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free roamable islands?

S

sada86

Landlubber
HI, im new here, this is my first post. The build mod was great! I.ve recently played through both the original and the newest build 14 mod version. Very cool mod indeed with all the additions, its like a new game! But i just wonder if some of you think it would be possible to make the islands free roamable and made just as they look like from the ships in sailing mode. It would be a very cool addition to the game i think beeing able to walk around on them! though a very demanding and challenging thing to do i guess if it works.
 
maybe i'm not understanding this properly, but have you tried walking out of the gates?
 
Ahoy sada, welcome aboard mate!

Our modders have indeed done an awesome job with the Build Mod, they have done things that even the original developers told us were impossible! That being said however, I don't think proper free roaming islands will probably ever make it into POTC the way I believe you mean, due to the limitations of the engine. It might be plausible with CoAS, but I am no coder. :shrug
 
Hi
Yes i know you can walk outside the city gates, and travel around in those jungle areas between the villages, but i ment more like the idea and possibilitys to make being able to walk/roam around the entire islands just the way they look from your ship at sea in sailing mode. This ability could also add new gameplay elements like challenging treusure huntings around on the islands.
Ahoy Thagarr!
wow, that is a certification of a good job i guess even from the original developers, cool!
ok.
 
:gday sada and welcome :)

I think i get what you mean, more of a free roaming experience like in games like Morrowind/Oblivion where you can go anywhere you can see? It would indeed be totally awesome but PotC is built(coded) in such a way that everything(and i mean everything, even the sea) is handled by the code having locations built as seperate 'boxes' linked together. So you can only ever get from one 'box'(part of the game) via the loading screen that then puts you in another, that is a pure fixed method we could never change(and definately not without source code).

There is now some 'illusion' of continuous travel in the 'Direct Sailing' mod, but still it completely relies on the game loading from one cell to the next of the game word, that is just how the whole game engine has been created to work. So yeah we will never see that near seamless openworld gameplay that you get in games like Morrowind and Oblivion sadly.
 
would making one big location cell be possible? im not asking for the modders to actually do it but being able to go from island to island and roam about those islands without the loading screen would bring the game up to today's standards. Well, kind of.

I understand that there is a very slim chance of this actually happening but im am interested in knowing if it was possible. or is there a limited amount of space or data that can go in each location cell?
 
the limit is currently the pulling power of the game's engine. it also wouldn't just be a case of welding the existing locations together, but creating an entirely new location from scratch. with countless quests and events being dependant on the current locations (which would all have to be redone in order to do this), making a the new location itself is the least of your worries.

so yeah, you could do it, but it's such an amount of work that it commonly gets labeled as impossible.
 
Hi again, ahoy !
So the game's built upon separate boxes of what i understood. But one thing noticed, isn't the game also split up between like two different 3d scenes: 1st the one where you play as your character in 1st & 3d person view, here the mouse buttons are action buttons. you play in this so called 3d scene when you are in villages, jungles and on board on your ship deck, where you are able to walk around in all ship areas, like below deck etc. 2nd: The 3d scene where you are sailing your ship around the islands on the sea. Now the mouse buttons are proceeding forward/backward with mouse button, or zooming in/out, depending on the camera view choice to the ship you sail. Except from this the difference between those two 3d scenes is first the graphic, its like more detailed in the 1st i think. the other differens is the size of the boxes, the 1st is alot smaller like the most containing part of a village or jungle area before you have to aproach tha loading screen to enter a new one. in the second you can sail away from one island almost seeing it back in the horizon before the next box load up with "new land load screen". this might be because of the 2nd graphic is less demanding/requirable/detailed than the 1st.. So one idea if it worked, could be to like combine those. what i mean is like this: If it worked, then a thing to do is to make your character playable in 2nd mode , which is sailing mode. That would mean you could then be able to play as like jack sparrow and se him in 3d person view on your ship even in sailing mode. With this in hand the ability to leave your ship and swim in water could lead you to the island, making the island part walkable then gives you the ability to roam/walk around on the islands. Then no loading screens would maybe not be necessary, because the island are in saling mode contained in its own box, because those are larger, less graphic demanding. the villages would still be there and as you appraoch them you get into them as usual(in the 1st 3d scene). In the 1st 3d scenes countless of quests and events where dependant on it's current locations, So now nothing there would actually maybe not have to be changed there then! And if this worked, for those who missed like the zoom in/out camera mode in sail mode, it could still be an option, but with your character viewable on your current ship.
 
i suspect it would require the redesigning of the entire game engine. you can't control both your ship and character at once, the controls are shared.
 
