Discussion TLOPO Q/A Thread

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Nate Dreadshot said:
After hearing some feedback on leaderboards, will you be making an account total category for enemies killed and for bosses killed? A lot of the top looters spend a lot of time across several pirates within one account.
Click to expand...
No, at this point we are not going to be adding account totals to leaderboards, there are several issues with this but the most obvious being that leaderboards will be public and for an account total to be there would require disclosing the usernames of the accounts.
 
John Macbatten said:
No, at this point we are not going to be adding account totals to leaderboards, there are several issues with this but the most obvious being that leaderboards will be public and for an account total to be there would require disclosing the usernames of the accounts.
Click to expand...
Could you not put it under the account's pirate with the most kills?
 
Does the game development staff have any interest/need/room for digital 3D artists to join the TLOPO team? If so, under which position should they apply?
I have taken a look at the available positions from the tlopo careers page and all the game development work seems to be about coding while all the artistic work seems to be for website development.
 
Jeffrey Plundersmythe said:
ETA for Isla Escondida more or less?
Click to expand...

Short answer:

We don't have one. Sorry. It's still coming though. We promise. <3

Read: https://tlopo.com/news/post/253/

Long answer:

So, I'm gonna give you my own personal take on "what happened" with Escondida. I joined the dev team a long while after all of this went down, so details might be scarce. Also, names are withheld for privacy.

Also, please forgive any typos or weirdness below. It is 7:00 am and I've been up all night (it's been fun as usual, @Truecrash. You make me not want to light myself on fire with a Hollowed Flame in devs chat.)

And honestly, expect these to not be proofread at all going forward. I like giving you all these long replies, but I don't wanna spend too much time on them. I'd rather be developing the game for you all! So I'll spit out what's on my mind, but it may be very rough around the edges. Thanks for your understanding. :D

Anyway, here we gooooo:

Escondida was the very first "new thing" TLOPO ever made. It was exciting, and that excitement was infectious. Everyone was just over the moon with the prospect of not only new content, but a WHOLE NEW ISLAND. It was an ambitious project, and was redone over and over multiple times.

Most of us were young, still in high school, and were really hyped up about this concept, and decided to share it publicly with you all. In hindsight, that wasn't a good idea. It was too early, and things happened.

For one, between December 2016 and May 2017, ALL of TLOPO was thrown in the trash bin and rewritten from scratch, and for good reason, but that's another story. Escondida, as you've seen it in promotional material and on our live streams, was functional only on the old TLOPO "Alpha" client, not our brand to "release candidate" or "rc" client.

Side note/rambling:

That's where the "rc" in our patch notes and game versions comes from. RC means we're shooting for this version of the game to be as stable as possible before full release. Like another beta between beta and live, if that makes sense.

Side note to the side note: I am not as experienced with this tech lingo compared to some of the other devs. There's a large chance what I'm saying is slightly incorrect and will have to be revised for more clarity, but I'm pretty sure that this at least captures the general concept.


So, when the 2017 client was at least somewhat functional in early January of that year, the main dev working on the project realized "oh shoot, this is gonna be a huge hassle to port over to the new system."

Furthermore, Escondida as we envisioned it was becoming more and more difficult to achieve with our current set of tools and current experience. There were a lot of snags. Seriously. You have no idea how insanely difficult it was just to place a single tree. It was absurd.

So, the plan was to scale back, given our limitations at the time and the difficulty of transferring the island over.

That's when this lead Escondida dev started Hollowed Woods, around late January of 2017. It was based in a pre-made jungle, so that helped with prop placement, because most of the vegetation was already set. Hollowed Woods was still ambitious though. The bones system, the bones stores, the quest, and new models were all brand new territory for us. And it took a LONG time to get everything set.

In short, we were still ambitious, but not overly so. We were more measured and were understanding of our own technical limitations this time around.

