Bill Z Bubba

KNOWN ISSUES
FSAA
Having the game manage FSAA causes the world, but not your in game windows/menus to go black. The lower your resolution, the less likely the blackness will occur. I've had it occur at 2X FSAA at 1280X1024.

Ghosted Image when Overlooking Water
A ghosted image will ALWAYS appear over water if Water FX is set to High. Low Water FX by itself will not cause the ghosted image, but will if used with Bloom or Depth of Field. If Water is off, Bloom and Depth of Field together or by themselves will not cause the ghosted image.

Crytpic's HDR Implementation
Water FX set to High and/or Depth of Field are still incompatible with FSAA.
Bloom will NOT break FSAA if FSAA is managed in game rather than with the Catalyst Control Center. Of course, if you have the game managing your FSAA the world may go black on you.
Bloom and Depth of Field used together cause the screen to be washed out and bright.

The Contact and Character Information Windows
As of Issue 8, opening the contact screen causes a drastic reduction in FPS and a jittering effect as the contacts are being loaded. Once completed, however, FPS returns to normal. This issue is universal for ATI and Nvidia users.
For ATI users with AGP cards, you will probably experience an application lockup when opening the Contacts screen if you do not have Fast Writes enabled.

Enhancement Screens and X1*** series cards
If you have an X1*** series card, (may be present with the 2*** series cards as well, but this has not been verified by this author) either on the normal enhancement screen, or when putting enhancements into slots during a respec, the cursor becomes erratic when placed on the enhancement icons. In order to grab enhancements, you must have the cursor above and left of where it should be.

Grandville and 92** series cards
Having Geometry Buffers enabled within the game while using a 92** series card causes graphical anomolies in Grandville and often an inability to even zone there.

Task Switching, alt-tabbing, use of windows key while playing
It's broken. Use of -renderthread 1 flag to enable multithreading often breaks it. Having the Catalyst Control Center manage FSAA and/or AF may be part of the issue. Running Full Screen may be the problem. You'll have to play around with those three to find out what fixes it for you.

If I missed any, which I no doubt have, please remind me of them by PMing me.


RECOMMENDED SETTINGS as of the Cat 7.6s

In Game:
Resolution AND 3D Resolution Scaling: Same as Desktop
Refresh Rate: Same as Desktop
Advanced Graphic Settings: Enabled
Particle Physics Quality: High (Very High if you have PhysX pci card)
World Texture Quality: Very High (Lower if your card has less than 256MB vram)
Character Texture Quality: Very High
World Detail: 100% (Large performance hitter, lower to raise framerate)
Character Detail: 200%
Max Particle Count: 25050 (Large performance hitter, lower to raise framerate)
Vertical Sync: Disabled
FSAA: Off
Shadows: Enabled (Disable for slight performance boost)
Use Geometry Buffers: Enabled (Disable if you have a 92** series card)
Anisotropic Filtering: Disabled
Texture Crispness: Smooth
Shader Quality: High (Lower for older cards, game looks bad on anything but High to me)
Water Effects: Low (Or off for better performance)
Depth of Field Effects: Disabled
Bloom Effects: None

In Catalyst Control Center:
Under Display Options:
3d Refresh Rate Override: Same as Desktop
Under 3D settings:
Anti-Aliasing: 4X (Temporal Disabled) (2X for better performance)
Anisotropic Filtering: 4X (2X for better performance)
Catalyst A.I.: Disabled (I've seen no benefit in leaving this enabled)
Mimmap Detail Level: High Quality
Wait for Vertical Refresh: Always On (Disabling this will yield better performance, but will causes screen tearing. YMMV.)
Adaptive Anti-Aliasing: Disabled
API Specific:
Direct3D:
Enable geometry instancing: Yes
Support DXT texture formats: Yes
Alternate pixel center: No
OpenGL:
Triple Buffering: Yes (If you disabled Vertical Refresh, do NOT enable this)
Force 24-bit Z-buffer depth: No


Uninstalling/Reinstalling Drivers
(Thanks to Wolf_Shadow for the reminder)

Here are the steps I currently use when uninstalling old driver packages and installing new ones.

