CFIndustries

This is a bit of a cross-post as I just discovered this thread and didn't realize part of my request in Dink's costume thread really should be over here:

WING EMOTES:
I'm thinking primarily of birds, but these could work for any wings with the right rig...Angel, Demon, Dragon, etc. Might even work with the Mecha wings. Not sure how they'd work with the tiny wings (Cherub, Bat), Insect, or Fairy wings (might require special variant animations).

--/em wingdisplay -- wings open out straight and up at 45° angle and hold

--/em wingspread -- similar to wingdisplay only out at a 90° angle (wing edge parallel to ground)

--/em wingflap -- some variant of the "few flaps before landing" animation (that "FLAP...flapflapflap" thing), just one that we can trigger while on the ground. Imagine how annoyed birds sit there and flap their wings a few times.

--/em wingpoint -- some kind of "pointing at you" with the arm AND wing pointing

--/em wingthreaten -- I can visualize in my head but hard to desribe, but it would be like /em angry only incorporate the wings (maybe "/em angry" + "/em wingdisplay" from above?)

Just seems to me there are alot of emotes that would be fun to have a "winged" variant...right now the wings are kinda passive outside flying and jumping. Not complaining, the wings and all their various animations are VERY cool. I still marvel at them all these years later.

Another two just sprang to mind too:

--New Flight Pose for winged characters, "Soar." Basically instead of flapping wings it would put the wings out straight as if gliding (honestly, not unlike the static wing position on the larger Mecha wings).

--A variant of the Hover animation for wings...instead of flapping it would be "cupped" wings the way some birds use their wings like "scoops" to stay in place in windier conditions. Of course this might be a problem for characters, myself included, who hover-combat as such a "scoop" post would certainly be more of a view-blocker to other players than flapping is.

Does some crazy base builder have a visual catalog of all the available base items and how to get/craft them?

I've inherited a number of complex bases, and some that are just "large" but really need sprucing up. I've versed myself in a number of the stacking tricks, so really my imagination is all I need to proceed. I was charged with accomplishing a number of the "looks" we implemented on some of the bases, and since being "nominated" architect, I've been watching other people's bases and "borrowing" ideas. ;-p

I understand only a LITTLE about what's available beyond what you get access to without crafting.

However, I know from the previous SG leader of one of the bases that "other" items not listed are available for crafting. Some are quite cool looking. However, I can't seem to find a way to "see" these pieces, or see how large they are, without knowing in advance where to look or having the items handy to craft them. Seems a bit of a Catch-22.

For example, have a villain-side base with an Arcane aesthetic, the plan was for a tomb with a central temple. He had told me that there was a "really cool" item we were saving for...it was a fancy Control item I think, maybe Power...which was was going to be the basis for the central part of the temple.

But I never got to see what he had in mind, or have any idea how to craft it. And ironically, this was the base the original leader was giving me carte blanche with once we had enough prestige.

So it would be really nice if there was a list with pictures someplace showing all the nifty pieces available.

As a note: I would also need to know which items require a Secure base, and which will work with a simpler Hidden base. The redside base I'm currently fiddling with is not Secure, just Hidden.

Since I was enlightened to this thread, adding my other pet peeve as a player of non-humans:

Far, far, FAR too many of the lower body options are not available to players if they are using the Monstrous legs. And for that matter I believe Monstrous chest and gloves also come-up short (I just happen to notice "pants" issues more in my costume designs).

For the life of me I can't figure out why either. Unless troubleshooting clipping/fitting issues is incredibly difficult. Seems a shame though that they added digitgrade legs and then left us with a limited selection of lower body options.

I honestly think it should just be s standard part of the costume design for lower body parts:

--Male Human. Check.
--Female Human. Check.
--Huge Human. Check.
--Male Monstrous. Check.
--Female Monstrous. Check.
--Huge Monstrous. Check.

In other words, I think of this as a process issue and less of a design issue. The Monstrous parts have been left out of the standard process.

This way Monstrous users get everything as it's designed, aside from pieces with totally irreconcilable clipping issues.

(And honestly, even then I don't mind clipping issues as much as some people do, as long as the clipping is "reasonable," such as overlaps and such.)

Samuel_Tow:

While the fur works at a distance, and even to a degree close-up, on a clothed bird, it doesn't on a more "naked" look (such as a bare-chested male).

