[HN Gopher] Pirates, a naval warfare game inspired by Sid Meier'...
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Pirates, a naval warfare game inspired by Sid Meier's Pirates
Author : iweczek
Score : 304 points
Date : 2026-06-12 17:07 UTC (23 hours ago)
HTML web link (piwodlaiwo.github.io)
TEXT w3m dump (piwodlaiwo.github.io)
| HiroProtagonist wrote:
| Sid Meier's Pirates on the iPad was a great experience. Bummer it
| isn't supported in modern iOS.
| iweczek wrote:
| I did not know that, I have an old iPad, going to look for it
| JMiao wrote:
| removed from app store, sadly
| Apreche wrote:
| At first I was frustrated because I didn't know what the controls
| were. The arrows were moving, but nothing seemed to shoot.
|
| Then I realized the space bar _was_ shooting. You just can't see
| the bullets because they are tiny black dots on a dark blue
| background.
| iweczek wrote:
| Thank you for the feedback! I'm going to address both points
| tonight when I get back home.
| monkeywork wrote:
| Well done - that was a fun little distraction :)
| iweczek wrote:
| Thanks!
| zuzululu wrote:
| this game is crazy fun
| iweczek wrote:
| Thanks!
| dbingham wrote:
| That was fun, but the AI and the balance need some work.
|
| It's too easy to win as the small boat. You just stay ahead of
| your opponent and then turn back and strafe periodically.
|
| It would be _much_ more challenging if you added wind and
| realistic sailing dynamics. If wind direction vs sail orientation
| mattered to your speed and boat characteristics weren 't as
| simple as smaller = faster then I think it would be much better
| balanced and way more fun/challenging!
| matthewfcarlson wrote:
| I just went into a circle and shot, won every time for every
| boat
| dbingham wrote:
| On further play, really the only match up where I had any
| trouble was large vs large. (As a side request, it would be
| nice to be able to choose your opponent!)
|
| With both small and medium, you can just strafe back and forth
| in front of your opponent if you're faster than them. With
| medium and large, you can just circle them and absorb more
| punishment than them when you're larger than them.
|
| Multi-player would solve the AI problem -- especially if it was
| more than 1v1 -- and then it would be more challenging.
|
| But I would still request realistic wind and sailing dynamics.
| That strafing maneuver isn't really possible with real wind
| dynamics, because you slow down as you swing around and that
| allows the opponent to catch up to you and return fire. You
| could have a little arrow in a corner of the screen that shows
| the wind direction. You don't even have to make the sails
| movable, you could just have your speed be proportional to how
| orthongal your sails are to the wind direction in the simplest
| implementation.
|
| It would add a whole new element to it that would make it much
| more challenging! :)
| iweczek wrote:
| Thanks for playing and the feedback. I plan on adding wind
| dynamics very soon. Letting you choose opponent instead of
| random should be easy. Multiplayer with more than 1 would be
| interesting, I like that idea!
| stackghost wrote:
| That's interesting, because I found it trivial to win with the
| largest boat. Tank one hit, lead your target, blast away. I
| remain undefeated with the largest boat.
|
| By contrast I found winning with the medium boat required the
| most skill, and lost the first few times I tried.
| Mtnh2o wrote:
| Highlighting that game mechanics are hard - I struggled with
| your strategy but found it too easy to be the tank. Turn in a
| circle and shoot and rely on the higher HP + cannon loading.
| dbingham wrote:
| Fair!
| idontwantthis wrote:
| The cannonballs should have randomized elevation as well so
| that "raking" the bow and stern is more likely to get hits than
| hitting the side. Hits on the bow and stern should also do more
| damage. Cross the T!
| carpo wrote:
| If I remember correctly, the original was like this too. I
| always used the sloop and would often beat much larger ships.
| chongli wrote:
| Yeah so the other factor missing is gun calibre and ship hull
| reinforcement/design. The reason sloops didn't dominate
| against ships of the line came down to these factors, as well
| as sheer number of guns.
|
| A sloop's guns were generally so light the balls would bounce
| off the hull of a ship of the line. The sheer weight of
| firepower in return would shred a sloop to pieces. Add on to
| that the fact that heavier guns can achieve longer range when
| trained at the right angle, and a sloop can't really get
| anywhere near a ship of the line and live to tell the tale.
| iweczek wrote:
| I plan on adding wind dynamics. The largest ship has 1 more
| cannon, do you think I should add more? or perhaps longer
| range on the larger ship cannons?
| chongli wrote:
| Longer range would help! I should also note that ships
| had forward- and aft-firing guns in addition to the main
| batteries on the gun decks firing to the sides. A smaller
| ship merely trying to run away could be fired upon until
| it got out of range.
| iweczek wrote:
| yes, i also always chose the Sloop and would usually win.
