Xenos

Apprentice
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  1. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Black Pebble View Post
    Wow. I can't believe I missed that. Nice job.
    Call me Mr. Obvious. Glad you liked it.

    Would love to see a screenshot once you make him.
  2. Well, this one seems terribly obvious to me, but here it goes:

    Roi, The Fiscally Responsible Hero!

    Alternatively ROI or R.O.I. would also work, though it wrecks the Roi/Roy idea.

    Illusion/Kin Controller
    or
    Mercenaries/Time Mastermind

    Have fun and thanks for everything.
  3. Folks over on the Titan Network are trying to organize some ideas to save COH. As crazy as it sounds, what I have read so far is actually encouraging. The majority of the posts seem to be in this thread: http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index....ic,4877.0.html

    If saving COH is a longshot, saving the Mac client is probably even more unlikely, but I think it would be great if some of us could poke their heads in over there. Folks like CuppaManga have done a lot of poking around the code that could be useful in any case, and there will be need for support in all sorts of areas (web design, media, legal...). So head on over and throw your name into the hat. Nothings wrong with taking a longshot.

    - Xenos
  4. Chaos, I think they have improved that issue somewhat with the SandForce processor, plus the OWC 240GB drive is actually a 255GB drive with the extra space being utilized for data management. I have not used the drive long enough to really say that this will never be an issue, but these drives have certainly improved a good bit.

    As an aside, today I realized that I had forgotten to set the new drive as the start-up drive in System Preferences (which you need to do on a Mac when you swap out a boot drive) and the boot time, incl. Photoshop start is now down to 35 seconds! That is almost 2 minutes less than with the regular hard drive.

    EvilRyu, if your MBP is recent enough (from 2009 on), OWC has a kit that you can use to replace your optical drive with another hard drive, or SSD. I would have loved to do that, but my MBP was too old. So you can have a small/cheaper SSD for the OS and the apps you want, and a bigger hard drive for data.

    I think OWC may owe me a commission at this point.
  5. Just wanted to share a little improvement I made to my aging MBP and the way COH plays for me.

    The change is not Earth shattering, but it's a welcome improvement and I would encourage anyone who is on the fence about adding a Solid State Drive (SSD), to go for it.

    My COH machine is an older 17" 2008 MPB with 4GB of RAM and GeForce 8600M card. Not cutting edge in any way, but it plays COH well enough. Over the weekend I replaced the 160GB 7200RPM drive with a new OWC 240GB SSD. On this pre-unibody MBP it was a little bit of an operation, but the videos on OWC had all the info for the upgrade.

    Just for kicks I timed the boot (incl. start of Photoshop) of the MBP pre and post upgrade (I cloned the drive, so it was loading all the same stuff). Pre came in at 2:26 and post at 1:16. The biggest change of course was in opening the apps once I was booted to the desktop. Needless to say I am very happy.

    I don't have any numbers for the changes in COH, and I don't think that it would show in the frame rate, but I could tell that in areas that the MBP was choking on previously, it now does not seem to show any significant slowdowns. It does not look like a new game, but it just seems to have fewer problems, which is a nice bonus to this upgrade.

    Two thumbs up for SSDs.
  6. A great source of joy is gone.

    I am surprised how truly personal his passing feels and I see this mirrored in the messages from other people. His brilliance and excellence made the life of countless people happier.

    Thank you very much, Steve Jobs.
  7. Seriously?! You only give same day notice about no longer supporting a version of the OS that is still in general use and is in use by your player base??! This feels very much like dropping your XP customers without any prior notice (...you haven't done that, right? Not trying to be funny, I seriously don't know, though I doubt it).

    I thought after this whole mess with the the Mac version of the Beta client, you would be a little more considerate in regards to your Mac players.

    I sincerely hope that the game won't stop working under 10.5 right aways, as it did briefly during the Freedom update because someone wrote a 10.6 minimum requirement into one of the pref files. If that is the case people should have at least some time to decided if they want to upgrade and to implement that update.

    I run 10.5.8 on the Mac I play COH on. It worked fine with the Freedom upgrade. I doubt that I will rush to upgrade that machine for a game.