I got an idea about that. When you control the ship , the character could be just present, and as you advance with your left mouse button holded, your character also proceedes forward, just in the way the original potc and seadogs character controls worked. When sailing the ship, the kind of action buttons are "w" and "s" making your sail up/down. The tricky thing would be to all of sudden lure the game engine to think the game character to being the ship in some conversion way by pressing some button and change the action buttons to the mouse and inputing w/s to walk forward/backward. Then there would also be a clue how to make the character to actually leave the ship, it could be fixed by some jumping ablility maybe if that worked. Making you able to jump offboard and make the way all in to the share of the current present island. Or the character could maybe just walk through the ship fence.
 
It's all too difficult, if at all possible, mate. We don't have the people to even try these things; we're just trying to finish up what we've got which is a huge enough task on its own. :facepalm
 
Pieter Boelen said:
It's all too difficult, if at all possible, mate. We don't have the people to even try these things; we're just trying to finish up what we've got which is a huge enough task on its own. :facepalm
Click to expand...

and what a fine job it is that you are doing... even in its unfinished state its a masterpiece.
 
alright,Don't know much about modding myself, just thought it was intresting and wanted to write about it. Anyway if i'm not remembering wrong i read a new version of the mod is maybe coming in a couple of months. Well then thats for sure something good to wait for. The newest release of mod gave me many good gaming hours and this new sure will.
Ship ahoy! :keith
 
We intend to release Build 14 Beta 1 Patch 7 soon and then Build 14 Beta 2 before the end of the year.
 
This engine works from cell to cell, even in the free roam engine games such as Oblivion and Morrowind they work the same way but have much more complex coding to allow the sense of Seamless movement. Also distance views and various levels of detail in all of the models to give more detail as you are close and less when you are farther away help with those illusions but with the exception of some extremely demanding engines such as those that create the Gothic game series and have very large areas, game engines need to deal with small zones. Otherwise it just gets too complex.

What happens in many such free roam games, as your avatar moves about, the engine "draws" or creates a zone around you of visible reality, and it uses minimal models or what are called sprites, 2 dimensional cut outs for distant shapes that are switched for more and more detailed LOD versions of themselves as you approach them or as they approach you. But all the while the game engine is keeping track of everything by its 'address" or unique location, and something like an island in the sea would be quite complex even all by itself as it would have its wireframe mesh, then the texture for that, and the vegetation, and its dynamics, any other environment factors, then the walk mesh, see below for that, collision on the landscape, and or veg, useable or moveable items if any, quest triggers and goal zones, hot spots, access points, and much more......

Especially when the player character is connected to or 'on" a vehicle or other moving entity. That is almost the most demanding situation for 3D engines, as they have to code and "run" both the player avatar and its movements and POV (point of view) AND those of the vehicle which is moving thru time and space ...and both are moving thru the various zones of the 3D environment. It can get the most challenging in some of the MMORPG game or sim environments where you have hundreds of persistent ie permenant but changing avatars such as Second Life, World of War Craft or Blue Mars. Such sims demand many billions of lines of code.

This engine here is quite robust but it appears from what the experienced mod teams say that it has its limits.

Just to throw in a new variable, when you create a free roam environment, you must along with the landscape add physics, collision, (what is solid and what is not), and walk meshes (coding that tells the moving avatars ie characters where they can go and where they cant).....and if there are triggers, or actionable items that the sim or game allows you to interact with that takes coding and then those factors can change if you can manipulate, use or even more demanding, pick up and Keep and then re use such items. In games like Oblivion by Bethesda, who actually created the first of this series of Pirate games, Sea Dogs, the coding is remarkable for you can use and store and change hundreds of items, and modders have created many thousands of new ones.

So it is not possible to achieve here what you are thinking of, tho it would be nice indeed. It is remarkable what IS possible here and I continue to be amazed at what the ingenious and determined mod teams have achieved. Hope this helps explain a bit more of this.
 
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