I've learned a few of the "cheats" but they don't really cut it, and don't make a good blend with the head except with VERY specific colors. As Nalrok corrected me, the "normal mapping" between the feathered heads and the Animal Fur (or Monstrous Fur) does not match. You can force matches if there are proper shades of colors (use darker or lighter colors to make matches), but then that railroads you to certain colors.

(The aweful color palette in this game is a separate problem.)

You can also stick to dark colors, which don't show-off the mismatch as bad.

But a few examples I've tried (an played):

--Two parrots, to be specific, two "pirate parrots" which are colored the sterotype "Amazon parrot" colors (a medium green with lighter green or pale yellow highlights). I have them dressed in the long jackets to hide their beltline and chests so only really the bottom part of the thighs show. Animal Fur in a medium green with a paler green or pale yellow-green cheetah or leopard pattern fakes a texture well enough because the at is only 4' tall. This falls into your argument about distance viewing. But I would have preferred them to be "naked," in which case the cheats fall apart.

--One raven and basically "naked"--black with a muddy light blue and uses one of the mystic line patterns because of his backstory. Because he is so dark and the default gamma in the game is so dark, the look is very convincing (can't really see "texture" with it being all black).

--A seagul. Ended-up using "Tights" and the "mesh" texture in dark grey to break-up the flat texture of the tights. Not super convincing though, but best any of us ("Flock of Seaguls" SG) could come-up with after some experimenting. White is always tricky in this game. And again, it's only passable since our specs are for 5' tall or less. Also, being forced to use the mesh pattern means we couldn't use bicolor blend patterns on the body for a better coloration (since seaguls are typically white with grey or black).

But for another example, Polly's Revenge has a TALL form (max height) alternate look, and the methods for "faking" feather start to fall-apart when scaled-up.

So a "simple" texture map, again, is really all I'm after.

And while *you* may never look up-close at costumes, many folks do, myself included, and I suspect many RPers (coming from Virtue, that's my view into the game) may also. Not to mention the camera forces you in-close indoors all the time. ;-p

Also, as someone visual, I can assure you that "passable" and "good" are two different things. Illusion is in the subtleties you don't actively see unless you're trying too. That's why texture maps work...tricks of light and shadow trick your brain. The fur pattern on a bare chest in brighter "bird colors" in no way tricks me into seeing anything other than a bird head on a furry body. Why? On closer examination it's because the texture map does not have the pattern of light and shadow we associate with "feathers."

"Normal mapping," got it. Not all Photoshop terminology makes it well to 3D rendering space. ;-p

At the suggestion of Samuel_Tow, cross-posting this from another thread:

So were there any plans to finish the bird costume pieces? We got a couple of heads, thanks. A few beaks, nice. We already had wings, thanks. Talons, check. But...

...feathered tails?
...feathered chest?
...feathered pants? (bonus points if they blend with the talon Monstrous legs)
...feathered arms?
...some kind of talony-glove that blended with the feathered arm?

Also "nice to have" (but not strictly necessary, though would bring birds up to par with cats):

...bird texture patterns (i.e. like the Cheetah and Jaguar spot patterms, only pick a few bird patterns). For the record I could argue wolves and bovines need their own texture patterns too.
...wing color variants: instead of strictly the "edge color" and "trailing" color we have now, add a couple other variants from the bird world

Also nice, wing emotes:

--/em wingdisplay -- wings open out straight and up at 45° angle and hold

--/em wingspread -- similar to wingdisplay only out at a 90° angle (wing edge parallel to ground)

--/em wingflap -- some variant of the "few flaps before landing" animation, just one that we can trigger while on the ground. Imagine how annoyed birds sit there and flap their wings a few times.

--/em wingpoint -- some kind of "pointing at you" with the arm AND wing pointing

--/em wingthreaten -- I can visualize in my head but hard to desribe, but it would be like /em angry only incorporate the wings

Just seems to me there are alot of emotes that would be fun to have a "winged" variant...right now the wings are kinda passive outside flying and jumping. Not complaining, the wings and all their various animations are VERY cool. I still marvel at them all these years later.

Still, wolves, cats, and bulls got their Monstrous Fur and Animal Fur, and a number of tails and animated tails. The avians seems to have gotten only half, or even less than half, their due.

So were there any plans to finish the bird costume pieces? We got a couple of heads, thanks. A few beaks, nice. We already had wings, thanks. Talons, check. But...