Go to Add/Remove Programs
Choose ATI Software Uninstaller
Click Remove
Click Yes to removing all ATI software
Allow the system to restart
Cancel XP's attempt to automatically install the display adapter, probably twice
Disable your antivirus program
Uninstall any 3rd party ATI driver packages still listed in Add/Remove Programs
Use Driver Cleaner (if you have it) to clear out ATI, ATI WDM, ATI Uninstaller, ATI CCC
Install the latest Catalyst package
If you have an OEM laptop that will not let you install the real driver package, you can get tweaked drivers from omegadrivers.net or laptopvideo2go.com

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask. I will do my best to answer honestly and correctly.

Dust buildup and once a coke. I have a strict no food rule in my office at work and home.

Mostly because of that coke. I like that keyboard.

[ QUOTE ]
Faulty crumbs stuck in my 6 year old keyboard...

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<---- Dies a little inside

Not silly at all. It's not properly documented anywhere. For a time, it was defaulted to Enabled, but due to the issues with task switching, they switched the default back to Disabled.

Last I heard, NCSoft QA was asking Cryptic about it, but nothing came of that inquiry.

It would seem to me that with the influx of dual cores, and now quad cores, that it would be in Cryptic's best interest to return the default to Enabled. (Not that the -renderthread 1 flag enables quad core functionality, it doesn't, but at least two of the four would be used, instead of 1 of 4.)

Maybe one day they'll recode the game so that it can recognize what you have and utilize it fully.

Edit: Just think of all the non-forum readers that "suddenly" see vastly better performance in their gameplay.

The -renderthread 1 flag forces the game to utilize both cores or threads on a dual core or hyperthreaded processor.

For dual cores you should see a 30-50% FPS boost, for hyperthreaded procs, about a 15% boost.

Consider it necessary. Warning: If you have an ATI card, the -renderthread 1 flag does not play well with task switching.

Hi, folks.

I've been seeing a lot of unecessary info/steps being given when folks ask about backing up and moving their CoH/V installation directory and/or installing the Test Server client.

Here's how I do it and I haven't had an issue yet.

Backing up/Moving CoH/V:

To backup CoH/V, burn the entire installation directory to a DVD or copy it to an external/separate drive.


Reinstalling CoH/V:

*Once you have installed CoH/V once, you will NEVER need the CD/DVD again.*

Copy the installation directory from your DVD/other drive to the location that you want it to go. I prefer using d:\games\coh

Stick it wherever you like, but keep note of where you copied it to.

Open said directory and make a COPY, not a shortcut, of the cohupdater.exe file to your desktop.

Run the copy. You will be prompted to reinstall CoH. Choose NO to the default installation path and browse to the location where you copied your CoH directory.

For example, if you used my path above, you would be changing from the default of c:\program files\city of heroes to d:\games\coh
*Be sure to highlight the main directory and NOT one of the subdirectories of your CoH directory. Example: coh should be highlighted and NOT coh\screenshots.*

The updater should take seconds to complete, leaving you at the coh/v startup screen where you click the Next button.

Close this screen. You will now see on your desktop Two coh icons. The copy of the cohupdater you created and a new coh shortcut. DELETE the cohupdater copy that you created.
*If you have a dual core or hyperthreaded processor, add the -renderthread to the shortcut's target line for the shortcut that the updater created. Example: My shortcut's target line looks like d:\games\coh\cohupdater.exe -renderthread 1
To get to the target line, right click the shortcut and choose properties, then click on the Shortcut tab.


Create a Test Server Install:

Make a copy of your coh install directory and rename it to cohtest. Example: In my games directory I have d:\games\coh and d:\games\cohtest

Make a COPY of the cohupdater.exe from cohtest to your desktop. Now make a shortcut of that copied cohupdater also on the desktop. Change the target line of THAT shortcut, adding the -test flag. Example: c:\documents and settings\<loginname>\desktop\cohupdater.exe -test

Run the shortcut. When prompted, as above, direct the installer to install the test server to your test server directory. Again: d:\games\cohtest and not a subdirectory of that directory.

Again, seconds later (unless there's a new version on the test server) you will find yourself at the coh screen with the Next button. Close this. Delete the COPY of the cohupdater and shortcut that YOU created.

