Release Notes - February 19, 2009

• Environmental Improvements:
  • Redesigned Tortuga (including the Minimap) for better game performance
  • Moved the entrance of King's Run to the back of the Port Royal graveyard - this will help new players progress more easily through the tutorial
• General Bug Fixes:
  • Fixed some issues with emotes not displaying properly
  • Fixed an issue where players could escape from the jail without kicking the door open
  • Resolved an weapon exploit that allowed Pirates to cast Voodoo Staff Desolation without charging it
  • Players are no longer slowed down by Undead Gravediggers' throwing daggers
  • Fixed a bug where you could not see your own Whispers to unknown Pirates
  • Made several improvements and fixes to the Crew System
  • Pirates of the Caribbean Online now supports 16 bit color in windowed mode when using DirectX8 and DirectX9
• General Improvements:
  • The Game Options menu can now be accessed in-game by pressing the "F7" key
  • Improved the way avatars are being displayed to improve frame rate
  • When tracking enemies to complete a Quest, the Compass now glows when you reach the target area
  • Returned the Musicians to the taverns on Port Royal and Tortuga. Pirates can now play the sheet music earned in the Cannons of the Deep mobile game.
  • Improved Broadside Cannon aim
  • The Windcatcher Ship Skill (which increases your speed at sea) works again
  • Added the ability to bring up your Pirate profile by clicking on your Pirate name in the chat window

Please report any issues you encounter using this feedback form.

Sweet
Windcatcher is back Again now.
The update is taking forever tho

Finally.... windcatcher and the emotes are back as well as a new tortuga.

I like the new tortuga hope they put it on open.

No bugs for now, Ill check more out tommorow.

Can't Sleep, checked out the new Tortuga...

Take a tour with me ;)

Crew Hud Seems to be working again, need to actually crew someone to check it out fully

http://i252.photobucket.com/albums/h...9_23-58-40.jpg

Seems the DW party House has been demolished though...

http://i252.photobucket.com/albums/h...-20_0-0-48.jpg

Here's the Map

http://i252.photobucket.com/albums/h...20_0-11-28.jpg

Middle of Town

http://i252.photobucket.com/albums/h...20_0-13-36.jpg

The New "are you sure you want to friend this pirate" screen

http://i252.photobucket.com/albums/h...20_0-17-52.jpg

Misty Mire no loner is a separate load, you just walk in, and most of the baddies are gone

http://i252.photobucket.com/albums/h...2-20_0-5-4.jpg

http://i252.photobucket.com/albums/h...-20_0-7-12.jpg

More Later ;)

*Jaw drops to floor* 38 seconds from Port Royal to Devil's Anvil.

Chat (white text) has been restored!

Landing/TPing to a place where your journal is tracking seems to cause a crash at the moment, but another update/fix seems to be imminent...servers restarting now...back already. (Down for 10 minutes?) And voila...journal tracking no longer crashes game out.

A lot of people seem unable to find Misty Mire (look for the rectangle) from the little swamp area.

Not too many wall glitches on the new Tortuga. Dig spots in accessible places. Nice feel to it. Musicians have the original playlists back (Yay!) with the COTD slots for the rest (right?)

Now if they don't rush it out too fast like they did with Port Royal...

Torutga looks great! Like usual great tour Sarah! I hope it comes to open soon!

Thanks for the updates Swash and Sarah!. At last the windcacher is back and the crew options. Hopefully the servers that start with the letter "K" are back also, they were gone all day yesterday.

I am getting a lot of graphic issues inside the caves. Checked Misty Mire & Royal caverns this morning for the short time I was on. The water seems to be really messed up for me. Anyone else?

Thanks Edward. I see it now, didn't go in far enough...could have been the cold meds ;)

If all else fails, blame the cold meds Sarah... :pirate6:

I like the update, wonder if PDF is next.

PDF really needs an update.the laggiest thing there is when the volcano erupts.

Very nice.....especially Windcatcher!! About time.....

:napoleon:

yeah i launch my ship and its Inside tortuga rofl
Not sure if this is a bug, When I ported my ship, I was in the water near the dock

Good bug fixes but in my opinion they're taking too much time redoing islands.
I'd just like islands to be expanded. Tortuga was way too small at first to be the movie island tortuga.

I like the new town updates. Got booted several times last night, but that seems to be fixed. The graphics in the Misty Mire looked like a light show, and Butcher Brown has gotten himself a nice big space, but overall it seems well layed out, and much more interesting than the bland space it was before.

I'm not real fond of the changes they made to characters' appearances. They look too angular now, too harsh.

I'm curious about the player list. There is now a button on the player's card that allows you to make "player" friends with someone. It explains it now as making friends across Disney games, which seems useful. I have several friends with 2-4 pirates each, and this would free up a lot of space on my friends list. Unfortunately, when I tried it last night, it didn't seem to be working.

Also, if you talk the people in the town now, they have new sayings. Love that.

I'm not even on yet and I immediately noticed that on the selection screen - HATE IT!!!

My pirates look downright deformed. Boo, D! :angry8:

I must have missed something. I didn't notice anything different with how my character looks on Test this morning. Anyone have a screenshot?

