Kyasubaru

In regard to CoH's world history being different than our own and how it affects RP: I can agree that yes, things likely ARE different, and there are a bunch of nice articles on the main site, on ParagonWiki and on Durakken's new site thingy that go into some aspects of how some of these events transpired in the CoH universe.

The problem is, they don't go over everything. They don't cover who was elected to office, or what exactly happened during Vietnam(or if it happened at all) or what movies did or did not come out.

So you have 3 choices on this matter:

• Completely avoid the subject, not talking about these things at all.
• Make up your own stuff.
• Use familiar real-world events, people, and media.

Completely avoiding the subject is kind of.. lame. It completely cuts off an entire route of discussion and RP.

Making up your own stuff can be problematic. While making up a silly or purposefully-cliche movie title or actor name is easy enough(maybe your character IS the actor?) and is usually accepted, other things aren't so cut and dried.

Persons A and B are talking about current politics. Person A says some guy named John Jackson is the current POTUS. Person B says some guy named Jack Johnson is the current POTUS. There seems to be some discrepancy there. Is it enough to kill the RP or start an argument? Maybe, maybe not. But it's a fairly major difference and can have a big effect on the conversation. I'm just using politics and the POTUS as an easy example. There are others like past events, sports, wars, etc that can have an effect.

Using real world events and people can give discussions a grounding and familiarity that helps to avoid toe-stepping like that, as long as the references take into account the differences that are written down in-game and on lore-informative sites. We know that WW2 was different. We can read about it on the various sites, and when referencing that war, those differences should be taken into account.

In my opinion, to avoid stepping on toes, using real-world references and names is the safest thing we can do unless there's something specifically mentioned in canon to refute them. To go back to my easy example, we don't know who the current POTUS is in CoH lore. It's not written down anywhere, a name isn't ever mentioned as far as I know. Using Obama is the safest move because we're familiar with him as the current POTUS.

But as with all RP these things can wind up in a grey area. I don't use this as a strict rule even in my own RP. You really do need to be flexible when it comes to this kind of thing.

Anyway, that guy shouldn't have yelled about mentioning a real movie in chat. This is not a medieval fantasy game. It takes place in a modern setting. Movies exist. Movie theatres exist. Actors and special FX exist. Crappy straight-to-DVD sequels exist. Make up your own movie titles and actors if you want, but don't yell at others for using real-life stuff when there's no reason it shouldn't also exist.

The problem with scaling yourself relative to the NPCs instead of the height measurement is that others won't do that.

So one person scales their character to the NPCs and decides that they're all 6ft tall, so they make their guy what they perceive to be 6ft tall to match.

Another person decides to use the creation window height measurement to put his character at exactly 6ft as indicated.

Both of your characters are supposed to be 6 feet tall, but one character ends up noticeably taller than the other. I think this would drive people like us (OCD maniacs who can't stand discrepancies like these(and yes, I'm one of them!)) mad.

"I'm 6 feet tall!"

"I'm 6 feet tall too!"

"But you're a whole head shorter than me."

"... Crap."

Anyways, my whole point is that the workaround in scaling compared to NPCs instead of the height slider shouldn't have to be used. Though it's not a super high-priority problem or anything, an official "fix" for this issue is needed.

The solution would hopefully include the following:

• Adjust the height measurement meters in the background of the character creation screen so that it accurately represents the true height of Male, Female, and Huge models.
• Adjust the scaling of civilian NPCs, pedestrians, and contact NPCs to accurately reflect a normalized height in relation to player characters.
• Obviously, some NPCs would remain large because they're supposed to be.

I'm unsure if enemy groups should be rescaled or not, because for most of them there is a reason for their size. But it can get a little disconcerting when fighting an absolutely GIGANTIC Council or Freakshow(not the tanks of course). Perhaps make the size change a bit more gradual as the levels increase?

I would kind of like the idea of making the non-tank Freakshow normal sized, so there'd be this very obvious contrast between the Tanks and the non-tanks. I mean there is a bit of one now, but it'd be cool to make the contrast even MORE stark.

Or in regard to the Council/5th, to make the LTs and Bosses more normal sized so when they turn into a giant werewolf it's more of an "OMG HE JUST GOT HUGE!" moment.

Anyway, I'm kind of rambling now, so I'll stop abruptly here.

Done.

Still not working for me.

OS: Win7 x64
Card: 5850
Drivers: 10.6
Res: 1920x1080
Occlusion Settings:
Customized
Strength: Strong w/Bleeding
Res: Quality
Blur: Trilateral

I get the artifacts no matter which AA setting I use. Also went ahead and tried to match my settings to yours just in case, but still no luck.

Did the full Uninstall-reboot-Driver Sweeper-Reboot-Install-Reboot deal. So unless there's something else I'm missing, it's still a no-go for me.

On the plus side, I hadn't noticed we had advanced shadow settings until now. Yay! On the minus side, my post count is no longer 1337. Boo.