    I've been here as a paying customer since day 1, and I can say the last couple of month have been the most frustrating ever.
  8. Wow...it never rains, but it pours. Not being able to log into the forums was really annoying. Thank god someone figured out the "reset you game password" solution.

    Anyway, on 10.5.8 things are looking fairly good. I am able to get into the game, launcher updated properly and the store seems to have most if not all of it's fonts in place.

    On my first and only store purchase the games crashed when I hit the final purchase button. Good news is that the purchase went through fine. I'll try another purchase once I feel ready to part with more of my precious points.

    Thanks for staying up late, Zwillinger. And thanks for this great Mac community.
  9. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Nalrok_AthZim View Post
    When did so many of the mac users turn into negative nancy's?
    There is nothing wrong with voicing criticism and frustration over this issue. This is a clearly inadequate situation that could have been avoided on a number of occasions, no matter whether they are working on it now or not.

    I appreciate Zwillinger's efforts as much as the next guy, and I am sure that if it was within his powers he would have fixed it a while ago. But that is not the case and we don't have to like it.

    I think it's more helpful if you let people express their feelings, especially when it is done in a wholly appropriate way, than to tell them to shut up.
  10. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Aggelakis View Post
    I am judging by posts in the beta forums, not the mac forums. The majority of the complainants have stated a huge improvement with the last couple patches. The biggest complaint I've seen lately is the lack of font, which is not a show-stopping bug and will be kludge-fixed (before being actually fixed).

    Yes, there are still people having crashing issues, a lot of them unrelated to the store (which was beyond the scope of my post). Yes, there are still some people unable to access the store reliably.
    Ahhh, too bad, I had hoped you had a solution that worked.

    If you check over on the Mac forums, you may find somewhat different posts than in the beta forums. We mostly stayed over there with that issue, because we had Zwillinger's ear, who was in contact with the engineers of the Transgaming client as well as the in-house Devs.

    In short, at this point the font issue seems to exist under Leopard and Lion (OS names, just in case), and if you can't read most of the content of the store (including how many points you have) it makes shopping pretty interesting. I think the judgement is still out about how stable the store itself is for all Mac users. Extended use seems to crash it for many if not most. And lastly, if you access the store, the launcher is still unable to start the game back up unless you trash your preferences (which includes your finely tuned graphics settings).

    I consider this a pretty unsatisfactory situation. And even though we were assured that Freedom would not go live with this problem unresolved, I understand that there are other pressures. It just sucks for us.

    But thanks for your interest.
  11. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Zombie Man View Post
    And what do you base that on?

    In the past, if technical problems kept players from getting a certain reward, the Devs have always, in every instance, extended the availability. Why would you think they would not do that in this case (if it is indeed the case)?
    It's not a reward, it's a discount. Which involves money. And right now it looks like financial interests matter more than our (minority) interests.
  12. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Aggelakis View Post
    Accessing the store on a mac doesn't cause a complete lockup for the majority of mac users. There are another couple store-related issues (none worth pitching a fit over, annoying but not show-stopping) but the majority of store-related lockups were fixed in one of the last couple patches.
    Are you playing on a Mac? And do you mind if I ask you what version of the OS you are on?

    The situation you are describing is not what I see reported in the majority of the posts on the Mac forum and elsewhere. And it is certainly not my own experience. Any information you can share about your set-up might really be helpful in solving this.

    Thanks.
  13. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Zombie Man View Post
    True dat. And knowing our Devs, I'm sure if the Mac users missed out on that through no fault of their own, they'd extend the sale until Mac users could access it.
    I would not count on that. I think it's very obviously being demonstrated to us right now, that Mac users are too small a group to matter for them over financial considerations.

    It really is a bit of a big deal if this is not fixed by Tuesday.
  14. First of thanks for all this info, Cuppa. Sounds like a fun procedure ahead of us on Tuesday.

    But you bring up a good point here that I had not considered yet...the potential loss of Paragon Points.

