MTS

[ QUOTE ]
Since when they come out with crossover they need to flip that switch on so villains crossing over can have it, it is pointless to flip it off for a few months, or however long it will take, just to flip it back on when they institute crossovers. Furthermore it would upset those who already have it for a few months for NO gain on the devs/game continuity part.

[/ QUOTE ]
So, basically what you're saying is: Since one day there might be a moon zone, we should remove alien faces from the costume creator. Can't have anyone creating an alien, since that will someday be an unlockable costume part from the moon zone TF.

The whole thing does seem rather rushed to me. My guess is that the higher ups are pushing for I14 to hit soon so that I15 can be ready for the 5th anniversary, and they need the test server asap to get it ready for beta...

[ QUOTE ]
Why the Badger bashing? Are Badgers the new PvPers? Are we to be the next segment of the population revamped and alienated?

Color me at this and the Longbow stealth changes. 'Missed patch note' or not, to me this change is indefensable and unacceptable, just like the Longbow badge change.

[/ QUOTE ]
Hint for the devs and PR dept: people are so upset over this because there seems to be no logical reason for the change.

There are quite a few other badges which are shared (as in use the same /settitle ID and have different names / descriptions for each side) without ill effect. If there's a good reason why this badge in particular is a problem, please tell us. Even if you don't want to elaborate on what exactly the reason is, a dev reassuring us, even if it's relayed through Ex Libris, that it's something other than "we felt like it" would go a long way toward containing the fallout. "Aware internally" and "no comment" makes it sound like they don't care, regardless if that's true or not.

If it's simply that the name and description don't make a whole lot of sense in context, i doubt any badge-o-holic would object to it being changed. There are plenty of other badges that don't make sense or have inaccurate descriptions in any event.

Wait, what?

Ok guys, I normally stick up for you when people get upset about bugs in new issues and patches. I maintain servers for a living, and I also develop software, so I know that these things take time to track down and get fixed, and sometimes issues crop up when it goes live that didn't happen during test.

This isn't one of them. Seriously, does anyone even read the training room boards? Lately it seems like a large portion of the problems brought up there end up going live without being fixed. Not little things that we can live with, but issues that adversely affect a large segment of the player base, or make you look bad when you have to tell people to ignore the problem.

Why is it that when the patch went live, it was (at least) two incremental builds ahead of what's on test? Whatever changed in those somehow caused things that were fixed on test to regress, not to mention new and exciting bugs popping up. Bugs in things that were thoroughly tested and found to not be a problem.

Seriously, what's the point of a test server if what's been tested isn't actually what goes live? I know you have an internal test and QA department, but they can't possibly replicate the conditions of actual gameplay from around the globe, and all the edge and corner cases that it can expose.

Anyway, I feel better now that I've had my mini-rant. Just please try to remember that a lot of the people who are being critical love this game and only complain because they care about it. It's frustrating when bad things happen that should be preventable.

[ QUOTE ]
So what I do is: draw lower torso, translate/rotate; draw upper torso, translate/rotate; draw head (head then inherits lower and upper torso translations and rotations). Reset drawing point, perform the translation and rotation for the lower and upper torso without drawing them, draw left upper arm, translate/rotate, draw lower arm (lower arm inherits lower torso, upper torso, upper arm). Reset drawing point again, same for the right arm branch. Reset view again, one leg. Reset drawing point again, the other leg.

[/ QUOTE ]
Just out of curiosity, have you considered using glPushMatrix/glPopMatrix to save and restore the transformation matrix of the lower and upper torso? Might reduce code complexity a little if you don't have to keep performing the translation and rotation for them every time you reset.

[ QUOTE ]
I scrapped the entire model I was using in favor of OpenGL's glRotatef API. I figured that's what COH uses.

[/ QUOTE ]
Actually, I kinda doubt it. If COH drew the various limbs as discrete meshes then yes, a simple rotate / translate chain could be used. Most bone-based animation systems however, stretch the verticies of a single mesh to match the desired bone orientation. OpenGL only handles drawing graphics primitives, so that's normally calculated in software (or possibly vertex shaders). Given the age of the CoH engine I'm thinking probably software calculations.

