CuppaManga

There were two different kinds of bugs - the one you describe seems to be the "mouse reset" bug where you're pointing a certain direction and the mouse resets with slight movement, abruptly changing the camera direction. This one seemed to be occurring both on the Mac and PC versions, though more commonly on the Mac version.

That other mouse bug with the Intel GMA is the "mouseover" bug, where hovering over an object or contact causes the cursor to jump out of the way suddenly, making it difficult to select or target things. This one only occurs on Intel GMA 3100 and 950 video Macs.

Can CoH connect from either of the Macbooks?

Ok next try this: Open Terminal (in Applications > Utilities > Terminal) and type this:

sudo dscacheutil -flushcache

You'll need your administrator password for that. It will flush the DNS cache and reset it, in case the name server lookups are failing. It's not harmful, so it doesn't hurt to try it.

At this point, if the troubleshooting hasn't worked yet, send a support request to NC Support (help.ncsoft.com or support@ncsoft.com). They might have something I missed and more heads working on this the better (especially when mine is sick with the flu).

First, just as a precaution, open Safari and pull down the Safari (application) menu. Select Empty Cache.

Then restart the computer. Sometimes the "wineserver" process launches and gets stuck, and it will prevent CoH from launching as long as it's still there.

(you can also run Applications > Utilities > Activity Monitor and quit it from there, but restarting is easier to explain)

If neither of those work, we have to troubleshoot your network connection and see if you have your firewall turned on possibly set in a way to interfere with CoH (are you using a 3rd party firewall?).

The funny thing about being a CoH for Mac user is that the game developers are Windows based. Us Mac users, in some cases, might know more about our Macs than they do.

What that means is, we have to think preventatively. When you see a new build of the Mac client on the Training Room, test the hell out of it. Send bug reports when you see bugs, don't depend on someone else reporting it. Pretend that you're *always* beta-testing the Mac client, and every bit of information you can provide, any help you can lend, may be useful.

I know it's not our "job", but while the Windows user base is like the population of a small city, the Mac user base is more like a small town. We all have to work together to make it work. And the more we work at it, the more the devs understand how it works - we're making them experts!

This Mac client was on the Training Room for at least 6 weeks before it went live. During that time, I found one critical bug that would have caused huge problems, and as a result the release was held back to a few weeks after the I16 release.

I'm using an nVidia 9400/9600, and I mistakenly assumed that someone was out there on the training room with an Intel GMA 950 and/or 3100 testing it as well. I watched the I16 beta forums daily, if I would have seen a post about a mouse click bug like that I would have done my best to make sure the release was held back again until it was fixed.

Unfortunately, it didn't work out that way. The Mac client was released because all of us involved (testers, devs, etc) were convinced that the most critical bugs were fixed and the rest were annoyances that could be patched later.

When the new fixed version hits the training room it would be great if some of the people posting to the forums with the mouse bug problem would test it out and make sure it works before it goes live, so we don't have a mess like this again.

It might be possible *if* the game (or Cider) is capable of converting characters to Unicode. Unicode is a common method of encoding characters so they look identical on all platforms. Without it, typing Option-G to get the copyright symbol on your Mac would show up as something entirely different and weird on Windows.

If you type your special characters in TextEdit and then paste into CoH, the clipboard is already converted to Unicode before you paste, so those characters do show up identically.

I think there's some confusion here: Not supported doesn't mean it won't work, or that the current mouse bug was created by the lack of support, or that it won't be fixed specifically for GMA 950 Macs.

Unsupported doesn't mean you *can't* play with a GMA 950, or that NC Support will refuse to help you with anything as long as you have one. It only means if you send a petition for a graphics related bug, you'll get a canned response that the Intel GMA 950 isn't supported. Any other bug (connection issues, etc) will most likely be resolved like normal.

In my own research so far, the mouse bug exists identically for all Intel GMA based Macs. That implies when it's fixed for the supported 3100, it'll very likely be fixed for the unsupported 950. Where the "unsupported" part comes in is the devs and QA aren't going to test it on a 950 - that's up to people with GMA 950's to try out the new client when it arrives and make sure it works (I have one I can borrow to try it out).

So the important thing to remember is that the devs will probably fix the Intel GMA 950 bug while they're fixing the GMA 3100 one. They won't say they *will*, because they're unable to definitively test it in QA before the new client hits the training room. At this point it's way too early to worry about it.

The "unsupported" part about the Intel GMA 950 has always been around since its first release. I and a few others helped people get it to work on the 950 anyway, and admittedly that may have been a mistake, because now expectations for it are a little too high and the devs are pulling their hair out over it now. Always remember, if you're running CoH on an Intel GMA 950, you're kind of bending the rules a bit, and occasionally you can expect trouble.

Drag cohupdater.exe from Program Files (x86)/City Of Heroes to the desktop and double-click it.

I can't say for sure yet (until I see the fix, that is) but there's a good chance the mouse bug fix for the Intel GMA 3100 may work for the unsupported 950 as well.

What it won't fix is the reason the 950 isn't supported: Broken glass textures, lighting and shading that doesn't work, and possible crashes because some of the textures simply won't fit in the limited video memory.

If you haven't already, use /bug in-game or file a support request so the devs and QA know how widespread the mouse issue with Intel GMA based Macs is.

Forum posts might take days for them to track down, but /bug reports and support requests go directly to the devs and QA. It's the fastest way to get noticed.

During Training Room testing, I found a critical bug (not related to the mouse bug) that held back its publish - it was supposed to go live with I16, but was delayed.

I use an nVidia 9600 based Mac for testing, and I believe there was someone with an ATI based iMac. Sadly, I have no Intel GMA 3100, and I'd have to borrow a GMA 950 to test that.

It's unfortunate that there weren't any GMA 950/3100 testers to spot the mouse bug on the Training Room while it tested there for several weeks. If a bug like that would have been noted, I'm sure it would have held back the release until it was fixed. I'm hoping next round of testing we can get some Intel GMA players on the Training Room before release.

Throw cohupdater.exe on the desktop and run it. That will fix any possible permissions issue.

/reloadgfx and /unloadgfx purge textures from dedicated video RAM, or shared memory if your video card uses it. It doesn't affect system RAM unless your video card uses shared memory.

It affects system performance by reloading the textures into video RAM *and* the system swap file, only with less fragmentation than the textures that were there before, making for "cleaner" system memory allocations than before.

Quick iPhone reply:

The devs do care - but this problem may be more complicated than it looks. Could be a Cider issue, or a game client issue, or a driver issue, or worst case, all 3. They'll get it fixed when they can.

There's an issue with the current Mac client and Intel GMA 3100/950 video. The devs are aware of it.