je_saist

A: the incarnate system was not designed to grant soft-cap.

B: the average to-hit granted to NPC characters in Incarnate content has been raised so that you can't realistically soft-cap.

C: The days of passive soft cap are over. Get over it and learn to play the game.

How long does it take to get a GM?

Depends on a lot of things.

For starters, it depends on how concise your particular issue is. If you get stuck in a mission, simply do:

/petition

choose: stuck

For title put the mission name and stuck, such as:

Why does Paragon City still have War Walls?

Time, Resources, and Money.

I've been over the basic timeline of recent City of Heroes Development... quite a few times: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...77&postcount=5 :: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...13&postcount=5

The important thing to remember is that Paragon Studios has limited resources. They cannot do everything the players wish, and somethings do take time to development and implement.

With that in mind, now for the history lesson. Way back when the game was created the developers needed a simple way to separate each zone, and the War Walls were a convenient method by which the zones could be broken up.

It wasn't until the Going Rogue development Cycle that the developers began working on what they called "Vista" tech. The "Vista" tech was a combination of several other changes including modifications to the spawn point, map generation, and skybox technologies. The end result of the vista tech enabled the developers to synch up maps and roughly position players spawn points in one map based on their exit point from a previous map.

Creating that end-result still takes a lot of time and art-resources. Case in point is the skyboxes themselves. As can be seen in these pictures there is a drastic difference between the quality of the rendered models used in the skybox and the live map:

Through the Loading Wall:






The Live Map:






As can be seen the skybox version of the map lacks many of fine details the live map has, despite similar distances from the point of rendering. The Skybox map also lacks reflective surfaces, a detail not required for the viewing disance.

Unfortunately there seems to be an assumption that the creation of a skybox map simply consists of loading up a map, maximizing the rendering viewpoint, then cutting off any map behind that viewpoint, and presto, new skybox. Skybox creation isn't that simple. One of the problems with a fully 3D skybox like those used in Praetoria is that they don't have to just be low-polygon and low detail. They also need to cut out certain data to begin with, detail that the user won't see due to the camera angle. Stuff like the poster on the other side of that wall likely wouldn't be in the skybox model:



Taking these details out saves on memory space and rendering. Details that don't need to be seen don't need to be rendered.

Bringing this back around to the War-Walled CoH maps, updating the original City of Heroes maps to use the "Vista" tech and remove the war-walls would be a massive undertaking of artwork generation. Ignoring Croatoa and Peregine Island, every single map would have to be skyboxed, something the developers can somewhat get away with not doing right now.

Then there is the space problem. Take a look at the map from the Good Versus Evil edition of the game:

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/_6gkPL0jmAKE/TV__wxmSzgI/AAAAAAAAKTk/j9zZKGWsof0/s400/Paragon_City_%28GvE%29.jpg

There's large swaths of space in the city that have nothing in them. In the case of Baumtown to Steel Canyon, entire major geographical features are completely ignored. Creating "Vista" tech skybox maps for these zones would require rendering and creating the artwork for each swath of land that is visible from any point within the existing zones.

Then there's the aforementioned problem with Terra Volta in Independence Port. Terra Volta's box is about 640 yards on each edge:





Inside of the box Terra Volta is about a mile deep and about 1.25 miles wide:



Independence Port is less than a mile wide:



So: to recap. Terra Volta is wider inside than Independence Port

Earlier somebody said something to the effect of "Make it a double zone like Faultline." Well, that isn't a solution. First of all, Faultline isn't a double zone. It's a single zone. There is no mid-map loading. There is even a nice solid tunnel with no doors connecting both parts of the map:



Implementing Terra Volta into IP as one zone or a "Vista" enabled zone would require massive changes to either one of them.

Now, don't get me wrong. I am NOT saying that this type of work cannot be done, or that it should not be done.

What I am saying is that upgrading CoH to the Vista tech and removing the war-walls is going to take a lot of work. Implementing that type of upgrade would likely be almost as art intensive as simply creating new zones from scratch.