And unfortunately, another limitation would hit us. The lead developer on Escondida and Hollowed Woods left shortly after the latter's release. His departure was amicable, there was no drama or firing. He went on to pursue other stuff. But considering he had most of the knowledge about world creation within the POTCO codebase, the devs leftover had to learn everything that he had all over again. And even then, it wasn't much. We were still limited, even with his occasional tips and tricks.

The goal since then has been to gradually work our way up to what we envision for Escondida. Forsaken Shallows was the first attempt at doing a new thing after that lead dev left. And it was smaller in comparison to Hollowed Woods, but that was because we were essentially a step back in terms of skill. But since then we've been getting better and better, and I can confidently say we are almost there, when it comes to technical ability and tools.

We're working on and off with a new expansion that will take place BEFORE Escondida in the story. It's our most ambitious project yet, and it will push the boundaries. Once it's finished, I'm confident we will be ready to tackle Escondida.

The best part is we have an actual level editor now. So myself and another dev, when we were free, pumped out a bunch of islands as practice. Some of them have a planned purpose. Some of them don't. But we have a plethora of content that's like 50% finished. It just needs everything else that encompasses releasing a new island to go with it. If you haven't seen it already, we've previewed some of the islands here.

Anyway, I can promise that this "next chapter" has been set up with Escondida very much in mind. It was essentially designed to wrap up a good portion of Disney's loose ends, both story wise and content wise, and be the launching point for a new direction, which will start with Escondida.

It's really early days on this stuff, and the dev team balances bugfixes, other new non-story content (CTC, Lobbies, etc.), and Pypperoni all at the same time. So don't expect this expansion I'm talking about to come out any time soon. And Escondida won't be out until even after that.

So yes, it's gonna be a long while, but we have every intention of getting there. I for one do not want Escondida to be our equivalent to Disney's whole Kraken fiasco. (Older players, you know what I'm talking about).

And there is hope. One of our devs, late last year, ported Escondida over to our current system. It runs and is functional. So we have a baseline. But don't be surprised if we change a lot about what you've seen so far. Not everything will go away. We want to keep that old dev's original vision intact. But we will want to make Escondida the best it can possibly be as well.


I hope this huge jumble was at least somewhat illuminating. I love being able to write out these more transparent, in-depth explanations for you guys. I've been a super secret member of the TLOPO team for quite awhile now, always watching and reading your stuff, but never replying. I like being under the radar, but this "Mr. Dev" persona allows me to interact with you directly, finally. And I've been wanting to do that for a while now. :)

So to all the folks who have been trying to guess which dev I am (you know who you are ;) ), don't bother, I'm not any of the ones that have been publicly announced. I'm "new" - but not really. I guess new to you.

Keep your questions coming! Happy to answer (just about) anything.

~ Mr. Dev
 
Lizzzzzz said:
Does the game development staff have any interest/need/room for digital 3D artists to join the TLOPO team? If so, under which position should they apply?
I have taken a look at the available positions from the tlopo careers page and all the game development work seems to be about coding while all the artistic work seems to be for website development.
Click to expand...

I've sent you a DM that should answer your question a little more clearly. :D
 
The Crew said:
Short answer:

We don't have one. Sorry. It's still coming though. We promise. <3

Read: https://tlopo.com/news/post/253/

Long answer:

So, I'm gonna give you my own personal take on "what happened" with Escondida. I joined the dev team a long while after all of this went down, so details might be scarce. Also, names are withheld for privacy.

Also, please forgive any typos or weirdness below. It is 7:00 am and I've been up all night (it's been fun as usual, @Truecrash. You make me not want to light myself on fire with a Hollowed Flame in devs chat.)

And honestly, expect these to not be proofread at all going forward. I like giving you all these long replies, but I don't wanna spend too much time on them. I'd rather be developing the game for you all! So I'll spit out what's on my mind, but it may be very rough around the edges. Thanks for your understanding. :D

Anyway, here we gooooo:

Escondida was the very first "new thing" TLOPO ever made. It was exciting, and that excitement was infectious. Everyone was just over the moon with the prospect of not only new content, but a WHOLE NEW ISLAND. It was an ambitious project, and was redone over and over multiple times.