[ QUOTE ]

When you say that's how they "should work"...that means those telepads don't work like that? ...Cause if they do work mine are about to change.

[/ QUOTE ]
Oh, they're fully functional. By "should work", I meant that's how the beacons should have been designed to attach in the first place instead of requiring a wall (that often makes the beacon hard to see or requires you to jump up to the pad)

I had a couple queries PM'd to me, so here's the method I used. I don't have any screenshots of the process, but I still have another TP room to do so I'll grab some when I do and update this post.

The pieces needed are under the Cabinets section. Stand in between the legs of your first teleporter in the row and look directly at the wall. Place a large cabinet (I used large rustic or large wooden, doesn't matter) at the desired height on the wall, it should be completely obscured by the leg of the teleporter in front of you. Rotate the camera a little and stack 2 more large cabinets directly in front of it.

I used a rotating stack of 3 cabinets. It can be done with 2, but 3 gives me an additional safety net in in case I mis-click while moving one. It also makes leaving the 'anchor' cabinet inside the teleporter a little bit easier.

Anyway, start working your way out from the wall. Grab the last one in the stack (closest to the wall) and move it to the front. Make sure you're always exactly on top of the last one so your position doesn't drift. Placing it square on top of the stack can get a bit tricky, if you're having trouble try a different camera angle. Often there will only be a few pixels that you can have the mouse pointer in that will drop it in the right place. Be patient and take your time.

Once your floating stack of cabinets is inside the teleporter's hitbox, they become difficult to select. Moving the camera under the floor can help, but that also makes it harder to find the sweet spot to drop them so that they stack. One trick is to left click and hold to start the move, then rotate the camera with the right mouse button while still holding down the left. I also found that rotating and zooming the camera so that it's inside the teleporter's hitbox helps you select them without having to go under the floor. The escape key to unselect is your friend here.

When a cabinet intersects the teleporter leg, it's time to think about leaving an anchor. Go ahead and keep moving as normal, but when the time comes to move the first one that was partially inside the leg, don't. Instead grab the middle one (may have to tab target to select it) and move it to the end so that you end up with a gap. Move the 2-stack a couple more spaces down to widen the gap. Then place a new *small* cabinet (I used "Steel Cabinet"), and move it so that it's stacked on the one you left behind. The goal here is to have the small cabinet be at the height you want, and fully enclosed within the teleporter leg. It should be only 1 grid square inside the leg for best beacon placement (keep moving it slowly until the blue box vanishes). You can zoom way in and get the camera inside the leg to verify the placement is correct.

Once the anchor is set, you can grab the large cabinet you left behind and move it back to the front of the stack. At this point, you can place the beacon if you want, and it's rinse lather and repeat to get to the second leg of the teleporter, and beyond if you have more pads in a line.

Overall, it's a slow process, and it's somewhat surreal to have a floating stack of cabinets inch its way across the room, but I think it's worth it . It's a lot faster this way than it would be to stack from behind the teleporter, as you'd need a new stack for every beacon. It's even better if you have several in a row that you can get in one pass.

The advantage of leaving the anchor cabinet inside the teleporter leg is that you can come back and re-arrange the beacons later without having to re-float everything.

Anyway, hope this helps! I know it's a little hard to understand without screenshots, hopefully I can get back in the base tonight and take a few.

Not so much a room, but an idea I was playing around with.

This is how Tech telepads SHOULD work

Side view

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
A: We feel that players will take that chance on the random roll tables for that chance at the reward they want. There will always be that temptation to roll on the Pool C rewards 12 times instead of buying that one shiny IO. If a player doesn't get what they want, they can post these items on the markets. Also consider that before only players running Task Forces and Strike Forces were contributing Pool C and D items to the market, now even solo/casual players will be able to do so.

[/ QUOTE ]

You guys seriously believe this? I have to question your understanding of human nature then.

[/ QUOTE ]
No offense, but I have to agree with Heartbreaker here about your staff psychologist. You guys need to get a second opinion.