Locate the new shortcut that the updater create, and edit its target line to add the -test flag. Example: d:\games\cohtest\cohupdater.exe -test

If you are on a dual core or hyperthreaded processor you can have multiple flags. Example: d:\games\cohtest\cohupdater.exe -test -renderthread 1


Questions you may be asking:

"Bill, why must I make a copy of the cohupdater to my desktop prior to running it?"

Because often times, the cohupdater attempts to update itself and cannot because it is in use. You will probably see an error about disk space and unable to write to the cohupdater.exe file.

"Bill, why, when creating my test server client, must I create a shortcut to the cohupdater I copied out of my cohtest directory?"

Because you can't add the necessary -test flag to the updater itself.

"Bill, what is the meaning of life?"

42
Possibly beer.
Probably 42 beers.

[ QUOTE ]
Waitaminute. I recall a study a while ago that applied the tests often used to identify "sociopaths" and found that many CEO's have similar characteristics.

:looks at typical gamer forum.
:looks at the sociopath index.
:looks at the state of corporate america.
:looks at sociopath index.
:looks at gamer forum again.

Are we sure this conditioning is a good thing?

[/ QUOTE ]

<twitch>

Carp... he's onto us.

Break out the red herrings.

Finally updated my avatar to include the new art I've gotten.

If anyone else wants to take a crack at Bill Z, don't be bashful.

[ QUOTE ]
Wow... er.... that's something....

What's also interesting is, if you follow the same way of looking at this... well... she has two. O_O (badum--tssshh)

Yes, the internet and adult anime has tainted my mind. O.o

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...
...

Double pen' for the win?

That's pretty dang cool.

[ QUOTE ]
...Well, the Kaiserin is possessed by one. That counts, right?

The Kaiserin in a rather ragged outfit

Seth, Egyptian God of Chaos
Seth's (Setheck) one of my newest characters.

Pictures drawn with india ink, watercolor and gouache.

[/ QUOTE ]


Beautiful.

[ QUOTE ]
Has anyone tried to get Elude near perma with IO recharge bonuses?

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PM PowerFist

I have little doubt that he's pushing for max recharge to get as close as possible. Probably has it done by now.

More.

There's a whole lot to love in this piece.

Graver and JTran have done an AWESOME job of bringing to life how I've always viewed Bill Z in my head.

The glowing magic symbols were a touch I didn't expect but absolutely love.

Thanks so much for this work.

Very nice.

So few Warshade costumes seem to capture the WAR part of our name.

Gratz to have done it for yourself.

Unless they both play claws/sr...


THEY WILL LOSE THE BATTLE OF THE SEXY!!!!

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Please tell me villains are going to get more Strike forces in the level ranges they are missing in issue 10? If not this is more towards giving heroes more content than filling in any gaps villains have. I just hope this is just the first part of the issue 10 goodies.

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Since everything being added can be enjoyed equal by both groups (if I read that correctly), this is as split down the middle as things can get.

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Yep. Looks like the Dev finally gave up on making unique content for each side and are just smearing the games together now.

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About time. <GRIN>

I gotta add to this:

When I first started playing, one of the things that got me about the game was the Rularuu invasion. I loved it.

I have a feeling that a game wide rikti invasion is going to be a hoot for me.

Nice lips.

Pwiiitty Kitty.

More proof of the evil of capes. Even butt capes will get you killed.

Good stuff.

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Wow. She looks... human. I love that piece. All Rocinate's work is like that. Wow.




Wow.

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That's cos he uses stock model photos and such. He's a PhotoShop wizard. A "Photomanipulator".

[/ QUOTE ]

Well that explains it. Still a dang fine lookin hotty he used there.

Wow. She looks... human. I love that piece. All Rocinate's work is like that. Wow.




Wow.

Gratz folks...

But Starchasm, I'm posting to say how much I dig your "Room for One More" piece.

There's something very twisted going on in that bunny's head.

Huh.

Ok. Devilta's: I think the word I'm looking for is precious.

Sodacan's: Normally I hate the 3d renders around here, but that one works. I think the statement at the bottom of the picture did it for me.

Sayda's: Downright awesome. Great style.

Thally's: omgwtfbbq haaawwwwwt