je_saist

Ah. Gotcha.

Maybe I should clarify this:

What I mean is this sequence of events:

• Hit Republish and Exit
• Drop back to AE main window
• Watch System Tab for "mission updated" in green
• Close AE window
• Open AE Window back up
• Go to Mission
• Check mission with Edit
• Changes are applied
• Close AE window
• LOG OUT
• Log back in : new character
• Go to AE building
• Open up AE mission window
• Click Edit
• Version displayed is OLD version.

City of Heroes has changed a lot over the years. Some of these changes directly impact your ability to see whether or not anybody is online.

Earlier this year the developers allowed limited Free Transfers, and multiple players used the transfers to move characters off of servers like Freedom and Virtue, while certain cliques, such as the PvP crowd, moved onto specific servers (particularly Freedom Server).

The developers also developed a new /hide system, which allows players to selectively hide from various searchable lists within the game. The first thing many veteran players do is turn off their visibility to /search.

The developers also revamped the server hosting system itself. Server population indicators when players log-in refer to over-all load... not server population. Improved load-balancing software has also enabled the servers to better utilize available resources. What this means is that the server load icons visible when you log into the game... don't actually tell you what the server population is.

***

The developers also expanded the number of Global Channels players could belong to a few issues back, and with Issue 17, have developed a Channel Timeout function, to clear existing global channels of inactive accounts. The result is that most active teaming takes place in Global Channels... first starting with private SG or Coaly based channels, and then expanding to the more wild and rampant public channels.

If you do a search for global channels, you'll likely find a public badge or Task Force channel for your server. If you earn a reputation as a competent player who is reliable through the public channel, you'll likely be invited to one of the smaller private channels were you'll have more opportunities at special events like Master of Task Force / Strike force runs.

***

Some servers also have players who are active on the forums (from what we know of published figures, it's likely that only 1/5th of the game visits the forums, and closer to 1/10th actually posts on a regular basis). So, if you get involved with a Server specific forum, you are more likely to find a good play group.

***

Now, would I reccomend you start trying to play on Freedom server? Oh no. Not in a hundred million years. Freedom's got the reputation of being Freedumb, and I lost count of the players using the free-transfer opportunity as a way to get their best characters off of the server. As mentioned by another player, this is why Virtue has taken the reported lead in being the most populated server.

Now, what server would I suggest you start playing on? Well, pretty much every server has a group of good people. You'll probably need to actually go to each server and find one that suits you.

*bargins with the demons and sells them the rights to publish the pictures of Dominatrix Ali tied up in return for letting the kitten get away with tying the Dominatrix Ali up*

*suddenly drops out of the rafters, tackling the DomiAli and quickly ties her up in bright pink ribbons*

The pizza is saved!

not at this time, no.

You can add a shortcut to run CoH through Steam, but you will appear as simply being in a 3rd party game.

That being said... Steam Integration may not be that far off: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...item&px=ODIyOQ :: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...item&px=ODIzMA :: http://store.steampowered.com/macbeta/

Nvidia moved the base MX440 drivers to a legacy status years ago.

Nvidia still updates the legacy drivers on an occasional basis to account for Windows API changes. Nvidia has also fixed some serious bugs (such as a 5 year old memory leak) in the legacy releases. So if this is a driver issue (and it probably is), you need to contact Nvidia.

Okay, here's the bad news. You got this seriously backwards.

There's a very good reason why for years neither AMD nor Nvidia gave official support for laptops. Vendors can, and did, often change chip configurations such as clock speeds, memory buses, memory amounts, and even ordered special chips with cut pixel processing pipelines or on-board disabled hardware. Vendors would also link extra display hardware, such as the LCD luminosity controls (brightness / tint / hue) to the graphics chip, components that wouldn't be in the reference driver.

So while the chip in your laptop may have been sold as a Geforce 440MX... it might not actually have BEEN a 440MX, and it might not map to a reference 440MX's device-id's and IRQ's.

Currently both Nvidia and AMD offer limited support for Laptop hardware, but you might notice that mostly full support requires a a DX10+ / OpenGL 3.0+ chip. ATi still provides a reference driver for the DX9 / OpenGL 2.0 cards running Xp, but Geforce Support pretty much starts at the Geforce 7 series.

