Mephisto_Kur

Operating System: Vista 64
Browser:Firefox 3.5.1
Forum:All
Bug Description:

If you use the boards.cityofvillains.com URL, you do not log on to the boards.

To repeat the bug:
Log out of boards.cityofheroes.com
Go to http://boards.cityofvillains.com/
Log in to the forums.
You are redirected to the boards.cityofheroes.com "Thanks for logging in" page.
You are then redirected back to http://boards.cityofvillains.com/
You are not logged in to the forums.

The cookie\session only seems to be valid for the Hero side of the forums.

While watching Big Bang Theory, I saw no less than 7 large CoX advertisements in a comic book store they gang was in. While this is fine, this in no way leverages the property to coincide with the current Superhero movie and media trend. Superheroes are outrageously popular right now, but the only ads for CoX i see are in shows that cater to our demographic (the geeks).

WoW advertises to the masses. Their ads are *everywhere* so they get a huge cross section of the population that at the very least tries the game long enough to inflate their numbers.

I also feel that Paragon is doing the game a disservice by not advertising anywhere near enough.

I was brought into the game by word of mouth. i had never even heard of it until 3 years ago. I even had the "bootleg edition" disks sitting in a stack, not knowing what this game was, and not caring enough to load it up.

Please, Paragon. Advertise in places other than Chuck and Big Bang Theory. Non-geeks LOVE superheroes right now. Why aren't the numbers swelling?

[ QUOTE ]
The newest versions of the Catalyst Control Center don't seem to have these settings.

I figure, if you can't find the setting, it's not worth worrying about.

[/ QUOTE ]

All of the settings in L_T's post are there and working in the newest drivers. make sure you are looking at the "All Settings" window.

After setting things the way many in here had suggested, I had the issue that the game seemed to be ignoring my settings entirely.

I don't know if it is mentioned anywhere in this thread, but I actually had to turn off the advanced settings in the game, use the slider to push all the way down. This forced the game to relinquish the AA and AF settings to the driver - which it should have been doing already. Then I switched to advanced mode and cranked everything back to where it should be.

Took me a good half hour of futzing with it to figure out that it would work when I did that.

This is my first gaming ATi card in 15 years. The difference in color saturation is striking coming from nVidia.

The 4890 is an awesome card. It is very annoying that NCSoft and ATi can't get on the same page about getting it working easily for everyone. It is pretty unacceptable that every other game I have thrown at this thing works flawlessly, but I have to set up a profile so it works with this 5 year old game...

With the release of i15:

Rikti Drones play the death animation over and over until they do the fadeout. They explode, re-appear, explode and repeat this until the normal dead body fade out. Each explosion leaves the normal amount of debris, so the floor is covered with metal chunks after this behavior . This was on the Ashley McKnight arc, June 29th, Pinnacle (redside obviously).

AT: Thugs/Poison MM

When using FLY.
Casting a buff - heal, Antidote.

After the animation of the buff finishes, there is a stutter as you return to the idle flight pose.

Way to be unhelpful. How will bugs be fixed in the OS if no one tries to run things in the pre-release? Do you think the copy of Vista or XP that you run was somehow magically perfect? I beta test ALL of MS' operating systems - so that YOU don't have to when you get it loaded on your Dell.

Heh, I glazed over that part. I wouldn't have tried that anyway, but thanks, Ryu.

I can say for a fact that none of the released W7 drivers seem to work. I tracked down the old drivers that worked fine with the beta, and ran CoH with no issues on this machine - they don't work either. <shrug>

I'll give that a try. I've been up and down the driver tree - I am amazed that i have not blown up the system yet. Thankfully W7 seems a lot cleaner at removing things than even Vista.

I am easily at the "throw my hands up" stage of this issue. No way I'm going back to Vista on this machine, and XP is a pain to install since I have no floppy for the SATA drivers :/ .

What's annoying is that i can play just about any other game than this one - including some older FPS games (CSS, HL2) with no issues.

The drivers do not install. The RC drivers are the newest drivers that work on Windows 7 RC.

I can force them to install anyway, but the performance is absolutely horrible.

Understand that I know this is an older driver. There are no newer drivers that work with W7 RC yet, and this driver works fine in any other OS, including W7 Beta. If you have no other advice than "get a new driver" then I would like someone else to chime in some advice. I don't mean to sound snippy, I just think the "new driver" option is a dead end at the moment.

The 1200 series has no newer driver available for Windows 7.

My laptop is admittedly at the lower end of acceptable for this game. I didn't get this to game, but I found that with Windows Vista, CoX was playable on low settings. On W7 Beta, it was even better, and I was even able to turn some stuff on.

Windows 7 RC is different. All players around me are invisible except for their capes and auras. I see powers fire off, but that is all. The environments look great, and I can see contacts - tho I don't know about other NPC content as I haven't played much like this.

Here's my CoH helper and HiJackthis logs - any ideas?

