Xenos

Clearly nothing is gained at this point by pointing fingers at each other, and personally I don't read those posts in the same way. To me they speak to the same frustration that we all are experiencing in regard to the minimal support of the Mac client.

What we can do now is make sure that we are being heard regarding this issue with the Paragon Market and Freedom. Maybe, if we are lucky, other solutions will come out of that. This is an undeniable game breaking problem that can not be solved on our end. Zwillinger referring to it as a "critical" issue, is encouraging to me, and I would love to hear something from Paragon that they are indeed treating it as a critical issue.

I don't want to go too far with the minority metaphors, but if we want to stop riding in the back of the bus, we need to come together and make clear to Paragon that we matter as a group. If you are reading this thread and are a Mac user, please add your voice. If you know some Mac users that you are not seeing represented here, PM them about this thread. Seeing posts from 20 or 30 people that rarely speak up will be much harder to ignore.

Another thought I have is that we may want to start a Mac global channel on Live. Not to segregate ourselves, but to have as a means of coming together when needed.

My opinion on dual booting is that if you boot into Windows to play the game, you are using the Windows client and not the Mac client. It's not a solution for the Mac client, though I understand that some people will choose to do this if the Mac client becomes unusable or severely compromised. Personally I am not sure what I would do, and I would rather not be forced to make that decision.

Netphenix, closed beta invites are supposedly random. The initial phase was often followed by a round of veteran players being invited. And than it was onto open beta. Veteran status was probably not a factor during the closed beta of Freedom though. I have been here since the original COH Beta, and was not invited, though I have been in many other closed betas during my time here. So I don't think that there is anything we can actively do to get into the closed beta.

And maybe that should be different. As there is a much smaller group of Mac players, it probably would not be a bad idea to set a quota for including a certain number of us into closed beta. It's a common way to make sure that minorities are appropriately represented.

And Starry, I too hope that this will be resolved, but I don't think I will rely on that hope. This is one of those situation where it's really too late once it's too late. Now is the time to speak up. Politely.

There is a big difference about the issue with Freedom and the Paragon Market compared to any of the other problems we had to deal with in the past, and I think it's important to focus on that.

Nalrok, I know there have been troubling issues in the past, but for the most part we found workarounds and they never affected all Mac players. Of course those things should be addressed, but lets focus on the one big, indisputable and unavoidable issue for now: Should Freedom go live with the current Paragon Market issue in place, this game will be pretty much unplayable for ALL Mac users.
(I consider the Paragon Market central to Freedom, and without access to it, we have at best access to a severely crippled version of the game)

I hate to get worked up unnecessarily, but as we have no reliable information whether we are close to Freedom going live, we should proceed as if we are (until we hear otherwise).

Absent of real numbers regarding the percentage of Mac based players, I think all we can do is make sure that we are heard. This time the issues are not occasional crashes and memory leaks that may affect some players. We all need to speak up, and all Mac based players should be motivated to speak up. If there is no change, we won't be able to play this game on a Mac. Period.

Zwillinger, if you have any information regarding how close we are to going live with Freedom and how likely it is that this bug will get addressed beforehand, now(TM) would be a great time to inform us about this.

Trust me Cuppa, you are not the only Mac player testing the beta clients...you just are the best at it . Every closed beta that I have been invited to, I logged on and played various aspects of the game and especially the new content. Most of the major issues I found, you or someone else had already reported on the boards. But I bugged things in game, and added the occasional post. You are not alone out there, and nobody feels that it's your responsibility to catch and solve all the Mac issues. I for one am grateful for the knowledge you have shared in the past.

je_saist, thanks for the e-mail addresses. I am a little reluctant to bug the Transgaming guys as I have been paying Paragon/NCSoft for this game. I think our first point of contact needs to be with them.

Ok, here's what I don't understand...the issue with the Paragon Market is impossible to miss and seems to affect ALL Mac users. Does that mean that no Mac players were in the closed beta??? (I know I wasn't, and I am astonished to hear that Cuppa (who I consider our unofficial Mac Rep) wasn't either.) How could this problem have been missed?

This issue certainly should certainly be considered a show stopping bug. However small the Mac player population is (would be nice to have some numbers, wouldn't it...), this game is being sold as playable on a Mac. I am prepaid for a bunch of month and this would prevent me from playing the game in any meaningful way. So there is a real issue here...and if Cuppa is right that the launch might be imminent, this does need to get addressed first.

Any thoughts on best course of action? Cross-posting on the Beta Forums? PMs?

Hi Zwillinger,

Thanks for letting us know about these issues.

I am sure you guys are having your hands full with the account servers and that mess, but I really think that it's critical to address these issues with the Mac client soon and thoroughly, in other words throw a few more resources into this than are usually allocated (or appear to be allocated) to Mac related issues.

