Fix black screen revive ideas

  • This is about the randomly long black screen one can sometimes get when reviving. Sometimes even minutes long. Usually worsened by heavy stacks of loot.

    I know optimizing an engine can be a pain, but this (amongst many other game breaking bugs SoT has) can often be a game ruining experience, destroying hours worth of work, or turning a victory in to a loss just because one got rared

    Solution idea
    Get rid of the ferry of the damned. I love it. I like the lore around it. I like talking to dead pirates, either enemy or from the other side of the map. But its simply not worth the hassle. If you never take the player away, you never need to reload anything, so revive time would not be random, and would be pretty be much instantaneous.

    Here's some ideas about how a replacement for the ferry of the damned could work without having to reload everything. Functionally characters would still die and revive, but with more reliable respawn times.

    Most basic version:
    BIG BLACK image covering everything. You are teleported to your boat, made invisible, and cannot be interacted with. (Hopefully not even sworded to find out where you are RARE!) Some text saying "Yur Ded, Revivin in 10..9...8 press X to take the purple flame because a pirate killed yo, Press Y to change weapons". Keep the player moving with their boat. That should on its own start loading anything that needs loading from the moment you die if you were away from your boat. If thats all rare can muster. I'd be happier with that than with the current state of affairs.

    Middle version:

    • Mute all sounds except for the sound of the boat of the damned sound effects. Add player to audio channel where they can chat with other dead people, and include a list of currently dead character's names. That way we can still use the info about players being dead, and communicate with them. Remove them from said channel when they revive, and enable normal sounds again.

    Better version:

    • Make a "Dummy" boat of the damned. Dont teleport the player away to the middle of nowhere and then back where they will have to reload everything, but instead simply add a visual overlay that looks and somewhat acts like the boat of the damned. It doesnt needs proper physics or interactable objects, simply being able to see other players, talk to them, and emote would be great.

    Alternative:

    • Give me the toggleable option to play without everything loaded. I dont care if I dont see textures, or if all I see are tracelines, or if a pirate is invisible, or if my boat is invisible but I can see the holes. Just set a respawn time where USUALLY most stuff is loaded, and always res the player at that time, no matter what has loaded or what hasnt. Ideally there would be a priority load to certain things (IE: Pirates, Holes, chests, kegs) over less important things (Trees, doors, decorations)

    Anyone who has played this game long enough has met those horrible black screens, and here's one example I saw today in a video.

    [mod removed]

    Black screen starts at around 11:20 and ends at around 13:30

    Funny enough, I had a horrible one yesterday. Not half as long as this one in the video, but it for certain cost me a battle. As hitbo says in this video, you will never know, you might have won the battle, you might have lost it, but this thing took that away from you. It feels 10 times worse than actually losing the battle.

    Rare I like the new guns (If I feel they are not well balanced) and I love the burning blade.

    But please fix basic game ruining bugs. I dont even know if the one you use to find a respawning pirate's spawn point has yet been fixed after these many years (And that one seemed like an easy fix).

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  • But if you get rid of the ferry of the damned, how will the opponent sink them if they aren’t sent away for a small period of time?

  • Get rid of the ferry of the damned.

    Ok, so we die and...

    BIG BLACK image covering everything. You are teleported to your boat, made invisible, and cannot be interacted with

    Ok..so you are basically seeing a black screen.

    Add player to audio channel where they can chat with other dead people

    Guess you missed the months of players complaining about hearing players voices, nasty talk stuff. Or nobody even uses a Mic.
    Black Screen and all you hear is random player voices all screaming :p

  • @burnbacon
    I might have assumed a level of understanding in game development from people who might not have it.

    Currently when you die you seem to be teleported somewhere else. Its probably a location somewhere off bounds in the map, far away from where any boat can reach, with the ferry of the damned in that area.

    When the door opens and you cross the portal, it looks like you are then teleported back to your ship. While it does that, it shows you a black screen. It doesnt removes it until everything around you is loaded and ready to go. And it likely takes longer to load, depending on server load, and the amount of items and elements around your revive zone.

    This is NOT necessary. Why take you away, unload everything, just to 15 seconds later take you back to the same spot and force the game to load everything back again.

    You dont need to teleport the player to another location and force it to load everything back. You can keep the player in the middle of the action, with no reload made, no processing necessary, and just covering the player view with the black screen, making him invisible and with no collisions, and keeping him on the ship/near the action, so elements dont need to load again.

