NGrfx

I have a 3.5 floppy disk caddy, filled with mini-cd's that are basically character soundtracks. I stopped making those before extra character slots camer out (thank god). Though, honestly, I only stopped because it started getting annoying to find mini-CDR's in the store anymore

I stopped reading any of that thing after the billionth time I logged in, about 3 years ago, hehe.

Anyway, after being unable to connect to DBserver for the last 6 tries, I downloaded the NCSoft launcher and tried that. The user agrement I'm used to seeing on the CoH Updater is not present, and there's no user agreement confirmation until that "new one" that pops up on the login screen.

NC launcher didn't change anything either though so... I'll go reboot now.

It appears as if NCSoft is goin g the way of Steam and Games for Windows Live, in so much as they're create a master launcher and self contained payment system. The big part of the new agreement pertains to the "NCCoin" (comparable to Microsoft points on GFWL). What this means in the long run, who knows?

Party pack? Eight bucks?? Where my party hat? Where my vuve.. veluz.. volkswa.. noise makers? Where my water balloon (perma-)temp power(recolored snowball temp with a splash noise on impact)? Where my claimable base items like the neon laser light things and a disco ball and a bar tap, and a pool table and a basketball backboard and a soccer goal and for god's sake bar stools! ?

If?? You mean they aren't??

Wasn't there some monkeying around by a dev during I17 testing, where he put slifbos 2 into the command line of the launcher shortcut to enable it (on nvidia cards only as I recall). Think it was a post from The Television, if someone wants to flex their search fu muscles and try to track it down.

SO I hear they're beta testing this new system that lets your existing characters change sides, like go from beinga hero to being a villain. Apparently it involves collecting tips of some sort.. *notices the tip jar sitting on the IT department's desks now* . . . oh for the love of...

I get a server stable enough to run more than two missions before the mapserver disconnects and flat out boots start up for the night, and I'll be happier. I get some sort of official response indicating they're at least closing in onisolating, if not correcting, the problem, and I'll be even happier. I get some sort of pacifier prize for my personal preference being to use the one part that's malfunctioning, while the other 90ish% of the service is still available, I'll be suprised. If they want to give virtue a "sorry about that folks" prize, I'd say make is something more... mundane? like open the ski chalet for a week or something like that.

Okay people, quit messing with your own client settings, in hopes it will correct a server side issue. All kinds of people are getting booted like this, red side and blue side (now), with tons of different settings and hardware configurations. During I17 beta, they posted that they were trying out a new server configuration, exactly what that means, I don't know. but the market crash(and subsequent shutdown for a week), and now these disconnects, are server problems. All we can do is report them, and cross out fingers for a prompt fix.

Red side seems to bog down and start having these issues once enough people get on. Something they changed, or need to physically change(as in some bad piece of hardware) is making the server choke and die, kicking people off when they query the mapserver to transfer to a new instance/zone. This is not isolated to to you, or related to the character itself. It seems to be more about server load, and zone population (i.e. amount of data needing to be shuffled through the server pipes).

It would probably be less frequent red side and or happen blue side if it weren't for the sheer numbers of demon summoning masterminds that flooded the Isles the moment we were allowed to roll them up. In a sense, you could blame the cubic butt-load of mastermind pets, fully dependent on the server to dictate what they are doing/where they are going, but that's more of a catalyst, really. They're making the problem surface, not solely causing it.

*strolls in about 5 minutes after Nora, Jora, Xora, Angel, Bittercup, Angel, Clover, and Amata have finished wreaking havoc, reloads the 50cal sniper rifle and blows the smoke of the end of the barrel*

Anyone find any teddy bears? Marie needs more teddy bears. No? Okay, let's check the building.

*puts the sniper rifle away and pulls out an ominous looking customized axe with "The Dimemberer" etched into both sides of the head*

Let's have some fun.

*winks at Clover and Jora, who both pull out customized auto-axes, and the troop head indoors, followed by a mangey looking mutt that slips in just before the door swings shut*

Slackers unite!
. . . tomorrow . . . maybe.

Yep, no go on trying to get in from a allied character either...
guess I'll have to wait on that server reset

This is on Virtue. Tried a third character, no joy, entered a coalition base just fine. Next test, is get a character to whom the base in question would be a coalition base

First try was from Cap, 2nd from a different character in Nerva, latest a different character in Grandville.

I'm not liking this pattern...

I used the base teleport power to move from a mission entrance way up in Nerva, then telepad to get back out again. I go check the Black Market, then go to get back into the base in Cap. I click to enter my SG base, and it goes to the loading screen. The progress bar moves sloooooooowly, but I don't enter the base.

I gave it 5 minutes, then ended task on it, and logged back in, trying again. been 15 minutes now, and still just a slowly progressing progress bar, moving because it technically hasn't crashed yet, but still waiting on the packets from the server to know what to load, I'm assuming.

Tried on a different character on a different account, with the same results.

I was just in there. There's been no base editing, no changes to the base, even in storage.

So.. anyone else having troubles zoning into their bases?

Shield Defense has the same debuffing aura that other sets have, to help hold aggro. It raises your damage, based off how many enemy targets are around you, in range. This aura, plus dealing higher damage to bump you up on the hate list ladder, plus a normal use of taunt (I still didn't take taunt all the way up to level 40 and did fine) plus being an active combatant holds plenty of aggro. You also get a very nice damage targetted AoE attack in shield defense, that bumps you even further up the hate list, every time you use it.

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Try enabling VSync.

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That's specifically to address your "background looks like its trying to catch up" issue.

Your 6150 is "old", yes, but can still technically do the job. You're just going to have to turn some settings down, and use things like "suppress extra player FX" and "suppress FX when close". I wouldn't push your draw distance sliders all the way up either. You're not gonna see everything like someone with a newer card will, but it will be adequate to play the game, relatively smoothly.

