How easy is it to use the tools in POTCO?

[Harukantos]

Pretty easy if you have an idea as how to make one...

Does anybody understand how simple it would be to make an island with their tools? Putting a straight and simple beach area is simple, and you much just cover it with the sandy ground design. add a few dig spots for some quests. Next you copy paste smaller enemies to cover that beach or make up some NPC models that look like Pirates. Simply shuffle up the clothing from clothing lists and make up some models. Set their movements, nothing too hard because the lag makes it so they don't usually walk like a human. Certain NPC's could flip coins, dance, play the ukulele, etc. Since players can walk through them it doesn't matter where you place them.

Next you can recolor buildings from other islands and place them on the island. Move a shipwright ship to the island near the shore somewhere, and also add a few dinghy's with a few docks. There you go, a simple beach. Next you have your extra features that make the island unique when compared to others. You can add a few mounds, by making an upward slope foundation of the ground, and curving it to where it makes level ground when you have reached the top of the mound. Here one could place some more buildings, or start a sort of mine shaft.

Visualizing this, I am going to make an island that has a mine shaft that goes down into the island. Inside this cave, I could have a floor made out of sand, tone down to sands color to make it darker, or use a ground setting that looks similar to the floor in Tormenta. Here i'm going to put the floors that look like Tormenta. Along the side of the walls I am going to have ropes hanging on the walls with Black Pirates flags on them. The walls will look similar to Tormenta's as well because I am just making a demonstration, and this is how I would imagine a new island anyways.

Ahead of you there are three paths you can take, one sloping upward that is in front of you. There is a Pirate flag with an eyepatch hanging from the top of the ceiling in front of you. Up these stairs are some pirate enemies that have randomly generated clothing each time they respawn. They are in a room surrounded by gold and treasure chests. A simple copy and paste from Tormenta. On the right after you defeat these enemies is a trap door. You can take this trap door to an area that has loot and treasure chests lined up on both sides leading on a downward sloping area that again, looks like Tormenta. A few enemy pirates are in your way as you go down this slope. But an opening to the right will have a dock, and a copy pasted enemy ship that is similar to El Patron's but does not have a Loot chest just sitting there. Instead you can have an enemy Pirate boss standing there that uses a doll. But like any pirates I have fought in PvP he will use the doll when he needs to heal, but he will also have a summon ability with it. Here he can summon extra help when he is being bombarded, and pirates would have to take out the group while a respawn shield covers the boss. You beat the boss, and you are in contension for powerful dolls. The summon ability could be on a bit of a set up like in the Queen Anne's Revenge Battle. But instead of having a timer to spawn enemies, use the amount of health to determine when to summon. The rest of the doll abilities could just stand as usual, not causing too much stress to make a good boss that drops a certain type of loot. Here you could get a key with a water sign on it.

The second path in that cave that leads to the left is covered by a door that has a sign showing water hanging above it. Here is a place that consists of a deep waterway. You would have to swim across a small area and head to the left a bit more. Here you find a black ground area like in Tormenta that has a watery mote around it. Here is a pirate boss using a cutlass and pistol. He would use the cutlass for up close attacks and use a shot every once in a while to attack an unsuspecting enemy at any range that is attacking him or healing a person attacking him. At first there would just be a simple shot animation mirrored on the enemies arm, alongside the gun animation being flipped. This way the enemy would have a shooting animation when he shoots, but his cutlass animations would not be bothered as much. There may be a few graphical errors, but it would make a unique enemy, who would hopefully attack enemies who are both at a long range and up close. Here you could get some firearm and sword weapons to drop. You would also receive a key from this enemy you first time that has a Tombstone on it.

