New World Port (Total-Conversion-Mod)

[Iron Roger Flint]

Just wanted to look what other game-modding is going on elsewhere these days and stumbled on this (in german, images and video).

This is a 'one man show' modification. Well, what can I say... this guy really knows what he's doing.
Seems like this was supposed to be a final year university project, at least this is what he wrote in his DeviantArt profile (contains the same images and video as the link above).

'Curious how the gameplay will be ... maybe some Pirate RPG?'

'When I get around to implementing game play it will indeed be a pirate RPG at the moment though, I'll only be aiming at making a demo. I'm currently looking into what style of game play I want to aim for. It will probably be 3rd person and I would like to aim for an Oblivion style game (only not as huge) with good dialogue and NPC interaction.'

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Looks nice. We should help him finish it as a complete game!

^ Not quite serious, BTW.

 

[Stallion]

Dude's got some serious skills, I'd say.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Though admittedly, all I see is a town model and two ships.
It's a nice town model for sure, but there isn't much else there yet, is there?
The game graphics, shadows, sea, etc. are probably handled by the engine.

 

[Iron Roger Flint]

Well, yes, the graphics are really handled by that CryEngine. Even though I don't like games wich are just eye candy and nothing more, it still makes me think we should really consider doing something about the outdated graphics of the Storm engine. I've been playing PotC from 2003 and CoAS till now (got it just because of a good bargain... and because my lil'bro broke my PotC CD ), and the graphics are starting to hurt my eyes really badly in last 2 years... I'm starting to understand average gamer comments about the graphic issues of the Storm games. Not only graphics, but gameplay (bugs), combat system, inabillity to explore islands via open environment (area loading) are also being commented out there.. .and around 80% of comments are negative

From my point, it seems that upgrading or even building a new engine on the Storm base is a necessity for PA to continue being a modding community. Just think about the number of new members joining in, if we had modern game features in Storm...

 

[Pieter Boelen]

There's definitly some truth in it. Even though I reckon the Storm engine graphics are functional enough in quite attractive in a way,
there's no way around the fact that they ARE outdated when compared to what's out there these days.
And even though the loading time between locations is pretty short, it still IS loading.

Of course we've always spent most our efforts on gameplay and not on looks, but still the eye DOES go wanting.
Especially the eye of "the modern gaming audience".

My main question, though, would be: how can we do game developing here at PiratesAhoy! on something that is up to par with today's games?
Sure, we've got the source code for CoAS, so we can at least do SOMETHING.
But what are the limits of what the Storm engine can do and is that good enough?
And how do we REACH those limits? And if those limits are NOT good enough, THEN what do we do?