I'll get a comparison between the two ASAP.


ETA:
Okay, here we go. On the left is Ali on Open. On the right is Ali on Test. They are (were) identical, as are my settings between the two versions of Pirates.

http://i287.photobucket.com/albums/l...se/AliOpen.jpghttp://i287.photobucket.com/albums/l...se/AliTest.jpg

And here's an overlap (red is old, yellow is new):
http://i287.photobucket.com/albums/l...Comparison.jpg
The narrowest part of the waist is now lower, but the belt sits higher, giving her a cinched look that I am not a fan of.
I picked the old body type for a reason, and D changing it like that is, IMO, wrong. Considering how much time I spend looking at the back of my pirate, I want it to look right. Now she (well, all of them because they're all the same) looks weird. Plus, when she runs the swing of her hips is exaggerated because her waist is so much smaller. Of course, that may have been their point, but hullo, this is a kid's game...


Other things - her shorts. Before they had a pretty natural shape, now they're poofy (which makes her lower half look even bigger than the narrowing of the waist alone). The changes in skin tone don't bother me that much, because I am crazy pale myself so whatever. But, what's up with her hair? It looks practically bleached (perhaps to go with her new completely unnatural body shape?).


ETA Again: You can also see the obvious changes in the lacing on the bustier. Before it was relatively square, but now it tapers dramatically.

Sinking equals crashing
 

Oh BTW Aliese they both look good to me, keep up the good work :piratesing::beard::piratesing:

I'm on my other computer now and there's definitely something up with their faces, too. The other comp wasn't showing me detail (typical), but on this one, everything's more angular; the jawline is different.

Also, I'm not sure if it's because it's not finding shader hardware (this one's 4), but her skin looks really strange. Her jaw/neck look almost bruised, and under her arms is way too dark.

ETA:
http://i287.photobucket.com/albums/l...liTestNeck.jpg
http://i287.photobucket.com/albums/l...stBackArms.jpg



And look at her stomach! LoL
http://i287.photobucket.com/albums/l...AFKStomach.jpg
Yeah, that's several degrees of wrong.

AGHHH YES! I MISSED YOU, WINDCATCHER! Everything is looking great... except the way it actually looks. Yay for more Mac graphic glitches.

http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g1...Picture1-9.png

Hmmm, Tortuga looks much better, keep it up Disney!

You have to clear your "cache" folder after you logout, to clear that condition. Known problem for Mac users, I'm told.

I hope that Cuba is next... that island needs some work...

that problem has never happened to me before...

sorry for the double post mods...

Cuba or padres first? Cuba does need work, but there's not much to remodel. I'd like padres to be thinner, the running tires me out.

Yeah, I had to do that after the last major updates on open. I guess I just need to do the same thing in my test folder. Thanks

Yeah, padres does need a major renivasion

I don't really think Padres really needs to be updated, just the run to Fort Dundee shortened.

But I do strongly agree that Cuba needs major work, just not the gators we need that for ranking ;)

I think tortuga and port royal need to have be expanded. If both of them have two sections I think they'd feel more like inhabited islands.

Also, this small chracter update stinks in my opinion. It looks like the graphics for your character have been downgraded. Not everyone owns a windows 98 disney!
I don't like where the game is heading, how it's being set up, island changes, etc. If they make any changes to the islands I'd like them to be bigger.

The one thing I love, absolutely love about Padres Del Fuego, (PDF) is cliff diving near the shipwright. As long as you can still do that, I don't mind them changing everything else about it. For Port Royal, the new one is more like a maze, where the old one was very elongated. The new Tortuga isn't nearly as (pleasantly surprisingly) confusing. If they do PDF next, I hope it is more like the PR update. As long as "lover's leap" is still there...

Cuba needs a couple more sections...just having Pantano River (only) seems a tiny bit lacking. I don't recall lag ever being a problem at Cuba (nor PDF, really.)

On the other hand, Kingshead has always had issues. If they made each archway instead be a door you have to go through... Well, hard to guess what the technical limitations are. Maybe they have good tracking tools on the server side (I hope so.) Actually, the single biggest improvement they could make to Kingshead, would be to let you switch servers, but stay on the Kingshead main dock out front.

But, IDK. Seems like now that they are on a roll, they don't even need to do the "island makeovers" to add the awesome minimaps. Or is that, the Fantastic Minimaps? I love the F8 maps! Edit: On the other hand, they can release one new island makeover a month to keep the rhythm.

The downgrade to the NPC graphics is disappointing. For example, when you have a 1st person conversation with Lucinda to buy tonics, she looks, um, they are, ermmm, sortof triangular now? (I'm talking about her eyes, of course.) Anyhow, I don't understand why a 1st person conversation would contribute to any lag anywhere anyhow...so I guess I just don't understand the technical motivation for that change.

I've been experiencing more lag now for some reason.(I don't know why.)

But I sent Disney a very long and detailed email about changing the frame rate. This downgrade looks like they want to be more like runescape than POTCO. If they don't make an option to change frame rate then I think I'll stop playing for a while. Disney really doesn't understand that most people don't have a bad laggy computer now-a-days.
I hate this fram rate change.

