First of all, I want to underline that this will be a lengthy post which includes different topics. Because of the linked nature of these, I will post them together in this one, but if this is not in accordance to the board rules, feel free to split it in multiple parts and move them to their respective fora.
Ahoy!
I am Toxural and I want to tell you a true tale beginning in the year 2004. In the aforementioned year, I bought the PC game "Pirates of the Caribbean". At the time, I was an ardent video game player and heavily fascinated by the beginning of the open world gaming era. Beginning with the turn of the millenium, when this game genre, due to the increased technical possibilities of the sixth video game console generation, was practically invented in its current style, some of my personal all-time favorite games were released. Those games, which I still play occasionally are "Gothic" (2001), "The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind" (2002), "Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic" (2003). Considering this gaming background, "Pirates of the Caribbean" seemed to me like a logical addition to my games collection.
My experience with "Pirates of the Caribbean" was much more ambivalent than with any other game I ever played up to this point.
I was positively surprised by the refreshing concept of combining two different gameplay styles (Naval / Island) in a functional synthesis. The story was decent, but in no way comparable to the three atmospheric giants which I mentioned above. The RPG elements were nicely integrated in the game and made it even more enjoyable for a player like me. The soundtrack was really catchy.
My main critical point throughout the game was always the wasted potential at every corner. Too less features, atmosphere, storytelling, ships, items. In "Gothic", I was used to be surrounded by interesting characters who had something to say, but in "Pirates of the Caribbean" nearly every character was boring and replaceable. Some islands had nothing to offer, which was interesting enough to sail to them. I don't even want to begin to rant about the armada of bugs, which infested this game to its core.
Summarized, I can say that I enjoyed "Pirates of the Caribbean" during countless playthroughs and was always disappointed.
I asked myself the same question very often: "Why is no one unleashing the potential of this great concept?"
At this point, I had no knowledge about the game series "Sea Dogs" and its relation to "Pirates of the Caribbean". I thought that because of the commercial failure of the game and the general lack of interest on the market, the game will stay an odd and very unpolished diamond in the great sea of video games. But after my last playthrough in 2020, an idea occurred to me. Although I thought that the game is entirely unknown these days, I searched for modifications for it. I found "New Horizons" and was very surprised that there is an available mod, but a real surprise was to find out about the vast amount of new content which is included in it. So without further ado, I installed "New Horizons" and could not stop playing it in my free time for days. I played the campaign from the original game to test the waters and was immediately amazed by the sheer sum of additions and revamps in every category. Finally someone unleashed the true potential of "Pirates of the Caribbean". It is impossible for me to list everything I like in "New Horizons" as it has too much new content compared to the original and I am absolutely sure, that I saw only a fraction of it.
At this point, I want to express my sincere gratitude to Pieter Boelen and his helpers for this colossal work in nearly two decades!
After you know my personal story with the game, I want to talk about some ideas concerning the possible future of it, I developed since then. Reading through the forum in the last couple of days, gave me an impression about the current state of development and I would like to give my perspective for a possible future as someone who is absolutely new to this forum and was not influenced throughout the developments in the last nearly twenty years. A fresh view on the situation. Moreover I have to say that I am fully aware of the fact that I am not a programmer and even farther away from being a designer. Therefore I am most probably not able to help in a substantial way to realize these ideas and naturally I do not expect that others are realizing them for me or the community.
If I understand it right, "New Horizons Remastered" was an attempt to make a modern port of "New Horizons" with new assets and after its development became dormant, licensing problems concerning the proprietary assets were the reason for the failure of making it open source.
My idea for the future of "New Horizons" would be different. In my opinion, the situation entirely changed due to the open source release of the latest Storm engine. Under the premise that it will support the original "Pirates of the Caribbean" in the forseeable future, only one problem persists and that are the proprietary assets of the current "Pirates of the Caribbean".
But while the endeavour of "New Horizons Remastered" was to actually create a new game, I am strongly in favor of a "Ship of Theseus" approach.
A list with every single asset of the full installation of "Pirates of the Caribbean" should be created and then step by step replaced by an asset with an open license. That would be an entirely transparent and motivating way to a full open source game. First and foremost, the most experienced developers should be agreeing on a unified way to reach that goal. They should determine the best possible open license for these new assets. The next task should be to find designers and composers, who are able to meet the standards of making assets which are in a similar style of "Pirates of the Caribbean". Finally, there is the need for donations specifically for this task in a transparent way to commission them. It would be much easier, if they find volunteers, but that is in my experience rather unrealistic.
And after every single asset is replaced by assets with an open license, it is, combined with the GPL-licensed Storm engine, an open source game by definition. The hurdle of buying an antique computer game which is largely unknown would vanish and "New Horizons" could reach the whole open source gaming community, which would result in much more interest for the new game and therefore in more contributions for it.
This "Ship of Theseus" approach for games with an open source engine and proprietary assets from an original game should be followed by all developers in similar situations. In my opinion, it is a much more successful way than creating an entire new game, which is much more work and much less motivational for the potential players, because of the unplayability of the game until its first demo release and the uncertainty that it may end up cancelled by the developers.
My capabilities as a helper for "New Horizons" are currently limited. I am able to translate in German as this is my native language and I can give ideas. That is it as of today. I could not even help as bug reporter, because my operating system is based on Linux and my "Pirates of the Caribbean" discs are massively scratched after all these years and bearly readable for the disc drive. Unfortunately, I am short of time too, so even responding to posts could take some time.
