Zloth

Actually, that reminds me of another heroic momement. We got a partial group wipe, including my character. Sparky's fire tank and a fire blaster got away. A minute later I see both of them flying full speed down the hall, flame powers blazing, and they pile right into the villains - burning them to cinders in seconds. Fooom, whoosh, booom!!

Here's one from the old old days - within days of release I'm pretty sure. Early enough that none of us have any powers that make auras going.

You know, looking at InfiniteWisdom's pics, SuckerPunch's pic, and my pics.... Did Dr Vhaz change a bit over the years? Seems like his zombie-body got bigger in relation to his own body. Or maybe it's just the light in the new room? (That room is just MADE for group posing!)

I think the Gust power in the Storm set is what really hooked me bad. I made Windy, a Grav/Storm, mostly just to see how that class worked. I figured I should see how the things work so I could understand the game better. (And because I wanted to see how pretty I could make a character in this game. ) It's fun shooting enemies up into the air with Lift but Gust.... wow! Whole groups of enemies would FLY back 20 yards!! I think *maybe* I got to do some stuff like that in 3D in Sacrifice but certainly not right off the bat! I was having a ball pushing Hellions into oncoming traffic. If they had offered a $200 lifetime subscription after that play session, I would have bought it (and I would have saved money)!

Five years ago today, Cryptic announced City Of Heroes. Here's a little 'screenshot spectacular' to celebrate:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Cryptic Studios Announces Massively Multiplayer
Online Role-Playing Game, "City of Heroes"

Comic-Book Style Adventure Filled with Superheroes and
Fearsome Villains to Release in Summer of 2002

San Jose, CA - September 26, 2001 - Cryptic Studios proudly announces "City of Heroes," a massively multiplayer online world home to an entire universe of super-powered, comic book style adventure. When the game releases next summer, thousands of players can take on the roles of superheroes, fight villains, and help create the story in a stunning, 3D graphical world, courtesy of the San Jose-based developer.

Super Powered Action and Adventure

City of Heroes is the first superhero themed online RPG and will offer a host of exciting and compelling gameplay features. Players create their own heroes, choosing from hundreds of different powers, skills, abilities, and items and design their own unique costumes. Then they can band together with other players to fight evil, build their own secret headquarters and strive to become the premiere hero group in the city.

Gamers will confront super villains, aliens, madmen, monsters, criminals, and other fearsome foes. They can take on personalized missions and rid the city of dozens of different evil organizations and hundreds of individual enemies. With success players acquire power, wealth, and fame and come to bask in the spotlight and rake in the rewards as their powers and fame grow with each successful mission and every defeated foe.

City of Heroes takes place amongst the skyscrapers, slums, sewers and streets of Paragon City, a sprawling online metropolis that offers unlimited adventure and countless surprises. Players become an integral part of many and varied different ongoing story arcs as the villain groups menace Paragon City and react to player victories and defeats.

"With City of Heroes we're bringing a new and exciting genre to online gaming: the world of superheroes," says lead designer Richard Dakan. "We've designed this game to not only capture the excitement of comic book heroes but to offer a unique gaming experience. With this game you can literally 'become your own hero.' Players can not only design their very own superheroes from the ground up, but they can have a direct impact on what happens to the city they live in."

Cryptic Studios plans to release City of Heroes in the summer of 2002. For a gameplay movie, screenshots, and additional game information check out the City of Heroes Web site at www.CityofHeroes.com.


And a big congrats to those who had the smarts, the guts, and the know-how to get this thing out the door and keep it fun for years on end!


So how about all you other players? Got some "I'm so glad I bought this game" screenshots?

You can see the comics at ftp.coh.com. Issue 13 was fine but issue 14 - yuck. Looks like something they chopped out over lunch so they could say they met their contract obligation.

Regular replay whatnow????

1. Upload your picture someplace (like http://www.imageshack.us/ for example).

2. If you are not doing a Quick Reply, click the little "URL" link below the box where you type your text in. It will ask you the URL and the text to put in.

2 Again. If you are doing a Quick Reply, just put it in yourself. It looks like {url=http://your.url.link/page.html}Text to appear{/url} only use square brackets instead of curly brackets.

Screenshot & Demo FAQ

I can't think of a real work around but, if you want to do a lot of screenshots from the character creation, you could just run in Windowed mode. Maximize the window and you'll be prety close to full resolution anyway. You can even crank up your desktop resolution for awhile if you want, it's easy enough to put back later. From Windowed mode you can just use your task bar to switch between programs.

If your game still crashes just switching from one program to another then look up BillZ's ATI card guide. It might have something on how to avoid the crashing.

Zeus is also the god of speculation.

Hmmm, I thought a hypocrit was still in the atmosphere and it becomes a hypocrite when it imacts the ground? <grinning, ducking, running> Yeah, my spelling has always been horrid.

[ QUOTE ]
All too often, point by point responses are nothing but tripe because people aren't actually responding to the points, or people aren't quoting properly by omitting IMPORTANT context.