I'm done Hamidon raids, and herded large chunks(not the whole room, but a lot of it) on the Eden Trial on a 5700 before. If you've got the CPU and system memory to help that GPU keep up overall, you should be able to get by.

SE.. those the little tiny ones that share system memory? Assuming you run XP and have the maximum 2 gigs installed, giving 512 to the card, and leaving 1536 for windows is about as good as you can balance it, to get performance out of that video card.

Don't know if CoX uses it, but there is a "new feature" in these drivers, ambient occlusion. CoX wasn't on the list here, but some other fairly popular games are. Just from what I see in game, and knowing that an option even exists for "uselightmaps" I'd wager CoX doesn't use this rendering feature. So "your mileage may vary" but me personally, I'm going to install them, to make FO3 look better. Oh and I'm using a 9800GT on Vista Home Premium 64 bit.

Not to derail, though I think the actual topic has run it's course already. I do have to make a reply to this last sentence though

"It's all the same, 2d or 3d doesn't make a difference"

It does in fact make quite a difference. There are fantastic sculptors that couldn't draw a circle to save their life, and at the same time wonderful painters that couldn't sculpt an ash tray. The differences are no less profound in 2d and 3d digital arts. Many 3d graphics instructors have commented, that the first, most important, and most difficult thing to do, is to get their students to actually start thinking in 3d.

The rest of that post, I pretty much agree with. I just had to respond to that last sentence.

Since alt codes can't be entered in game, the way you get those special symbols is to open your character map(start menu->accessories I believe the default is), select, then copy from there, return to game, and paste it into the chat entry field. a paste key on your keyboard helps for this. ctrl+v will do.


Now, anyone sorted out the name of the chat bubble font yet?

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I did a version of PlasmaStream as well. Sartori, where did you get those buildings you used in yours? They have a good, contemporary look to them.

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Looks like the Dysotopia City Blocks, which were recently revamped and passed through DAZ to go in their store.

Just to be fair in the name dropping Syxxus has a werewolf figure, and there is an entire super hero line of stuff by Sturkwerk over at Poser Pros.

Most in game approximations on costume bits can be done with the catsuits and the aforementioned photoshop skills. Most of them have templates available on their product pages, the really good templates are done by Snow Sultan. Using DAZ Studio, or Poser 6/7 you can also bring in displacement mapping to have them look less like textures painted onto a catsuit.

If the OP wants to do character renders, I would agree, start in the "poser universe" and the best foray? the free one. Grab the program, grab the free content pack, raid the freeby archive, and spend a little time scanning their forums for tips and tricks, as well as download links to Questor's studio downloads(a nice set of metallic shader presets, and a good set of character lights. Find the additional DAZ shaders, and play around til you get the hang of it. If you move into Poser 7(dont bother with poser6, honestly) your only real challenges will be figuring out "okay, where the heck did they put this tool I was used to being over here?".

Incidentally, Questor also has two sets of guns(pistols) and a set of knives and swords in the freeby archive, that cover just about all needs in that department.

Now the big name dropping list.

Community sites.
<ul type="square"> [*]Renderosity-one of the biggest and oldest (gone a little downhill recently, but still has seniority[*]Poser Pros-big, helpful, so good DAZ bought them up.[*]Animotions-Super hero oriented "Poser" stuff(will also lead you somewhere I'm not going to mention specifically)[/list]
Specific Merchants to be on the watch for.
<ul type="square">[*]Billy T[*]Bat Labs[*]Pretty 3D[*]Baron Vlad Harkonen (also locatable by looking for Digital Vixens , the name of his website)[*]The3dWizard[*]PhilC[*]Uzilite/Wusamah[*]Kozaburo-Hair, excellent, excellent hairs, and prefers to leave them free(Daz actually had someone go meet with him in Japan about getting stuff in their store, but he prefers his hairs remained free)[*]B-Man/idler168-Shoes and boots. You'll see them in the stores at Daz and Renderosity.[*]Jim Burton-can't forget this one.[/list]
I could go on and on and on, but that's a heck of a start. I didn't specifically link, so as to not possibly erk the mod-squad with perceivable advertising frenzy on the forums here, but I gave you a pretty robust starting list to begin your searches from.

Edited for bad typing.

AH HA! Winner! I've managed to construct a tier 2 station with one group and a tier 3(only able to be built on the tier 2 station) station with another. Duration does not increase, but scale of the buff seems to increase. So, you have possibly 20 minutes of cracting, to get a 15 minute power that rushing you might make it through most of a solo mission on heroic/villainous with.

Now, if these temp powers became on demand, so we could save them for use when there were most needed, the rest of the system would be more acceptable. However, why go up to teir 3? Well, I can't actually confirm the effectiveness increase of the buffs, this stuff takes too much salvage to build to just test for the sake of testing, when the bases still have telepads and such that need to be built from that salvage. So, if the higher tier stations yielded more charges, or actually increased the duration(as indicated in their description before you build them) per charge, then a tier 3 would certainly be worth the 60k prestige and salvage use.

Now it has been stated that a single buff, from multiple stations, will stack. Unfortunately, you'd have a LOT of prep work to do, then have to buff yourself at each station, then run out and have your buff partially gone, before you ever got to a mission or outdoor area that you got the buff for. Nobody will ever use on of these in a Hamidon raid, unless they wait in the base, communicating with somebody at the "Staging rock" to know exactly when to create the buff and come use it until their first face plant, that some nice defender, controller, or medicine pool user picks them up from.

So, make them on demand temp powers, not activated at the time of building, but placed like other temp powers, that can be activated(and some deactivated to save charge time) when they are needed, as opposed to use ruching to try and milk every precious second of those medium(at best) strength buffs.