At some point somebody is going to have to pay for Noble Savage and his crew to sit in a chair and draw the new artwork. At some point somebody is going to have to pay for The Box and The Television and their crews to work the engine and maps to implement the "Vista" zoning.

So whose going to pay for that work?

More importantly, when is that work going to be done?

One of the basic problems the game faces now is that such massive overhauls to Paragon City aren't going to draw in new subscribers. The type of player influenced by fancy graphical effects would have stopped into try Going Rogue. If they didn't like the game behind the graphics, they would have moved on.

By the same token, such massive overhauls to Paragon City aren't going to prevent current subscribers from leaving. Players here for the gameplay, the community, the events, and so on, aren't really going to be bothered or influenced by the War Walls or lack there-of. It'd be a bit like buying a Pagani Zonda, then sending it back because the side-mirrors were a bit too Elton John-ish. Insert stock line about screwed up priorities here.

Proposing that investors, in this case NCSoft, dump more money into developing an aspect of the existing game that won't drive any tangible returns... well.... that's the kind of thing that makes investors nervous. Such upgrades would only make sense if it would attract new subscribers... such as another retail box release.

For now then, the War Walls, such as they are, are likely to stay where they are.

For those interested, Windows 7 Service Pack 1 has been released to Technet and the Microsoft Developers Network (MSDN): http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/l...8WS.10%29.aspx

The consumer release of Windows 7 SP1 is expected shortly.

The corresponding update to Windows Vista, Service Pack 3, is still missing in action. It has been rumored that due to the reputation and reception of Vista, as well as Microsoft's desperate attempt to convince consumers that Vista and Windows 7 are not the same operating system, that there won't be an official service pack 3 release.

It has been suggested Microsoft will retain the method used to synch Vista with DirectX 11 and other core updates and release the changes as a Platform Update.

/signed

personally my vote for forum software would go to phpBB: http://www.phpbb.com/

A: It's under an Open License, not a restrictive license

That means that NCSoft can hire developers to modify the software to fit the needs of this forum rather than relying on a third party to modify or fix bugs as bugs appear.

B: It's free of cost

Invision's about $350 or so for a business license, which NCSoft would need. Sure, that's chump change in the long run, but pennies are pennies.

Granted, Invision has a phone number for customers to call, which makes investors and beancounters feel good. phpBB's support network depends on users being able to navigate IRC networks, forums, or email systems... which beancounters never feel good about.

W.orking A.s I.ntended.

Seriously. Be grateful the developers even added the ability to do a breakdown. Remember the old adage: Don't look a gift horse in the mouth!

I'm still running through benchmarks and tests right now, but on DX10 class hardware (RadeonHD 2x00 - 4x00) series AMD graphics cards, the recently released 11.2 drivers still seem to have the major regressions introduced in the 11.1 alpha series of drivers.

Specifically I am encountering crashes to desktop and termination of the graphics driver on NT6 systems (that's Windows Vista and Windows 7, they are the exact same operating system) against RadeonHD 2600 Mobile and RadeonHD 4850 Desktop.

as far as benchmarks have shown, none of the chipsets produced by ATi or AMD are known to deliberately harm the performance of a competitors graphics card. None of the chipsets produced by ATi or AMD are known to use exotic or non-standard connections.

From a hardware standpoint there are no problems putting your Nvidia card into a system with an AMD or ATi chipset.

Sounding good.

I don't like this idea.

*pushes the Kay into Rookery and DeNile*

There isn't one, as far as we know.

The appearance is likely an artifact of limitations of the engine to spawn large groups.

Another example of engine limitations making awkward spawns is the presence of a Dwarf or Nova critter being part of enemy group that consists of Ghost Widow, Scirocco, Black Scorpion, and Captain Mako when a Peacebringer or Warshade is on the team.

If you want a canon story behind the engine, just imagine that he's the poor sap assigned to carry Liberty's broken body around.

For those interested, I'm uploading pictures as I take them to : https://picasaweb.google.com/je.saist/florida#