CuppaManga

Thanks for clearing that up, Zwillinger. I stand (or sit) corrected on that point.

I still would like to see more Mac users involved in betas though.

Also let me know if you want any specific tests or data to speed along the fix.

Closed Beta is invitation only, and the criteria is unknown except to Paragon.

But, I don't believe they have an automated way to tell if you're a Mac tester unless you tell them. So if you want to help out and get involved, make your intentions known: Post here and send a PM to, I believe, Skippy Sidekick or Zwillinger.

This issue release is different than any before it due to the Paragon Market. Every day the release is delayed means thousands of $$ in lost profits. In my mind, that means as long as the account server and store are working for the vast majority of players, this issue is going live, no matter what else is broken. Would you give up a few thousand $$ a day to fix bugs?

I wouldn't. As a software developer (not related to Paragon) I too would be focused on getting those profits coming in, even at some risk or alienating a few customers. I can't fault them for that, I just wish the Mac testing would have worked out better.

I'm not irreplaceable, and I shouldn't be. I volunteer for CoH beta mostly because I want a well working Mac client, and I'm afraid nobody else will, and what happened this issue would happen. Next beta, or the one after that, who knows what will happen to me? I might easily be able to participate, or I might not be invited, or I might be too busy to squeeze it into my schedule. I don't mind being the person who has good troubleshooting skills for a complicated problem, but I should not be the only one testing at all.

Zwill - the crash is because a function or API that's available in Windows but not in Cider is being called *just before* the Paragon Market window opens. If Transgaming is too slow responding, that might help your engineers work around the problem.

If new character models needs to be justified, ask the powers-that-be to datamine just how much time people spend in each zone on average vs how much time they spend stationary not doing anything but chat and play with emotes vs how much time players spend at the tailor.

While we appreciate zone revamps, the truth is most of us don't visit every zone every day. I do understand that it makes for brilliant screenshots to market the game; but individual character utility/appearance by far gets the most use per-player.

Fingers, more variation in costumes (and I don't mean sheer count, I mean things like more shorter and taller boots, shoes, more textures, more loose shirts), higher-res faces, eye color tinting, and more poses and emotes are things players will use and show off *every day* for several hours. If players like how their characters look, they'll spend money (points/infl) to adorn them. So if you want something that gives the greatest return for the hours put in, this is it.

P.S. Non-rednames please don't reply with how much work this will be; I know. I also know this will require a revamp of all costumes, emotes, and power animations, and multiple issue releases might go by before this dream is realized. But I think of all of that as an opportunity instead of a problem; there's a lot of junk built up in the character/costume system over the years (pieces that are very low-rez and look awful, or clip with everything and nobody really uses anymore) it's about time to clean it out, and the power animation system, well...it really needs some cleaning out.

1) No, I can't produce exact numbers, to the cent, of NCSoft staffing and project costs that would be saved. Since that's private information, nobody can produce that, meaning I will always lose that argument automatically.

2) Nobody told me that there were so many die-hard .NET fans or that anyone would take my suggestion as a personal insult. I really didn't mean to offend anyone.

3) I admit I might be a little insulted if someone petitioned NCSoft and Paragon to ditch the Mac and Linux people and embrace DirectX, .NET, Windows Media, and every kind of proprietary Windows technology to make sure you absolutely need a Real Windows PC to run CoH. But I'm not advocating exclusivity for the Mac or Linux, or even asking Windows players to give something up in order to accommodate Mac or Linux. Quite the opposite, actually.

Now I've cleared up that much, I'm advocating being as *inclusive* as possible. The current way of doing things isn't producing that result. The *path* to producing that result is a short one, and is worth taking, because it has the added benefit of making things simpler. That is all I suggest.

The reason NC hasn't already ditched .NET when they have a Mac build to draw a non-.NET version from is because it's easier at the moment to leave everything alone. Until it needs updating, or it breaks.

What I'm proposing is something one person can do (two would make it faster though) in a very short time. After that, instead of requiring two maintenance teams, you'd have one, so it would be cheaper and cut the deployment time in half. I believe they just need someone or something to nudge them along.

I think I know what you mean now. The libraries (and header files) are easy to swap out and link into the application. The user interface elements can be re-created fairly easily since they're simple - not custom (the proof of that is the Windows Launcher has been mostly duplicated in the Mac counterpart). By no means is the initial port from Mac to Windows a simple re-compile, but it's not difficult either - maybe a 5 on a scale of 1 to 10.

But then that's when the real value of it shines through - because instead of having two very different code bases, you'd have a partially merged single one. The user interface parts will be separate, but how often does that really change? Those parts that handle server communication and game patching would all be shared.

That's a legitimate question, it's not snarky at all. The answer is that Windows has similar yet different interface elements that are, like the Xcode ones, separate from the code itself. The Windows NCLauncher seems to be using fairly basic interface elements, so most likely they could be re-used or easily duplicated for a non-.NET version to a native Windows non-.NET version.


It's fairly trivial on both, unless you use highly customized interface elements (it doesn't seem like NCSoft did). Both Mac and Windows modern programming tools have visual methods of creating a basic user interface.

Wikipedia once again has a short article explaining Graphic User Interface builders and what their basic purpose is, as well as links to several kinds:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphic...erface_builder