GOF 2.5 Update

Yes, there is far more content in GOF 1.2 than 2.0 or 2.5.

Also, to add a brief history of my involvement with the series...

I purchased City of Abandoned Ships in 2011 and played quite a bit, but noticed some glaring errors, such as the problem dialog for the Tenochtitlan quest that was actually broken to the point that speaking to the first guy on shore would show nothing and freeze the game.  An online search connected me to some sites that explained the fairly simple program script changes needed to fix that.  I am a programmer in my day-job, so these types of things are relatively simple for me to do myself and once I gained an understanding of the script  mechanics, I was able to start fixing other problems myself.  Through this, I became aware of GOF 1.2, that extended the characters, ships, items and such and so I started playing that mod.

This mod also contained a number of problems and errors that I was able to fix myself, which was necessary because by the time I was playing it, the GOF mod team had disbanded.  GOF 2.0 and 2.5 evidently spawned from the fact that some of the newly added ships and script logic caused far more crashes than even stock/vanilla COAS; the Storm Engine was always problematic and rife with crashes (see also TEHO forums, as they use the stock engine and still suffer from many user complaints for crashes such as quick save, rain, etc.), but adding extra, and in some cases, non-conforming characters/ships, and extra script code did expose more engine flaws.  I believe from what I read, 2.0 and 2.5 were an effort to scale back much of the 1.2 work, so they are vastly stripped down versions of GOF and really look more like a lightly customized version of stock COAS, with just some GUI texture changes for the HUD and some character model swaps (e.g. Peter Blood).

While playing GOF 1.2, and looking for online resources in the past, I became aware of ERAS, and since it had started as GOF 1.2, but went in a direction of incorporating many historical characters, ships and items; people/items that actually fit the time-frame and Caribbean setting during this era of sail history.  I really enjoyed that mod, but again, since it was based on GOF 1.2, also suffered from many engine flaws that got exposed with the extra GOF script logic and some of the slight non-conformance issues of the extra ships, etc.  Since I had fixed many logical flaws, missing content and such during my GOF 1.2 gameplay myself, I started posting my actual fixes for ERAS to the main dev site.  This brought the attention of the ERAS dev to my presence, and after getting to know my script fixes and day-job background, he contacted me personally and asked if I knew C++ code.  He explained that the original game devs had divested their interest in the Storm Engine and had actually freely distributed the source code for the game briefly, back in 2009 or so and he had been given a copy.  To this point, hardly anybody ever got it compiled and working properly.  I said I would take a look at it and he sent it to me.  I was able to compile it, but then noticed that although it was Storm 2.8, claiming DirectX 9 on the box, it was really DirectX 8 as well.  Sure enough, a process monitor tool with my stock COAS game showed it was really using d3d8.dll...bit of a funny surprise given the "requirement" on the box for DX9.1c and even an installation option, LOL.  Anyway, now I could set upon finding the root cause and fix many crashes, memory leaks, etc., but I also found some Microsoft guides to port from DX8 to DX9 (I have no background in game/graphic programming, but rather ERP business/accounting/integration software).  I also upgraded to use the more current Visual Studio/C++ runtimes (the original was circa 2008), upgraded memory allocation to use the same as Firefox/Facebook/BSD, fixed many crashes, updated to 64 bit (while keeping original DX8 32 bit, and my added DX9 32 bit, yet with all the same fixes applied).  Once I got ERAS working with this, I set about offering to everyone the ability to play ALL the past versions of the game as well, because they all have roots in the same engine, and required relatively minor adjustments in both scripts and resources to work.

All this to say, that given my experience in modding the game, the three with the most solid experience will be COAS, GOF 1.2 and for certain ERAS as we still develop/add content for ERAS.  The others, including POTC, CT, CT Immersion, GOF 2.0, GOF 2.5 and New Horizons are all "smoke tested" in that I've launched the game, started a new, played some basic features like sailing, fighting, navigating GUI interface, saved and reloaded a save to ensure it works.  But I never actually played through any of them.

Again, if they are broken, and I get feedback from anyone, I will take a look and fix what I can, but we really only update/keep current ERAS.  The others, such as the compass/textures you don't like in GOF, will remain as those were the original design choices of a past team and we really don't have much interest in changing an old mod; we are really just focused on offering a more solid platform to play the old versions, and will offer new/updated content in ERAS only.

Hope this helps explain our position.