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by CuppaManga View Post
    - Do NOT spend a lot of time in the Paragon Store. Make multiple trips there, close it when you can, and when you wish to make a purchase, do so quickly and then get out of there. There is currently NO guarantee that the Paragon Store crashing will not cause a loss of Paragon Points! You may be able to get them back, but Support will be overwhelmed and it's not something that will happen quickly. Protect yourself first.
    Do any of you know where I can actually check how many Paragon Points I have? That part is at least for me affected by the missing font issue in the store? Is it available elsewhere? Could it be made available elsewhere in case they don't get this addressed in time. Because that is really vital information.

    Thanks.
  15. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Kitsune Knight View Post
    They also had publicly said they were parting with Transgaming, using their Cider wrapper. That really is a bit more technical than most people care for, though, so it didn't get a huge amount of attention. They weren't exactly trying to keep it secret.
    Wow, I totally missed that...so were they indicating that they would no longer have a Mac client, or that they would develop one independent of Transgaming?
  16. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Lothic View Post
    It is quite literally the "squeaky wheel" of this game which has siphoned away far more of the Devs' energies than it could ever reasonably justify from a cost/benefit point of view.

    Long story short: It was taking far too much time to fix given the relatively few number of players who actually use it. From an engineering point of view it became the obvious candidate to de-prioritize in order to get the rest of the show on the road.

    Now I'm fairly sure the Devs are going to continue to do their best to get this "problem child" up and working ASAP. But to be perfectly blunt despite what Zwillinger said it seems pretty straightforward to me why they couldn't afford to waste any more time on it prior to Issue 21's launch. Hopefully it won't take too long...
    Well, at least your avatar is line with your amount of compassion.
  17. Yeah, this is very exciting...unless you are a Mac based player!

    Just so you all know, based on what's currently on the beta server, the game is pretty much useless for a Mac user at this point. In the Paragon Store half the type is missing or unreadable, prolonged use of the Paragon Store crashes the game for many if not all of us (that couldn't really be tested very well during beta as for most of the time we could not access the store at all) and lastly the NCSoft launcher will not start the game again after you use the Paragon Store, unless you dig deep into the guts of your folder system and throw out your COH Beta Preferences folder (yes, that also resets all you finely tuned graphics options to the default).

    Over in the Mac forums (a friendly place that few ever visit) we were assured by Zwillinger that Freedom would not launch with this issue in place. This imminent release date puts that assurance in doubt.

    I know that this probably does not matter to most of you at this point (and frankly I'd be thrilled too if it weren't for this problem), but I just want you to be aware that this announcement is not all sunshine for some of us.

    And yes, there are still 4 days left to pleasantly surprise us with a fix, but as of now, based on a post by Zwillinger (who kindly has kept us in the loop), there is no solution in place yet.
  18. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Kitsune Knight View Post
    I think it's quite reasonable to fix the font issue in 4 days...
    ...or 2 days, unless you think they are working on this over the weekend. Based on the "priority" this issue has had so far, I personally doubt that very much.

    I for one am stunned how soon this is launching. At this point there has been extremely limited beta testing by Mac users due to this issue. Who knows what other issues will pop up.

    If Freedom launches in the current state that the beta client is in, I'd consider COH at best a severely crippled game for Mac customers, and at worst unplayable based on how central the Paragon Market is to Freedom.

    This would completely fly in the face of the assurance we got in this thread from Zwillinger that Freedom would not launch with this issue in place (...and I don't think anybody could argue that the work done so far has solved the issue. It was a promising start, but I don't think we have heard from one person who doesn't still have problems with the Paragon Market in one way or another).

    Just so this is clear to whoever is working on this, aside from the font issue and the problem with the launcher, the Paragon store still crashes the game for me if I use it for say more than 5 minutes (yeah, I'll have to turn into a power shopper, ha, ha...). And based on comments here and in other threads I am not the only one with that issue.

    Well Cuppa, I guess you were right with you initial assessment how critical this issue is to the folks at Paragon.

    Damn, I hope you guys prove me wrong!
  19. Quote:
    Originally Posted by CuppaManga View Post
    Maybe the latest publish changed something with the Registry writes. I'll check into that.