...feathered tails?
...feathered chest?
...feathered pants? (bonus points if they blend with the talon Monstrous legs)
...feathered arms?
...some kind of talony-glove that blended with the feathered arm?

Also "nice to have" (but not strictly necessary, though would bring birds up to par with cats):

...bird texture patterns (i.e. like the Cheetah and Jaguar spot patterms, only pick a few bird patterns). For the record I could argue wolves and bovines need their own texture patterns too.
...wing color variants: instead of strictly the "edge color" and "trailing" color we have now, add a couple other variants from the bird world

Also nice, wing emotes:

--/em wingdisplay -- wings open out straight and up at 45° angle and hold

--/em wingspread -- similar to wingdisplay only out at a 90° angle (wing edge parallel to ground)

--/em wingflap -- some variant of the "few flaps before landing" animation, just one that we can trigger while on the ground. Imagine how annoyed birds sit there and flap their wings a few times.

--/em wingpoint -- some kind of "pointing at you" with the arm AND wing pointing

--/em wingthreaten -- I can visualize in my head but hard to desribe, but it would be like /em angry only incorporate the wings

Just seems to me there are alot of emotes that would be fun to have a "winged" variant...right now the wings are kinda passive outside flying and jumping. Not complaining, the wings and all their various animations are VERY cool. I still marvel at them all these years later.

Still, wolves, cats, and bulls got their Monstrous Fur and Animal Fur, and a number of tails and animated tails. The avians seems to have gotten only half, or even less than half, their due.

Suddenly the phrase "biting off more than I can chew" comes to mind. ;-p

I don't know hardly any VB. I know programming, just not VB specifically, and "figuring out" the HeroStats API-ish thing without help is a bit more daunting than I figured.

I think I'll try this first with a simple timer. For now, the powers I was going to try this with are things like Inner Inspiration, Mission Teleporter, Base Teleporter, etc. that have fixed recharge times. Don't know if any of these are affected by recharge bonuses, but even if they are at least a fixed timer is a "normal case scenario." Lets me get my feet wet.

For anyone curious about the general LED control on the XK-24:

http://www.piengineering.com/tutorials/backlighting.php

I've enjoyed using X-Keys panels on my Mac for work (the discontinued Button Panel, X-Keys Desktop, and X-Keys Foot Pedal) and I've been using an X-Keys Desktop and Foot Pedals along with my Zboard Keyboard for years for playing CoH. I highly recommend X-Keys products for folks who need more keys and want to tinker.

Blerg. My VB-fu is rather weak, but P.I. Engineering has a basic tutorial for the VB involved with the LED tinkering, and I figured I could muddle my way through the rest with some trouble. But reading the network is likely beyond the scope of this "tinkering" project. ;-p

I seem to recall HeroStats has the ability to do a form of "verbose" logging, so I wonder if just keeping an eye on the log might work? Of course, that might be a bit resource intensive polling the log constantly, eh?

Does anyone know what mechanism HeroStats uses to get game information on status of powers, rehcarge, etc.?

I'm buying a pair of X-Keys XK-24s for use with CoH and they have a red and blue backlight for each key which are programmable via VB. A friend got me thinking: what if I could bind certain powers to these keys and have the backlight turn red on activation and back to blue once rehcarged?

Then I could offload things like Inner Inspiration and other long-recharge powers onto these keys, and also not need to have trays out for visual indicators.

The obvious way is to figure out how HeroStats gets its info and use that same method, or somehow use HeroStats itself as the conduit to get the information (via log sniffing or something).

Anyone have any ideas?

Is there a method for getting a high-resolution (i.e., "render") of a character? On a flat, neutral background would be ideal (white, grey, light color but not "in world").

For example, some way to use the demo generator with settings cranked up to max?

If so, can someone post a step-by-step for someone who has never used such a feature?

I wanted to do a line-up of all my alts (50+). Figured I'd render them one by one, big as I can, and then composite in Photoshop. Final output is a printout (banner).

Launcher "works" but after selecting "Play" it brings-up a "Just-In-Time Debugger" that has to be dismissed twice before it launches City of Heroes.

After that, all seems well.

What bothers me is that...well...outside of hacked-together Access scripting, I've never seen a user dropped into a debugger. I mean seriously, a good programmer should have trapped for that.