---System information gathered by CoH Helper version 0.1.1.7---

DxDiag gathered at May 26, 2009 19:27 (-04:00)
Operating System: Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit (6.1, Build 7100) (7100.winmain_win7rc.090421-1700)
System Manufacturer: Acer
System Model: Aspire 5515
BIOS: Ver 1.00PARTTBL,
Central Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) Processor 2650e, ~1.6GHz
Memory: 2048MB
.Net Memory Report: 1102MB out of 1789MB available
Page File: 2643MB (936MB currently in use)
C Drive: (WDC WD1600BEVT-22ZCT0 ATA Device) 38449MB out of 49899MB (77%) free
D Drive: (WDC WD1600BEVT-22ZCT0 ATA Device) 98741MB out of 102623MB (96%) free
E Drive: (Optiarc DVD RW AD-7580S ATA Device) zero-size drive
Windows directory location: C:\Windows
DirectX: DirectX 11
DirectX Diag version: 6.01.7100.0000 (32-bit version)

Display Notes: No problems found.
Sound Notes: No problems found.
Input Notes: No problems found.

Monitor:
Monitor's Max Resolution: (blank)
Video Device Name: ATI Radeon X1200 Series
Manufacturer / Chip: ATI Technologies Inc. / ATI Radeon X1200 Series (0x791F)
Video Memory: 894 MB
Driver Version: 8.561.0.0
Driver Date: 12/1/2008 8:29:34 PM
Driver Language: English

Sound Device Description: Speakers (High Definition Audio Device)
Driver File: HdAudio.sys
Driver Version: 6.01.7100.0000
Driver Date: 4/21/2009 11:50:11 PM


WMI Information
Motherboard Manufacturer: Acer
Motherboard Model: (empty)
Motherboard Product: Nile
Motherboard Version: N/A
BIOS Manufacturer: Acer
BIOS Name: Ver 1.00PARTTBL,
BIOS Version: ACRSYS - 6040000
BIOS Release: 20081203000000.000000+000

Registry Information for Current User
Resolution: 1024x768
3D Resolution: 1024x768 (Not using renderscale)
Full Screen: Yes
Maximized: No
Screen Position: 0, 0
Refresh Rate: 60Hz
Vertical Sync Enabled: Yes

Physics Quality: Medium
Maximum Particles: 50000
Max Particle Fill? 10.000
Physics Card Enabled: No

Anti-aliasing: None
Anisotropic Filtering: 4x
Texture LOD Bias: Smooth
Water Effects: High Quality
Bloom: 1.000 (turned on)
Depth of Field Enabled: Yes
Desaturation Effects (Sepia) Enabled: Yes
Shader Detail: Low (with world bumpmaps)

World Texture Level: Very High
Character Texture Level: Very High
World Detail Level (Vis_Scale): 1.000
Entity Detail Level: 1.000
Shadows Enabled: Yes
Gamma Correction: 1.000
Geometry Buffers (VBOs) Enabled: Yes
Suppression of Extra Player FX Enabled: No
Suppression of FX When Camera Close Enabled: No
Close Suppression Range: 3.000
Show Advertisements: Yes

Audio Mode: Performance
3D Audio: No
FX Sound Volume: 1.000
Music Sound Volume: 0.600

Show Advanced Graphics Options: No
Overall Graphics Quality: 0.600
Reverse Mouse Buttons: No
Save Login Username: Yes
Transfer Rate: Unknown bytes/second
Current Game Version: 18.20090422.5T
Installation Directory: D:\Games\City of Heroes

Mod files in the Data directory
No modifications found
************************************************** *****************

Logfile of Trend Micro HijackThis v2.0.2
Scan saved at 6:39:44 PM, on 5/26/2009
Platform: Unknown Windows (WinNT 6.01.3004)
MSIE: Internet Explorer v8.00 (8.00.7100.0000)
Boot mode: Normal

Running processes:
C:\Windows\system32\taskhost.exe
C:\Windows\system32\Dwm.exe
C:\Windows\Explorer.EXE
C:\Program Files\Alwil Software\Avast4\ashDisp.exe
D:\Games\Steam\Steam.exe
C:\Program Files\Xfire\Xfire.exe
C:\Program Files\Notepad++\notepad++.exe
C:\Windows\system32\SearchFilterHost.exe
C:\Program Files\Trend Micro\HijackThis\HijackThis.exe