    EDIT: Nope, still broken for me. I'd like to find out if people who have to throw out the preferences each time are in the majority or minority. Where do you have your copy of Beta installed? Maybe it's requiring it to be in Applications for some reason.
    Yeah, it's still broken for me too. Text missing in store. Poking around the store for more than 5 minutes crashes the game. And I have to delete the Prefs folder in order for the loader to start the game again.

    Game is also in the Applications folder (what I would consider the default location for apps).

    It'd be a great time for another babystep forward to keep the spirits up.
  20. Quote:
    Originally Posted by CuppaManga View Post
    The fonts are reportedly only not loading for people running Lion. Some fonts in Cider come from the Mac system, and others are built into Cider. So it could be a font that used to be included in Snow Leopard but isn't in Lion; or a font that's corrupted and would kind of work in Snow Leopard but won't load in Lion; or it could be that the fonts embedded in Cider at Transgaming weren't added to the project for Lion, and they didn't test adequately.
    That is not correct. The fonts are also not loading in Leopard (10.5.8). The only difference is that instead of the little square in place of the font, we get nothing (see my screenshot earlier in this thread).
  21. After another night of testing the beta client, these 3 problems persist:
    1. Some parts of the Paragon Store are missing the font, ie. they are blank. It seems to be the font that's used in the labels of the UI. The font used to describe items seems to be fine.
    2. Using the Paragon Market for more than approximately 5 minutes, leads to a crash of the game for me. Playing the game, eg. running missions (even the new ones) is fine.
    3. After quitting the beta client, or crashing out of it, the NCSoft launcher will not start the beta client, unless I delete the Preference folder first.
  22. Quote:
    Originally Posted by DvandomZ View Post
    Hm. So is there a way to remove the preferences file without doing Zwil's file dance, and would that be enough to make it work again?

    ---Dave
    This is something that Brennan_Mari mentioned a few posts back and that is "working" for me, instead of using Zwillinger's more complicated method:

    Quote:
    Try this: Go to Finder>Library>Preferences>City of Heroes Beta Preferences. Delete the City of Heroes Preferences folder, ...
    That's it.
  23. For the time being I will post Beta issues related to the updated Mac client and the Paragon market in this thread. Zwillinger, please let us know if we should be posting this elsewhere.

    My experience on a MBP running OS X 10.5.8 so far:

    I saw Zwillinger's note about deleting the COHBeta_0.0.0.0_Install.dmg file after I "repaired" the client, but before I started the game. I went ahead and deleted the file at that point. After I had my first crash accessing the Paragon market (more about that later), I was able to restart the game without any problems. So maybe deleting that file helps even at that point...

    Paragon Market was also missing some of the fonts, though there were no "funny" characters taking their place:


    I was able to purchase some of the power sets one the character creation screen and made it out of the Galaxy City tutorial into AP. After spending some time in the Paragon store in AP, I had a total crash of my computer where it prompted me to restart the machine and created a crash report for Apple Support after it rebooted. If that crash report is of interest I can post it or e-mail it.

    After restarting the beta client, I tried the Paragon store a few more times, though spending more than 5 minutes in the store leads eventually to another crash (though none as severe as the first one so far). It does not seem to be related to specific parts of the store.

    That's all for tonight. Hope it helps.
  24. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Nalrok_AthZim View Post
    The good news: It works! I can access the market.

    The bad news:

    I can't read it.
    We are Mac, we don't need words! I think this is probably working as intended.

    Glad that we have this update, and I'll spend some time with it tonight...looking at the pictures in the store.

    Thanks.
  25. Hi Zwillinger,

    As the last official update on this issue was on 8/22 (almost 10 days ago) & hopefully everyone is back from PAX, I am inclined to check in for another update.

    Not trying to breath down anybody's neck, but just to remind everyone that we are pretty concerned about this issue. Lot's of cool Freedom stuff is being promoted, not least of all the VIP head-start, which makes Freedom feel somewhat more imminent.

    Appreciate anything you can share at this point.

    Thanks.