I am happy to be on board of this great ship although I do not have any merits yet and expect that I have to scrub the deck. Figuratively spoken.
Greetings from Toxural!
Ahoy!
I am Toxural and I want to tell you a true tale beginning in the year 2004. In the aforementioned year, I bought the PC game "Pirates of the Caribbean". At the time, I was an ardent video game player and heavily fascinated by the beginning of the open world gaming era. Beginning with the turn of the millenium, when this game genre, due to the increased technical possibilities of the sixth video game console generation, was practically invented in its current style, some of my personal all-time favorite games were released. Those games, which I still play occasionally are "Gothic" (2001), "The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind" (2002), "Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic" (2003). Considering this gaming background, "Pirates of the Caribbean" seemed to me like a logical addition to my games collection.
My experience with "Pirates of the Caribbean" was much more ambivalent than with any other game I ever played up to this point.
I was positively surprised by the refreshing concept of combining two different gameplay styles (Naval / Island) in a functional synthesis. The story was decent, but in no way comparable to the three atmospheric giants which I mentioned above. The RPG elements were nicely integrated in the game and made it even more enjoyable for a player like me. The soundtrack was really catchy.
My main critical point throughout the game was always the wasted potential at every corner. Too less features, atmosphere, storytelling, ships, items. In "Gothic", I was used to be surrounded by interesting characters who had something to say, but in "Pirates of the Caribbean" nearly every character was boring and replaceable. Some islands had nothing to offer, which was interesting enough to sail to them. I don't even want to begin to rant about the armada of bugs, which infested this game to its core.
Summarized, I can say that I enjoyed "Pirates of the Caribbean" during countless playthroughs and was always disappointed.
I asked myself the same question very often: "Why is no one unleashing the potential of this great concept?"
At this point, I had no knowledge about the game series "Sea Dogs" and its relation to "Pirates of the Caribbean". I thought that because of the commercial failure of the game and the general lack of interest on the market, the game will stay an odd and very unpolished diamond in the great sea of video games. But after my last playthrough in 2020, an idea occurred to me. Although I thought that the game is entirely unknown these days, I searched for modifications for it. I found "New Horizons" and was very surprised that there is an available mod, but a real surprise was to find out about the vast amount of new content which is included in it. So without further ado, I installed "New Horizons" and could not stop playing it in my free time for days. I played the campaign from the original game to test the waters and was immediately amazed by the sheer sum of additions and revamps in every category. Finally someone unleashed the true potential of "Pirates of the Caribbean". It is impossible for me to list everything I like in "New Horizons" as it has too much new content compared to the original and I am absolutely sure, that I saw only a fraction of it.
At this point, I want to express my sincere gratitude to Pieter Boelen and his helpers for this colossal work in nearly two decades!
After you know my personal story with the game, I want to talk about some ideas concerning the possible future of it, I developed since then. Reading through the forum in the last couple of days, gave me an impression about the current state of development and I would like to give my perspective for a possible future as someone who is absolutely new to this forum and was not influenced throughout the developments in the last nearly twenty years. A fresh view on the situation. Moreover I have to say that I am fully aware of the fact that I am not a programmer and even farther away from being a designer. Therefore I am most probably not able to help in a substantial way to realize these ideas and naturally I do not expect that others are realizing them for me or the community.
If I understand it right, "New Horizons Remastered" was an attempt to make a modern port of "New Horizons" with new assets and after its development became dormant, licensing problems concerning the proprietary assets were the reason for the failure of making it open source.
My idea for the future of "New Horizons" would be different. In my opinion, the situation entirely changed due to the open source release of the latest Storm engine. Under the premise that it will support the original "Pirates of the Caribbean" in the forseeable future, only one problem persists and that are the proprietary assets of the current "Pirates of the Caribbean".
But while the endeavour of "New Horizons Remastered" was to actually create a new game, I am strongly in favor of a "Ship of Theseus" approach.
A list with every single asset of the full installation of "Pirates of the Caribbean" should be created and then step by step replaced by an asset with an open license. That would be an entirely transparent and motivating way to a full open source game. First and foremost, the most experienced developers should be agreeing on a unified way to reach that goal. They should determine the best possible open license for these new assets. The next task should be to find designers and composers, who are able to meet the standards of making assets which are in a similar style of "Pirates of the Caribbean". Finally, there is the need for donations specifically for this task in a transparent way to commission them. It would be much easier, if they find volunteers, but that is in my experience rather unrealistic.
And after every single asset is replaced by assets with an open license, it is, combined with the GPL-licensed Storm engine, an open source game by definition. The hurdle of buying an antique computer game which is largely unknown would vanish and "New Horizons" could reach the whole open source gaming community, which would result in much more interest for the new game and therefore in more contributions for it.
This "Ship of Theseus" approach for games with an open source engine and proprietary assets from an original game should be followed by all developers in similar situations. In my opinion, it is a much more successful way than creating an entire new game, which is much more work and much less motivational for the potential players, because of the unplayability of the game until its first demo release and the uncertainty that it may end up cancelled by the developers.
My capabilities as a helper for "New Horizons" are currently limited. I am able to translate in German as this is my native language and I can give ideas. That is it as of today. I could not even help as bug reporter, because my operating system is based on Linux and my "Pirates of the Caribbean" discs are massively scratched after all these years and bearly readable for the disc drive. Unfortunately, I am short of time too, so even responding to posts could take some time.
I am happy to be on board of this great ship although I do not have any merits yet and expect that I have to scrub the deck. Figuratively spoken.
Greetings from Toxural!
