Pirates, Vikings and Knights
Pirates, Vikings and Knights (abreviated by most people as PVK1) is a video game mod which utilizes Valve Software's GoldSrc Engine, first used in the computer game Half-Life. Released sometime between 2001 and 2002, it was among the most popular multiplayer GoldSrc mods during it's heyday due to its absurd and explosive nature. With the announcement and release of Valve's Half-Life 2 and the Source Engine, a small portion of the original team went on to create it's sequel Pirates, Vikings and Knights II, making full advantage of the engine's newest features. Pirates, Vikings and Knights' latest and final release, version 2.31, was released in March of 2005.
Gameplay
Pirates, Vikings and Knights' gameplay shares many similarities with it's sequel, although it lacked several mechanics introduced in PVK II, such as shield bashing, weapon charging and direction-based swing and block, as well the fact that all classes's stats are similar to one another. For example, a cutlass swing would be non-stop by holding down the left mouse button and it has the same swinging speed as a crowbar from Half-Life. Despite these differences, all classes have for the most part the same weapons as their PVKII counterparts.
In Pirates, Vikings and Knights some classes have their own special attacks, however they were used as alternate attacks of their specific weapons which can be activated anytime without the need of a special bar, however all of those have a cooldown. Notable inclusions of special attacks include Skirmisher's leap attack, Berserker's rage and Gestir's charge, all of them using the exact same weapons as in their PVKII counterparts.
Classes
The mod has nine playable classes, with three classes for each team.
Pirates
Vikings
Knights
Maps
With the final release, the mod includes the following maps:
- Cartoon B2
- Castle
- Colosseum
- Colossus
- Desertruin
- Eldorado B1
- Freeze
- Frozen Hell
- Giant
- Graceland
- Grogboat
- Grogboat 2
- Harbor
- Hell Awaits
- High Ground
- Island
- Island 2
- Lighthouse
- Marctastic
- Ocean Calm
- Omni
- Omni 2
- Pinegrove
- Shores
- Temple
- Tourney
- Treasure Hunt
- Zombies!
A couple of these maps, Desertruin, Island, Pinegrove and Temple, were later remade onto Pirates, Vikings and Knights II, while another map, Colosseum, had it's own spiritual successor, Arena. Unused textures found in PVKII's folders suggest that a remake of Eldorado is in the works, and despite being shown in PVKBeta Live, it's unknown if it will ever get released.
A fan-made port/remake of Colossus for Pirates, Vikings and Knights II, using the Territory game mode, is avaiable to download in Gamebanana.[1] A fan-made port of Lighthouse is also available for download.
On March 2016, CrazyTalk released a PVK1 map pack for Pirates, Vikings and Knights II, with official ports of the maps Grogboat, Colosseum and Desertruin, with more being ported in the future.[2]
Legacy
PVK1 proved to be successful to get its own sequel which itself explored even further its theme and gameplay potentials. Despite his discontinuation, former creators of the mod who currently work on PVKII made the possible to make it functional as it was back at its heyday. With websites no longer providing download mirrors the final package was uploaded in ModDB for preservation purposes, and coders like Akz created plugins like GrogBot, a script that enables bots in any created server. In some rare occasions the PVKII Team plans game sessions over the GoldSrc mod to celebrate it's existence.