Nobody who's ever run a TF before is going to spend 20 merits on a random roll. We all know the odds of getting the drop that we want, and given human nature they're perceived as even worse than they actually are (murphy's law etc). With the current odds of getting something "good" from a random roll, people are going to go for the sure thing.

HOWEVER

[ QUOTE ]
It's an unfortunate fact that the VAST Majority of drops in Pool C arent worth anything near that.

[/ QUOTE ]
What remains to be seen is if, once the market dries up and many Pool C recipes have 0 for sale, will they still be worth so little? I think they're betting that the increased scarcity in Pool C from people hoarding merits will drive up the prices of the lesser-used ones and make the random roll a more attractive option.

People do use Trap of the Hunter, Pacing of the Turtle, and Sting of the Manticore (which is actually a pretty nice snipe set). The problem right now is that with so many random drops entering the market, the supply is much higher than the demand for them.

If nothing else it will be interesting to see how it plays out.

[ QUOTE ]
Ok, I'm in panic mode.... We are moving from a 999 capacity storage unit to a 30?!?!?! Will I be able to convert this stuff before I13 goes live with this change? My SG has over 120 of each piece of Halloween salvage from the last 3 years of ToT events... What will happen to that? (Not that we need anything remotely close to that, but I like hoarding).

[/ QUOTE ]
It's my understanding that your salvage will be fine, you just can't put anything else into the bin until you take out enough so that it's not overloaded anymore (if you ever do).

EDIT: I don't check the forum for two days and what happens? A base developer gets a redname! Hooray! Welcome to the boards Sunstorm, and don't let the trolls get to you. Most of us are friendly people, it's just been a little trying lately with all these changes and not knowing why or sometimes even what was going to happen. Though it sounds like you've been lurking so you probably know all about it.

It's good to know that we are being heard.

[ QUOTE ]
How will bind files work?
Currently I use the /bind_load_file command to map my binds
I have to to do /bind_load_file c:/coh/reset.txt to load my speed on demand binds.

On mac this command won't work.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'd assume you would use a unix path like /Users/BackAlleyBlaster/cohstuff/reset.txt

Even in Windows I find it easier to just use relative paths. Create a directory called 'data' under c:\coh, put reset.txt in there, then just do:

/bind_load_file reset.txt

Sometimes I even get fancy and do /bindloadfilesilent binds\mm\bots1.txt

I had very similar experiences with purple-conning (by maybe about +3 IIRC) Tsoo bosses in talos. Run run run don't look back the gray squishy might get me.

That was a few months back, sometime between issue 11 and 12 I think. I haven't tested it again because, well, they con gray now and I don't have any alts in the right level range.

[ QUOTE ]
If you have a creep that just runs around aggroing other mobs, instead of toward the Police Drones, just wait for the creeps to walk back, then take them out.

[/ QUOTE ]

Except that runners in coh don't aggro other mobs, unlike some games. The only time a runner will result in more enemies aggroed is if you had some aoe toggle power (rad/dark/storm/sonic/cold) anchored on them, or if you follow them and move into aggro range of the other mob.

[ QUOTE ]
Head Capes, shoulder capes, capes, buttcapes, next we'll get groin capes (aka loin cloths) >_>

[/ QUOTE ]

See also: Sybils

Some of them have wrist capes too...

[ QUOTE ]

Aha! That must be why I get two, You have ignored so and so messages. I hadn't even noticed one of them was a global, thought it was just some silly bug.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, as of i12 /ignore and /gignore do the same thing. Used to they would do different things. The default one where you right clicked somebody and picked ignore did /ignore which only ignored that one character. You could also type /gignore to ignore a global.

/gignore also had the interesting feature that when used on a local player name without an @, it would ignore the global associated with that player. In the process it also told you what the global name was. So a quick /gignore, /gunignore was a way to get someone's global name.

Now both of them globally ignore the player, *i think*. I'm not sure if the non-global ignore list still exists in some form and is just hidden or if it's gone completely. Haven't played with it in depth yet but I'm sure some of the people around here have

[ QUOTE ]
not that I'm complaining...how come there's a global rename token?

