Curveball

Yeah, I know the bind, but there's more to it than the keys. You need to really be on your toes and aim that sucker right... or get hover as well to keep from falling.

That said, it does seem to be the best fit concept-wise... and concept is king! Thanks all.

Yeah, good point...

The Whispering Man is a Magic Dark/Regen scrapper who looks sort of like a twisted variant of the shadow. The basic idea for the character is that he is a supernatural streetfighter whose affinity to magic has boosted his physical abilities, making him nigh unkilliable... at least, on a permanent basis.

He's nearing 14 (11 at the moment) and I haven't taken any travel pool powers because I can't decide what fits best. I've ruled out flight, because that doesn't really fit the feel of the character at all, but the other three could work...

Teleport is my least favorite of the three, not for thematic reasons as much as I find the mechanics of it awkward.

Super Jump could work, though it seems a bit like flying. It's certainly very versatile from a game mechanics standpoint, and it would work with a supernatural character pretty well.

Super Speed could also work -- in fact, it seems, power-wise, best suited to the supernatural streetfighter motif... but it looks very bright and cheerful when turned on.

So I'm sort of stumped at the moment, and the time for choosing is drawing near...

Any thoughts?

Hm. Well, that's quite a lot. Guess I have my work cut out for me.

Best thread ever.

Best.

Ever.

Ever.

Branman, if I didn't know better I'd say you disagree with me.

OK, ten more of mine


Walk like an Egyptian - The Bangles (wha???)
Closer - Nine Inch Nails (worst song on the whole freaking album)
Detonation Boulevard - The Sisters of Mercy (oh my GOTH)
Glass - Robyn Hitchcock
Story of a Girl - Nine Days (must... keep... wife... away... from... iPod...)
Penetrate - Klank
Labels - Subhumans
Turning Japaneese - The Vapors (me so New Wave!)
Wayfaring Stranger - Johnny Cash
Muzzle - Smashing Pumpkins (meh)

Not quite as "old school" as my previous run, but it still probably dates me:

Walken's Syndrome - Fugazi
I want to be an Anglepoise Lamp - The Soft Boys
Cathedral - Robyn Hitchcock
Bullet - Reverend Horton Heat
Man Should Surrender - Pailhead
Beautiful Queen - Robyn Hitchcock
Candy - Morphine
Detroit - Rancid
Dr. Evil Theme Song - They Might Be Giants
Wake Up Dead - Razor Muzik

1 - Kerosene - Big Black
2 - Haus Der Luge - Einsturzende Neubauten
3 - When the Man Comes Around - Johnny Cash
4 - Icewater/Flyswatter Blues - Lyle Lovett
5 - Time Bomb - The Dismemberment Plan
6 - Bodies - The Sex Pistols
7 - Know Your Rights - The Clash
8 - Neat Neat Neat - The Damned
9 - Work-Rest-Play-Die - The Subhumans
10 - The Devil Went Down to Georgia - Charlie Daniels Band

What? What?

Are they evil, sentient, intergalactic space waffles?

((Based on the police records for various villians featured on the CoH/CoV site, I thought it would be kind of cool for us to post our own villain police records in a similar format. So post if you like. This is what you believe the police and other law enforcement agencies know about your character.))

Identity: Scrapper Jack
Real Name: Jack Barrow
Threat Level: Unknown

Height: 6'1"
Weight: 220 lbs.
Hair: Black
Eyes: Dark Brown
Distinguishing Marks: 3 scars that start in the middle of his forehead, cross his left eye, and end at the middle of his left cheek.

Convicted: 1996 on various Assault charges
Sentence: 5 years
Convicted: 1997, Assault with intent to kill, Assault with a deadly weapon, possession of a concealed weapon without a license, possession of a concealed weapon in a state facility, seven counts of Assaulting a state officer, resisting arrest, possession of unregistered metahuman traits
Sentence: Life sentence at Ziggaraut
Wanted: Escaped from Ziggaraut with outside assistance. Suspected Arachnos involvement.

NOTE: Current whereabouts unknown.

Known Powers

"Scrapper Jack" possesses strength well above human norms. Limits of the strength unknown at this time. He also possesses some level of the trait commonly classified as "Invulnerability." Limits of this ability are also unknown.