    There's different ways to make a black/loading screen. To you it might look the same, but its not necessarily the same.

    And how is a voice bug related to making a different version of the boat of the damned where dead players can (or not) communicate?

  • @xdragonman15558
    They would still die.
    But instead of sending them to another location, and then back where they have to reload the whole thing, you just make them invisible, no collision, unable to see or do anything.

    It would functionally be the same. Character would die and would revive in 10-whatever seconds. The only difference would be that the revive time would now be reliable.

    Its just another way to do dead/revive.

    They actually already seem to do this AFTER you cross the portal, you are already teleported and loaded in to your ship. Thats why you can hear some noise sometimes, and also the reason for a long standing bug where enemy boarders could figure out exactly where you were going to respawn. Not sure if its fixed at this point.

  • Doubt this would remove the black screen everyone fears.
    Sometimes, often. Its not the game or server, but the players own connection/machine.

  • @burnbacon said in Fix black screen revive ideas:

    Doubt this would remove the black screen everyone fears.
    Sometimes, often. Its not the game or server, but the players own connection/machine.

    I honestly dont see how it would not as in most cases it would make you stay in the same area, so nothing needs to be loeaded. Even if the problem is your computer or connection it wouldnt matter, because your computer nor the server need to do any reloading. This only happens during transitions to/from faraway places. (I doubt its mostly client based tho.)

    Even if you died away from your ship, at least you are giving it some 10+ more seconds to load, and worst case scenario this would get you to load 10+ seconds faster, as it would start loading the moment you die, not the moment you cross the portal to revive.

    I dont know about you, but if the thing is going to lag out on me, I'd prefer if it lags 5 seconds, rather than 15

  • But… what about the lore…?

    You’re suggesting completely removing a HUGE lore source.

    And what about A Pirate’s Life? One of the tall tales has the Ferry of The Damned in it.

    Not to mention Fate of the Morningstar. If you remove the ferry of the damned, you basically can’t complete the tall tale at all…

  • @xdragonman15558 Easy ways to solve that. Make it a toggeable option in the menu. You can pick:

    • I want the cool ferry of the damned (Which I agree is cool and I love it) and risk random extra delay to my respawn from anything between 1 and 150+ seconds.
    • I want to respawn. I already know the lore. I already did the telltales. I dont need it, and can enable it back on whenever I want.

    Of course man I would prefer if they fixed load times to not be so atrocious. But if they cant, or they are unwilling to put the resources, then this is an alternate and (likely)easy to implement solution.

  • Ferry of The Damned is great, love seeing my crews victims in there.

  • You can black screen by using a mermaid, so all this is going to do is remove an area from the game and not really address the issue causing the black screens.

  • @d3adst1ck I would love if they addressed the root cause. But after this many years they are either incapable or unwilling to do it. So I am suggesting an alternative solution which partially and easily fixes the issue.

    Mermaid only seems to be an issue when you are far away from your boat, so while this would not solve the issue 100%, it would solve a good % of the situations where it occurs.

    And no, it doesnt have to REMOVE the area. As I said this can be a toggeable option in the menu. If you want your cool area at the risk of taking 2+ minutes to reload thats cool. I would not.

  • The long black screens tends to be your machine itself, so how would you suggest the devs fix that? Load times take a lot longer on the Xbox one X than they do on the series X. The only time I have a long load screen on my series x is when the ship has been sunk as I load in.

  • @hitash-levat Proof of that? Or merely your opinion.

    If it was a "your machine" thing. It wouldnt sometimes be 2 seconds and sometimes be 2 minutes, it would consistently be 2 minutes.

    And....I already explained how to fix it, and why it would work EVEN if its a "your machine thing" X)

    You can find videos where it happens to streamers with expensive rigs and the best network connections. So...yeah.

    And you clearly dont have experience with the game, as it IS longer usually when a lot of loot is around. So it is an optimization issue.

  • @kakaroto9766 i play on both platforms almost daily. I try to get two ships on the same server every time I hit load at the same time, my series X loads a good 5-10 seconds faster. Sometimes my one X loads into the ferry of the damned so slowly the door is already opened, while that has never once happened on my series X. Denying reality does not make it false, just makes you foolish.

