CuppaManga

I haven't seen that one before. Contact Support and see if they have any information on it.

If it's an ISP issue and you have too much difficulty trying to download that much stuff, order this instead:

http://www.amazon.com/City-Heroes-Ar.../dp/B001TEPX8A

It will contain ALL the most recent Issue 14 data files for both Mac and PC, so any patch that downloads will be small.

P.S. Hopefully Support will refund the cost of the first purchase if you order the Amazon one. If not, it's no big deal - you'll have two Expansion Pack codes and two months free play time.

Send a Support request, they may have a more detailed set of troubleshooting.

The Good, Bad, and Ugly:

- Good: CoH is an OpenGL game. This makes translation via Cider easier so it runs on Mac much more smoothly than most translated games, because it does not have to go through a DirectX translation layer.

- Bad: Because CoH is an OpenGL game, it has problems in Windows. That means the developers had to rely on creative hacks to make it work right in Windows. But that, in turn, makes it harder for CoH to translate to Mac via Cider.

- Ugly: At least one of those hacks is to get around Windows awful memory management. The hack does not play well with Cider, which is why we have occasional crashes until it's fixed.

All of the above also applies to any possible native Mac build as well. OpenGL would make it easier, but the CoH devs would have to figure out how to re-code all the hacks and everything involving memory management, because those wouldn't work. Cider at least creates a buffer for that so it mostly works.

The devs currently have their hands full just working on the next few issues worth of content. Transgaming is almost like outsourcing, because otherwise they wouldn't have the staff to be able to handle it.

Make sure the resolution you set the game to is a native resolution of the monitor (i.e. not scaled). You can check this by going to System Preferences > Displays and making sure your setting is on that list.

You can reset the setting without having to fight with the cursor by clicking "Next" as soon as the Updater comes up, but then check "Safe Mode" before you click "Agree".

Or just duplicate the CoH application and then you can open it (and even patch it) twice at the same time.

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Sometimes when I play for too long on my macbook, my cursor disappears. It still "works" but it's invisible, which makes clicking on windows and toggles a major pain. I usually have to restart to get the cursor to reappear. Anyone else have this problem?

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I haven't seen that problem before, but you might be able to work around it by using Cmd-Return to switch to windowed mode and then back.

Check if you have any 3rd party mouse software installed that might be messing with your cursor.

Hang in there everyone, we appear to be closing in on the cause. I hope.

There's an ongoing troubleshooting discussion in this thread, so don't lose hope.

More questions:

1. Are all of you having this looping download issue using MacOS X 10.4? Any of you using 10.5?

2. Did all of you try rebooting AFTER throwing out the City of Heroes preferences as shown above, but before running CoH? (that does a better job clearing the DNS cache than any command)

3. Did all of you who re-downloaded the Training Room client check the permissions after installing and verify you can create files? (Show Contents, go to Contents > Resources > transgaming > drive_c > coh > cider and try creating a new folder)

4. Do any of you have a section of Console Log (Applications > Utilities > Console) to show what happens IMMEDIATELY after the COHD file is downloaded?

5. Anyone who's brave using 10.4 willing to try to use the command line to decompress the COHD file manually with "tar" and see if it produces an error?

I'm going to try to confirm something with the devs...it seems some people's CoH updaters are still either getting ahold of the bad Patch Server somehow, or there's more than one, or there are multiple issues at work.

For 10.4 it's:

lookupd -flushcache

All I did to find both commands is google "reset dns cache mac".

Everyone who's having the above problems, do this:

Go to (your user name) > Library > Preferences

Drag any folder that starts with "City of Heroes" into the trash (actually if you have one that says Test Server or Training Room, throw that out - the plain "City of Heroes" one is your Live client's).

EDIT: Then launch Terminal from Applications > Utilities and type this:

dscacheutil -flushcache


Empty the trash, and then launch the Updater.


You may have to reset your display preferences in your CoH clients.

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The issue is still totally unresolved. At the suggestion of tech support, I have even gone so far as to completely delete the test server installation from my mac and attempt to re-download it from scratch. Every time, the very first thing the updater tries to download is that busted "cider-COHD-Updater-002591.tgz" file, even before it starts downloading *any* of the game files such as piggs. And, of course, as soon as it tries to download the busted file, it goes right back into that endless loop. Getting really annoying...