This on XP/SP3, and just checked, have all the latest patches.

I wanted to get some screenies of my various heroes/villains, wondering what the best way was?

Ideally I want just a white or neutral background. Any good locations in the zones to take simple screenies?

I vaguely recall there was a way to make movies outside the game, and wondered if there was a way to get my hero/villain's character model into that system for a more staged photo?

Fairly high-res, full-length, close-up, and well-rendered would be a plus.

Thanks in advance!

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The only thing I can say is the mobs must be doing an aggro check of every player in range and the AI is splitting the aggro among the whole team so one player is not the main focus of the whole spawns aggression.

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That's correct. It has been this way since release, I believe -- I remember being aggro'd while running Invisibility back in beta. In a nutshell, the entire team is put on the awareness/aggro list, not just the person who initiated the combat. It's not quite that simple, since there are a number of extenuating circumstances that can happen, but in general it is correct.

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...and is generally why Stalkers are nothing but under-powered Scrappers for the larger chunk of the game if they team. Since if you Assassin Strike before the team aggro's, you're dead from the alpha, and unless you play run-n-hide, you'll never get an Assassin Strike off otherwise (and according to the above, that isn't even guaranteed). Well or you can just sit on the bench until Retsu or Elude or similar power is ready.

If I had some infamy for every time I was broken out of Hide for "no reason" (before understanding Team Aggro as explained in this thread) I'd be set for life.

Guess this means /Dark is a lost cause and everyone needs to switch to Claws Stalkers. ;P

Me, dismayed, confused? Naaah.

I sent Lighthouse a PM a few days ago, nothing yet.

I too wish they had a sticky with a realistic system requirements list and expected FPS from that system so we could settle things in an objective way. I know what's on the box is a joke, at least in my experience.

ADDITIONAL FEEDBACK:

I've been playing Villains a bunch over the last week, and can now provide some feedback based on the Intel Core 2 Duo and TripleHead2Go system specs from earlier in this thread.

I am getting respectable frame rates now, nothing like sheer brute force. But villain-side the performance is extremely variable, not as "steady" as hero-side.

CHANGES:

--I've actually upped the World and Character details to maximum, it helps when using /camdist 120 on a widescreen. Also clears-up some "skirt anomalies" where from a distance the female skirt looks like a wierd loincloth (the sides disappear but the v-shaped front and back stay...very odd looking).

--Forced the SLI to "AFP 2" per some forum recommendations. It seemed to make a small 5-10fps difference over "nVidia default" when using the TripleHead2Go. My current running theory is that as others have pointed out SLI isn't really supported but at ultra-resolution needs (like my effective 3840x1024) the tiny gains in performance are more noticeable.

VILLAIN PERFORMANCE:

--Outdoors I generally am getting about 40 fps, but often dips for no apparent reason into the 20-30fps range. Grandville is all over the map, from 14fps to 42fps. Flight is fairly fluid, but using Teleport is still problematic due to the brief moments of framerate drop when appearing from Teleport. This zone just needs help. ;P

--Most mission maps I can sustain 30-40fps.

--Worst case scenario...Arachnos map, full team of Lvl 50s, corrupter-heavy (lots of AoEs and special effects), set for high difficulty (huge spawns) and tanking (so my screens are just packed with effects), I can sustain 14fps, and even maintain 20-30fps, but it can still dip into 5fps for a brief time. in other words, for the most part, *playable* again.


OTHER NOTES:

--FPS rates villain-side are alot more jumpy and variable than hero-side. What can be best described as "lag spikes" where I get 5-10 seconds of ultra-low framerates are common, especially outdoors. I would write this off as map complexity except that it is the responsibility of the developers to ensure fluid transitions, or to simplify the maps enough to make them more fluid. Grandville is the ultimate PvE example of this, with any Arachnos Base a close second.

--Villain-side still induces "memory leak" symptoms more than hero-side. Even with 1 GB of RAM, after 60-90 minutes of playing any villain I need to quit and relaunch the game because framerates take a huge hit. This usually happens after exiting a mission. Hero-side I can go 3-4 hours without needing to relaunch the game. /reloadgfx has no effect on the problem.

--I pretty much run with "/showfps 1" on all the time, since it gives me an objective "here is the baseline, here is what it's dropping to" metric.