[/ QUOTE ]

My guess is that some people might have assumed that global names were private and could be seen only by those who were on your global friends list. So they might have picked something more personal than they would have otherwise. Now that it's easy for anyone to see anyone else's global they might wish they had picked something else.

Yes, there were ways before, but those might be considered an "exploit" in that it wasn't the intention of the gignore command to be used that way, and a lot of people didn't know about it.

I was contemplating suggesting one be given for exactly this reason, but now I don't have to

[ QUOTE ]

I remember less than a year ago, the run AI was definitely broken and a lot of foes were fleeing the instant you attacked. This was especially prevalent with Freak Bosses in Brickstown and Crey's Folly. Sometimes they would flee even before the first shot was fired.

[/ QUOTE ]

This has happened to me as recently as post i-11. It was especially funny when +4 Tsoo bosses in Talos that were conning purple to me would flee the second I attacked them.

[ QUOTE ]
Mwahahaha my Defender will soon amass 14 costume tokens and she no longer has to use them!!! Mwhahaha! My plans for world domination... *cough*

[/ QUOTE ]
Because mere mortal... this apartment...

...IS RENT CONTROLLED!

And... water's included.

Don't know if it's been mentioned yet or not, but pretty much everything from the Pandora's Box store in steel canyon.

Wall textures
Floor texture
Candles on wall sconces
Candles on tables
Stackable dark bookshelves
Ceiling fans
Lots of other goodies

<graphicsgeek>

[ QUOTE ]
To be fair, that's actually an old rendering trick. The floors are actually not shiny at all, rather they are semi transparent and a mirror image of the Atlas lobby is underneath them.

[/ QUOTE ]

Depends how it's implemented. There may be actual geometry under there, inaccessible through normal means. Another way to do it with any planar surface is to just re-render the scene with a transformation matrix calculated from the position of the surface and a stencil buffer applied to limit the shape to the visible area. That would get movable objects like players and NPCs as well (as long as they were rendered in the second pass).

[ QUOTE ]
Actual reflection is too difficult for PC graphics cards to do in realtime.

[/ QUOTE ]

Depends what you consider "actual reflection". The stencil method gives a realistic reflection for any flat plane. Spherical reflections can be done in realtime by rendering cube maps, but that might be too intensive for a game that's played an all sorts of graphics cards. If you mean raytracing reflections, well pretty much all polygon rasterization is just an approximation anyway . There's no "actual" specular lighting or bump mapping for that matter

</graphicsgeek>

[ QUOTE ]
Has anyone noticed/mentioned that the floors in Atlas City Hall are so shiny they are reflective? A very cool detail.... dunno if it could be done on one of the decorative tiles......

[/ QUOTE ]

The reflective floors in city hall also reveal a secret about player-created characters. We're all vampires!

More seriously, I'd like to see the floor-mounted "banner lights" from the Freedom Corps building in Galaxy added. It's really tough to get SG banners lit properly without resorting to ambient light.

Neither this nor anything else using the same installer (vidiotmaps) seem to work for me -- just get a flash of a command window with "This program cannot be run in DOS mode". The properties tabs for the executable indicate that windows seems to think it's a DOS program.

Is it possible for this to have an alternate distribution method that's just a .zip file of the texture directories? Paragon Maps has that as an option and it worked fine. Besides the installer not working for me and at least one other person who posted on the badge-hunter.com forums, I don't like the idea of downloading random executables, and neither should anyone else

[ QUOTE ]
Open contact with the devs.

[/ QUOTE ]

Absolutely!

I was over in the wow forums the other day (my previous addiction), and someone was complaining about not getting any feedback on the many ideas and requests for fixes that are posted there. Someone had replied and said something to the effect of, "the devs are not allowed to comment in the suggestion forums for legal reasons".

Of course I had to jump in and say what utter BS that is, because there's at least one MMO out there where the devs not only comment on suggestions but actively implement them and participate in the community. Oh, and they have a sense of humor too!

Needless to say that went over real well. lol