CuppaManga

Issue 18 Mac Comprehensive (hopefully) Known Issues

NOTE: The results of this list were generated using a very small sample size, so your results may vary. It may not cover issues that are occurring for certain individuals. If you continue to have problems, make sure to send a request to Support at help.ncsoft.com.

- If you use a City of Heroes build older than 4462 (check your version by clicking the City of Heroes application ONCE and selecting Get Info from the File menu), you’re strongly encouraged to download the new one from your NCSoft Account page or the FTP site. Version 4462 fixes many types of crashes while editing bases, ineffectiveness of Vertical Sync, and a rare crash entering RWZ base from another zone. I now consider this a critical update; I’d like to convince the CoH devs to push 4462 via the Patch Server so all Mac clients are updated.

- 4462 uses more CPU than older versions, but the motion within the game is smoother.

- If you’re using Mac OS X 10.6.x make sure to update to all the latest graphics updates - Apple has been drastically improving the performance of Mac graphics, and this affects CoH positively.

- There is a rare legacy issue which may cause video settings to become corrupted, causing game crashes or preventing the game from starting. The Mac client does not detect the erroneous cached settings; You must toss out your game preferences (Users > [yourname] > Library > Preferences > City of Heroes Preferences) to resume normal play. This is known as a “legacy issue” because it’s caused by an older version of the client, but inherited by the new one. The signature methods of crashing are Assertion Failure or sudden mass corruption of on-screen graphics and a crash.

- Build 4462 uses much more CPU than previous builds, which results in smoother gaming but more lag in background applications.

- Using Geometry Buffers on the Mac client causes severe lag on certain maps such as SG bases, RWZ base, Arachnos maps, and Pocket D.

- Using FSAA at any setting causes unusually high CPU use, resulting in typing lag both in-game and outside in other applications.

- During SG base editing, icons for base items appear corrupted. This appears to be caused by a image scaling issue occurring on the Mac client - possibly reversed sizing values.

- During SG base editing, your character turns semi-transparent; on the Mac client, this causes rogue reflection and transparency effects to appear across your character’s body.

- Cursors are RGB-reversed (issue duplicated by mixing colors in Photoshop RGB color picker).

- Mini-avatars in Mission Architect editor do not animate, and corrupt if you rotate them. This seems to have to do with a problem deciding which size of bitmap to use (the corrupted ones look like NPC’s rendered at a long distance away).

- The version number in the Patcher window is too long, and runs into the Time Remaining.

- The Training Room client on the FTP site is woefully out of date, and may unwittingly contribute to the legacy video settings corruption issue above.


More as I find them...

Due to the number of issues in pre-4462 CoH builds I'll ask anyone who's having problems and did not already download the Going Rogue installer from your NCSoft Account page or the FTP site (ftp://client.coh.com/) to do so now.

If you have a black screen starting up the new client, throw out the preferences (Users > [yourname] > Library > Preferences > City of Heroes Preferences).

Follow the instructions in my guide (in the signature) to locate game files if you wish to save your screenshots, Mission Architect files, and Demorecords.

Soon I'll post a comprehensive list of I18 Mac client issues and that should clear up some of the mystery behind what I discovered so far.

Did you see the instructions in this post?

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...0&postcount=28

Make sure the game is using the native resolution for the display. Check the Displays panel in System Settings to see the current resolution, and then pick a matching one in-game.

Follow the instructions here:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=234445

Did you download CoH originally from Steam before or after Going Rogue went live?

Use Spotlight to find it - type "City of Heroes" in Spotlight and then click Show All (you don't want to click the application icon, it'll launch CoH without telling you where it is). Then use the Get Info command.

Which CoH version do you have? To find out, click the application icon once and select Get Info from the Finder's File menu.

I'm currently researching crash-related issues with the Mac client. Please read and reply to this thread:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=234320

Also send a Support request via help.ncsoft.com so they can track the issue as well.

Geometry Buffers sacrifices more VRAM usage for faster rendering speed. With current video cards it makes little of any actual difference.

My guess is with the current VRAM allocation issues the Mac client has (which is why it crashes sooner or later) and the extra the Geometry Buffers uses up just makes it worse.

Does the icon corruption/crashing occur on the ATI Mac as well?

I asked about the base size because there was an old base editor crash that had to do with the number of items in the base. It was supposed to have been fixed though.

I am kind of curious to see if anyone with ATI video sees the same corruption in the base editor.

It's always had a crashing "time limit" even with measures to extend that limit for me. I've been able to extend it usually by several hours.

Then again we might be talking about different crash issues. If so, they sound really similar.

Do you have a very large base with lots of items in it?

Yes, that's the memory leak. Unfortunately there's nothing to roll back to, it's been there since the first one.

Sometimes it does that when the Training Room is down for maintenance. Give it a few hours and try again.

Try turning off Geometry Buffers in the graphics settings, it'll improve things quite a bit. If you're on a mission map for a while, try using /reloadgfx when things feel laggy or when you take an elevator to another section.

Yes, Geometry Buffers is in the graphics options.

I haven't seen version 3070 yet, but you seem to be using the EU client. See if this one works better for you:

ftp://client.coh.com/EU/MAC_CoH_Installer_EU.dmg

It'll take a while to download but not very long to patch.

Try turning off Geometry Buffers before editing the base, that might help. Failing that, I'd have to do some more testing.

What version number of the CoH application are you running? (You can get that by clicking the application once and selecting File > Get Info from the Finder)

Additionally, Nunix, did you try throwing out the preferences (Users > yourname > Library > Preferences > City of Heroes Preferences) yet?

If you're upgrading from an older version the cache in the preferences might still be corrupted (bad feature set).

Please supply the CoH version number if you can. The instructions for obtaining it is here:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...1&postcount=20

I'm currently researching general crashing issues here:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=234320

I'm currently researching a similar issue here:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=234320

That's caused by a laggy network connection or one with very little bandwidth.

I think I may have a very substantial clue on this issue, but I'm going to need some extra data first.

Everyone who reads this, click the City of Heroes application ONCE and then select Get Info from the File menu in the Finder - or use Cmd-I.

Tell me which version number of CoH you have, which Mac model/processor/graphics you have, and whether or not you have the crashing issue.

As I've tested so far on my Macbook Pro/Core i7/nvidia 330M (15 min running from RWZ to base to Pocket D & through a mission map):

1.0.3069 - No crashing
1.0.4462 - No crashing