Arcanaville

The "my character is exploded into disconnected pieces" issue is something I now recall I fixed a while back. I don't remember precisely how, so I'm taking a look at my configs and notes to see. Stay tuned, but in the meantime here's some things to try:

1. Turn off ultramode and reduce graphics settings to low values. Since we're trying to extract the models, it doesn't matter how well the client renders them.

2. Uncomment out the following lines near the bottom of the gliConfig.ini file:

// ExtensionOverride = ("GLExtOverride/GLExtOverride.dll")
// {
// RemoveExtensions = (GL_ARB_vertex_program, GL_ARB_fragment_program);
// }

What you are seeing are almost certainly the result of the game client using vertex programs, and OGLE doesn't capture them, so objects that are processed by vertex programs to deform and position themselves will end up basically at the origin and "straightened out." Which is basically what a lot of people are seeing.

I remember sometimes the devs would release a build of the game, and this would break for me, and then the next build would fix it. The current test client works for me, so I believe it should work or at least can work with the current client.

There are a couple of other issues that I will describe in more detail when I write up my processing post, but I notice in Blender I basically see the scene, albeit often rotated and offset oddly. In Art of Illusion I see what looks like a giant inverted gemstone shape which is I believe the bounding boxes for the scene, and unless you delete those it will be very difficult to see the scene inside. Again: not a 3D modeller, so not sure why the difference in the two apps.

So there's no confusion, when I do this on my test client and import the .OBJ into Blender, I get this:



Zooming out, I get this:



FYI, I'm standing in the parking lot in Talos: my character is standing with arms crossed to the right of center. To the far right in the second image you can see the Freakshow that have been trying to steal a car from the hospital parking lot for the last eight years.

So I was up last night looking over the moving pieces for this, and rather than try to write one big document for it all, I'm going to just post what I can as I can in the thread.

First: I have a dropbox link to OGLE for those that can't find it on the internet, which is probably all of you at this point because the thing seems to be in witness protection.


Also, this guys seems really interested in my google searches now

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ysy9hon4f3mf4pe/SA_LZrs-1L

That link should have two things in it: a copy of GLintercept (source and exec) and OGLE. GLintercept is basically the OpenGL shim driver. Running and installing that just makes a directory in Program Files with all its jazz, it doesn't really "install" anything per se. The OGLE binary distribution also creates a directory that puts its stuff in there.

Here's how the magic happens. You take the OpenGL32.DLL file from the GLintercept directory and copy that into your City of Heroes game client directory. Then you take the OGLE binary distribution directory - all of it - and copy that into the plugins subdirectory of where ever GLintercept installed itself. The directory should be renamed to be called OGLE if it isn't already (or you will need to make more config file edits). Finally, you take the gliConfig_OGLE.ini file from the OGLE directory and copy that into your game directory, but you rename it gliconfig.ini and you edit it with what you want.

Here's what's important in that file:

1. Directories. There will be some references to the GLintercept directory created when you installed that above. If you didn't change it, the main thing that you might need to fix is on a 64-bt OS it was probably installed into "Program Files (x86)" and the config file just says "Program Files". You'll need to fix that, depending on what OS you run on.

2. There's a line in the config file called "FrameStartKeys. Its the set of keys you have to press simultaneously to "capture" a frame. By default I think its CTRL+SHIFT+F. Change that if you want that (especially since on most people's default keymaps that will cause you character to start sprinting forward at the same time).

3. In the plugin section there's a setting called FileInFrameDir. I like to set that to True. More on what that does in a minute.

For the technically minded, there is a README for OGLE in its distribution directory under \docs.


All this cannot be done while the client is running. You do all this, and then launch the client. You should see more or less no change, although its possible the shim driver might slow down the client a little. I haven't noticed myself. I have seen the rare occasional crash while the plug in is installed so I don't leave it there all the time. To disable OGLE once you set this all up, just rename the OpenGL32.DLL you copied into the client directory to something like OpenGL32.DLL.DISABLED. When you want it, rename again.

When ready, hit your hotkey combination. The game will freeze. This is normal. Upon hitting that key, the next frame the game tries to render will have all of its OpenGL commands being sent to the video adapter intercepted, processed by OGLE, and then spit out into a set of files. That will of course take time. On my system, a zippy Core i7-860 this takes about two to six seconds depending on geometry complexity, but I've seen it take as long as ten seconds. When your client starts moving again, you have captured that frame.

What you get is a directory called something like Frame_006827 in your game client directory. Within that directory is everything GLintercept and OGLE decided to log. You should have a directory called DisplayLists which I suppose contain display list information but I've never really looked at carefully. There should be another directory called Images that actually should contain little bitmap images of all the textures being sent to the renderers. So those things are actually in there.

Some of it is real obvious:




Some are not obvious textures, but I can guess what might be used for:



But character textures use some projections I should probably recognize but don't:



Head, hands, and boobs. According to Rob Liefeld, I've listed those in ascending order by mass.

And of course, sometimes there's:



There's... uh... Wait. I'm sorry, but W-T-F is that, Art Team? Did you guys actually sneak an x-rated x-ray image into the game? Holy ****.