Investigator's Report

Jack Barrow did not develop his metahuman traits until he was in prison. He was serving a 5-year sentence in a standard prison for his involvement in a number of altercations, including one in a police holding cell (see Attachment A). During his stay at the prison he was involved in an altercation with a prison gang that triggered what seem to have been latent mutant abilities which made him stronger and much more resistant to damage. After he was subdued, he was quickly transferred to the Zigarraut and his sentence was modified to reflect his metahuman status. He escaped when Arachnos assaulted the facility and engineered the escape of a number of metahuman prisoners (see Attachment B).

Last Updated: Domingo, R.

Hah. Yes, that kind of stuff really needs to be in the version!

[ QUOTE ]
A section about how using + $$ can be cleaner than using say +down$$-down$$

[/ QUOTE ]

Just going to show that I don't know everything about binds... what the heck is this one?

In the case of a scuffle, I suggest challenging them formally and then going to the dueling arena. That would be kind of cool.

The Unofficial Guide to Bind was released and updated right when City of Heroes was released. This makes it a rather old guide, and while I still think it's generally useful it's not particularly up to date. I sort of faded back from playing for a while (I actually quit in disgust for a few months when Statesman foisted this Enhancement Diversification BS on us combined with the crippling of the Tanker Archetype, but CoV pulled me back in) but after looking around it doesn't look like there's a "new and improved" guide to bind out there.

There *is* some really cool stuff, though. The fly/hover bind combo is freaking brilliant. The bind generator program(s) (I've seen a few of them) that create your binds for you are pretty brilliant as well. And the game now gives you greater control over what actions can be mapped to what keys.

So I think the bind guide needs a new version.

What I'm wondering is, for those of you who are familiar with the original: what would you like to see in version 2.0?

I just sent in an origin story for Scrapper Jack, my Brute. I rather like it -- if it gets passed on, I'll post it in the RP forum.

I found writing in first person actually cut down on the length, though it still chewed through more than 1800 words.

Are there any formatting/length guidelines you can point us to?

Right, I wasn't being specific.

I meant doesn't it use commas in order to separate a name from a message? I guess when I think of a message sent to a channel I think of it as name, message -- but that may not necessarily be how it works. I haven't really played with the chat commands too much.

Doesn't CoH use a comma instead of quotes?

so /send Ravens Nest,

instead of /send "Ravens Nest"

I know that's how tells to players work. Might not work that way with channel names though.

Cameraderie is a lot easier to pull off when you always win.

The fact that none of them really have their powers (except maybe Manticore, I guess, and Positron insofar as he hasn't left a huge smoking crater where their HQ used to be) is forcing them to deal with life sans crutches. So I guess Manticore is most like he was before, because he's also the least changed by it.

Or some kind of psychobabble like that.

[ QUOTE ]
I love that we're getting to know the Freedom Phalanx. They're the most interesting thing in the game, in my opinion, and it's nice to learn more about them.

[/ QUOTE ]

Nonsense. *I* am the most interesting thing in the game.

The Blue King comic started off not too impressive, but it grew on me. I can't say I found the storylines terribly gripping (though I thought the "Jury by Peers" arc was pretty cool) but the characters were fun, and as other people mentioned, you could see this taking place in an actual game world. I mean, I could imagine the trial going on while Regiment and Curveball were out there fighting the good fight, glued to their TV sets at night to pick up on the latest developments in the case.

The new comic has some weird continuity errors that others have pointed out. For the most part I can ignore them, the story is interesting enough... but I can no longer imagine Regiment and Curveball hanging out in Paragon City while these events unfold. It's not really the City of Heroes universe for me... not any more, anyway... because there's no room for the actual game in a storyline where suddenly all the heroes have lost their powers in-city and have moved out to other cities.

He doesn't have a cat or a panda on his shoulder.

You can't create a macro that automates anything. So I doubt that would work.

yeah -- you can't actually bind anything to LBUTTON that will override it's select functionality. You can, however bind commands that don't interfere with it.

For example, my rbutton bind looks like this:

/bind rbutton "++mouse_look$$forward"

This allows me to go into "movement mode," so that I can use the right mouse button and mouse movement to steer my characters.

(Note that it's been a while since I've actually *looked* at the bind, so I may have parsed it wrong)

In order to free the mouse cursor for when I need to actually click on things, I also use this bind:

/bind lbutton "-mouse_look"

Whenever I click the left mouse button it sends the -mouse_look command, which will release the mouse from mouse look mode if it's in it but will not affect the game any other way. Since this doesn't actually impair the select function, the bind works.

Early in beta when I started looking into this I found that if I tried to bind certain commands to the select button, the results would be inconsistent and annoying. I can't really remember what they are at the moment.