Buccaneers! News

Fellow swashbucklers,

As the Steam Game Festival enters its final day, we have one more update to share for the Buccaneers! demo.

With this update, we have improved SteamVR support for those of you using Oculus Rift or Quest devices, so you should now have a more consistent experience whether you play the game in SteamVR or Oculus VR modes. (You can choose which one is used when hitting the "Play" button from your library.)

Here's the full list of patch notes:

Changes

• [VR] Temporarily disabled photo mode whilst sailing or in combat.
  
• [VR] Changed loading screen to a black screen in SteamVR mode.
  
• [VR] The pause menu is now accessed via the Y button instead of the menu button on the left Oculus Touch controller when in SteamVR mode.
  

Bug fixes

• Fixed lighting issue in Clarence Town.
  
• Fixed occasional issues with the Cabin Customisation seller.
  
• Fixed a bug that would cause the player to take starvation losses in the Siege of Havana.
  
• Fixed restart button not working after dying in a land battle.
  
• [VR] Fixed land portion of Siege of Havana not working.
  
• [VR] Fixed player’s health bar not displaying correctly in a land battle.
  
• [VR] Fixed some buttons not working when using Oculus Touch controllers in SteamVR mode.
  
• [VR] Fixed incorrect hand rotation and pose when using Oculus Touch controllers in SteamVR mode. No more constant finger-gunning! 👉
  

Once again, thanks to everyone who has submitted bug reports and given us insightful feedback so far! We've enjoyed reading your comments and have taken a lot of points on board (pun intended) which will help to shape the game before its full release.

If you haven't done so already, be sure to join our Discord to keep up with the game's development after the demo ends!

Happy pirating! 🏴‍☠️

Fellow swashbucklers,

A new update has just gone live for the Buccaneers! Steam Game Festival Demo, including several bug fixes and improvements based on your feedback.

Among the highlights is improved support for Valve Index controllers, which should now have better hand placement by default. We also added manual rotation and position offsets to the Controls menu in the game's settings, so you can tweak the hand placement yourself if it still doesn't look right.

Here are the full patch notes:

Changes

• Disabled “hide UI” hotkey.
  
• Updated lightmaps for Clarence Town.
  
• Reduced delay before music starts playing in the Main Menu.
  
• Disabled player abilities which have no effect in the demo.
  
• [VR] Added hand rotation and position offset settings to the Controls menu.
  
• [VR] Changed default hand rotation for Valve Index controllers.
  

Big fixes

• Attempted fix for inactive controllers interfering with mouse and keyboard controls.
  
• Fixed Clarence Town navmesh near the jetty.
  
• Fixed bounty board in Cockburn Town.
  
• Fixed post-battle UI scaling incorrectly on some screen aspect ratios.
  
• [VR] Fixed game freezing in Cockburn Town.
  
• [VR] Fixed incorrect demo completion text.
  

Thanks again to everyone who has tried the demo and given us feedback so far. We're continuing to monitor bug reports and suggestions in the Steam discussions and on our Discord, so please keep them coming!

Happy pirating! 🏴‍☠️

Today is your last chance to play the naval combat portion of Buccaneers! for free! The demo will no longer be playable from later today (14th September) at 10am PST / 6pm BST / 7pm CEST.

If you haven't yet tried the demo, it features a short tutorial and seven waves of increasingly difficult ship battles, taking you through all seven playable ship types from the recently announced Pilgrim brig all the way up to a mighty three-decker.

The demo is playable in both VR and non-VR modes and supports the Oculus Rift/Rift S and HTC Vive series of headsets. The Valve Index is not currently supported, but we're working to fix that soon.

We'd love to hear your feedback on this early work-in-progress build of the game, so please send us your comments via the community forums or on our Discord. We've received a lot of excellent feedback so far which we're using to improve the game for future beta releases.

While you're playing, try the in-game photo mode (non-VR only) and send us your best screenshots for a chance to win a free copy of the full game when it releases! To enter, simply upload your photos to the community Screenshots page or share them on our Discord or social media (with the hashtag #BuccaneersTheGame). We will announce the winner after the demo ends.

If you didn't get a chance to play this demo, don't worry! We'll be announcing more opportunities to try the game soon, so keep an eye on our social channels.