Anyway, the last two things should be two text files: gliInterceptLog.txt and ogle.obj. gliInterceptLog.txt is some light reading. ogle.obj is the money shot (hey, I wasn't the one that put dick textures into the game). Its a waveform-compatible .OBJ of the entire scene.

Now all you have to do is find you character (or whatever you want to capture) in there somewhere, and get that into something you can print, or alternatively import that into the 3D program of your choice and do whatever you want with it. People who know how to use 3D modelling software correctly, as opposed to the random flailing around technique I use can take it from there mostly: the .OBJ format is supported by basically every 3D modelling software not made in North Korea.

For everyone else, I'll cover that next.


PS: I know you guys think I'm making up the dick texture, but I'm not. Do the capture yourself, its so far shown up in every 3D capture I've done. Whatever it is, its burned into the DNA of the game.

Confession: I did work with the Paragon team on a game feature, like for-realsies, just before the launch of Going Rogue. That's why I'm listed in the game credits in that edition. But I was never an employee of Paragon Studios or Cryptic, I never had a red name, and I was never issued my own neuralizer.

Thank you.

So a couple years ago the subject of City of Heroes figurines came up. The problem was, apparently, that the models used for CoH were not conducive to making figurines: they aren't actually solid models, and don't form solid structures. So it was basically impossible to make figurines from the models we use in the game. So we were told.

Well, I didn't think it was impossible. I happen to have a Makerbot, and I did experiments last year to see what was possible in terms of extracting 3D information from the game, and then printing it.

Honestly, the results were rather rough:



But over time, I refined both the model clean up process and the printing process, and I now believe it would have been possible with a slightly better printer (the Cupcake I have wasn't quite precise enough in my opinion) and a slightly better Blender jockey (I know the math inside and out, but I'm not a 3D modeler).

It was getting much better:



That's *almost* good enough in my opinion. I think it would have been possible to make professional grade City of Heroes figurines of our characters. However, real life intruded and I had to temporary shelve my Makerbot. I was planning on revisiting this idea with a more advanced printer next year. I may still do that eventually, but with the game shut down the impetus to do so may fade. In either case, whether I figure out the best way to do this, there won't be a Paragon Studios to pitch the idea to anymore.

But I thought I would share anyway. If anyone wants to know how I got the models, I used OGLE. It should be searchable through google, and what it does is extract 3D models from OpenGL software. This isn't a pigg-dive, those two models were basically ripped from the OpenGL driver as the game ran.

It ain't that simple. You end up with your character, and all the geometry surrounding them, and you'd be surprised what invisible geometry is floating around. But sift through it, and you'll see your character there. Probably microscopically small because of the strange scaling that the game does to things. Scale it up, and you have the two models shown above.

I stuck them into Blender, fixed them up a bit, and specifically used some Blender filters to make the cape "thicker" so it would print (the thing is essentially two-dimensional in the game). Ditto the skirt, which is actually a real skirt in that print: its not solid it actually wraps around the legs. Then its just STL convert and send to the 3-D printer of your choice.

And spend a month calibrating the best possible print.

But yeah, if we had survived through 2013, I would probably be bugging Paragon to figure out a way to offer these. That second model took maybe two bucks of ABS to print. Factoring in the cost of my time, and it only cost about twelve thousand dollars to make.

I've never actually self-identified as a Scrapper. My main, Lady Arcana, is actually an Energy/Energy blaster. But this forum has always felt like home on the forums. This is the forum where so much testing was done, so much analysis, so much question and answer. More than any other forum, I think this is where we figured out the game, how it worked, how it didn't work, what we could do in it.

My first Scrapper, Violet Rumble, did the journeyman's work for a lot of my analysis of the game. She tested defense powers for me. She tested the streakbreaker. She tested damage mitigation in general. She performed the tests that led to "Arcanatime" and the luck problem Bella mentions above and helped me arrive at the correct formula for tohit (although I was trumped there by Stargazer).

Personally, I've always thought Controllers matured to the strongest archetype in the game. But there always seemed to be a much more visceral pleasure in destroying enemies playing a Scrapper than a Controller. Controllers always felt more "diffuse" in their destruction. Scrappers were always up close and personal, and in your face destruction. And because of that Scrappers always had a special place in my gaming heart.

I remember my "Take the Arcanaville Super Reflexes Challenge" thread involving SR and the Storm Palace, that eventually led to the creation of the Rikti Crash Site challenge, that became the Storm Palace challenge, and then the RWZ challenge. It was always open to anyone and anything, but in all its incarnations it was always known as just "The Scrapper Challenge." That was always the benchmark for performance: what could a well played well built scrapper do.

But what I remember the most about the Scrapper forums is that moreso than any other forum, Scrappers tended to be neither defensive nor superior about their accomplishments. We did not claim to be better than any other player or archetype because of what we could do, and we joyously took it as a challenge to figure out how to do what others could do rather than covet that performance.


There are always exceptions. But what I will remember most is that in my opinion, Scrappers led the way on a lot of fronts both in gameplay and metagaming, but did so in a fun way and not an obnoxious way.

And that's why this forum was always home.