And for the final path to the right you have a door with a tombstone engraved on it. Beyond this door is a slight downward slope leading to an area filled with skeletons. The ground would have grassy looking areas with burial pits, coffins, and tombstones. Undead Generals could be introduced here using both Daggers and Cutlasses. Along with some undead captains that bare of high level using only a cutlass, and Undead Spellcasters using a doll. One tombstone will have a ghost pop out of it after defeating these skeletons, Fading away shortly after, you can go to that tombstone, and you can see a small path behind it with a hole that looks to have been dug open. There is no treasure chest, but instead a deep hole. Hitting shift would leave you into pit area. Behind you is a burrowed hole in the wall so you may leave. But the grounds here are surrounded by a lava mote. At the end of the area is an undead boss that has a staff. Using player animations that causes the staff to begin casting and the downward casting motion they could make this enemy work. When hit by the first strike he would do a downward motion and toxins would damage all players surrounding the enemy. He would probably say "Breathe the air of the Undead!" This could be programmed for this attack.

After his first move, he would raise his arm and it would say casting. Similar to what Jolly does, but without moving and actually showing casting motions. He would strike downward, and on move could be cause Desolate Burns. Causing you and anybody around to be set on fire and weakening, here he could say, "Feel the burdens of being dead!". The skeleton could also use the chains command that jolly has, and also have the ability to strike lightning down on the player who is doing the most damage at this point of the battle. This enemy would also be able to cast Undead trance on players. After receiving a specific amount of damage, the boss could cause pirates to turn undead. Instead of casting lightning down he could cast Banish onto any pirate that is causing a large amount of damage. After getting his health down to almost 3 percent he would begin casting desolation. At this point a count down would begin that would be for 25 seconds. After 25 seconds is up each person in the room will have been killed by Desolation. meaning game over because the players failed to beat the timer.

Bit of a long shot, but it is just a bit of an example, if you have any questions or comments that you wish to express please leave them below.

[bartholomew bladeroberts]

Ok being a bit of a halfway part time game developer I take a bit of offense to this it is not anything like this do you realize the amount of coding it would take to do your idea. It would put som developers to tears.

[Dark_Pixie]

Okay, I know it probably took you a while to write this, but making an island isn't that simple. If it was, Pirates Online would be whole lot bigger! Like Bartholomew said, it takes a whole lot of coding to make something like that, and a lot more if you want to make it good. Sometimes I look at Pirates and think, 'Those developers have put so much work into this, and boy am I grateful.'. Do you think that too?

On another note, hats off to you for thinking up an island! Have you entered the create an island competition?

[Ofury/ Tom]

Making an Island takes alot of programming and coding like the others have said. It takes a verrry long time run just a simple website. Imagine what its like to code, animate, run, and maintain a successful mmo? Tons of work! Theres a little more to do than just simple clicking my friend.

[Harukantos]

I promise you I put all of your coding into perspective and everything. The codes Pirates use are similar on each use of the weapons. Reading logs and looking at my characters set up is simple. I took this into account, and honestly it would still have the same outcome in each area. what pirates does not understand is that their main issue is all of the excess islands. Being a person who made a few of the Unique Landscapes for an Oblivion mod that made many areas look better in the game such as statues and even the simple ground that you walk on. The ground was a bit of a code push, but I was able to fix it up and give a unique feel to the ground. Not only that, but the parts of the ground that have rocks pushing up in it actually have rocks that are 3d, not just 2d to where it looks like a white grain of snad. Making it was not so easy, I had to make it so characters did not fall through the foundation, and there were some issues testing it because I had my characters fall in a few times.

I know there are codes that need to be tooken into account, but seeing the Jumbee's makes it feel as if this island has potential. They have already shown Jumbee's can have random clothing. Using pirate models like they have used PvP zombie models, the codes for clothing could be reused I am sure. Randomize a few pirate characters, copy some coding from them, and simply remaster their models to make them look and work better. Yes, there will be some glitches, but if they test well they can test these on their servers to check out the enemies. As for the grounds of certain areas, surely you guys notice all of the grass is the same. Sure you'll need some reworked coding to place doors and entrances to caves, but I can already tell you how to place dig spots on islands and tell where your character is at in this game. Along with working Oblivion to find out where to place grass/gravel models. Doing many of these things alone I do understand coding can be difficult, but many of the tools the pirates online crew has are preset, and mostly require minimal coding.