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Are you logged in with an Administrator account or a Limited one?

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CuppaManga, is there any chance you could post any details about what you're thinking the cause may be? My version is still refusing to patch properly, even after completely deleting my test installation and trying to reinstall from scratch. I would love any help in figuring out how too get this dumb computer to cooperate.

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It's pretty much what Avatea said. Actually I observed that either the Patch Server was sending incomplete files, or the Updater wasn't writing them properly. Thankfully it was the former, since they could fix the problem by pulling the bad Patch Server from the rotation.

You may have to run the Updater a *couple* of times, it turns out, to force it to patch correctly, but it should work.

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CuppaManga, can you send that to Avatea please. She's looking for more info on this issue.

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Already sent really late last night (not to Avatea though, to another dev).

As Avatea noted in a separate thread, the problem should start to resolve soon. If your Mac client was damaged by the faulty patch server, you may have to wait for some files to re-patch before it works.

Hang in there, I've actually managed to duplicate either this issue or a similar one last night, and I documented what I think the cause may be.

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/usr/bin/tar: Read 7653 bytes from /Applications/City of Heroes Test.app/Contents
# /Resources/transgaming/c_drive/coh/cider/cider-COHD-Updater-002591.tgz


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There's your problem. The COHD file I have is 12,674,533 bytes, not 7653. Something is interrupting your download before it's finished, and the Patcher doesn't really know how to properly handle unfinished download files.

Send a support request and point out this thread, they may have separate troubleshooting steps for downloads not finishing.

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CuppaManga, what exactly is clicking on tgApplyPatch supposed to do? What is that?

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It finds the COHD file that downloaded and attempts to install it. Or if something is wrong it'll display an error.

1. What happens if you right-click City Of Heroes test client, select Show Contents, and then navigate to Contents > Resources, and double click tgApplyPatch?

2. Open Console (Utilities > Console) and wait for the patch to download. Note if there are any error messages just before the client launches and begins downloading again.

That's a great idea, except that, no offense, it doesn't make sense to dedicate those kind of resources to something less than a dozen people will use.

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I am anxious for a Mac fix, but I haven't read anywhere that the Mac client has been improved except this last patch fixed a rare memory leak. If that is supposed to fix some of these issues I will eagerly try the Mac client on test.

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Only one way to find out. We can use as much feedback as possible on the new client on the Training Room.

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The lag is particularly bad in the Vanguard base in the RWZ. My Mac client ends up looking like a slide show where the Windows client under Boot Camp on the same machine has no lag in that area with higher settings. Losing performance under Boot Camp using the Windows client shouldn't be your concern.

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I guess your mileage may vary, but I believe the Mac client has performance that's good enough for me not to deal with the hassle of Boot Camp. Boot Camp was taking up a lot of maintenance time (as Windows tends to), plus the Windows CoH client wasn't really stable around the "bleeding edge" video drivers laptops (Macbook Pro, late 2008) usually get.

On my Vista based gaming PC, I have issues there too with occasional crashing, lots of lag, and "pauses" every 15 seconds. Vista has been such a pain, I've been threatening to use the Mac for CoH full time.

The difference, I believe, is that the Windows client problems are a mystery, while the Mac client's problems are well known and on the list to be fixed eventually. It might even be possible for them to be fixed before the PC issues.

BTW, you can reduce the RWZ/SG Base/Pocket D lag by turning on Advanced Settings and sliding World detail to 100% or less. I have mine set to 100%, and after a few seconds in a large SG base the lag subsides and it behaves almost normally.

Test server only until I15 goes live.

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I was wondering, since one can duplicate the City of Heroes package file and run two instances of the game, why can't I set resolution sizes independently for each instance?

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You can! But you have to edit one of the applications' info.plist files.

I recommend you install Apple's Xcode developer tools to do this, as it makes it easier to edit .plist files.

Use Show Package Contents on the application, then open Contents. The info.plist there is the one you want to edit.

The tag you want is called PrefsFolderName, and is usually set to "City Of Heroes". Change that on your 2nd client, and then launch it - voila, two separate application settings!

Try the new Mac build on the Training Room and see if that improves things for you.