB says:
Apparently if you go to their web site you can download a free trial version, which lets you play the game, with certain limitations (level cap, premium members can kick you off the helm).
05/12/2012 at 21:03 sinister agent says:
Worth noting that the trial version has no significant limits, or at least, it didn’t have a few months back. It’s well worth downloading, as it’s tonnes of fun on its own.
Tip: don’t preload the cannons. It just means you can’t load rockets or fire if you need to.
06/12/2012 at 01:27 Kaira- says:
I think preloading was taken off after alpha.
05/12/2012 at 21:20 Shadrach says:
This game is heaps of fun to play, very glad to see it on Steam.
05/12/2012 at 22:42 Carra says:
How does this compare to Guns of Icarus? Looks very similar.
05/12/2012 at 23:53 Squishpoke says:
So I played it for the first time since alpha.
What the hell happened? No more ball loading? PERKS?!
06/12/2012 at 01:17 Mattressi says:
Wait, what? Half of the game was loading the cannons! What do you do now? Just sit at a cannon and click on enemy balloons?
06/12/2012 at 01:27 Squishpoke says:
Yup. You left click and your cannon lights up while you are aiming it, few seconds later a cannonball pops out.
Apparently other people can increase your fire rate by clicking on your cannon. There’s perks for that, too.
06/12/2012 at 02:25 sinister agent says:
No, you don’t click on enemy balloons. You aim at them manually, same as always, and light the cannon. It’s exactly the same, except that you don’t have to constantly cycle back and forth between a cannonball and a fuse for no reason, removing a pointless extra step that only ever caused problems.
It used to be “press E, press number key, click, press another number key, click, press E” Now it’s just “click”. Considering that in a typical fight you’ll be firing dozens of times, that’s a vast improvement, as it allows you to concentrate on aiming rather than faffing about with extra buttons for no reason. It also means you don’t get some idiot jumping on your cannon when you were loading it and firing at a nearby wasp or something, and you no longer get those annoying arseholes trying to be helpful by constantly loading ammunition you don’t want and breaking your flow, too.
What is incredibly annoying, however, is the apparent lack of a way to exit a match without quitting to the desktop or moving straight to another game.
06/12/2012 at 02:42 Mattressi says:
To me, it seemed that one of the main features of the game was loading the cannons. It was an odd mini-game to fire a cannon and it made battles interesting, to me. The madness of it all, especially the reloading, is what really made the game for me. I guess I’ll have to try the new version to see how it plays now, but I worry that it’s going to just be a game of sitting at a generic cannon and firing.
06/12/2012 at 03:34 LJFHutch says:
The cannon loading was awesome, it made the cannon combat feel clumsy and makeshift; like your balloons. People scrambling around on the deck loading and firing cannons was epic :(
06/12/2012 at 04:42 unangbangkay says:
@LJFHutch
Clumsy and makeshift is great if you want a game about nerds LARPing Master and Commander for the first time, but less so if you want a pseudo-realistic game about airships fighting and crews playing as a team. Ludocraft wanted the latter, and something probably had to give. What gave was the bullcrap Sinister Agent was talking about.
I’ll miss it as well, just like I miss the Harry Potter Marauder’s Map from Far Cry 2, but I can see why the decision was made, and respect that.
If nothing else, in AirBuc’s case the rationale for the decision is more solid: Manual loading interfered with effective use of the cannons for things other than dicking around or being dicked around. It can be argued that keeping the magic map in FC3 wouldn’t be a detriment to normal gameplay and still remain the aid to immersion it was.
06/12/2012 at 07:56 Squishpoke says:
These are problems that occur when you are trying to do everything yourself instead of working as a team. Sure, you can solo fire, but of course it would be clumsier than if you had a barrel monkey taking care of two cannons.
I liked the old way because it was more interesting and encouraged teamwork.
06/12/2012 at 08:32 unangbangkay says:
@Squishpoke
I can sympathize with that, but not everyone wants to be a barrel monkey. Shooting a gun is more fun than loading a gun for the most part, and teams (especially public teams, which will be common) shouldn’t be forced to subordinate one member (if they don’t have a particularly generous masochist to volunteer) to keep things going.
If this were, say, a surgery game, would you REALLY want to force one person (or yourself) to be the nurse that just waits for the surgeon to call for a given tool? Similar deal.
06/12/2012 at 10:50 El_Emmental says:
Maybe make it a server-side setting, in a later patch, adding more challenges to the normal gameplay, such as (but not only) reloading – Classic Clumsy Challenge mode.
Being a reload monkey can be fun if the whole crew is using microphones to communicate, and if you get to put the powder too (and choose the amount of it) – and also get to do something else from time to time. Also, switching roles.
There used to be Medics healing their teammates in TF2, why there couldn’t be supporting roles, such as reloaders, in Air Buck ?
06/12/2012 at 17:45 MrLebanon says:
I recall reading something about a “hard-core” mode that had things set the old way… although my mind can’t remember where I read it or whether or not it was a real thing.