| ms_menardi wrote:
| make it multiplayer, I dare ya >:)
|
| (if you need this kind of motivation)
| sudo-rsingh wrote:
| Yup totally support that.
| k2xl wrote:
| Fun but should have difficulty levels!
| iweczek wrote:
| Love the feedback, just wondering how to implement that. More
| difficult means your ship moves slower? you reload slower? your
| hits cause less damage? Need to think about that...
| Jeema101 wrote:
| Illustrates the importance of 'crossing the T' in naval warfare
| before there were turreted guns. :)
| hermitcrab wrote:
| Fun. Maybe you could add some random features for a bit more
| variety. Shallows, islands, fog banks etc.
| iweczek wrote:
| Thanks for playing! That's an interesting idea, thanks.
| ez8 wrote:
| Good but too easy
| inasio wrote:
| Nice job! Sid Meier's Pirates is one of my favorite games, wish
| they brought it back (I still play it occasionally, can't believe
| it never got a remake)
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| It was remade in 2006
| Am4TIfIsER0ppos wrote:
| Maybe like me that is the only one they've played. I didn't
| know there was an earlier one for several years.
| alt227 wrote:
| Great game!
|
| Reminds me very much of Overboard for the PS1 back in 1997.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71accvNZ0aA
| sfRattan wrote:
| 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)
| wolttam wrote:
| Cute but I won first time on all 3 sizes
| fabiensanglard wrote:
| Nothing is moving on the screen for me :/ ! I can't pick the
| ship.
|
| Console shows no error.
| toxicunderGroov wrote:
| Same here, using Firefox 151.0.4
| san_dimitri wrote:
| did you try arrow keys and space bar?
| iweczek wrote:
| 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
| williadc wrote:
| I also experience this on Firefox 151.0.3 on Linux
| JMiao wrote:
| 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/
| iweczek wrote:
| Nice, I still remember that map even though I haven't played
| the game in decades :) tinywind looks very cool, thanks for
| sharing.
| tinywind wrote:
| 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 :)
| madduci wrote:
| This is really cool
| mgc8 wrote:
| This is pretty cool as a prototype, nice job! I'd say it needs
| some progression (one-on one to one-on-multiple, think 1xL
| against 2xS, etc.), as well as some more map variation (channels,
| islands, hazards like a giant whirlpool, kraken, the works). As a
| final shape, multiplayer would be pretty cool, but of course
| that's quite a bit more difficult... But I for one would be there
| for it :)
| alexpotato wrote:
| 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 lead to Game
| B which in turn lead you back to interesting ideas for Game A (or
| maybe better Game C).
|
| 0 - https://alexpotato.com/games/tractor47/?l=hn
| alexpotato wrote:
| If people have feedback on the game, would love to hear it on
| the below link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48503530
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| That link doesn't work, so I'll respond here: My impression
| is that my ship always has a better turn rate than the other
| ship, so if I ever manage to get into the enemy ship's e.g.
| 4'oclock position, I can keep turning towards it, it will
| (slowly) turn towards me while consistently shooting behind
| me, and I can consistently hit it.
| LearnYouALisp wrote:
| Well, have you dogfooded it and how many times?
|
| I have hundreds of turns on it now, at least.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| 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.
| verelo wrote:
| So, I love this little game. I've been wanting to remake
| Scorched Earth for years, just for fun.
|
| Decided to experiment with this repo today, adding multi
| player, islands that can sink the ships (that the ships cant
| shoot through), and a few other things to the game. Anyone who
| wants to join, ill be in here in a multi player room that
| supports up to 10 people at a time:
| https://ndroo.github.io/pirates/?join=BP4Q
|
| I also added controls for mobile users, because that was the
| first issue I ran into. Probably buggy, maybe not secure...but
| i had some fun with a friend a few moments ago and it wasn't
| awful.
|
| Thanks for sharing this OP!
| nkmnz wrote:
| 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.
| neonstatic wrote:
| > Is it even possible to win the game?
|
| If it's a faithful simulator of soviet economy, then you
| should not be able to win :)
| rmast wrote:
| Maybe the only way to win is to cheat.