  • @hitash-levat You do realise:

    1. Anecdotal evidence = nothing but opinion. Its not provable facts.
    2. There CAN be elements to loading coming from both a lower end device, as well as server/optimization problems?
    3. You are talking about first loading in a tavern, with nothing else going around. Not in the middle of a battle, with lots of loot floating around.
    4. Even if it was the case its ONLY local. My suggestion fixes the issue both if its server or local slow loading, because the solution essentially avoids a reload.
    5. I can send you a video of an streamer who has a very high end computer, internet, and in the same session he mostly reloads in 3-5 seconds, and in one instance it took him almost 3 minutes, and no, his ship was not even sunken. So, explain that if you believe its only local slow.
  • @kakaroto9766 said in Fix black screen revive ideas:

    @hitash-levat You do realise:

    1. Anecdotal evidence = nothing but opinion. Its not provable facts.
    2. There CAN be elements to loading coming from both a lower end device, as well as server/optimization problems?
    3. You are talking about first loading in a tavern, with nothing else going around. Not in the middle of a battle, with lots of loot floating around.
    4. Even if it was the case its ONLY local. My suggestion fixes the issue both if its server or local slow loading, because the solution essentially avoids a reload.
    5. I can send you a video of an streamer who has a very high end computer, internet, and in the same session he mostly reloads in 3-5 seconds, and in one instance it took him almost 3 minutes, and no, his ship was not even sunken. So, explain that if you believe its only local slow.

    @kakaroto9766

    1.) A plurality of anecdotal evidence is proof and not just speculation. The amount of times I've done this is a plurality and thus evidence.

    2.) Shared internet connection, from the same router, eventually even the same exact server strengthens my case not weakens it, or are you going to suggest that when the only accountable variable is the platform itself, that it's more than likely something else?

    3.) I'm not just talking about in a tavern, I am indeed also talking about in combat. Also the fact that often I end up with both of my characters on the same ship while my friends are on their own also factors in variables such as loot present on the ship, floating in the water for both screens.

    4.) I don't necessarily disagree that your solution would help (in theory)

    5.) Computers are complicated, there's a plurality of reasons why his computer specifically might be having issues. It's why I used the xbox for evidence, they are more consistent, less variables you have to account for. I wouldn't throw either of my computers in the comparison due to the nature of how drivers interact with programs and how variability in those machines (not to mention other software that might be inadvertently having conflicts) will create more variables than two systems, running the same OS, with similarly installed software, where the only difference is the hardware as the OS is designed specifically for the purpose of running video games as opposed to computers which are not (even if you built it for that purpose, the OS is not designed specifically for it).

  • @hitash-levat
    1- You are just you, your anecdotal evidence is nothing but the opinion of someone who clearly has no idea what they are talking about. There's not even proof, or video, or anything, its just an opinion, not a single fact. So even calling it anecdotal evidence is being overly kind to it.
    2- So...Your local variables affect the outcome...but server variables do not. Got it. That makes a lot of sense (NOT)
    3- SO you somehow reconnect in combat at the same time in 2 different devices? BAhahahahahahhaa Man thats some crazy anecdotal evidence.
    4) Then why whine about it and go on about some nonsense about local slower computers?
    5) XBOX is a computer X) If you think the actions of a game are somehow going to create some magical glitch in the machine that is not related to the game server or poor optimizing...X) I mean. You clearly have no idea how computers work. No, they are not magical.
    Yeah Xbox has to load less things than a windows computer. But there's no magical mambojamboo voodoo magic in your computer that for no reason will make a 5 seconds task turn in to 3 minutes. Particularly in the same gaming session with absolutely no changes to nothing. And even more so when its just one example of many you can find around.

  • 7 years I don't see them pulling this off.

    Yes the ferry is situated underneath the seas in the middle of the map close to the sea dogs tavern/giant rock areas.
    Having to load your pirates in another instance whilst loading game meshes/textures then when spawning loading back to your ship etc.
    There's a reason why it loads faster on average on better PCs, it's not just having a SSD/NVME but also Vram on your graphics card and if you have other applications open when your playing the game.

    Even blackscreening via merms can sometimes take time if you are super far from your ship.
    I'm not a game dev but have dabbled here and there in Unreal and watched tutorials when I did a game jam with a few friends.
    It's a LOTTTT of stuff that goes in what seems to outsiders as something 'logic' or 'easy' to do that everyone takes it granted.
    I'm not sure if they even load a seperate level for the Ferry. or if it's all in one map, the standard map...

