Suggestion Access to Pirates Online via Mobile Device

Cyclone

Notorious Pirate
Ahoy Maties!
Today I am here to not only make this suggestion to the TLOPO Staff, but also to the whole pirate community. So as I was looking through the forums and I saw that TLOPO plans to give the users the opportunity to play Pirates Online on all Linux users computers. That inspired me to make this suggestion to the TLOPO Staff and the community. It should be on any Android, IOS, Samsung etc. and it would give the user a whole different dynamic in playstyle and a big push into the future for more users to play the game. I am also aware that it may take a while to implement it to mobile devices, but as I said it will add a whole new aspect of playstyle.

Now i will leave the desision up to you guys so make a vote down below if you approve of this suggestion or not.
 
I was thinking about this the other day. If they can get the optimizations in place, the controls as is can be played with a joystick and tapping. This is the one game where it really doesn't matter that much if you play with a trackpad vs a mouse, because it isn't really competitive.
 
This sounds really cool, but I don't see it happening.

The limitations of the hardware alone are discouraging enough. TLOPO is borderline unplayable for anyone with less than cutting-edge hardware when there are enemies or other pirates around. And these are full size computers with dedicated hardware.

iPhones, iPads, and iPods have weak graphics engines, weak batteries, and an unknown amount of available memory (Apple is notoriously secretive about the RAM content in their hardware, we only have speculative figures from people who have done teardowns/benchmarks). They simply cannot handle it, and no amount of optimization will change this.

Another thing is mobile apps are usually not very secure. This is a problem for an entity like TLOPO that wishes to keep their code safe from competitors or cheaters. Anyone with a jailbroken phone (including myself) can hook into processes and alter them (w/ Flex or literally any Cydia tweak), or examine/change file structures directly (w/ Filza or a desktop program like iExplorer). Many app developers have people working specifically on jailbreak detection for this very reason. Snapchat is the first app that comes to mind, only difference is they have stockholders to appease.

And if you think we can get around iOS jailbreaking by only supporting Android, you must not have heard of rooting.
 
This sounds really cool, but I don't see it happening.

The limitations of the hardware alone are discouraging enough. TLOPO is borderline unplayable for anyone with less than cutting-edge hardware when there are enemies or other pirates around. And these are full size computers with dedicated hardware.

iPhones, iPads, and iPods have weak graphics engines, weak batteries, and an unknown amount of available memory (Apple is notoriously secretive about the RAM content in their hardware, we only have speculative figures from people who have done teardowns/benchmarks). They simply cannot handle it, and no amount of optimization will change this.

Another thing is mobile apps are usually not very secure. This is a problem for an entity like TLOPO that wishes to keep their code safe from competitors or cheaters. Anyone with a jailbroken phone (including myself) can hook into processes and alter them (w/ Flex or literally any Cydia tweak), or examine/change file structures directly (w/ Filza or a desktop program like iExplorer). Many app developers have people working specifically on jailbreak detection for this very reason. Snapchat is the first app that comes to mind, only difference is they have stockholders to appease.

And if you think we can get around iOS jailbreaking by only supporting Android, you must not have heard of rooting.
... but... there's fortnite. It drains batteries fast, its graphics are greater than TLOPO, and it was built for the PC, yet it exists. If EPIC GAMES can do it, why not a small volunteer organization can?

... oh right.

MONEY
 
... but... there's fortnite. It drains batteries fast, its graphics are greater than TLOPO, and it was built for the PC, yet it exists. If EPIC GAMES can do it, why not a small volunteer organization can?

... oh right.

MONEY

Fortnite faces the battle of jailbreak detection daily. Fortnite is also built on Unreal Engine, which is a modern, sleek, open source game engine with official support, development, and documentation for iOS and Android development. TLOPO is based on a game built on Panda3D, a custom game engine created by Disney and Carnegie Mellon almost specifically for the Disney MMOs, with slow crowd-sourced development by a small community. It's outdated and simply frustrating to work with, you can grab a copy of the server code off GitHub and see what I mean. The game can't be easily ported from one engine to another, either. That topic has come up in the past and it's simply a bigger task than it sounds like.

To quote drwr from the Panda3D forums, "Panda3D on iOS technically works, but it’s not a finished and useful product, and therefore it is not possible to publish a Panda3D app in the App Store."

So theoretically it may be possible to port the game, but bearing in mind the other points I have mentioned in this thread, it may not be worth the trouble.
 
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