Most of us were young, still in high school, and were really hyped up about this concept, and decided to share it publicly with you all. In hindsight, that wasn't a good idea. It was too early, and things happened.

For one, between December 2016 and May 2017, ALL of TLOPO was thrown in the trash bin and rewritten from scratch, and for good reason, but that's another story. Escondida, as you've seen it in promotional material and on our live streams, was functional only on the old TLOPO "Alpha" client, not our brand to "release candidate" or "rc" client.

Side note/rambling:

That's where the "rc" in our patch notes and game versions comes from. RC means we're shooting for this version of the game to be as stable as possible before full release. Like another beta between beta and live, if that makes sense.

Side note to the side note: I am not as experienced with this tech lingo compared to some of the other devs. There's a large chance what I'm saying is slightly incorrect and will have to be revised for more clarity, but I'm pretty sure that this at least captures the general concept.


So, when the 2017 client was at least somewhat functional in early January of that year, the main dev working on the project realized "oh shoot, this is gonna be a huge hassle to port over to the new system."

Furthermore, Escondida as we envisioned it was becoming more and more difficult to achieve with our current set of tools and current experience. There were a lot of snags. Seriously. You have no idea how insanely difficult it was just to place a single tree. It was absurd.

So, the plan was to scale back, given our limitations at the time and the difficulty of transferring the island over.

That's when this lead Escondida dev started Hollowed Woods, around late January of 2017. It was based in a pre-made jungle, so that helped with prop placement, because most of the vegetation was already set. Hollowed Woods was still ambitious though. The bones system, the bones stores, the quest, and new models were all brand new territory for us. And it took a LONG time to get everything set.

In short, we were still ambitious, but not overly so. We were more measured and were understanding of our own technical limitations this time around.

And unfortunately, another limitation would hit us. The lead developer on Escondida and Hollowed Woods left shortly after the latter's release. His departure was amicable, there was no drama or firing. He went on to pursue other stuff. But considering he had most of the knowledge about world creation within the POTCO codebase, the devs leftover had to learn everything that he had all over again. And even then, it wasn't much. We were still limited, even with his occasional tips and tricks.

The goal since then has been to gradually work our way up to what we envision for Escondida. Forsaken Shallows was the first attempt at doing a new thing after that lead dev left. And it was smaller in comparison to Hollowed Woods, but that was because we were essentially a step back in terms of skill. But since then we've been getting better and better, and I can confidently say we are almost there, when it comes to technical ability and tools.

We're working on and off with a new expansion that will take place BEFORE Escondida in the story. It's our most ambitious project yet, and it will push the boundaries. Once it's finished, I'm confident we will be ready to tackle Escondida.

The best part is we have an actual level editor now. So myself and another dev, when we were free, pumped out a bunch of islands as practice. Some of them have a planned purpose. Some of them don't. But we have a plethora of content that's like 50% finished. It just needs everything else that encompasses releasing a new island to go with it. If you haven't seen it already, we've previewed some of the islands here.

Anyway, I can promise that this "next chapter" has been set up with Escondida very much in mind. It was essentially designed to wrap up a good portion of Disney's loose ends, both story wise and content wise, and be the launching point for a new direction, which will start with Escondida.

It's really early days on this stuff, and the dev team balances bugfixes, other new non-story content (CTC, Lobbies, etc.), and Pypperoni all at the same time. So don't expect this expansion I'm talking about to come out any time soon. And Escondida won't be out until even after that.

So yes, it's gonna be a long while, but we have every intention of getting there. I for one do not want Escondida to be our equivalent to Disney's whole Kraken fiasco. (Older players, you know what I'm talking about).

And there is hope. One of our devs, late last year, ported Escondida over to our current system. It runs and is functional. So we have a baseline. But don't be surprised if we change a lot about what you've seen so far. Not everything will go away. We want to keep that old dev's original vision intact. But we will want to make Escondida the best it can possibly be as well.