***

Your card, unfortunately, only maps to OpenGL 1.3 (It's an overclocked Geforce2 MX at best). So, getting back to your particular problem, here's another spot where you got it just, well, wrong.

The developers DID fix the BUGS. The legacy graphics engine was a horrible mix of over 6 years of patched and re-patched code. The code quality has been described as abysmal and more band-aids than would be needed to deal with one of Riff's paper-cut bombs.

However, just because the game itself is API compliant... does not mean that the drivers are API compliant. One of the main reasons Nvidia heavily supported OpenGL from the Riva TNT up to the Geforce FX was the addition of proprietary extensions. OpenGL can support a vendors proprietary plugin for code acceleration. In some cases, Nvidia needed these proprietary extensions to run certain graphical effects and operations. The most famous of these extensions was Ultra Shadow, which allowed the OpenGL 1.5 / DX 8.1 GeforceFX keep up with Radeon 9700's in ID Software's Tech3 engine utilized in Doom3.

This is where we get back to your to your particular problem. The City of Heroes legacy engine was reportedly filled with calls to these proprietary extensions, hence the rendering errors with water effects on ATi Radeon graphics cards. Rewriting the engine to get the same type of visual / graphical effect against the ratified API standard took a lot of time and effort.

However, we know for a fact that Nvidia's drivers at the time were loaded down with various cheats and driver-shortcuts, as evidenced by the FutureMark 3DMark 2003 scandal where GeforceFX was rendering a completely different scene as forced by the driver than equivalent cards from XGI/Xabre, ATi, Matrox, Via, or 3Dlabs.

***

See, what you are asking for is for the developers to BREAK, and I'm going to repeat that, BREAK the engine in order to account for major long-term issues with the driver your card uses.

You are not asking the developers to fix anything. You are asking the developers to insert intentionally badly written, vendor specific code, back into the engine. Well, sorry. I don't think Paragon Studios should re-break their engine to deal with issues introduced by a vendors bad or proprietary code.

Now, I do think Nvidia should do a code-audit and make sure their legacy driver sets are capable of running standardized API calls. I'm not entirely sure such a code-audit would help though, again, as a reference driver provided by Nvidia may, or may not, map to the chip you physically have in your possession.

Making sure the driver maps to your chip would be up to the vendor of your laptop.

*waits in the rafters above the donuts and wonders whats taking Fedor so long to take a bite at the bait*

*ish walking along the bottom of the counter when a shadow passes over head*

Huh?

*looks up to see a falling pizza box!!*


FEEEEEEEEDOOOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!

*KERSPLANT*

*crawls out from under the pizza box with Sackthingy nomming now the number 1 priority*

Right now, either 10.1 or 10.4.

We'd prefer you be running 10.4.

try an /sfc scannow before reformatting or reinstalling.

Some weird mom?

Could you further explain what you mean by this?

Double the Burlap! Double the skateboard! Double the Noms!

Install them with the Catalyst Control Center. Use Catalyst Control Center to turn VPU recover off.

Also: what wattage is your power-supply?

which drivers are you using? Catalyst 10.1? 10.2? 10.3a? 10.3 stable? 10.3 OpenGL 4.0? 10.4 preview? 10.4 stable?

New From Kitteh/Puppeh Chew Toys International!

... GTX cards run hot. Period.

Honestly, if you just bought it, return it, save yourself $75+ bucks over what you probably spent, and get a RadeonHD 5850. It'll run faster, give you DX11 / OpenGL 4.0 support, and run a lot cooler. If you still like playing in the $400+ bracket, pick up the RadeonHD 5870 instead, which is a heck of a lot faster, and again, a lot cooler.

Nope. Nor will there ever be.

Illusion was one of the few sets the devs said would never be proliferated.

*TACKLES the Pogo and reveals that Pogo is wearing powered armor!*

Ah hah! I THOUGHT SO!

Personally, I've gotten two purples since I17.

On the flip side, I also know people who have been playing since purples were introduced that have NEVER had a purple drop.

Ergo, off the top of my head, not getting any purple drops doesn't signify anything is wrong with the game or the system.