R1 - HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Search Page = http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=54896
R0 - HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Start Page = http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=69157
R1 - HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Default_Page_URL = http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=69157
R1 - HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Default_Search_URL = http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=54896
R1 - HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Search Page = http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=54896
R0 - HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Start Page = http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=69157
R0 - HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Search,SearchAssistant =
R0 - HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Search,CustomizeSearch =
R0 - HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Toolbar,LinksFolderName =
O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [avast!] "C:\Program Files\Alwil Software\Avast4\ashDisp.exe"
O4 - HKCU\..\Run: [Steam] "d:\games\steam\steam.exe" -silent
O4 - HKUS\S-1-5-19\..\Run: [Sidebar] %ProgramFiles%\Windows Sidebar\Sidebar.exe /autoRun (User 'LOCAL SERVICE')
O4 - HKUS\S-1-5-19\..\RunOnce: [mctadmin] C:\Windows\System32\mctadmin.exe (User 'LOCAL SERVICE')
O4 - HKUS\S-1-5-20\..\Run: [Sidebar] %ProgramFiles%\Windows Sidebar\Sidebar.exe /autoRun (User 'NETWORK SERVICE')
O4 - HKUS\S-1-5-20\..\RunOnce: [mctadmin] C:\Windows\System32\mctadmin.exe (User 'NETWORK SERVICE')
O4 - Startup: Xfire.lnk = C:\Program Files\Xfire\Xfire.exe
O13 - Gopher Prefix:
O23 - Service: avast! iAVS4 Control Service (aswUpdSv) - ALWIL Software - C:\Program Files\Alwil Software\Avast4\aswUpdSv.exe
O23 - Service: Ati External Event Utility - ATI Technologies Inc. - C:\Windows\system32\Ati2evxx.exe
O23 - Service: avast! Antivirus - ALWIL Software - C:\Program Files\Alwil Software\Avast4\ashServ.exe
O23 - Service: avast! Mail Scanner - ALWIL Software - C:\Program Files\Alwil Software\Avast4\ashMaiSv.exe
O23 - Service: avast! Web Scanner - ALWIL Software - C:\Program Files\Alwil Software\Avast4\ashWebSv.exe
O23 - Service: Steam Client Service - Valve Corporation - C:\Program Files\Common Files\Steam\SteamService.exe

--
End of file

Excellent, most of my other games are in steam already. will there be a way to use an existing account with Steam?

Arc Name: A Soul Divided
Arc ID: 61674
Faction: Custom
Creator Global/Forum Name: Mephisto_kur
Difficulty Level: Medium
Synopsis: The Loa need help retrieving an artifact.
Estimated Time to Play: 15-20 minutes

Arc Name: World Tour of Poker
Arc ID: 69164
Faction: Family, Nemesis, Malta
Creator Global/Forum Name: Mephisto_kur
Difficulty Level: Easy
Synopsis: Go play some poker!
Estimated Time to Play: 5-15 minutes


Please enjoy. World Tour has a lot of stuff in its clues and NPC dialog. I am still working on Soul. The story is complete, but needs more detail and backstory.

Small update. When I dual-box, I occasionally get very bad texture issues that are not solved without completely closing both copies of the game.

This is a shame as I have not been able to dual-box since switching to Vista. When it works, I hardly notice any drop in FPS - just like back on XP.

[ QUOTE ]


i was able to install x-fi drivers for my fatal1ty card, in the properties you can have it run as a vista install under the compatibility tab. it install just fine and i was able to have sound again.

[/ QUOTE ]

I had lots of snap-crackle-pop on the Vista 64 drivers. i found the PAX drivers from a post on the Creative forums about people having the same issue as I. <shrug>

CoX runs perfectly for me. Not a single issue. W7-64 with a 9600GT on the Windows Update drivers.

Issues I do have:
CSS FPS issues - but this seems to have worked itself out.
No X-Fi drivers for it (no surprise considering how long it took to get Vista drivers), but there is an unofficial PAX version that runs almost perfectly on W7 without some of the advanced features.

This is possibly the easiest, most stable OS beta i have ever used from MS.


As an aside, why is it always necessary to have these idiotic OS arguments in any thread like this? I'm sure the thread title says "Windows 7 and City of Heroes.".

[ QUOTE ]

I dont know whether to laugh at you or cry with you having given a working card to your wife! Uggh! Thats gotta make you want to pull your hair out!!

This is I THINK the first I've heard of this errror on a 7xxx series card, but then again your not getting it until you SLI. I was previously asking folks to break SLI for testing and that may have been part of it.

However, I notice your still on a 178 driver. You've probably figured out that my stock answer at this point for anything the hotfix isnt fixing is "roll em back!" But if your happy with only a few crashes a day, enjoy!

(I still think its sweet you gave your wife your working card!)

[/ QUOTE ]

Haha, yeah, its rough going backward. The only other game I play is CSS - which a 7900GS is easily good for.

I am getting no crashes so far. I played for several more hours (with the wife, no less) and never crashed once. I am calling it fixed for me with the hotfix applied.

Switched from a 9600GT (which did not have the issue) to two 7900GS cards in SLi mode. Single mode has no crashes. SLi mode would slowly start dropping frames, then give me the display driver not working error. Crash happens within half an hour of the game being started. After the initial crash and game restart (no reboot), the game normally runs fine for as long as I play, but occasionally i may crash again with the same symptoms.

After applying the hotfix, I have not crashed yet after 3.5 hours of play. Even if I crash now, this is an improvement.

Driver is 178.13
OS is Vista Ultimate x64
AMD X2 BE 5000+
4GB DDR2 RAM
2x 7900GS in SLi
SB X-Fi Extreme sound card (can't remember which one)

I want my 9x00 card back. Sucks my wife has the bigger monitor and needs it more than I do .

Please put the LGTF back the way it was. It added much needed TF content for the villain side 35+ and was something I and many others looked forward too.