SuperOz

Should point out over on the Test Server forums that there's a post about SLI (two video cards, essentially) that mentions a new Nvidia driver (that I'm downloading right now) that improves the OpenGL graphic coding up to modern levels, 3.3 for most video cards and 4.0 for the super-shiny new Fermi cards. I think it's worth having a look at, and hopefully a redname can comment on it. I won't be installing it myself until I get some more word.

S.

Is this something that deserves posting in General Discussion for those wanting better performance from their video cards? At the very least I'd be hollering at the Devs to mention this for any sort of guide to utlising Ultra Mode.

S.

Happy Birthday! Wow, hasn't it grown? Look at it, all shiny now and animated. Seemed just like yesterday when flying, teleporting, running and leaping was all it could do...

How quickly they grow up...

S.

Hello to all.

This seems to be a fortuitious coincidence on top of the end of the Rikti War. The 25th is ANZAC Day in Australia, to commemorate the fallen in all the great battles over the last century and this one. It stands for the Australian and New Zealand Army Corp, though the day recognises all the armed forces.

I cordially invite everyone to Atlas Park at the two braziers at City Hall at 8pm EST onwards to remember these fallen, where I will speak the Anzac Ode, taken from a poem by Laurence Binyon. Hereafter you can if you wish lay a red poppie flower in recognition of the fallen. The poppies are a memory of those lives lost in both World Wars One and Two in recognition of the blood spilled in the fields of France and Belgium. The legend goes that they bloom red because of that same blood spilled.

The ceremony is simple; There is an introduction, a brief prayer, the recitation of the Ode, a minute's silence and then the laying of wreaths and/or poppies. If you wish to attend in formal costume or uniform, you would be more than welcome. The whole ceremony shouldn't last more than an hour. I will definitely be present and paying my respects. I will be in-character as Green Taipan.


S.

Outstanding video, D_R! I agree, the transition from regular to Ultra Mode was a great shot, and even with the frame rate dips in final playback, it looks outstanding and really covers the bases well. Another top-notch video.

As always, I hope to aspire to your level.


S.

Hello all.

This is a little pet project of mine that started ages ago when I decided to make an Iron Man homage character, who eventually got the interesting name Steelmonger. The aim here is to eventually get him to 50 (he's 37 now), fitted out with appropriate Epic Pools and the Vanguard armor, as I consider it the most 'complete' set in the game.

The other part of the challenge was to make him seem as high-tech as I envisiged. As soon as I saw the animation for opening the Ouroboros portal, I knew what I was onto. Holding up your arm, tapping an invisible device...there had to be a way to replicate that. I found it eventually via a Temporary power you can craft that is called Advanced Targetting...don't quote me on the name, but it has a fantastic animation that pops up a little holographic display with the same animation used for the Oro portal.

So here's where I need some help. I'd like to compile a list for myself and the other high-tech heroes out there of what temporary powers, accolades, badges and so on can help get you more of that 'tech hero' feel. A good one to start with is getting your Mission Engineer Accolade for the AE tablet. Just like the notepad animation, but on a slick high-tech one. Cheesy, unnecessary? But definitely high-tech.

Please help me out if you can!


S.

This is like Westworld, but with avatars.

You need to work in a Yul Brynner cameo somewhere in a story, Steelclaw.

Ten points to those old enough to remember the movie (written by the same man who would go on to do Jurassic Park....)

S.

Hello all!

Instead of my usual commentary on what I think the game should be like in 2010 or wondering what kind of video card I should buy for Ultra Mode, I thought I'd mention something I've come to appreciate a lot more in this game, and the very thing that tends to almost be neglected in a very ironic sense.

And that is the City of Heroes (and Villains) itself(selves).

Now, like most people I made my character, had fun with powers and probably like most people again I took my travel power of choice at level 15 and skipped all over the place from mission to mission. And when Ouroboros and the Pocket D VIP power came along, I had suddenly convenient shortcuts to the zones I needed to get to (and sometimes in a hurry if I was teamed up).

But then late last year I decided (as a Virtue player and roleplayer) to create a themed character that was Golden Age of comics inspired. So I made Green Taipan, an Australian superhero whose sole visible power were a pair of fighting 'claws' that looked like green blades.

And no ability to fly, teleport, leap or run without some sort of technological aid.

Now, this is a deliberate choice on my part. The Natural Booster was out, and the Ninja Run's animations and better-than-average travel speed suited the concept perfectly. Had I gimped myself? I'd never really taken a character this way before.

