CuppaManga

Yes, but you'll also have to reset the preferences for NC Launcher. Use the Go > Go To Folder command in the Finder and type ~/Library/Preferences, and then throw out the one I believe is called com.ncsoft.nclauncher.plist.

There are two possible answers for what you describe:

1. The patch server on Live has been occasionally sending bad patches to the NCSoft Patcher. It happened to me TWICE. Hopefully they'll fix that soon.

2. You have Crossover Games installed, or CoH installed on a Boot Camp volume. The NC Launcher behaves badly in either case - you will have to click the triangle next to City of Heroes, and then double-click Properties. Make sure the Install Location points to the correct City of Heroes application. You will have to do this every time you launch the NCSoft Launcher.

You have to put the NC Launcher and all the CoH clients in one folder, and then make a duplicate folder. Each folder is a separate instance.

Applications have to be modified (slightly) by the developer to support Lion's full-screen mode. Sadly, Transgaming hasn't to my knowledge done that.

It might be kind of redundant though - CoH already has full-screen mode. Lion's full-screen mode would only work in Windowed Mode to become a second full-screen mode.

Do the iMac and Macbook Pro have different types of video processors? (ATI vs nVidia?)

FYI for those who are interested: The drop of support of Leopard may be because the newest Xcode might no longer include API support for 10.5.

It becomes too difficult to keep around an older Mac running an older OS just for the purpose of compiling a Leopard compatible version. Some developers do this (you'll see a separate Leopard version for download on their site) but but it does make things difficult.

I have checked the City of Heroes applications for Live and Beta, as well as the NCSoft Launcher application, for Mac. All of them currently *require* a minimum of 10.5.7.

The lack of support means that if you have a problem running the client that's unique to 10.5, you'll be asked to update to Snow Leopard (10.6) or Lion (10.7). It also means that the next Mac client or NCSoft Launcher may not support 10.5 in the future.

So really, the warning from Paragon means there will be no *future* support for 10.5. It was, however, phrased badly and unfortunately placed on a maintenance day in order to cause maximum panic. There's no reason to panic, though. You have plenty of time to upgrade to 10.6.

P.S. Unofficially, from my Guide:

Q. Should I upgrade to Leopard or Snow Leopard?

A. Snow Leopard is your best bet for future support from both Paragon Studios and from Apple.

Saying you hate Macs and everyone else should too, and implying that everyone else should too because your logic is faultless and therefore anyone who likes them is faulty somehow, that's what we call a *subjective opinion*. That's fine on its own, until you try to force it on other people.

Now here's my own experience. I'll do my best to keep it balanced.

I have a Windows 7 PC I built myself. It was built cost effectively, but reliably, by imitating the use of hardware and assembly methods that some of the higher-end PC's use, but at a fraction of the cost. It's not the most powerful gaming PC ever made, but it's way beyond what City of Heroes can throw at it at the highest settings. I'm kind of proud of it, actually, because it's quiet, cool (temperature wise), and powerful. It is also capable of running Linux or hacked MacOS, but I don't run those on it (it's good to be able to though).

Also I have a Macbook Pro. I use it for everything but gaming (even work), and sometimes for games. Usually when I use it for CoH, I'm either dual-boxing, far from my gaming PC, or when the PC decides to fail me. When I do use it for CoH, it gets a little warm, but it does not get hot. I find that to be remarkable, that a light and thin laptop can run a game at high settings without much fan noise or overheating.

And fail me the PC does. Even though I did not cut corners with the hardware, it's extremely difficult to get reliable hardware even when it's brand name. I've been through several video cards, power supplies, even the motherboard went out once. This is considered normal for a self-built PC. This is why I tell people not to build a PC themselves unless they're ready for a lot of stress.

The Macbook Pro has been serviced once, when it was brand-new, for a very minor issue. It was fixed in about 24 hours, and I still had the old Macbook Pro because I hadn't sold it yet. Since then, I've had no trouble.

I do wish the Mac version of CoH would be better. That I can't change. I wouldn't switch to all PC's because of that, though, because I'm used to the Mac.

P.S. Companies don't make Mac versions of games available for financial reasons. They have very little resources, and they want to sell it to the largest platform first. They also shun the PS3, XBox, and Linux platforms when they do that, and those are designed for gaming. It's not platform preference, it's money.

Change your screen resolution in CoH so it's smaller than your actual screen size. Then windowed mode will be smaller.

Someone had a similar problem last issue - was that you?

Ignore the trolls. I've had a Macbook Pro of some sort even since before CoH for Mac - I was using Boot Camp to run CoH on Windows on my laptop!

It's over-engineered for the job. At a lightweight 1" thick (I don't remember the weight) I've never had any of those overheats or shutdowns, reported with some other laptops, happen to me. I won't speak for everyone because I don't survey people for a living, but that's my own experience.

Also ignore those who tell you that you can get a laptop real cheap. With laptops, you really *do* get what you pay for, either in materials, functionality, or reliability. I work with a lot of $600 laptops - even heavily loaded, you do *not* want to be using those to play a high-end game. Some of them will overheat and shut down running a screen saver.

As for building a PC or laptop, yes, you can do that pretty cheaply and fairly reliably if you really know your hardware. But be prepared for a LOT of trial and error, and lots of headaches with drivers and software. I'm pretty well practiced at it, and I still go through several rounds of exchange and replacement with various components until I get it working just right.

I have three cheap Microsoft optical laptop mice sitting around here because I got them for $4 each at Target on sale.

The Paragon Store just lost about $50 worth of Paragon Points because I tried to unlock costume slots.

So for now, don't try to unlock costume slots. I'll update if I can once I send in my support request.

EDIT: Ah nuts, wrong forum. That's what I get for posting tired and with a cold...

Read my "Important things to know..." thread linked in my signature. It details how to manually update Cider to the latest version.

I'm glad to see everything working out well, I was a little worried about not being around to help after being locked out of the forums for 2 days during this mess.

I know this is a potentially bad situation and why it happened but all we can do now is survive it and beat it. I'll probably be out on the roads when I21 goes live, but later this evening I'll do what I can to intercept and either fix or work around any problems.

As I said before, I do hope the devs learn something from this and I also hope it prompts more Mac users to get involved with testing.

P.S. In all fairness, Zwillinger is caught in the middle of this. He doesn't really have the power to fix things, but it's still his job to post here representing those who can. My somewhat scathing posts were aimed at the engineers and devs, not Zwillinger. Keep that in mind when you reply.

I won't guarantee this will work, but it might be worth a try:

1. Right-click the NC Launcher application and select Show Package Contents, then double-click Contents.

2. Open up Info.plist by dragging it to a text editor like TextEdit (it's in your Applications folder), BBEdit, or even Xcode if you have it.

3. Change the value below LSMinimumSystemVersion to 10.5.7 instead of 10.6.

This may cause the NC Launcher to crash if they didn't just forget to change the value back before compiling it.

I can't say for sure since I haven't seen it, but usually an NSURLErrorDomain error would imply the target server (patch server) was reassigned and the DNS information hasn't trickled down yet. Give it a few hours and see if it works.