  • @kakaroto9766 said in Fix black screen revive ideas:

    @hitash-levat
    1- You are just you, your anecdotal evidence is nothing but the opinion of someone who clearly has no idea what they are talking about. There's not even proof, or video, or anything, its just an opinion, not a single fact. So even calling it anecdotal evidence is being overly kind to it.
    2- So...Your local variables affect the outcome...but server variables do not. Got it. That makes a lot of sense (NOT)
    3- SO you somehow reconnect in combat at the same time in 2 different devices? BAhahahahahahhaa Man thats some crazy anecdotal evidence.
    4) Then why whine about it and go on about some nonsense about local slower computers?
    5) XBOX is a computer X) If you think the actions of a game are somehow going to create some magical glitch in the machine that is not related to the game server or poor optimizing...X) I mean. You clearly have no idea how computers work. No, they are not magical.
    Yeah Xbox has to load less things than a windows computer. But there's no magical mambojamboo voodoo magic in your computer that for no reason will make a 5 seconds task turn in to 3 minutes. Particularly in the same gaming session with absolutely no changes to nothing. And even more so when its just one example of many you can find around.

    1,) i am me, over many years. My sister and her husband are also using a similar combo with similar results. If you doubt it, do your own tests with different platforms and witness the same results then try and call it anecdotal. Smh

    2.) That's not what I said, what I said is when both platforms are connecting to the same server, it negates the variable of you connecting to two different servers. Allows you to ignore that variable as it is the same for both platforms. This is how you do controlled experiments, or have you forgotten this since 5th grade science class?

    3.) I regularly play one character at a time then run them both out of the ferry of the damned at the same time. I know my one X will take longer, it has literally every time. It's hardware is older and it struggles with a ship with 50 or so items on it. This is just the same as when you place too many of the same object in oblivion and it crashes the game, or simply struggles to render it. (Have you ever duped a thousand oblivion gate orbs in that game? If the 360 didn't down right crash the game, it seized up like an epileptic during an episode.) It's the same concept. Once again, this is easily provable, run the tests yourself if you don't believe me.

    4.) What? I wasn't whining at all. I pointed out why you're wrong. Don't like it? Not my problem. I don't know if your idea to fix it would be beneficial or not. My point was to explain why it's hardware issues that lead to longer loads in general.

    5.) yes an xbox is technically a computer. A computer built from the ground up, to include the custom windows OS they placed on it, to play games. A computer who's games that are made for this computer are designed and optimized specifically to run on this computer. This is wildly different than a computer that is capable of running a game, but that game was not designed with your specific system in mind, taking into account all the bloatware that gets removed from the console OS. There are so many variables just within your chosen devices hardware and other programs you have installed on your computer that can and often cause conflicts in other programs. They do their best to factor that in when making games but it's far from perfect and it's why a game designed for a console will always have fewer major problems than a port.

    Bro I worked on computers for 11 years and it used to be a passion. You aren't going to win this argument. Computers are capable of better performance than consoles due to the ability to build a PC with significantly better specs, that doesn't mean it will be free of issues related to those variables. Games can start having problems just because your video card drivers are out of date (as an example of something stupid causing problems)

    There are limitations to what the game can do. I noticed if I stack 4 FotD loot on a ship, often the textures start going to low res versions and sometimes disappears altogether. I normally don't stack that high while running two characters on a ship as it is easier to lose things that way, so i haven't figured out of that is a console limitation or the game itself having that limitation. That being said, I wouldn't be surprised to find out these clowns with stupid long load times are due to overstacking loot and the game struggling to load all of that stuff in at once.

  • @veronik5682 said in Fix black screen revive ideas:

    7 years I don't see them pulling this off.

    Yes the ferry is situated underneath the seas in the middle of the map close to the sea dogs tavern/giant rock areas.
    Having to load your pirates in another instance whilst loading game meshes/textures then when spawning loading back to your ship etc.
    There's a reason why it loads faster on average on better PCs, it's not just having a SSD/NVME but also Vram on your graphics card and if you have other applications open when your playing the game.