So I got out into Atlas Park and tried it out. And to my absolutely pleased and genuine surprise, it was great. Instead of aiming my flying character at a zoning point and pressing 'R' for auto-run, I had to make conscious decisions about where I was running and how I was getting there. Walls were obstacles, fire escapes were my friend. If I was totally and utterly stuck, I could rely on a Raptor Pack or one of the temp jetpacks you can buy (which has a great steampunk/golden age feel to it, I might add) to get me somewhere where Ninja Run couldn't.

And the city really came alive for me in a way I hadn't appreciated before. Past a certain point, I was running through the city to keep with the theme and wasn't doing it in a self-preservation kind of way as I had done in my earlier levels. Atlas Park had roaming gangs hiding out in its industrial areas, or behind the Architect Entertainment building. Kings Row was a hotbed of clandestine activity and there was a surprise at every turn of a fire escape.

And Steel Canyon was a revelation, with ledges and spots to bounce off continually.

I realised that in a sense, even though it works to COH's advantage to have instanced mission maps, we're missing out on the city somewhat. A case in point is Founders Falls, which is almost Venetian in design, with bridges and canals and tunnels and tightly-packed buildings, but noone goes there. For a character with no significant travel power, Ninja Run was made for this area. Scooting in and out of the tunnels particularly and sometimes finding things I hadn't seen or completely forgotten about as I flew, jumped, ran or teleported past them.

I should point out I'm not advocating an open world style of game here, ala Champions Online. And the major reasons I say that is that the griefing and the queueing that goes on in an open-world style of game not only breaks your immersion in the world, it's also time-consuming and in some ways discourages cooperation, at least in my personal opinion.

But.

I would hope that in some way that City Of...encourages people to be a city, and not just an urban landscape we pass through on the way to the next mission. Going Rogue's Praetoria City sounds very promising with no War Walls, underground sewer systems (that might be connected in a more logical fashion than Paragon City's) and open spaces to roam through.

But I also hope it's not just a tourist attraction. Champions Online I thought fell down in the sense that there was too much happening in their streets, sometimes literally just across the street from one event to another. Their buildings might have people who could be rescued from them or be more enterable, but it also felt like they weren't being used. Everyone was out on the streets being a criminal or being harassed by one.

I want to be out in Paragon City, hunting the rooftops for where the Circle of Thorns cabal is conducting their terrible scheme, and not just in some warehouse I know where exactly it is. If that's the case, why not just send some Longbow/cops/other NPC organisation in?

I hope other people feel similarly inspired to rejoin their city and not just pass overhead or through it without seeing what's there on offer. And I also hope that any redname reading this takes a moment to think about this and decides that not all crime happens indoors.


S.

Totally awesome, _Wyll_! I approve wholeheartedly of any family that not only knows what a TARDIS is, but what it looks like! Might I recommend looking on Ebay for some of the excellent kids stuff that is made in the UK like blankets and little playhouses? I've been incredibly impressed with the quality the Brits make the stuff and you might too!

S.

Lost Halo,

I will concede the point regarding the flyer, but the first respawn and thereafter were really pushing the line as far as timing is concerned. I'm still not entirely convinced there wasn't an issue.

As for the towers, I must reiterate again that we were methodic in how we handled the repairmen and not one slipped through when we were taking down towers. The repairmen, and I will say it again, were manifesting from previously downed towers. I sincerely hope you're not questioning the veracity of what I'm saying here, as I have no ulterior motive to do so.

S.

I have, and trust me....I regret at least one of those missions....

S.

I'm very aware of what was said, and my response is that it is not how the respawn of the Flyer was behaving. I can't be any clearer than that.

S.

We were 100% certain we'd gotten rid of all the repairmen. No mistakes, no miscounting. I was also able to see the action, being the tank with the only job of taunting Recluse. We had no FF's or other large-scale AoE scatter attacks.

As for the Flyer, it most certainly wasn't acting according to a timer. Between the first and second spawns was 18 minutes. No mistake on that, one of us was keeping count. It wasn't the balance of twenty minutes, it wasn't taken from when the first one went down or if another was due to be checked for at twenty minutes. It simply did not conform to the rule you are suggesting here. I'm happy to be proven wrong, but the entire team of eight was confirming what I'm posting here.

The timing of the flyer was out, and towers were being rebuilt by repairmen who were somehow appearing where there was no opportunity for them to do so.

S.

Hello everyone.

Tonight was my first opportunity to try the STF, and with one or two people who had done it before. Although it's very very long, it is enjoyable.

However.