This game is sold as a Mac game, and I really do appreciate not having to reboot into Windows. It's one of the reasons I have remained a loyal customer for all these years.

Obviously not much has been done on the Mac client since it was introduced, and we were doing ok. Some issues, but playable for most (not in the least due to CuppaManga's invaluable help). But from as little as I have seen of the Beta and based on what I have read, Freedom is changing a lot within the game. I have a feeling that there will be some serious issues affecting how the new game client works within the Transgaming wrapper. I could be wrong of course, but we won't really know unless we can test all aspects of the Mac version of the game during the beta period!

I was glad to see that you are referring to these problems as critical issues. Hopefully that means they are being treated as such. But I know you guys are busy and historically the Mac versions has never been a big focus, so I really felt the need to speak up and emphasize how truly important it is that we will be able to fully test the Mac version during Beta.

Personally I am hoping that Freedom will give many more Mac users the opportunity to try COH, and we all know about first impressions.

Thanks for listening. I truly appreciate this game and all the work you guys put into it.

Hey Lewis,

I had exactly the same issue...after changing the screen resolution I could not even see the Options window anymore.

Here's what I did. I opened the user.reg file that lives in your [USER] --> LIBRARY --> PREFERENCES --> City of Heroes Beta Preferences folder, and changes the values for "screenX" and "screenY" in the [Software\\Cryptic\\COHBETA] 1313004535 section to match my desktop resolution. "screenX" is the width, 1920 in my case, and "screenY" is the height, 1200 for me.

Obviously not a solution, but a workaround for the Beta test.

Alisha, for what's it worth at this point, I also redownloaded the Beta client. For me that actually went without a hitch and I can access the beta.

Of course there are some other issues with that...like not having VIP status, though I have been here since day 1...but that's for another thread.

Good luck with your install though.

Thanks Cuppa, but that's exactly how I have spelled it. Upper, lower, Upper, Upper initial letter.

I recently switched to the NCLauncher and it works fine with the regular game client, but it did not automatically find my existing Beta client when I installed the launcher.

If I go to NOT INSTALLED --> CITY OF HEROES BETA --> PROPERTIES in the launcher and browse for the game client (City of Heroes Beta) in my applications folder, I get the following message: "Incorrect File Selected. The file selected does not match the app name for City of Heroes Beta". Which seems like an odd thing to say, given that it's the right application with what should be the right name...

Any thoughts?

(I am obviously trying to avoid downloading the whole thing...).

My first character was/is Ray of Sunshine. He's an Energy/Ice blaster, and was the first toon I created in the original COH beta. He was inspired by the Legion of Superheroes character Wildfire (who I thought as a kid was the coolest).

I recreated him when the game went live, and he still has not reached lvl50.

I think he was "on ice" for a couple of years, but I sorta rediscovered him when we were able to customize the color of our powers. Having golden energy beams really made a difference on a guy called Ray of Sunshine.

Great idea for a contest!

A few issues though:

1. As some other people had mentioned, there seem to be problems with your PSD files. In my case H_LoadingScreen_2 is in a version incompatible with CS4 and CS5 on my computer (Mac) and won't open at all. H_LoadingScreen_3 starts to open, brings up a message about an incompatible Blending mode and eventually fails to open.
   
2. Like most I also don't have "Aharoni Bold" (your title font) on my computer. Will you make the font available? Are we supposed to use our own fonts? Could we? Keep in mind that some free fonts out there are only for non-commercial use...
   
3. If I read the contest correctly, you are asking us to send you our entries as an attachment to an e-mail. Seeing that most of the files weigh in at about 10MB, attaching one file, not to mention multiple files, will certainly hit some e-mail attachment size limitations. Plus attaching files to an e-mail additionally increases their size...

Thanks.

Hi CuppaManga,

If I remember correctly I installed the Vidiotmaps shortly after the Mac client became available. I probably just copied them over from my Bootcamp XP install. The files are dated April 22, 2007.

After your post I ran a couple of test trying to be a little more selective in what I remove.

In my initial clean-up I had removed:

Contents --> Resources --> transgaming --> c_drive --> coh --> data

That fixed it and I had no problems.

Last night I took a look at the content of the data folder. It had one folder called texture library inside, which contained three folders (GUI, V_MAPS and MAPS).

So I put everything back in place, and yes, I had the black screen again. At first I removed the V_MAPS folder. Still the black screen problem. Next I put the V_MAPS folder back and removed the MAPS folder. Now the game would start up, but showed some graphic issues. You can see the problems here, but basically a lot of things were missing their textures:

MAPS folder removed
Normal view

So next I took out the V_MAPS and the MAPS folders, and the games started fine and everything looked as it should.