[/ QUOTE ]
There could actually be some psychology going on there. Whenever any person decides that they are right, they tend to ignore what doesn't fit into what is 'obviously true'. I suspect the important context just went in one eye and out the other. One has to try to approach things with an open mind as much as possible without becoming outright gullible.

Unfortunately, kinda like getting drunk, when you become close minded the very first to go is you ability to see that you've become close minded.

Regarding grammar, spelling, caps, and such: The only real 'must' is that you have to get it close enough so that people can actually understand what you've said. HOWEVER, there is a bit of advertising to do. If somebody asks a question on the forums but doesn't even bother to push the shift key at the start of each sentance, why should I spend five whole minutes bothering to answer it? If you don't care enough about your opinion to take the time to make paragraphs, why should I take the time to read it?


Now - about quotes. What the heck is up with this? I use quotes a TON myself but I use them so it's obvious what it is I'm reacting to in a previous post. I don't worry too much about quoting out of context because the context should be just a few posts up.

But I'm seeing a lot of people quoting entire posts just to react to a bit of it. Why? I can see doing that if the post you are quoting is weeks old but it's common to see entire posts quoted in the very next post! Do they think I can't scroll back?

Preview your post! It's well worth the extra time!

Also, forums have quite a bit of formatting power. This can be very handy but occasionally some folks just go nuts with it, putting all sorts of colors all over the place. It's terribly distracting, especially when it makes text hard to read. If I have to put sunglasses on to read your post then I probably just won't read your post. Please PLEASE don't do this! (Unless you're a hypocrit. Then you can do whatever you %#@ want.

Cool! Did you notice any odd clipping or anything? (I'm wondering why the options aren't available.)

Ragdoll deaths are back in demos! The timing on them seems a little odd (they start flying back an instant before they get hit) but it looks *far* better than having them just suddenly be down on the ground.

The new command choked my Demo Edit program, of course. It's fixed now but you'll have to download the latest version. For those of you that missed it, Demo Edit can now be used to move objects. It's not easy to do but it should be a ton easier than doing it by hand or via spreadsheet.

Big thanks to Relentless for pointing the change out to me!

For those of you interested in such things (all dozen of you ), the new ragdoll command looks like this:

0 42 EntRagdoll 11 285597216 285596288 000001F900000201000001FF000001B800000266000001DF00 0001DE000001FF00000200000001FB.... (truncated to keep the forum formatting sane)

Sometimes the 11 will be a 0 and the massive hex number at the end won't be there.

P.S. And before you ask, no, the broken maps aren't fixed. Maps like MAPS/MISSIONS/UNIQUE/DOORMISSIONS/FREAKSHOW_ABANDONED_WAREHOUSE.TXT still crash CoH/CoX while loading.

Nice! Just make sure your MM doesn't show up at the same party as my Dominator!

I've used Virtual Dub some but I haven't noticed any problems with choppy-ness on save. Have you tried different codexes? It's under the Video menu / Compression...

[ QUOTE ]
The chiefs are ahead by 3 to 0 now....

[/ QUOTE ]
We tied `em! Close enough for me! (Yeah yeah, they kept playing "overtime" but that was just for bookeeping purposes. )

Huh? Name? Link? Errrrr..... <ahem> Why yes! Of course it has a name! BoardColor!

You can get it here: http://home.kc.rr.com/dasloth/CoH/BoardColor.exe

You'll need to have Microsoft's Framework 1.1 to run it, same as my DemoLauncher.

The program is shareware. If you enjoy this product, you need to make it so the Chiefs beat the Broncos today.

Why yes, yes I am. A peacock I know told me its a good way to attract mates.

To do it like Golden Ace just did you simply put a color in for each and every letter. Or quote somebody who already did it and replace their letters with your letters. See Golden_Ace's original post for details on the colors.

Mine's the same deal, except for lazy people. I've got a little program where I plug in the text I want to post, give it a start color, an end color, and tell it to go. It figures all the colors 'between' the two colors I give then sticks color codes in every few words so it slowly progresses from one color to the next.

If you want to see the color codes being used just hit the Quote link for the post. No need to submit the post, just quote it and look to see what you get.

Oh, I did notice (when the program wasn't working right) that you can nest the color commands. Also, if you don't close off all your color commands it bleeds into the signature like [color=green]so...

[ QUOTE ]
Prism writing is cool!

[/ QUOTE ]
Hmmm, I used to have a program that would do this in character bio text back when we could use HTML codes in them. Pretty fun, though you had to cut your bio's length way down. Board syntax is a tad different but a tweak here and a tweak there and we get (quoting the current test server patch notes).....

Mission Dropping Feature

• You will now be able to drop missions that you receive from Contacts. Dropping a mission will carry with it everything that completing the mission successfully does. It will advance story arcs, improve Contact XP, grant special powers, give Mission Complete XP, etc. You will not be able to “replay” the mission you dropped. This is done this way so that you are not stuck on a Story Arc, or are missing a vital Temp Power needed later on in the mission chain, etc.