A lot of the swords Broadsword and Dual Blades get would be wonderful additions to Katana/Ninja Blade's repertoir. My own personal most-wanted feature for CoH is to be able to use the "Longsword" model with Katana. I'm kind of obsessed with it... It is to me as animated hair is to GG.

Unfortunately, for most of the models the handle is indeed too short to accommodate the two-handed grip of Katana. Still, I yearn for the day when some kind dev will take some time out to lengthen the handles and make available these fine weapon models for us two-handers.


On a completely unrelated note, check muh post count. It's not the amount, it's the number.

When using Secondary Mutation, the "temp power" you get (like [Mutation: Pain Tolerance] for instance) plays its start up animation and FX with every cycle. I doubt this is intended. At least I hope it's not.

Oops this should have gone in the bug thread. Apologies.

I have a LOT of ideas for animations, so I'll be separating them into separate posts. The title of this post is:

All Things Sitting

With few exceptions, most chairs in the game (inside SG bases or otherwise) are simply too small to be seated in properly. We have a lot of great chair-sitting animations, but not a lot of places to properly use them. The "sittable" animations especially are pretty much impossible to use, because there exists no table at which a character can sit close enough to rest their arms on the surface.

There are a few ways to address this:

• A clickable chair system (described below).
• Review and alter character bounding boxes.(These are pretty huge anyway, some trimming could be done.)
• Review and alter chair bounding boxes. (Most likely solution would be to remove the physical boundaries of the arms.)

Clickable Chair System

Someone mentioned in the other thread clickable chairs. IE chairs that you could click on and be automatically placed at the correct position on the chair and set to using a chair-sitting animation. I have no idea how feasible this is, but this is something I've been personally wanting for awhile now.

In my own ideal, the clickable chair system would work thus:

• When you approach a chair and hover your cursor over it, the cursor would turn into a blue hand signifying an object with which you can interact.
• When you click on the chair, your character is forcibly moved to a pre-designated coordinate over the chair and made to play a default "chair sitting" animation.
• The pre-designated coordinate MAY cause a sitting player to be in a location not normally accessible(stuck in geometry, et al.) However, I would think a use of "Only Affecting Self" and loss of access to powers similar to Walk could be in order here.
• While sitting, a player is able to use the various sit emotes to change the style in which they are seated.
• Any use of movement keys would shut off the sitting state and cause the character to be moved away from the chair. (Or possibly placed in a location just above the chair, in order to avoid getting stuck in the geometry.)
• Alternatively, the movement keys could be temporarily locked out while sitting, requiring a player to click again on the chair or on a chair "button" to be released.
• Bench seats could be separated into multiple "chair" locations. (For example, a 3-seat bench would have 3 separate interactable areas, the right, left, and middle seats.)
• A "getting into the seat" animation is not necessary.

Perhaps this would be too much programming work, I don't know. But many other games, both MMO and single-player, have clickable chairs such as these.

Sitting Animation Variety

Female models especially have a lack of variety when it comes to sitting animations. More animations for them, and in general for all the player models, would be great. NPCs have a good number of sitting animations that we still do not have access to.

I have scoured the CoH and CoV world in search of NPCs who are sitting in a manner that we as players do not have access to. I have compiled screenshot compilations of these for you, and numbered each sit so I may better explain them.

Picture 1
(I actually made this picture a few years ago. Since then we've gotten two of the animations depicted. I have marked these out.)

1: A raised-surface (chair) sit. One leg is stretched out, and the subject is leaning forward, resting his arms on his legs.

2: A ground sit. The subject has one leg pulled in with an arm resting on it, one leg stretched out, and is supported by an arm on the ground.

3: A ground sit. Subject has both legs stretched and crossed, and is supported by his elbows.

4: Not a sit. This is a wall lean I spied years back that we don't have. It looks kooky from this angle. It depicts the subject leaning on the wall with one arm, with his other hand in his pocket.

Picture 2

3a: This is another angle of the animation from 3 in the previous picture. You can see it a bit better here without the Lost bulk in the way.

5: A ground sit. Subject's legs are stretched and spread, using both hands on the ground for support.

6: A ground sit. It is similar to /e lotus and yoga, but the subject is slouched forward.

7 and 7a: Teabagging sit, female version, from two angles.

8: Teabagging sit, male version 1.

9: Teabagging sit, male version 2. Note the crossed legs. This is not the same animation as 8!

Picture 3

10: You may recognize this one from the end of the I17 Hero arcs. It is a ground sit, with legs splayed and torso slouched, as if wounded.

11: A raised-surface sit. It is similar to the current /e sitbench1, but the legs are crossed differently.

12: The Thinker. Not much more needs to be said.

13: A conversational sitting animation, male version. This animation is on a loop, and involves head nodding and the pictured hand gesture.

14: A conversational sitting animation, female version. Again, this is a loop with nodding and a hand gesture.

15: Another female sitting animation. I'm not sure we have access to this one, but I could be wrong.

16: No, it's not a screenshot. I swear to all that is holy that I have seen an animation very similar to this in-game. But after searching every zone on both sides for 2-3 hours, I came up empty and had to use this. It is a "casual" crouch, or a "sitting on your haunches" position. Balanced on the balls of the feet, with arms resting on both legs.

