TargetOne

All I can say now is:







































DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

Yup, everything's down. I even got put into a queue (something like "200 of 659") when I tried to log back onto Virtue, and I've never seen that before.

Even the message forum took a long time to load just now.

Update: I can log in and select Virtue, then get the "queued" message. Eventually I get my character-select screen, but no matter who I choose, I get "Cannot find map" and get booted back to the login screen. Sigh...

I've not visited that particular area, so I can't comment on whether the issue affects only you or not. But it sounds similar to a spot in Pocket D (blueside, upper level, near the smaller of the two bars) where a floor tile shimmies incessantly as your viewpoint changes.

In the latter case, it seems clear to me that there are two polygons occupying the same space, each with a slightly different texture (or maybe the same texture oriented differently), and the game engine can't decide which one has priority, so it alternates between them with every screen update as the camera viewpoint moves.

You'll see the same thing in many supergroup/villain group bases, where the base designer placed two objects that overlap or intersect in some way. Again, the game engine doesn't seem to prioritize any particular object's polygons over another, so you'll see the shimmy where the surfaces occupy the same space.

In the case of the Pocket D floor tile, it's been that way practically forever. If the St. Martial shimmy really bothers you, you could always submit an in-game bug report.

Hi,

I frequently use the in-game feature that lets us keep notes about other players. But for some time now, it's been broken.

I used to be able to create and edit notes that were spread over multiple lines; I basically made a new line (by hitting Enter within the note editor) for each of that player's characters as I found out about them. So a note might look like this:

Just chipping in on the AMD-versus-Intel part of this little discussion...

A computer magazine I was reading had an article reviewing the latest-and-greatest CPUs from both vendors, and comparing them to a few of their older offerings. The article's author made the comment that Intel is already starting to reduce the "bang-for-the-buck" factor on their newer chips, precisely because AMD can't compete with them at the high end. AMD's Bulldozer chips are a disappointment, and Intel's latest i7 has cores that were deliberately disabled at the factory, apparently for no good reason other than Intel doesn't feel threatened enough by AMD to enable them. (It also uses quad-channel memory, which the author points out is of little value to most desktop apps and games that don't even push the limits of dual- or tri-channel memory.) The author went on to state that the i5-2500K is still the best overall value in CPUs today.

Food for thought...

A certain space-based MMO (which shall remain nameless) has a thing called the CSM. It's a small group of players who are elected (annually, I think) by the general player populace. They're supposed to listen to suggestions or complaints raised by the general populace, debate said issues amongst themselves, and if there's enough support, discuss them directly with the developers in meetings (which happen on a regular basis). The devs aren't obligated to implement the issues brought forward by the CSM, but it's generally expected that if an issue made it that far, the devs would have to have a very good reason indeed to reject it.

It all sounds like a very democratic process, right? But, just as in real-world politics, the people who run for CSM often have their own (sometimes hidden) agendas, and being players themselves, frequently skew towards supporting qame changes that benefit their own play styles.

For example, that game's message forums have many complaints about certain current CSM members who seem to favor the way large alliances (of which some are members) can totally dominate areas of space, with smaller corporations ("guilds") having little hope of making inroads in those areas.

My point is, a representative democratic process can be a two-edged sword, in both real and virtual spaces. Such an arrangement has the potential to bring about good changes, but it can also lead to results that benefit only a small minority of players.

Of course, the same thing could be said about the player-dev interaction in any game, CSM or no CSM...

Your problem could be related to a PCI bus latency issue that has been known to cause problems on many systems. Basically, the PCI latency timer is a part of the PCI bus which controls how long PCI devices can hold onto the bus for data-transfer before giving up control to other devices. If set too high, it may lead to some devices that need frequent bus access running out of data. Creative Labs soundcards are notorious for being pretty demanding with their PCI bus transfers, and on some motherboards a high PCI latency timer value can cause the soundcard's buffers to run out, causing audio dropouts or distortion.

