Zloth

I like that CryoShark!

Winding Heliix (Grav/Energy dom)
Original
Leather
She gets rather wild when Dominate kicks in.

Tezzlah (elec/elec brute)
Original
In red

EEeeeesh, ImageShack is moving like a slug today! Oh well, probably a good thing. I would have posted Ghazt pictures and he's one ugly Mastermind.

[ QUOTE ]
pfft. any travel except for super speed can get around the shard easily. You just need to have a little practice with the jump vents for SJ

[/ QUOTE ]
I swapped my SJ out for SuperSpeed on Test and was still able to go from Zulu to rim of the Storm Palace in about 15 minutes all via geyser jumps.

The Rularuu DID leave Paragon City. Except for one mission in Orenbega (?), they stay well away from our dimension now.

But anyway....

Happy Birthday Paragon City!!

[ QUOTE ]
A villain group returns with a dramatic change....

[/ QUOTE ]
Errr, we've only had one villain group leave. Unless the Rularuu are coming back into town.

Oh, quite a few changes.

I spy Calvin Scott!

Remember when the arena building project advanced and we got big concrete slabs but the NPC workers were still inside?

Perez Lake freezing over

University construction started with Issue 4 which came out on May 4, 2005. We're getting real close to two years on that one!

If you're in the mood to head down memory lane, check my Updates doc.

[ QUOTE ]
Whenever I quit the game the last image on screen "freezes", and I hear an error beep in the background.

[/ QUOTE ]
A BEEP?? Through the speakers or coming directly from your PC?

[ QUOTE ]
That's completely untrue. You are exemplared any time you enter a PvP zone under your level.

[/ QUOTE ]
Oooops, that's right, I forgot all about the PvP folks.

<QR>
[ QUOTE ]
Sadly, something a lot of players will have to consider is how spectacularly gimp this build would be if it exemplared underneath the level of its set bonuses.

[/ QUOTE ]
How gimp would it be, actually? I think that question is going to be extra complex simply because, in order to be exemp'ed down, there pretty much has to be another player with you - one that very well might cover for any lost bonus sets.

Still, it would be good to cover in the guide, IMHO.

[ QUOTE ]
Good grief. I'm sure that is an amazing analysis but if this is the kind of understanding and analysis and comparison effort I'm going to have to do to make use of the IO system, to be anything than just another random d*****s who slots IO stuff just because it drops, then I just dont want to bother. Thats crazy. I'm sticking to SOs.

[/ QUOTE ]
Nope, it ain't. The normal IOs are nice and simple. Easier than SO's in some ways. However, this does give the folks who love doing this kind of thing a *TON* of new debth by introducing the new set bonuses.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go hide under my desk and whimper for a bit. Once I get my confidence up, I'll resume reading the guide.

Maybe in the Marvel game....? <shrug>

Well, plenty of my characters have a 'casual look' I suppose. Zloth doesn't, though - poor guy can't get out of his armor. Took two years and whole vat full of something Icon called "essence of duct tape" just to get the friggen rainbow effect to dampen down. (Finally, no more late phone calls from Skittles marketing execs!!)

[ QUOTE ]
why cant thease things last sevral days some of us have to work

[/ QUOTE ]
Because the Devs have to, you know, develop stuff.

[ QUOTE ]
I've disabled desktop composition for CoX which effectively "switches off Aero" while the game is running, but I haven't tried disabling Vista's UI entirely. I can't imagine it would make any difference but then I can't imagine why the heck a PhysX .dll is (reportedly) crashing either - I'll give it a shot and let you know what happens.

[/ QUOTE ]
It's a real blind shot in the dark. If you have the shortcut set to disable Aero then, when the game finishes, your desktop blinks out and comes back. I'm wondering if maybe Aero is turning back on while CoH is still unloading things and it's causing some sort of weird memory collision.

If you're having to do the verification thing, though, that tells me that the game has not actually stopped working completely - it hasn't set the flag to say to skip verification yet. That means Aero hasn't started coming back yet meaning my shot in the dark is going to miss.

It's getting kinda hard to remember all the details of your bug. Does this happen if you just start City of Heroes and immediately quit from the login screen?

Nope. Sure would be nice, wouldn't it? As is, you have to edit the demo to move the camera around. (I did it once so I could peek inside the VIP room in Pocket D.)

UUuuhhh.... maybe, depends on when the crash happens. If the crash is early enough, you could get stuck doing the Verify Files every time you try to play. Ugh.

Kal, have you got the Aero (sp!?) features turned on? It's a random shot in the dark but you might try going to your Windows settings and turning them off to see if it makes the crashing stop.

P.S. But, if the newbies don't keep asking the same questions over and over, how the %#@! am I supposed to ever answer any questions in this topic!?

You've already GOT the IO info? W00t!!

Help us Sherk Silver, you're our only hope!

Turbine always does a nice sky. That's something sorely missing in City of Heroes.

However, those graphics do NOT look very impressive to me. I can't tell what goes on with animations but... honestly that looks a lot like Asheron's Call 2 graphics. I took this shot back in January 2003. Same water effects, same shadows, and they let you see the grass around you (though it killed most video cards). Yes, even nice sunrises.

