A suggestion on graphic quality and game speed and storms

[Benjamin Calicovane]

Actually looking at that, it really doesnt look like the models were changed at all, except for maybe the character model... But to me it looks very similar in poly count. The only thing that I see changed drastically is the skybox, water shaders, and the ambient lighting. From other screenshots I've seen texture mapping also has changed throughout the years of POTCO to be generally lower resolution for a given area. But I've never seen the models actually gain or decrease in poly count.

My input is to add a few things that would drastically increase the look of the game. All the while keeping performance the top most priority. These are probably suggestions for even after full release. FPS and stablity comes first.

1. Antialiasing.
   • I'm pretty sure the base game has no Antialiasing at all and this would drastically increase the asthetic of far away things and get rid of those awful pixelated edges.
2. Better texture mapping in some places.
   • Some places have such stretched textures that it is basically indistinguishable what you are looking at. One example is some of the dock edging on various docks. Some textures are facing the wrong way, so that their seams are so easily noticable, and some textures are just mapped so horribly that it is only 25% of the actual texture resolution in some areas. Its attrocious. Not that high of priority but it could be better.
3. Better lighting (possibly)
   • This is probably one of the harder things to implement of the three, so I could see if it wasn't implemented. Dynamic shadows, slight bloom, etc. all things that would probably be impossible for this game but would be amazing.
4. Leave higher resolution textures to texture pack makers.
   • The developers have confirmed the ability to have texture and sound packs in the future. Why waste development time on high res textures when the community can do that for themselves?

Totally agree with all of your suggestions. I didn't know that there would be a possibility of having texture packs in the future, so that's great news to hear. With texture packs, graphical changes like the old sky could be brought back, which would be awesome.

And for the polygon count: yes, it's primarily the character models that were downgraded. But character were heavily "squared down" compared to the natural, round look they used to have. This is most evident in the head, jaw, ears, boots, and other pieces of clothing. Check out these areas on the old screenshot, then look at them on the new screenshot and you can definitely see how many more flat lines are present in the newer one. I believe the overall detail level of the character was toned down some as well.

 

[Mike Wass]

Graphics: the graphics in the old POTCO were pretty bad, so I suggest for the new one you guys can increase the graphic quality?
Game speed: honestly the loading screens whenever I played it would be slow just slow and I had a Mac back then so hopefully you make it so it isn't slow.
Storms: I think we should add storms that have waves in them to add effect to the game just a suggestion.
Thank you for your time.

I'm going to be answering these from my experience. TLOPO might have a different stance on these, but I'd heavily doubt it.

Graphics: Right now, there are some limitations with Panda3D. POTCO is heavily reliant on Panda, and it would quite literally not make any sense to rewrite the entire game for a different engine. The most likely decision would be to update Panda3D's pipeline, but that itself is a very large undertaking and wouldn't be even considered for many, many years from now. So, unfortunately the game's graphics will likely remain the way they currently are for the foreseeable future. There could be some tweaks made to make the graphics a bit cooler, but it might come with a sacrifice of a few FPS, which is why Disney removed a lot of them.

Game speed: When I was there, we were already making tons of improvements to help with the game's speed. There are already tons of things in place that make the game so much faster than it would've been. I could see this being a main focus after the game is fully stable and in a state of full release.

Storms: This sounds really cool. If you could have it added in any way you could, how would you do it? How would the mechanics of it work? (Concept pictures are great too!)

Antialiasing.

• I'm pretty sure the base game has no Antialiasing at all and this would drastically increase the asthetic of far away things and get rid of those awful pixelated edges.

From what I recall, this is implemented at the base, however it's a small number. Certain computers will be unable to render the game with antialiasing at a very high amount. But that's definitely possible to get fixed and auto-setup to one that works best for each player's computer automatically.

 

[Bart Gunshot]

From what I recall, this is implemented at the base, however it's a small number. Certain computers will be unable to render the game with antialiasing at a very high amount. But that's definitely possible to get fixed and auto-setup to one that works best for each player's computer automatically.

Yeah there might be some but it sure isn't very apparent.