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).