| esafak wrote:
| For me the watercolor imagery and music were half the game
| (Pirates Gold). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOPdsiOp5R0
| contingencies wrote:
| Love the original. Some key tactics you need to pick up are: use
| a small ship, because if you are fast with the right technique
| nobody can hit you, and you can cross vast distances quickly
| without starving. Keep food stocked and limit large ship
| acquisition to a phase of the game in which you need large
| numbers of pirates for town invasions / large ship fights. Always
| sell extra cannons. Always buy the goodies from the bar. Upgrade
| ships religiously: you want all upgrades. In swordfighting,
| prefer rapier (speed with good reach) over larger weapons in most
| cases. Obtain new letters of marque. Obtain land after performing
| state-aligned duties by talking to the governors: this builds
| your long-term wealth. The easiest victim (given all other
| letters of marque) is the dominant state in the era (different
| eras have different mixes, but it's usually the Spanish). To
| catch the military payrolls, sink the escorts then damage to near
| 'strike their colors' before closing in for swordplay. Change to
| buck shot to reduce opponent count before swordplay without
| risking loss of vessel hull. Remake on Steam:
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/3920/Sid_Meiers_Pirates/
| supertroop wrote:
| "the emperor wishes to see you posthaste!" This immediately
| reminded me of the 1980s Apple game Taipan and of course it is
| playable online: https://www.taipangame.com/
| itintheory wrote:
| Huh. I remember playing a very similar game on Apple II, but I
| believe it had a Dutch / European theme, and was called
| something like "Ooperhoofd". I can't find any reference to it
| online. Maybe it was a 'modded' version of this? That one, and
| Odell Lake[0] were the best disks in the library computer lab
| in middle school.
|
| [0] https://classicreload.com/apple2-odell-lake.html
| pinchydev wrote:
| Love it! I remember fondly playing pirates as a kid this is
| great!
|
| I recently built https://navalstrike.app to scratch my naval
| warfare itch. Happy to share how I did lightweight p2p
| multiplayer with a super lightweight server handshake if you want
| :)
| RobRivera wrote:
| I am the greatest
|
| Pirate hunter in the world.
| lencastre wrote:
| I am not sure if my memory is mixing with 4D Boxing (!?) but I
| think if you took too long your pirate would be quite old and
| weak, or?
| iweczek wrote:
| omg, thanks for reminding me about 4d boxing! that was so much
| fun
| Daviey wrote:
| Really enjoyed this and it brought back many memories of the
| Amiga, great job.
|
| Two suggestions, - The sailing is a bit too
| nimble, it's possible to turn naturally. - It's currently
| possible to sail over/under the other ship.
|
| When will it be possible to intercept and have a sword fight? :)
| cbarrick wrote:
| Please adjust the color contrast. I can hardly see the cannon
| balls.
| iweczek wrote:
| thanks, will do!
| CrimsonCape wrote:
| It would seem relatively easy to tie speed to the direction the
| boat is facing. The more perpendicular you are to the 'wind
| direction' the faster you move. Or make the fastest velocity 45
| degrees from wind direction, for a bit more realism. Basic
| sailing physics can add to the fun.
| iweczek wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback, adding wind dynamics is on top of my
| list :)
| franze wrote:
| I started a thread if others want to show their AI coded games.
| -> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48509243
|
| maybe it becomes a monthly thing, maybe not.
| ceuk wrote:
| What's the key to fire? I've tried everything
| diabllicseagull wrote:
| Space key
| itintheory wrote:
| For some reason this made me think of Pirates Constructible
| Strategy Game [0]
|
| [0]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirates_Constructible_Strategy...
| theropost wrote:
| I remember playing Pirates on my 8086 in the 1980, mono-chrome
| screen, and I was amazed a a kid. Sid Meier's games were always a
| step above, and so immersive feeling for their day. I started a
| project from that too (one of many I suppose). I also was
| inspired by the KOEI games on SNES - Uncharted Waters.
|
| It needs polish, content and more work but the kids like it.
|
| https://ship-voyage-4zn.pages.dev/
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| This is exactly like a much older Apple 2 game called Old
| Ironsides fwiw.
|
| On the Apple 2 it was 2 player only but a lot of fun back in the
| day. With an added ability to ram ships (pointy front into flat
| side one if you landed it before they sunk you).
| atleastoptimal wrote:
| I feel like difficulty progression would help.
| aidanbeck wrote:
| One fun unintended mechanic: Because sailing off screen loops you
| around Pacman style, and because a browser window is dynamically
| resizable, you can use this to your advantage teleporting behind
| the enemy and taking them by surprise.
|
| Love this!
| taubek wrote:
| I first played Pirates on C64. There was a paper version of the
| map that was a lot of help when you played and tried to find some
| locations.
| pgt wrote:
| 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.
| wizardforhire wrote:
| 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!
| flohofwoe wrote:
| 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).
| sgt wrote:
| 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.
| cen0b wrote:
| Super fun! I'd add the ability to restart the same battle once
| its finished, kinda tedious to go back through and select the
| settings I want.
|
| A product of my laziness heh
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| Lovely! Thankfully no one (AFAIK) has done a similar work with
| Sid Meier's Railroad Tycoon Deluxe... Otherwise I would be easily
| spending tens of hours playing it. One of the games I have loved
| the most in my life!
| zhoBEENG wrote:
| Really enjoyed this, thanks for sharing!
| NKosmatos wrote:
| Not playable on iPad, will try it on PC.
| dmzxnico wrote:
| It's cute! Push it deeper
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(page generated 2026-06-13 17:01 UTC)