CuppaManga

Theoretically if you put NC Launcher and the City of Heroes application in a folder, and then make a duplicate of that folder, you'll be capable of two instances. This has not been tested, however.

It's also possible you may have to rename the second NC Launcher application, and the City of Heroes application, and then point the new NC Launcher to the new City of Heroes application. That hasn't been tested either.

Turn off Full Screen Anti-Aliasing (FSAA) and Geometry Buffers in the Graphics and Audio settings. Those are the most common suspects for that sort of thing.

Otherwise, the freezes during download/install may mean you have some sort of software conflict going on, or even bad RAM. Try creating a new user and launching CoH with that - if it works more smoothly, you have a software conflict. Bad RAM is the conclusion if it makes no difference.

Check my Mac guide in my signature, I have a section on playback of demorecords. I hope it works - I haven't upgraded the Guide in a while, so playing back demorecords hasn't been re-tested.

It has something to do with the ATI video driver (it's really cranky with a HD 6850). Whenever I install a new one the desktop arrangement resets. Often Windows updates do the same thing.

I don't even make a big deal of it anymore, I just shrug and deal with it.

It's not so much the initial power tray erasure that's annoying - I can fix that one character at a time, and probably will have to even after the bug is fixed. But the trays disappear again after zoning quite often, especially in and out of instances. That kind of makes those characters unplayable at the moment.

And no, I will NOT manually bind each and every power to a key manually as a workaround.

Also, I am a VIP according to the in-game stuff, and at the top of the board it says I'm VIP, but my gold name went missing.

I got this problem bad - not only do I have several chars with empty power trays, but if I re-fill them they vanish while zoning again! Lots of unplayable and broken characters...

I did however realize two things that seem to cause it: 1) The character has been created after Freedom went live; and 2) The character's power tray had empty slots in it somewhere.

EDIT: ...and apparently the forums think I'm a free player, not a VIP. Wth?

Addressing as much as I can quickly:

Low fps in crowds: Check your Energy Saver settings (in System Preferences) and make sure the check-box at the top that says something like "Use high-performance graphics" is checked. If it says "Automatic Graphics Switching" instead you don't have to worry about it. After you change this option you'll have to reboot so it sticks permanently - just logging out like it says will re-set the option at next reboot. Also make sure Geometry Buffers in-game is turned off.

Running out of memory: More RAM will help, but not because of the Mac memory allocation scheme. It's because Cider does not free memory properly - it just keeps taking more and more. Having more RAM is basically slapping a band-aid on this problem by giving it more expansion room before it runs out of memory and crashes.

Why some crash a lot: I still don't know why some Mac users crash and others don't in identical circumstances. There is one user of this forum who has exactly the same Mac I do configured the same way I do and can't even play for 10 minutes, yet I can play for hours without interruption. I did not do anything in particular to create that difference, or my ability to play longer between crashes. Cider has such a quantity and complexity of settings, even I still don't know where they all are or what they all do. Sometimes I think even Transgaming doesn't really knows how it works.

Why do I write the guide and try to help out? I knew from the first beta that Cider is not the ideal solution, but because I don't work for Paragon or NCSoft I don't really have a say in it. And it wouldn't matter if I did now (I don't), because the money is already spent. But I do want a working Mac client for CoH, so I do what I can to make sure it works; and then share my experiences via the Mac Guide.

I've had that same issue on my PC off and on, so it's apparently not uniquely a Mac problem. Next time I'm running CoH on the Mac I'll find some NPC's and see if they have speech balloons.

I agree with the spirit of the topic, everyone, but if we're not careful, the tone of the discussion is going to lead to this thread being locked. That would be a tragedy, since it is a valid and important topic.

Also, Blame Marketing.

Uninstall and re-install the beta and see if that fixes it.

Every release is losing more and more Leopard (10.5) compatibility. You're probably going to have to upgrade to Snow Leopard (10.6) or Lion (10.7) soon.

Which model are you using? 2010? 2011? And Macbook or Macbook Pro?

After seeeing your concept art, I'm surprised at how much detail or them was preserved in world objects; and equally surprised at how much detail was lost creating the in-game characters.

I noticed for instance that the size difference between the male and female concept characters was not so vastly different as they are in the game. While that doesn't seem like much of a point, it is when you get to Noble Savage. Making Maurader the largest possible size really took away from the impact of Noble Savage's "I'm a lab experiment" look. And don't get me started on Mother Mayhem.

P.S. Yes, I know there are limitations in a 5-year old game engine. It would still have been nice to see the concepts more true to form.

I believe you can now purchase a USB stick with Lion on it now but I don't know if you need to have 10.6 to use that.

The Paragon Market is going to give you huge problems with 10.5.8. You should upgrade to at least Snow Leopard (10.6) if you can.

It works pretty well with Snow Leopard and Lion - you can purchase stuff, but hanging around the Paragon Market for a long time will crash you once in a while.

You should definitely be able to update to Snow Leopard (10.6) at least, and possibly Lion depending on your Macbook Pro's age.

As for the hash failure, occasionally there's a bad patch download, I'm not sure why. It even happens to me sometimes. I usually download the patch again, and it works. The only way you can cause a hash failure is if you're running out of disk space (so you can check that, on the off chance that it's possible).

If you're getting repeated hash failures, you may need to try to Repair, or if it gets really bad, uninstall and re-install CoH.

The base editor fix was one or two patches ago, snuck in silently by the devs.

The online Apple Store often has steeply discounted previous-model refurbished 15" Macbook Pros, especially now after a new model was just introduced.