Upon getting all the way to Recluse in the fourth mission (I doubt considering how long it's been around this is any surprise), we ran into some severely unexpected problems. The first amongst these was the Arachnos Flier. As per the procedure we knew of, we destroyed the flier and then minions. Great. We knew then we had twenty minutes to make a start on Recluse and the towers. The problem was that instead of twenty minutes, the flier spawned again after just about three minutes. We tried to ignore it, and eventually we had to engage it again, during which time it kept spawning minions and disrupting the plans of destroying the towers.

The second and third times, the time to the respawn was well under twenty minutes. We also comprehensively destroyed the repairmen spawns on the towers...only to have them respawn anyways! So we wound up constantly being at two towers down, two towers up, which I found ridiculous. I actually wound up petitioning it as I thought this wasn't remotely normal behavior for the instance. No reasonable group could be expected to finish the scenario given the circumstances.

Does this happen a lot? Is the Statesman TF bugged and if so, how much?


S.

Zombie Man,

I appreciate the bullet points, but what I was curious about were the degrees of detail you'd get in various graphics cards, say for example a Nvidia 250GX to a 260, and a Raedon 5750 to a Raedon 5770. I think that'd help a lot of buyers sort out their budgets for this and more importantly what bang for their buck they'd be getting.


S.

That's not an issue. I've taken to using USB-powered devices like DVD burners, to cut down on the power needs. From what I can figure, even having the highest tier cards shouldn't stress my system unduly.


S.

The i5-750's are outstanding. Even on just the 2gig of RAM, I have to do a LOT to max out the system. The other game I play, LotRo, has much more detailed graphics than CoH currently and the system takes it in its stride. I have to play for something like six hours or more before I get any sort of slowdown or errors.

I couldn't recommend them enough. There are newer generation chips, but the i5-750 is a powerful quad-core chip and makes my old AMD chip look amateurish.

je saist, you make some interesting points about Raedon and I'm definitely looking at prices. The store I most reliably look to however makes some interesting pricing choices.

Currently, I could get a Nvidia 260 for 213 dollars AU, but a Raedon 5770 would only cost me 179. The next steps down, the 250 and 5750 are 125 and 148 respectively. Now, most recommendations are to aim for that level, but I'm considering going to the 250/5750 levels firstly for price's sake (but that may change in the next two months) and secondly because I wouldn't mind knowing the gradients of detail that cards from the 9800GT range up would give you. I think that's a detail point that really hasn't been touched on. Currently the discussion seems to be 'all or nothing', and that surely can't be the case.

I think also that the upgrade on my end is justified for LotRo for one (it'll take more of the load off the quad-core and give me better performance) and that I also do video editing and Photoshop, both very memory intensive activities, and a good video card will process video better, plus give me inlet/outlet options.


S.

Amused comment at the intelligence level of original poster.

Chooses not to use internet abbreviations for fear of loss of intelligence quotient.

Comment as to the insertion of Monty Python references in thread and whether this may be a public seduction. Advises against any mention of dead parrots, spam and lumberjacks.

Queries as to what 'generic rant' means and whether the generic was a specific rant caught out violating copyright and has been downgraded.

Random thought querying if all copyrights are now owned by Disney and the possibility of Going Rogue becoming 'Going slightly naughty, but only with an important life lesson in the end'.

Pleasant comment as to the continuation of this thread and appreciation that the English language is not dead but rather suffering an unfortunate rebellion by younger sibling Ebonic.

Exits, stage right even....


S.

I've seen this very late, but yes in fact the Dreamtime is, according to the various tribal myths, before the start of time when the Wandjina (or 'Sky People') came to the land and made everything around them.

These beings in the stories were immense. I have a character based on the Rainbow Serpent of these mythologies, and the Serpent's movements across the land made the mountain ranges. They encompass most elements you find in mythology; there's the trickster demon often taking the form of dingoes.

There's some similarity to the Dreamtime (or Dreaming as the natives prefer to call it) with the shattered aspects of Rularuu, but it differs at the point that these being or beings went mad and broke their world, whereas the Wandjina essentially dreamed the world into being, and often took the form of animals, be they snakes, lizards, fish and so on. It's interesting to note that the stories often feature talking animals, as all the animals could speak to each other in the Dreaming. It wasn't until they did things in the stories (more often than not told to explain for example why the blue tongued lizard's tongue is blue) that they lost these abilities.

I'd be happy to answer to the best of my abilities any other questions you had.

S.

Easily done, sirrah!

My operating system is as follows:
Gigabyte GA-P55-UDR3 Motherboard
i5-750 CPU
2Gig DDR3 RAM
Nvidia 9600GT 1GB video card.
Windows XP 32-bit edition


S.