Add the old sky texture to TLOPO

Benjamin Calicovane

Benjamin Calicovane

Notorious Pirate
The "old sky" found in POTCO from the beginning until the graphical updates that happened in 2009, was pretty sweet. It was way more detailed and aesthetically pleasing than the current sky textures. How would it be added back? Exactly the same way the old loading screen was put in the game. Under the "Fancy Loading Screen" button, there would be a button that says "Fancy Sky". Checked, it would give you the sky the game currently has, but unchecked it would give you the skies of old POTCO.

Here are some videos to show how sweet the old sky was.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHVXtfwmVAw

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Aghv0rOE7Q

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6JXk9l5yM0&index=14&list=PLwn5k1yPwRNYjajoK8LBtJe7B7pK5YtWe
 
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Wow to be honest I hadn't realized they changed it in the first place.

I like the new and old one, so which ever one they go with doesn't really matter to me.
 
John Foulroberts said:
Yes! I'm not the only one who thought the game looked MUCH better in its older days. I am all for this - if it is possible to do so. All of the textures were so much more detailed and much "crisper."
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I agree about the game as a whole having better graphics. Whenever I watch videos or look at screenshots of the game from 2007 to ~mid 2009, I notice everything had a higher detail level; from the pirate characters, to the ships, to the water, just everything as a whole has been downgraded over the years. Which I find very unfortunate :p
 
I imagine that was due to the constant complaints about lag issues. Downgrading graphics could have been a part of their solution.
 
Benjamin Calicovane said:
The "old sky" found in POTCO from the beginning until the graphical updates that happened in 2009, was pretty sweet. It was way more detailed and aesthetically pleasing than the current sky textures. How would it be added back? Exactly the same way the old loading screen was put in the game. Under the "Fancy Loading Screen" button, there would be a button that says "Fancy Sky". Checked, it would give you the sky the game currently has, but unchecked it would give you the skies of old POTCO.

Here are some videos to show how sweet the old sky was.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHVXtfwmVAw

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Aghv0rOE7Q

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6JXk9l5yM0&index=14&list=PLwn5k1yPwRNYjajoK8LBtJe7B7pK5YtWe
Click to expand...
This is very possible, however... it's a bit tricky. The Time of Day(TOD) system is very picky and is used in some things across the whole game. I.e for example: The lighting of the islands during the day/night, during Fishing there is something with the TOD going on, etc etc. We'd have to assimilate the old game TOD into the new TOD, and there isn't an easy way to just say "use the old or the new" without hacking up the whole entire game (and end up having hacky results). HOWEVER, what is possible is having the option to boot up using just the different textures and not the different animations. So the new systems animations etc would be at play, but the old sky textures would be visible.

I've done this before, lemme take a peek and recreate it. I might actually still have pictures of when I hacked up the client back in July to preview the old TOD from 2008... I'd need to look for them though.
 
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boop
 
Mike Wass said:
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boop
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That's so cool dude! Amazing that you were able to actually do it. I know you guys want to make TLOPO like POTCO was, but hey, if you ever have some free time and can get it working smoothly enough (smooth for alpha at least), this would be a cool little update!
 
Benjamin Calicovane said:
That's so cool dude! Amazing that you were able to actually do it. I know you guys want to make TLOPO like POTCO was, but hey, if you ever have some free time and can get it working smoothly enough (smooth for alpha at least), this would be a cool little update!
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I did some looking around in the code, it was seriously changing a 1 to a 2 to change the sky texture. There's also a 3 option. Gonna check that out right now. ;)

I'm working on a toggle for it right now.

EDIT: So option 3 is just a more vibrant option 2... so I'll option 3. I just finished writing the code for in the game options panel. It'll be in the next game update. Keep the suggestions coming! :)
 
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Massacred said:
I would also like to bring to light and old feature that was in the works but never released on Test or Live: rain.
This video is unlisted but appears on the Pirates Online Wikia under Weather, under On the Horizon.
I suppose you could consider it a sky type :)
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We do have the files for that, however the way it was implemented may change (if it would even be implemented at all).

This was actually in the POTCO beta iirc, but it was so buggy they removed it. @katnypp and @deanaug remember it from those good ol' beta days.
 
I remember how stunning the old skies used to be. I have many screenshots that have the old skies in them. Someone above mentioned they never implemented rain in beta or open. They actually did have rain in beta, just once. It was amazing, but created a ridiculous amount of lag so they took it out.
 
John Foulroberts said:
Yes! I'm not the only one who thought the game looked MUCH better in its older days. I am all for this - if it is possible to do so. All of the textures were so much more detailed and much "crisper."
Click to expand...
Part of this issue is Disney used palettes for a TON of textures.. so one texture might contain 10 other textures for other things. A prime example of this would be the exterior walls of common buildings, the different types of hulls on ships, almost every single thing you see in make-a-pirate(yes, that was seriously all crammed onto into file).

If you take a look at Toontown Online's English version vs Toontown Online's Japanese/French version, you can immediately see the quality differences. Toontown Japan/France did not use palettes where Toontown Online did. There might've been other Toontown versions that didn't use palettes, however those two are the only that I know of.

I'm kinda hoping there's an early version of pirates that didn't use palettes, so far I haven't found one. It'd improve so much of the graphics of the game.

Here's the a palette that contains about 99% of everything you see as your immediate in-game GUI.

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This is the palette of everything you see on the avatar chooser.
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This is the palette for some ship stuff:
e096ae9240edc79ed13abaa288f665d9.png
 
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