I hope this huge jumble was at least somewhat illuminating. I love being able to write out these more transparent, in-depth explanations for you guys. I've been a super secret member of the TLOPO team for quite awhile now, always watching and reading your stuff, but never replying. I like being under the radar, but this "Mr. Dev" persona allows me to interact with you directly, finally. And I've been wanting to do that for a while now. :)

So to all the folks who have been trying to guess which dev I am (you know who you are ;) ), don't bother, I'm not any of the ones that have been publicly announced. I'm "new" - but not really. I guess new to you.

Keep your questions coming! Happy to answer (just about) anything.

~ Mr. Dev
Click to expand...
First off thanks for the detailed response. Also, sorry, but I have a follow up question regarding this new project set to release before Escondida. May we have a hint of what it'll be? Or is it still under wraps?
 
With the new clothing and weapons being added a lot of the time is there plans to add more inventory space?? If so is there an ETA? Honestly running outta space in my clothing inventory specifically..
 
Jeffrey Plundersmythe said:
First off thanks for the detailed response. Also, sorry, but I have a follow up question regarding this new project set to release before Escondida. May we have a hint of what it'll be? Or is it still under wraps?
Click to expand...
We have already given a teaser ;)
Boots/Darkness said:
With the new clothing and weapons being added a lot of the time is there plans to add more inventory space?? If so is there an ETA? Honestly running outta space in my clothing inventory specifically..
Click to expand...
We have looked into various ways to handle inventory expansion but have no concrete plans or announcements at this time.
 
Hello Mr Dev!
Is the team aware of passives such as Dutchman's wrath not working as intended? I submitted a bug report, hope it got though. Also has anyone from the team seen one of the 2 posts I have done ( very detailed ) about Davy J & Kraken ? A yes / no answer is fine for both questions. Are there plans to add more ships to the game? ( Like Caravels, Carrack ( which is El Patron's ship ) )
 
-TheKnight- said:
Hello Mr Dev!
Is the team aware of passives such as Dutchman's wrath not working as intended? I submitted a bug report, hope it got though. Also has anyone from the team seen one of the 2 posts I have done ( very detailed ) about Davy J & Kraken ? A yes / no answer is fine for both questions. Are there plans to add more ships to the game? ( Like Caravels, Carrack ( which is El Patron's ship ) )
Click to expand...
Yes, yes, and yes. ;)

In fact, one of our developers teased the Carrack!

Carrack.jpg
*This ship is not final, it is subject to be altered down the road before release.*
 
Jeffrey Plundersmythe said:
Link me ? ;)
Click to expand...
Its actually in game with the newest update. A bit of an easter egg you could say. I went through everything in my post here (or quoted below) if you want to read through it. The second spoiler is the hints at new content.
Bart Gunshot said:
Ok I'll go ahead and divulge what I know and this could still only be be the tip of the iceberg (I suspect not at this point). Spoilers could be ahead so be warned.
First of all some neat new wall glitch areas, throwbacks, basically everything not related to the "clues" to suspected new content that I found interesting.

Through some wall glitches you can get up ontop of the new rock formation in the Hollowed Woods.
View attachment 116789View attachment 116790

I feel like it is theoretically possible to get up here if you raise your y position up extremely high off the map and then drop down, but its not really worth doing and I couldn't find another way up.
View attachment 116791

In the Hollowed Woods town hall we can see tons of throwbacks to old or unreleased content. First of all you are greeted by two of the old figureheads that used to adorn POTCO beta ships, I think all but the frigate.
View attachment 116792

Then on either side behind the green fire are actually paintings of concept art I believe.
View attachment 116793
View attachment 116794

Behind Captain Windshadow is a shrine with The Soulweaver in the middle surrounded by Devil's Claw swords.
View attachment 116795

And finally, the building itself is actually the old guildhall model that was never released. Its really well disguised, without glitching out of bounds to see the clues to new content below I probably wouldn't have noticed.
View attachment 116796