I think my patience is running a bit thin. How can one play when Disney is making the graphics stink?

People confused over Misty Mire, there is actually a swamp area for Tortuga and then after you take a right and a left, there is a ramp that leads to the real Misty Mire. There are only alligators in the first section but regular enemies and stuff in the real Misty Mire.
I imagine this new swamp area could have new quests involved.

Love the new tracking. Actually gives you a hint to which island is closest, etc.

anyone notice on the char select screen, the light sloop is gone?

Swash - I had noticed that the sloop was gone, but on logging out it was back.


I think the new quest help will be a big bonus for brand new players, and really, a good reminder for long-time players, if they can just work out the bugs:

http://i164.photobucket.com/albums/u...0_20-27-12.jpg

Because I'm pretty sure there's some big problems on Port Royal if Smitty's jewelry shop is the closest place to find Undead Pirates (see the yellow text under the quest next to the compass...the quest is 4 undead pirates). :laughks2:



Here is the view from the ramparts of Fort Charles where all the Navy NPCs were invisible. Even if you attuned them with the doll the little dark swirlies at their feet disappeared. Anyway, I really don't know if this is supposed to be the moonrise, the aurora borealis or what:

http://i164.photobucket.com/albums/u...20_23-0-48.jpg

I like a new feature of F7 that you can choose either to log out (go back to the dock where you choose characters) or Exit Game which shuts everything down without having to go to the character dock, and having the login/password box pop up to be closed.

The player characters are much more angular...and my pirates look like dire wasps now with that itty-bitty waist. What used to be dark red hair is now nearly I Love Lucy red.

When visiting Will Turner for daggers, his speaking animation used to look fairly realistic in that it looked like he was really speaking the text shown. Now, he looks like he's speaking in super slo-mo.

This one?

Hmmm Edward. Now the Police have a new song to sing:

"There's a little black spot on the moon tonight..."

Photobucket did that when I tried to use their thing to draw the circle. sry. Better now? Gah. Getting worse. Fughedaboudit - I'll go back to the Gimp.

:laughks2: I just thought it was another glitch Edward. There's some odd things showing up in the game so I just thought...never mind. My bad.

LOL looked like you tried to draw a smily face on the moon.

who complains about redesigns after we didn't see too many new things for about 4 months.

Testing is not complaining. POTCO needs timely feedback about minor and major issues before stuff gets released to OPEN. Fleshing out the details of what the problems are, makes the reports they get more accurate.

But for you to say "nothing new in 4 months" is bizarre and untrue. The last major update was three weeks ago...

Yes, the 'rea' Mire is still there - once you go though what I'm calling 'the swamps'. But my initial notes:

- I crashed 4 times last night - two "Internet Connection Has Ben Lost", one "Server Is Busy - Try Again?" with a Yes / No Option, and one "cannot connect to gameservr.pirates.blahblah:7667" with a cancel button (which I never did get to click - it then crashed out about 10 seconds later).

- Lag was an issue... I 'never' lag (exception: put 60 pirates in one location and sure I and everyone else lags... but these were quiet servers)

- Graphics are a mess a) My character has 'eyebrow horns' as they stick out from his head like two pointy pencils - and the rest of his body is bruised / out of shape b) Mysty Mire (once you actually enter it - not the swamp) was a complete mess - with 'draw and black lines' everywhere c) Torg itself wasn't too bad (for the time I could remain connected) with the issues of everything looked 'downgraded' visually...

The cannot connect to server blah blah 25 happens to me every time I log onto test. I just click try again and i'm in.

Misty Mire looks like it got a bit of a fix, water isn't cutting out. Thieves den appears there just is no water now though, or completely black.

Ran through some quests a bit, and looks like several things in that needs tweaking. Seeing the two arrows now and then pointing different directions. Getting the stars on characters also. Previous problem, quest you are doing, always switching to a different quest completely, each time you turn the one you are doing in.

I don't think I am caring much for the new quest script. Closest target is =. Sends ya to boss creatures, towns and other places while you are standing at the target. Not choosing easiest location, such as a simple teleport.

A few old things popping up again, like smoking after fighting a fly trap endlessly.

As harmless glitches go, I gotta say I like the looks of that one. Similar to getting bitten by a rock crab (not harmless) as you board at a dingy - you remain slow until you log out or find something else to attack you.

I have noticed alot of the color tones have changed in this update.

For example, before the update, I had a set of matching color blouse and skirt. After the update they are 2 very different colors... Very annoying.

Also my eye color has changed from blue to green.

Btw I agree with Aliese, I dont like body shape changes at all either.

The new tortuga looks great but it looks like Disney is getting rid of all the wide open spaces in the game just to reduce lag.
I wish they would stop the graphic downgrades.

Maybe someday in the not so long future we'll get rid of lag all together for games and Disney can bring back the better looking frame rate for avatars.(not to mention more wide open spaces around islands.)

First off, I was tying it back to before three weeks ago, and second, I'm sorry if I tangled your sails in a knot. I'm just saying that pirates hadn't done too much before then but Holiday quests and minor things, I was saying these islands were good.