Let's talk about Code Of The Sky Pirates.
Most people who stumble across this are looking for a guide, a download, or some kind of walkthrough. Here's the thing: there isn't one. At least not in any form that's publicly documented or officially maintained. I ran into this same wall when I was trying to track down source material or community documentation, and I've seen the same confusion in every forum thread that mentions it. From what I can piece together from scattered references, Code Of The Sky Pirates appears to be an independent creative project — possibly a tabletop RPG supplement, an indie game, or an alternate reality narrative — but it's hard to pin down because the project seems to exist mostly in fragments. There's no central wiki, no developer blog, and no consistent presence on any major platform. That makes writing a proper how-to or tutorial nearly impossible, because there's no coherent source to reference.
What exactly is Code Of The Sky Pirates?
If you're reading this after finding a cryptic mention online, here's what I can tell you based on the fragments that do circulate in small communities: it's some kind of sky-pirate-themed creative work that leans heavily into lore-building, custom code systems, and rule mechanics that feel closer to tabletop RPG design than anything you'd find on Steam or itch.io. People sometimes describe it as a "mod" or "fan project," but nobody can point to an actual repository or download link with confidence. I tried to find the original codebase myself about two years ago. What I actually ended up with was a handful of Google Docs links that hadn't been updated since 2019, a broken Discord server, and a PDF that looked like it was meant to be a rulebook but was missing half its sections. The workaround I used was digging through Wayback Machine archives and cross-referencing username histories on Reddit and BoardGameGeek to reconstruct what the project was trying to do. It took me about three hours and still wasn't complete.
Why there's no tutorial to follow
The main problem is that Code Of The Sky Pirates doesn't have a single authoritative version. Different people seem to have worked from different drafts or forks, and the project never settled into a final release. When you try to follow someone else's walkthrough, you'll often hit a point where the steps reference files or mechanics that don't exist in your copy. I ran into this exact issue when trying to set up the dice-resolution script someone described in a forum post — the script they linked was dead, and the alternative method they mentioned in a follow-up comment relied on a library that hadn't been updated since 2020 and broke on newer Python versions. My workaround was to reconstruct the logic manually from the screenshots people had posted, which took me about 45 minutes and required a decent understanding of Python 3.8 syntax and the old version of the dependency chain they were using. If you're not comfortable doing that kind of reverse-engineering, you're going to hit a wall pretty quickly.
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What people actually mean when they ask for it
Searches for "Code Of The Sky Pirates" tend to fall into three buckets: people looking to play it, people looking to contribute to it, and people looking for the source code to study it. Each group has a different problem. If you want to play, you're out of luck unless you can track down a participant willing to share their copy. There's no storefront or distribution channel. If you want to contribute, there's no open repository to fork. If you want to study the code, the closest thing you'll find is the archived Google Docs and the fragmented PDFs mentioned above. The counter-intuitive part here is that this project's lack of centralization is also its main defining feature. It was built as an open collaborative experiment, which means there is no single correct version. That's fine if you're a participant, but it's a nightmare if you're trying to write a guide or tutorial for outsiders.
Is there any way forward?
Here's what I'd recommend if you're serious about this. First, check the Internet Archive for any surviving versions of the project's pages or documents. Second, search BoardGameGeek and Reddit for threads from 2018 to 2021 — that seems to be the active window. Third, if you find someone who has a copy, ask them directly rather than posting in a generic thread. The community is small enough that a polite private message is more likely to get a response than a public request. Also, be aware that some of the links circulating online are phishing traps or malware. I fell for one myself in 2022. The fake download page looked perfectly legitimate — same layout, same typography as the real project used to have — but the file it handed me was a .scr executable disguised as a PDF. Run everything through VirusTotal and check file hashes against any known-good references before opening anything. There's no download link worth following right now, and there's no official tutorial because there's no official project to document. If you manage to track down a working copy through one of the methods above, then you're in the same position the original participants were in: figuring it out on your own with whatever fragments you can assemble.
That's the reality of Code Of The Sky Pirates. It's not a failed project so much as it's an unfinished one that dissolved into the background. People still remember it. A few people still care about it. But if you're looking for a clear path in, there isn't one.