Theres also this super cool rock elevator if you go out of bounds just jump while under.
View attachment 116798
Real spoilers ahead at the "clues" to new content.
Alright so now for any clues that might hint to new and upcoming content. Keep in mind this is all speculation. Right behind the wall of Captain Windshadow is this display, a giant mood rock with many smaller ones surrounding "walk in" - meaning walk into the giant mood rock.
View attachment 116799

Walking into it you see " I (heart) Mood Rock" spelled out in smaller mood rocks, a model of a heart rock, and swords. These swords appear to be a new model. (Stealing the last image its way too dark in here for me to see it as I don't have the lighting glitch thanks @Johnny Goldtimbers)
PIqnJCX.png
g3Tlygq.png


Next to the left side of the Hall facing Windshadow theres this huge staircase to nowhere really.
tGuQvbG.png


However going through the hole in the right side reveals this. This is where many are confused, and I think I can shed some light.
EMcAZ1x.png


The man in the image is old concept storyboard for El Patron, its directly refering to this video below uploaded by an Ex POTCO developer.
If you notice, El Patron references the Headstone in this. If you are unfamiliar with the headstone it was a cut storyline from POTCO. Planned to be the second story quest, it seems to have undergone many iterations, even seemingly to have been incorporated into Raven's Cove at one point, but it was cut from the game. Here was another cut cutscene from the game which introduced the quest. This was actually in the game at one point, but removed after they decided not to continue with it.

The skull on the rock I feel is another reference to the Headstone.

The gravestone shaped icon with a P on it of course is a reference to the headstone = gravestone. However I'm unsure of what the P could mean. Possibly Padres as thats where it was originally said to be hidden.

That leaves the 3 images on the bottom left. The first image is most definitely Kingshead and is likely a refrence to upcoming content coming to kingshead that has been teased before.
piratesforums.co

Kingshead Expansion Speculation

On the The Legends of Pirates Online Facebook page this picture was posted with "Meet Holly, our pirate pupper in training. She likes to walk around with our left over Beta Keys.", however reading the top of the Discord you can make out "#kingshead The place to post suggestions for the upcoming...
piratesforums.co piratesforums.co
tlopo.com

Developer Insider: Isla Escondida

A fan-made recreation of Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean Online. Play for FREE Today!
tlopo.com tlopo.com

The second image I finally was able to find (or rather was told) some information on. On TLOPO's website in the "Whats new section" appears a strikingly similar image of the island. It will likely have a new enemy type on it, spiders, as shown in the large poster.
skuBJOG.png


And the third image is a waterfall with a Stump enemy. This waterfall appears in almost every single jungle location in game and stumps don't ever appear up on it like in this image. The closest thing is El Sudoron as it has both this waterfall, and stump enemies. I checked this location or anything and there is nothing of interest.

There also appears to be a lava flow in the background.

Here are all my interpretations:
82tgSPY.png


Perhaps the 3 images are a sequence of events in finding the headstone. Do something at Kingshead, something more at this unkown island, and then finally ending at Padres in El Sudoron finding the headstone there. Perhaps I'm also reading way too far into it.

EDIT: Updated theory.
EDIT2: Updated image with thing I hadn't noticed before.
EDIT3: Mysterious island photo from TLOPO Website
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
Stephen Teague said:
Light Carrack, Carrack, War Carrack. Price and stats are TBD.
Click to expand...
Any interest or thoughts about updating the pre-teen navigational single selection mode in selling and other inventory arranging? Being, allowing multiple item selection in parts of the game out of battle management.
Has been a drag since day one.
thx.
 
squintz said:
Any interest or thoughts about updating the pre-teen navigational single selection mode in selling and other inventory arranging? Being, allowing multiple item selection in parts of the game out of battle management.
Has been a drag since day one.
thx.
Click to expand...
Currently, you can right-click an item to move it to the selling panel in TLOPO without having to drag it. Not entirely sure what you're asking.
 
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