For an MMO coming out right now, I would expect the graphics I saw in single player games about a year and half ago. Maybe not Oblivion class graphics but certainly comparible. Heck, our shadows aren't as good but in many ways, I think CoH looks a lot better.

Lord_NightBlade....
[ QUOTE ]
See what happens is big corportations take famous and popular works of fiction, bastardize them so they appeal to the lowest common denominator, and then turn them into video games.

[/ QUOTE ]
Firefly?

Did you do -compatiblecursors 1 first? What have you actually got in your shortcut?

Neurotickitty, how much memory does your video card have? What graphics driver do you have? (A dxDiag log would show us both, see the 'before you post' topic for instructions on how to do that.)

Alissara, what do you mean by 'ghastly'? Sometimes my mouse pointer comes up grey instead of blue but that's all I've noticed.

(You can also get to that settings form by right clicking on Computer, select Properties, and select Advanced system settings.)

Definitely correct on my setup - Vista makes SURE you know you're dumbing it down to Basic. I don't log in under the admin account.

[ QUOTE ]
I've got my desktop shortcut to the updater set to disable desktop composition. Thing is, it ain't working. I've got the same thing set for Oblivion and, when it runs, there's a message popup in the system tray to tell me it's happening and using alt-tab shows me an old-style program list. When I run the updater I get no message and alt-tab'ing still gives the cool glassy look.

[/ QUOTE ]
Found out why.

When you right click and change the properties, you only change it for your Windows login. CoH runs under your admin account so the setting doesn't take. You have to click the "Show settings for all users" button and THEN set it to disable desktop composition.

[ QUOTE ]
-Slotting: Standard slotting of....

[/ QUOTE ]
This term will be made obsolete in 5... 4.... 3....

I wouldn't bother posting the 1.2 guide with Issue 9 right around the corner. I9 is going to make more guides obsolete than even Enhancement Diversification did.

Yep, still here! (Though I've been getting kinda lazy checking of late. I9 chatter is... distracting.) This topic isn't really about my demo edit program but, since it's only gotten one question in almost a year, what the heck....

Let's see if I can do some examples. Say your demo has a car cruising along one of Paragon City's roads. You want to have the camera zoom in on the car even as it keeps moving.

1. Select any line in the demo for the camera and click the 'object to move' button.

2. Go to the point in the demo where you want to have the camera start moving. This can be tricky. If somebody says something right at that point in time then you can find that bit of chat. If somebody does a somewhat rare move or emote you can find that. Or, if you know the point in time is, say, 75 seconds into the demo then you can use the time values listed on the left. Anyway, once you get your point in time picked out, click the Start Time button.

3. In this case you are zooming in on the car, not some point in space, so find the car in the demo and click the Facing Object button.

4. Now find the point in the demo where you want your zoom-in to stop. For this zoom in, that would be the car again, so go down a few seconds in the demo and find your car again. Select that line in the demo and click End Point. Go ahead and click End Time, too.

5. Now click the Movement button. This brings up the movement form and, because you clicked all those buttons ahead of time, it will have most everything filled out for you already.

6. Lets fiddle with the numbers just a bit. As is, the camera will zoom right into the car, which is likely more than you want. Let's avoid that by having the camera zoom to a point above the car. Go to the Ending Point tab and make the Z value about 10 larger than what it is now. This way you'll zoom to a point about 10 feet above the car.

7. Select the Always Face Object option. The car should already be selected.

8. The Add Z number should be about half the height of the object. For a car, I think you would probably want to look at window level. Let's guess 4 for that.

9. Everything else should be fine so click the Move button. Your computer churns through the math and you've got it!

10. Save your demo under a new name and launch it with my demo launcher (or whatever). The camera should move smoothly from point A to point B, facing the car the entire time.

Circles are done in pretty much the same way with the big difference being the end point - you don't have an end point. Instead, you'll be deciding how many times you want to go around in a circle.

Anyway, check the Readme file for complete instructions on what every button and box does. I would suggest making a small, one-minute demo with a small team in a mission then using that to experiment on.

Make sure the drivers are REALLY uninstalled. You might want to use DriverCleaner. Then install the latest non-beta drivers.

RiptorDawnson, your video card is supported but just barely. Couple that with Vista's increased need for graphics and I think you've pushed your card over the edge. nVidia has fleshed out the 8000 series now, you might want to go pick one up. (Still no DirectX 10 for ATI!)

MysticFox, you might want to grab the latest drivers from Ageia to see if they help. Also, when you run CoH, are you running as an admin?

There could still be some odd setting different between the two.

Can you actually print out your registry settings or something so you can compare them between the two OS's? They are under Current User\Software\Cryptic.

With laptops, it's best to go to the laptop manufacturer's website to see if they have new versions of the latest drivers. Sometimes the latest and greatest from the ATI/nVidia don't work very well in laptops.

bad_influence: Given that you already have half a gig, you *might* be able to upgrade with just one more gigabyte instead of throwing out the half gig you have now and getting two gig. Check with your manufacturer. Two gig would really be better but 1.5 might make for a good fallback position in negotiations.

Speaking of memory.... what's with that flash drive extension thing? I got a cheap'o 2 gig one to help move things from my old PC to my new one. The memory in that flash drive seemed to be moving a lot slower than my hard drive. If flash drives are slower than hard drives, what's the point of adding them to the memory pool?