--Villains is still, overall, good for a 30-50% framerate drop over Heroes on average. Standing perfectly still Heroes caps at 60fps (due to refresh rate limitations of the TH2G) and Villains never sees more than 51fps. Once you actually do anything useful, the gap widens rapidly.

Hey Lighthouse, we haven't heard anything despite a few of us giving hard numbers and loads of specific examples. Can you give us an update, maybe some "we think we have a few ideas" kinda stuff? ETAs, even vague ones? You know, you're usual reassurance that the voices-on-high are keyed-in to the problem and acknowledge it as such?

Thanks!

[EDIT: Short PM sent to Lighthouse to see if he can give even some very basic feedback.]

I've never played with BAT files before, but when a double-click the .bat file it simple opens it in a text editor, it doesn't "run" it in any fashion. Tried using the "Run" dialog, same deal.

What am I missing?

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I've been experiencing bad lag issues since I8. Frame rates are erratic, ranging from 30 to 1.5. Solo missions run ok, with frame rates from 8 to 15 on average. Team play gets pretty choppy. I've dropped my graphics settings down to medium and low on most settings. I'm running an nVidia geForce 6200 256MB graphics card on AMD Athlon XP 2700+ processor with 1.0 GB of RAM. I'd noticed some lag in large teams before I8, but things have gotten ridiculous since.

I hope this helps.

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I just got off of a system close to yours. I've never been above 20fps since I6 hit. I'm afraid that what is listed as the minimum system requirements for CoV and CoH are a bad joke in poor taste.

The only way around the problem so far, near as I can tell, is brute force. This game is now only truly enjoyable by powergamers with deep wallets. Even then, I know few people even with the latest, most expensive, high-end gear who can play with all the game settings at maximum and on.

Advice:

RAM: 1 GB minimum. This helps load times and delays when memory leak bugs take hold. 512 is barely tolerable.

PROCESSOR: Sad to say, but I think if it isn't dual-core of some sort, it isn't going to cut it. This game seems really bad about taking advantage of things like SLI or off-loading to PhysX cards, so it needs a robust processor.

VIDEO: SLI has some marginal effect, but if you only play this game, you'll need a single 7x00 card minimum.

FSAA: I was told to use 4x and higher by alot of people, but using 2x I coulnd't tell the difference and got quite a few FPS increase.


I feel for ya, my AMD 3000+, 1 GB RAM, nVidia 6600 system was decent in I5, but became impossible to play in Villains with I6, and nearly intolerable on Heroes with I8. As I suspected would happen, whatever eats FPS Villain-side got moved to Heroes with I8. The memory leak bug (or bugs causing the same outward symptom) was again, like with every issue, re-released.

On my AMD system (which in reality was just a small step above yours), I couldn't push beyond 20fps outdoors and 5fps indoors, and as low as 1fps on a full team in combat.

Now with an Intel Core 2 Duo E6600, 1 GB Corsair Twin RAM, and two 7950 GT KO (SLI with AFP...small improvement) I can run 50+ fps outdoors Hero side, 30+ fps outdoors Villain side, 20 fps in combat Hero side, and 14 fps in combat Villain side--all at a jaw-dropping 3840x1024. (Ironically, going to 1280 x 1024 only gains about 10-15fps outdoors, 5fps in combat in most circumstances...I think what little SLI gets used helps at the HUGE resolutions). Graphics settings are medium-to-high.

I've found the best combat experiences are 20+ FPS, though as low as 15 is tolerable. Outdoors, 30+ FPS is a good target to enjoy all the eye candy and have a fluid experience, with 20 FPS being tolerable and not game-breaking.

This really should be a wake-up call to the devs. Their core users since the early days were people with average or lower-end systems (and non-PvPers...best left to another thread) and they've been drifting away from providing a good gaming experience for those people.

We all realize that needing uber-systems is the norm for online first-person shooters and non-MMORPG, and that's fine. But many of the people who make the "community" of this game are fine, decent people, good players with good tactics, and AVERAGE systems...not gaming-specific, highly specialized systems.

Please devs, consider re-examining the core code. Delay I9 for a while and take some much needed time-out to work on the basic underpinnings of the game.

Blah...rant-mode today. Guess I'm just annoyed that I just dropped $2000 on a system that at the current rate of decline, will be unplayable (for this game) by this time next year. The $2000 worked, solved the lag, but is not sustainable year-over-year, and not justifiable relative to the rest of the gaming world.