The islands are mostly preset along with the jungle areas. No I did not mean to make the set up of this island seem incredibly easy, but you have to take into account, much of this coding was set up here from the beginning. This is why customizable ships are so far away, and also why the Ship of the line is still unavailable. At first the main issue was multiple holes in the panels. The floor was missing where a lot of the planks below pirates feet was visible. Most of that got fixed, though as with each ship, there is always a way to walk off board. Next like on the war frigate where they had to remove the flag that got in the view of pirates that were attacking enemy ships. A bit of coding allowed the flag to disappear for pirates who were manning a cannon so that they could see enemy ships. On the back few cannons of the SotL you had a panel blocking the view of any pirates using a cannon. Finally on Test a friend of mine who has the SotL allowed me to test it, after a bit more progress they fixed these panels so they did not appear when you were using a cannon.

Maybe I think Pirates is a bit more complicated when it comes to coding, but they do have all the tools to make certain weapons work for enemy pirates. Their main issue would be adding an enemy staff and gunning. This is simply because they have never had enemies like this. Still, taking into consideration, I do think they have the ability to make this island.

[Panos]

If only game programming was that easy..

[Dark_Pixie]

Originally Posted by Panos

If only game programming was that easy..

Gosh, yes. One day we'll get the technology to do it as easily as Harukantos described, but for now it's going to take a lot of work...

[bartholomew bladeroberts]

Not saying that we dont believe you but if uou could post a screenshot of your oblivion mod then that becomes 100% irreputable evidence that you know exactly what your talking about and the potco staff is lazy. Keep in mind though oblivion uses a different game engine and possibly programming language than panda so it may be a bit harder to develop

[Harukantos]

Originally Posted by bartholomew bladeroberts

Not saying that we dont believe you but if uou could post a screenshot of your oblivion mod then that becomes 100% irreputable evidence that you know exactly what your talking about and the potco staff is lazy. Keep in mind though oblivion uses a different game engine and possibly programming language than panda so it may be a bit harder to develop

Aye, it is pretty different when compared to Oblivion, but I can tell you Oblivion takes a little more coding. Never had much experience coding, but here are my works.

Oblivion Barrowfields

Cloudtop

Also helped to code and plan these areas.

Wetlands

Entius Gorge

The Gorge was a nightmare that took us 5 months to make out, but it worked pretty well.

[Dark_Pixie]

They're very good, but is there a chance that the tools for that were created for the players to use easily? And like Bartholomew said, Pirates probably doesn't use the same engine as Oblivion. I really do like those landscapes, though. They're absolutely beautiful, and Oblivion has amazing graphics.

[Harukantos]

Originally Posted by Dark_Pixie

They're very good, but is there a chance that the tools for that were created for the players to use easily? And like Bartholomew said, Pirates probably doesn't use the same engine as Oblivion. I really do like those landscapes, though. They're absolutely beautiful, and Oblivion has amazing graphics.

Maybe I did make it seem as if Pirates had it easy. By the looks of the environments and seeing the files that Disney have already preset I would believe it would be a bit more simple than it is. I do appreciate what Pirates has done, but I do feel they could do a lot more for enemies. Not to mention maybe add some new jungle areas if they are not going to make new islands.

[Dark_Pixie]

The developers would probably have to sacrifice something from the game to create an island as big and detailed as that. Pirates Online is rather large, after all. We've got plenty of leveling places - how about something they've never done on Pirates before?

[Harukantos]

Originally Posted by Dark_Pixie

The developers would probably have to sacrifice something from the game to create an island as big and detailed as that. Pirates Online is rather large, after all. We've got plenty of leveling places - how about something they've never done on Pirates before?

I'm all up for dual weapons, i mean, that Tomas Blanco character is pretty sweet looking.

[Dark_Pixie]

Yes, dual weapons would be epic. It would be a new type of sword - broadsword, cutlass, sabre, dual cutlass. Now that is something worth trying!

[Harukantos]

I could see issues being abound in PvP, but it could just be a banished art in PvP or something if they don't want it in PvP. Overall, speaking on PvP Pirates has managed to make lag even worse with the QAR update. It had no people just vanishing at the blink of a second to now blinking at a moments every 10 to 20 seconds. Indeed PvP found a way to get slower.