• In order to drop a mission, you must be the mission owner, and you can talk to the Contact that gave you the mission. If the mission is droppable, an option to drop it will appear.

• There are a few caveats to the Mission Dropping Feature:

You can only drop one mission every 7 days with this feature. If you need to clear a mission, but have already used this feature in the past 7 days, you will need to contact Customer Support as normal.

You can not drop timed missions.
You can not drop missions that are part of a Task or Strike Force.
You can not drop missions that give badges as Mission Completion rewards.
Some other missions are marked as “undroppable”. These are missions that have rewards that are well above average.

• You will not be given the choice at all to drop missions that are undroppable. You will need to contact Customer Support in order to clear these missions.

• If you are on a team with someone who drops a mission, you will receive no rewards for the mission.

• Missions that are dropped are logged so we can more easily debug bugged missions.


Powers

• Fixed an issue with Moment of Glory which caused the Icon to blink after the power's Buff period had ended.

• The Gladiator version of the Malta Hercules Titan will no longer combine into a Zeus Titan if two are present.

• Ring of Fire and Fire Cages both have had a -Fly component added.

• The Teleport reticle now displays properly on Teleport powers with range enhancements.

• Pets made up entirely of f/x (like Tornado or Voltaic Sentinel) now display properly.

Hehehe, fun. Pointless and silly, but fun.

[ QUOTE ]
Well… to put it simply… as soon as you create your Elec/Elec brute, you just hit the ( I own) button for PvE.

[/ QUOTE ]
Look closely at your keyboard - I think that's actually the "Nerf Me" button.

I'm still pretty low with my Electric Brute but I have found that getting multiple enemies into Jacob's Ladder isn't too hard (and, for me anyway, adds a lot of fun to an encounter). Normally it either involves corners or stepping to one side after getting everyone into melee range.

Beware Haste! You use a lot of endurance when you are getting to use your long recharge powers faster AND there's a hefty endurance crash when the power fades out. It's nothing that can't be handled but you have to have the tools to handle it. Early in life you probably won't. You can still get it and use it for boss battles but I wouldn't stick it on auto-fire until you get some slots in Stamina.

[ QUOTE ]
If one jump hits a lvl 26 boss, it went down to about 1/3 of the experience it SHOULD have given me.

[/ QUOTE ]
That shouldn't happen. I haven't played my elec/elec brute much but I have played with a lot of mind control folks with my other alts. Even if an enemy loses half its hit points to confused enemies, it should still yield way over half the normal reward. To get it down to 1/3 would mean that the secondary shots must have been responsible at least 75% of the damage done to the boss! Are you sure on these numbers?

How's the endurance cost on Build Up? I know it's pretty noticable on my blaster.

[ QUOTE ]
Swift+Sprint+Lightning Reflexes

[/ QUOTE ]
Errr.... this sounds familiar. My Claw/Reflex scrapper uses sprint/swift/quickness all the time but I would have to drop a lot of slots into it in order to get it up to the speed of a travel power (or just get a Speed Boost from somebody). Looks like thats what you did. You might try a copy to Test, respec out the whole fitness thing, get conserve power, and use those slots to add some end reduction slots to the most draining powers. Then you'll get to pick two more powers. Maybe get that Chain Induction so you can check the numbers.

Many thanks for the guide! I was really wondering how the powers were working, especially the high end ones.

What is this Scissors program? You say it works on images that have already been printed out!? WOW! That's just totally amazing! Do you need special paper?

Well, I would use Paint.Net if I were ever to touch one up. I mostly touch up demos, though, then dump a ton of screenshots and pick out the best. So far all I've ever needed was very minor touchups which Irfanview can do quite nicely.

P.S. Zomg! They still have Windy's profile! That's from beta for pity's sake! I guess that website isn't just a flash in the pan, eh?

Well, my demo edit program can help with some stuff but Notepad is still a vital tool.

Jurassik's "axe" is absolutely classic.

D.E. Monsters

Babbage fighting

Hatched Kraken with Head of the Hydra

Fathaam T. Strong

Crystal Titian using his rainbow attacks. (Awww, Windy's buffs match her swimsuit!)

Infernal

The Perez Park Kraken (just after the first winter event when all the lakes were frozen)

supe... supe... Supa Trolls! (with apologies to Jimmy Snukka )

Lusca

The Envoy of Shadows

Sally

Quarry (with an energy blaster nuking right on its head)

Giant pumpkin... thing.... from the first Halloween event


And in the bogus category.... <evil grin>
Freaky DE! and The Winter Lord Celebrates!


But you're looking to show off? How about a hunting shot or maybe a campfire?

Or, if you have a crud.... <ahem> ... if your mouse wheel can't double as a button, you can hold down the PgUp key on your keyboard.

Lair of the Titan has the mote, those are older pics.