- 28 Nov 2015 00:10
#164483
I feel like giving my 2 cents on this conversation. Although considering how long this post is it's probably more like $5.
I was around what would've been roughly 3 years ago when this kind of conversation started, and then it was because of the quality of models increasing past the simple little block-y models. People, myself included, said that the rounder models didn't fit in with Minecraft. Mind you, this was just higher quality Techne models, not the super-smooth SMD's we use now. Regardless, it was the same general thing; it's Pokemon in Minecraft, so things should be like Minecraft, etc.
But what always needs to be kept in mind is that we're far more than just Pokemon in Minecraft. We've created an experience that's unique, not a simple amalgamation of two games. If we were to just add Pokemon to Minecraft, we'd suffer from the issue with Pokemon games, which is that it gets very boring and repetitive. If we were to focus on the Minecraft portion, people would have to create everything, we'd need hundreds of recipes or add heaps of things to boss drops which would gradually make less and less sense. We're trying to maintain a balance, to make something that is our own. Pokemarts give one option, making the pokeballs is another. Can trade with NPC's, or can trade with players. Can make your own healers, or you can visit a Pokecentre. Or, lastly, you can use extraneous features, or you can not.
The main drive, I believe, behind merging Utilities into Pixelmon is to let servers use those decorative items and armour and all the rest without forcing their users to download the sidemod (since it was a universal sidemod, not server-side only) which gives servers more power in that regard. Eventually Pixelmon will have no more features to add, at which time it'll be down to servers to create new and exciting things for players, and so we need to give them tools to achieve that. Like the furniture, like easier sidemod installation, and some other stuff I'm working on.
Lastly, with the lag issue, it really is a painful problem. We can't simply not add more stuff, but we want it to be as quick as possible on low-end machines. There have been optimisations, but frankly I don't know what we're going to do with the HD models causing framerate issues. Very difficult problem, not any easy call.