17: This may be too close to a laying down animation to be considered, but I thought I'd put it in anyway. Ground animation. Head resting on hand, legs crossed.

Other Sitting Requests

Please make it so we can select specific ledge sit animations. Currently, we have to use /e ledgesit over and over until we come to the desired animation. It would be nice if these were separated out into ledgesit1, ledgesit2, etc, like the other sits.

If possible, please allow us to use the kneeling animation from Rest as an emote, so we don't have to activate Rest to use it.

Some other requested sitting animations that I do not have examples of:

• Sitting and reading a book.
• Sitting and reading a newspaper.
• Sitting and writing on a clipboard.
• Sitting and talking on a cellphone.
• Sitting and drinking.
• Sitting and eating.
• Sitting and thinking. (Hand on chin, like in /e calculate.)
• Sitting with crossed arms. (/e crossarms, but sitting.)
• Sitting and sleeping. (A chair sit. Arms resting on legs, body slouched forward, Zzz effect floating above head.)

In one of the older site updates concerning villain groups, there were "testimonials" sent in by players about the villain group, and each player's server was listed in such a way as to imply that each server is considered to be a separate but "real" dimension. I'm not sure it's exactly canon, but ever since then I've taken this to be the case. (I think the article in question might be the Warriors dossier... Or possibly the Tsoo.)

Which sort of puts the whole "Primal Earth" thing out of whack... If all servers are Primal Earth, can the implication of that name really apply? Perhaps the "real" Primal Earth is the test server, or whatever server was the very first one to be brought online. (I never liked the idea of a "first" dimension, though I guess if the theory about alternate dimensions being created from branching decisions is what's being used, then a first earth is inevitable.)

Anyway, if each server is a parallel dimension, a version of Primal Earth, then each one has its own version of Praetoria, and its own Council Empire, and its own Shadow Shard. Of course that gets into a naming problem. Would you call the version of Praetoria that spawned from Virtue "Virtue Praetoria?" Certainly the Praetoria of one Primal Earth is different than the Praetoria of another. Pinnacle Praetoria wouldn't have the same heroes/villains(PCs) as Freedom Praetoria.

Sorry, I'm sort of rambling now because it's late and I'm typing this on a phone. I guess I don't really have much of a point, just adding my own ideas to the mix.

Here is an article about what other MMOs are doing with their iPhone apps. To any dev who might see this, or other players who aren't sure what an app could do, the article gives a decent look-see into what people want and what companies are doing.

I noticed and posted about it in beta. Also /bugged it then, too.

Still hoping for a fix.

Bean and franks?

Tiny bit of random advice: Don't take anatomy lessons from this guy.

Either that, or find him and take a photo QUICK. Weekly World News will pay tons.

Sorry, misunderstanding on my part about the World/Char sliders.

I like the look of AO too much to disable it for AA. Don't get me wrong, I DO miss AA very much, but I can live without it for a (hopefully!) short while until I can use it again, especially since AO is the new shiny I haven't grown tired of yet.

Here's my stuff for reference:

i7-920 @ 3.17 (I'd push it higher but having IOH overheating issues.)
6 GB Tri-Channel RAM (Don't have the speeds handy ATM)
300gb Velociraptor(which is what I run the OS and COH from, I have other drives too)
ATI 5850 1GB (Can't remember the brand)
Win7 Pro 64 bit
10.4 drivers

Running CoH at 1920x1080 fullscreen, Vsync on. With everything at ultra except AO (Which I have at Strong With Bleed/Quality/Trilateral) at World Detail 200% I get mostly smooth frames.

Of course I tend to use vis_scale 4... I've since had to scale back slightly to vis_scale 3.5. (Yes, that .5 DOES make a large difference in frames.) With 3.5, I get mostly "acceptable" framerates. Acceptable to me. Low end is around 15fps, maybe slightly less. All the way up to 40+ in some zones at some angles. Usually hovers around low to mid 20s. Inside missions it's always smooth. Since that's where I do most of my fighting, I don't mind it getting slightly choppy outside. Haven't tried a Rikti or Hami raid yet, though.

Lighting in bases seems to have been adjusted as well, and I'm not talking about Ambient Occlusion. Things which looked a certain way (certain sides were shaded, for instance) now look different (a different side is now shaded) when no actual change has been made.

It's possible the "bright green" crystals have something to do with this.

Wouldn't recommend using /vis_scale 4 on something that can barely handle the game.

Try /lodbias 1 or /lodbias 2 instead.

It was definitely enabled, all settings should be the same. (I could see CoH through my taskbar, so I'm pretty sure Aero was on.)

However, alt-tab is working for me again. I didn't change anything, I just restarted CoH. That's... real weird. But whatever, I'm just glad it's working again! Apologies for the impulse-post.

Still hoping to get AO+AA fixed soon.

So, little problem. I updated from 10.2 and now I can't alt-tab. Weird thing is, I can see my taskbar and move through the start menu fine, but I can't actually see other programs.

No clue what the deal is.