If you feel that it would be worthwhile to try some further selective removals, just let me know and I'll give it a try.

Alright, time for a quick "me too".

Removing the vidiotmaps overlay folder also fixed the black screen issue for me.

Thanks for figuring it out, Eldman.

For what's it's worth, I had exactly the same issues once after logging in with i17.

I figured that something in my costume was "reflecting" the environment incorrectly. Instead of truly reflecting objects it, it just showed the complete object. And for me at least the parts were changing as I changed locations.

It disappeared after I deleted the Preference folder...but I would also try turning off "Environmental reflections" if you do have it enabled.

Best of luck.

NightSable,

I get your frustration, and I do think that this needs to be addressed asap.

It seems to affect a number of people, it affects both Snow Leopard and Leopard users and it does not seem to be an issue when using the Test server. So for all matters and purposes there appears to be a solution (unless I am drawing the wrong conclusions from the fact that I have no problem starting the Test server repeatedly on the same Mac that I have the black screen issue on the Live server with...).

But in the meantime try this as a workaround. Instead of deleting the whole Preference folder, only delete:

"/Library/Preferences/City of Heroes Preferences/p_drive/User/Local Settings/Application Data/NCSoft"

In other words, just delete the NCSoft folder at the end of this path. You will have to do this every time before you start the game, but for me at least it keeps my graphics settings intact. No need to fix the settings and reboot in order to play. Major improvement.

UnicyclePeon, I think there is away to achieve the same without deleting the whole COH preference directory AND, more importantly, keeping your settings.

This is based on a suggestion from Eldman in another thread. Instead of deleting the whole COH preferences folder, look for:

"/Library/Preferences/City of Heroes Preferences/p_drive/User/Local Settings/Application Data/NCSoft"

...and just delete the NCSoft folder. You will have to do this every time before you start the game, but for me at least it keeps my settings intact. Major improvement.

(Eldman suggested using a Terminal command to delete the folder, but I don't like messing with rm commands...and manually deleting the folder works just as well)

Here's to the right patch coming soon.

Hi CuppaManga,

Strangely the MBP 17" was starting up the last couple of times I tried it, so I am putting down the info for the MBP 13" only. Will add the 17" once it acts up again.

Mac Model, video processor, video RAM:
MPB 13" 2.26Ghz Core 2 Duo, GeForce 9400M GT, 256MB

Installed RAM (memory):
4GB

MacOS Version (Leopard/Snow Leopard and version):
Mac OS X 10.6.3

What you were doing when it got stuck:
Not sure if I get what you are looking for...I was starting up COH.

The last thing you saw before the black screen:
Is the User Agreement.

What date/approx time you patched to Issue 17 (it sounds silly but there's a reason):
Today...about 1PM Pacific.

If there's anything in the Console Log just before the black screen:
(This is after I hit the NEXT button on the User Agreement)
Apr 30 18:26:56 Liza [0x0-0x4f64f6].com.transgaming.cityofheroes[8485]: Could not stat /Applications/City of Heroes.app/Contents/Resources/transgaming/f_drive (No such file or directory), ignoring drive F:
Apr 30 18:26:57 Liza [0x0-0x4f64f6].com.transgaming.cityofheroes[8485]: Flushing log files to disk
Apr 30 18:26:58 Liza mdworker[8464]: kCGErrorFailure: Set a breakpoint @ CGErrorBreakpoint() to catch errors as they are logged.

Thanks.

May as well list myself here now...

I'll be filing a support ticket next, but here's what I have encountered:

On 17" MBP (GeForce 8600M) running latest version of (not-Snow) Leopard, I was able to log into the game and play once after the update. Second time I tried it, I only got to the black screen that everyone else seems to end up with. Trashed Preferences folder and was able to log in. Changed settings to Recommended. Logged out and back in, and was able to play again. Next time I logged in I once again ended up with the black screen. No change on that until I repeated the procedure.

I am also running into the same problem on my 13" MBP (GeForce 9400M) running latest version of Snow Leopard.

On both machines I don't have that issue when I am trying to access the Training Room.

Hope that info helps with the troubleshooting...(yes, I am looking at you CuppaManga - will they ever make you the MacDev???)

Thanks.

Ok, I am duly impressed with the preview clip of Going Rogue from HeroCon. Ultramode with all the dynamic shadows and reflections looks stunning. But I am also wondering where the Mac client fits in with all of this (still lacking FSA and so forth...).

Was anyone at the Con and got to ask that question?

Thanks.

Agreed, the footsteps are not well done for the most part and really draw attention to themselves.

Running on streets I was at times feeling like I was in Monty Python and the Holy Grail and we were "riding" to Camelot - funny, but not terribly immersive.