The default or maximum PCI Latency is usually set in the motherboard's system BIOS; check to see what the current value is (write it down if you have to), then try setting it to a lower value (32 or 64 are often recommended), reboot, and try again. Note that not all motherboard BIOSes will expose this setting and allow changes. If yours doesn't, you can also try PCI Latency Tool since you're running Windows XP. However you make the adjustment, be careful not to set it too low, as this may cause performance issues.

You could also try moving your sound card to a different PCI slot (swapping other cards around if needed), and make sure you have the latest drivers for everything (especially sound and video, but also your motherboard chipset).

If this doesn't help, you can try running DPC Latency Tool, which checks for related bus-latency issues. Run it first while the system is idle; the graph should be continuously in the lower "green" zone. Then keep it running while you launch City of Heroes and zone a few times, switching back to the tool and watching the graph as the zone loads. If the graph starts spiking up into the red area (especially when you experience the sound problem), you have a latency issue. Follow the advice on that page and [carefully!] disable devices one at a time in Device Manager, starting with things like your network card and sound card, and see what happens.

Hope all this helps you.
Target

Hello, Jay (or any other devs that read this)...

I thought I would draw your attention to this thread:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=277933

... in which players are lamenting the way many costume parts are "pre-tinted" and thus cannot be colored the way we players would like. That is, sections of the parts have their own color tinting which mixes with any color selected by the player to produce an intermediate color which is not at all desireable. As pointed out in that thread, this often makes any attempt to colorize those parts come out ugly, and makes it difficult to match those parts up with parts from other sets.

Please fix this.

GoNukemHigh, what are your system specs (e.g. CPU, video, soundcard, speaker system, etc.)

Do you hear this buzzing at any other time, e.g. in other games? Have you updated any drivers lately?

I have Time-Warner myself, and I had a major connectivity problem yesterday evening. Mapservered mid-session, then couldn't reconnect anymore after that.

Firing up a web browser to check the server status, I found I couldn't contact cityofheroes.com at all. Checking out some other sites, I found my connections to be very hit-or-miss. Some sites would load, others wouldn't... and even the ones that did load, would sometimes time out if I tried refreshing.

So I checked out a couple of "internet traffic report" sites. http://www.internettrafficreport.com/ reported that North America was experiencing some connectivity problems (the traffic index was at 75%) with an average packet loss of 20%. And http://www.internetpulse.net/Main.aspx?Metric=PL was also showing some packet loss between a few of the major peers.

Mind you, these two sites are still showing similar readings tonight, yet my Internet connectivity is MUCH better than it was last night. So I'm leaning towards Time-Warner itself having been at fault yesterday.

Going to log into the game now, hopefully I won't get a repeat of last night.

What is your video card, anyway?

I had major flashing right after the patch. A repair from the Launcher corrected it for the most part, but it still happens from time to time. Basically, the "world" disappears for a tiny fraction of a second, leaving only characters hanging against the "skybox" backdrop.

Running nvidia GTX 460 here, 280.26 drivers (newer beta drivers are available, but I'm loathe to try betas to fix a problem in a single game) on Windows 7 Home Premium (x64).

Fish heads, fish heads... roly-poly fish heads.

How about... spinning a yo-yo?

You could also try one of these:

IDE to SATA converter

You plug it into the back of your IDE hard drive, then run a SATA cable to your motherboard. That way, you can keep on using the IDE drive for storage. Have to make sure there's enough clearance inside your case for the adapter to plug into the back of the drive, though.

I welcome our new free player overlords.

I'm sorry, but I think merging the archetypes forums is a bad idea.

There may be some crossover of powers and play styles between several archetypes, but they're hardly clones of each other. If I'm playing, say, a Blaster, and need advice, I really don't want to see discussions of Corrupter powers, and vice-versa.

Ditto. Forum forgets my login when I close the browser. (And still occasionally as I'm navigating the forums.)

Firefox 6.0.2 on Windows 7 Home Premium, x64.