    Even blackscreening via merms can sometimes take time if you are super far from your ship.
    I'm not a game dev but have dabbled here and there in Unreal and watched tutorials when I did a game jam with a few friends.
    It's a LOTTTT of stuff that goes in what seems to outsiders as something 'logic' or 'easy' to do that everyone takes it granted.
    I'm not sure if they even load a seperate level for the Ferry. or if it's all in one map, the standard map...

    I have my own mobile game and I have worked with Unity, Unreal, and a few 2d engines, so I have an idea what I am talking about.

    It makes sense to have it near seadogs, as being the center of the map, it makes it more likely people are near it when dying.

    I am not sure either how they do it. But this kind of things are USUALLY done in the same map, in a different location. A very simple example is fornite. You can always see the loading island, its an actual place on the map, you just cant get there via normal means once the game starts.

    So likely, when you die you are just teleported under sea dogs to the ferry, and when you revive you are teleported back to your ship. This makes absolutely no sense if their loading is slow.

    Knowing unity, memory management, and even having worked on some elements of a simple game engine, I can tell you that optimization is quite HARD. Triple so when it wasnt a concern at the start, they make the game, and 4 years later their huge game is being supported by VERY flimsy foundations. SOT could likely be a LOT better optimized if they had started with that in mind. But now, with everything on top of it, it would likely be a humongous effort to optimize. To the point where it might be EASIER to remake the game from the ground up.

    But that doesnt means you cant do hacky fixes which go around the problem.

    I KNOW my suggestions would be easy to implement. Pre-loading you on your ship already happens when you are reviving, thats why people had ways to find where you were going to spawn (Hope that fricking everlasting bug is already fixed). So instead of teleporting you to the ship of the damned, and then back, you can just be immediately placed on your boat in the same state as when you revive without forcing you to reload nothing. Then the only difficulty is giving the players some visual other than the ship of the damned to know they are dead and when can they revive. Hardly more than some sort of non-interactable menu.

  • @kakaroto9766 one thing I'm not sure of in a coding aspect is if there's a way to keep the locations loaded simultaneously. Seems the transportation from one area to another causes the most issues as was mentioned with regards to taking a mermaid causing long black screens if the travel goes a long distance as opposed to half an island away or whatever the initial spawn distance for the mermaid actually is.

    So if the ferry can stay loaded in and make that area specifically not try to load other objects or dump the previously loaded location upon placement in the ferry might fix that as well but I worked on computers, I was not a programmer so I haven't no idea if that is even possible.

  • @hitash-levat said in Fix black screen revive ideas:

    @kakaroto9766 one thing I'm not sure of in a coding aspect is if there's a way to keep the locations loaded simultaneously. Seems the transportation from one area to another causes the most issues as was mentioned with regards to taking a mermaid causing long black screens if the travel goes a long distance as opposed to half an island away or whatever the initial spawn distance for the mermaid actually is.

    So if the ferry can stay loaded in and make that area specifically not try to load other objects or dump the previously loaded location upon placement in the ferry might fix that as well but I worked on computers, I was not a programmer so I haven't no idea if that is even possible.

    Thats not what I proposed. What I proposed is to get rid of the ferry, and do everything around your boat. It wouldnt be different to just standing there on your boat. Only you would not see or hear stuff, and would not be seen.

    As for keeping both always loaded? Prolly nah. That would probably require some tweaking deep within the engine.

    If they were capable of that level of tweaking, they would be capable of optimizing in other ways.

  • Sometimes I need the flame of fate to help me figure out how I died. Was it a skelly? Was it a player? Without the Ferry of the Damned, I would never know…

  • @kakaroto9766 I know that wasn't what you were suggesting but it would allow them to keep the ferry (if even possible) while retaining the zone you're getting transported from. The load times are usually pretty consistent unless the ship is very heavily loaded up now in my experience so it's not a big issue however I know it always seems like when the ship goes under and I spawn in the water next to the loot it was longer than the normal spawn. Such is life though

  • @renee-le-mom said in Fix black screen revive ideas:

    Sometimes I need the flame of fate to help me figure out how I died. Was it a skelly? Was it a player? Without the Ferry of the Damned, I would never know…

    I mentioned an easy fix for that in my suggestion.

    "Hold X to take RED flame of fate, hold Y to change weapons". With color changing depending on who you killed. You can easily move all that functionality to a simple menu

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