Missing Weapons?

Since we seem to be getting some of Ex Libris' attention here, is there any feel for when the 'missing weapons' demo playback bug will be addressed? Is it even on the Dev's radar?

For those of you that may not have encountered it yet, starting with I11 any weapons that can be customized are no longer showing up in demo playback. Even weapons that are still 'legacy' are invisible.

Thanks in advance!

I would really like to know, too.

If you've got older demos of your character then I think you can just replace the custom weapon FX descriptions with the non-custom ones you can find in the older demo. Obiously, you want to do this on a COPY of your demo so you can see it with the real weapons later, when NCNC fixes the problem.

Unfortunately, that trick doesn't always work. I tried every which a way to get my archery blaster's bow to show up even as the legacy version, but it comes and goes during power animations. I was forced to omit her from the updated StarForce vid because of this problem.

Please, please, please, with sprinkles on top and fudge sauce and that whipped marshmallow stuff?

I definately want the Hammer from teh Mace weapons in so I can make my new animated avatar. *impatiently waits* are they in yet?

Hopefully after the hubbub dies down from Double XP Weekend, XP Smoothing and the Valentine's Event, then Ex Libris can spare us some time to check on where this problem is in the dev's queue...

Personally, I'm mystified as to why it is a problem at all. Its the same .exe as we use to play the game, just with different options. Why it would have such different code paths for something like this is weird.

There always seems to be some problem or another when it comes to demos. Certain maps crash the client (usually the really cool ones ), the custom weapons don't show up, and so on. Sadly the response (when we get one) has always been that it's a low priority issue, and honestly, I can understand why. The demo using community is a pretty small chunk of the CoH population, and demos don't directly affect the game itself. Perhaps a 'consolidated issues' thread for demos is in order for this new forum. That would help, uh, consolidate the issues! .

As for your more specific problem, it sounds to me like you might be missing a line or two in your demo. Since old versions of the weapons still show up, replacing the FX features should clear things up. Of course if you're missing a line here or there, then it would revert to the 'invisible' weapon again. It could be something totally ambiguous, though, and without taking the time to look at the demo itself it can be harder to diagnose. W00t studios lets you post demo files, so you could always put it up there for someone to look at, too.

The problem is that the reference is "customweapon.fx" but that is a link that should be telling the loader to reference the players costume to get the correct weapon, but is failing so nothing gets drawn. There is probably a "weaponhammer.fx" or something similar that if we knew we could hand code into the files to fix for now until the demoloader gets its hooks done right.

[ QUOTE ]
The problem is that the reference is "customweapon.fx" but that is a link that should be telling the loader to reference the players costume to get the correct weapon, but is failing so nothing gets drawn. There is probably a "weaponhammer.fx" or something similar that if we knew we could hand code into the files to fix for now until the demoloader gets its hooks done right.

[/ QUOTE ]

That code for the custom jobs are now applied as a costume FX, rather than as an FX attached to the character/model, and can be found in the costume code. I tried a few weeks ago clipping the FX segment out of the costume code and trying it as a character FX and it didn't work for me.

Aww, come on, Ex Libris! Can we get a little luv here? We just want to know if the devs give a rat's patootie about demorecordings.

I mean, here we have this great contest to produce a CoX commercial and we can't even SHOW the latest improvement - WEAPONS CUSTOMIZATION! Entire classes of characters have to left out of these commercials we're creating for y'all because of this problem.

We're getting absolutely zero feedback that this problem (or the lack of ragdoll physics) will EVER be fixed. Heck, we can't even get official recognition that the problem exists!

Its not a lot to ask, is it? Please?

The only official dev acknowledgement of demos I can recall is when Pohsyb (or was it Poz?) posted how to make them way back in CoH beta. It's not an official feature, it's just there so NCSoft can make promotional demos (hence the name).

That said, things do get fixed in demos from time to time. There's no mention of the fixes in the patch notes but they happen none the less.

Hmm, which weapons? I wanted to see so I made a dual blades scrapper and the demo played them back fine. Is it other weapons that are missing besides dual blades?

Edit: Ok, I didn't try to attack so I created a blaster with the legacy bow and then attacked with it. It showed up fine but after firing the arrow, the bow disappeared until the power was activated again. I think my blaster with a bow on live holds it until I use a different power. That is the only thing but it definitely showed up. Can you check again, perhaps it is fixed now?

Nope, That's pretty much the behavior we saw before when we tried to hack the demorecord files. That's as good as it gets: There one second and gone the next.

I give up.

Star, I might have found a work-around, at least for a video. I used the demo for the Legacy bow. I had the hero shoot off 5 snap shots in a row and the bow disappeared after each one. After trying numerous things I changed out the MOV animation to the bow arc (rain of arrows MOV I think) and what happened was the bow stayed in sight with shot #s 1-4 but between 4th and 5th shot, the bow disappeared. Hmmm, I wondered why it only disappeared then. I looked at the times on each and they were 5000 apart EXCEPT for the 5th time I used the power. It was at 8000, so I shortened it to 5000 from the last time and the animation played 5 times with no bow disappearing. OK, now I went back to shorten the time for Snap shot and it wasn't as good because the hero fired the bow almost constantly but it didn't disappear IF you get the timing right. Perhaps you can use a combination of differnt MOV animations/powers such as snap shot, rain, rain, snap shot and get the timing right enough for your movie. It does look odd but kinda cool so see her constantly grabbing an arrow and firing it, so try working with the time and see what you can do. Shorten the time between the MOV animations so one picks up right as the other ends because it appears the bow disappears after the MOV has completed but even using something like BOW_READY in between might work although the bow slightly changed angles in her hand.

Claws still don't show up at all on the Test server in demo playback.

Hey Star_Dancer, think of it this way - when the CoX commercials contest is done, I fully intend to go, "See, weren't these awesome? Now imagine what we could have done if ALL THE MAPS AND ALL THE CUSTOM WEAPONS STUFF WORKED RIGHT?!"

I have been badgering the devs about this since before Issue 10 came out, so don't feel too bad.

And I promise that if by some miracle I ever get hired at NCsoft, I will bribe the developer team with brownies to make sure this gets fixed.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

[ QUOTE ]
"See, weren't these awesome? Now imagine what we could have done if ALL THE MAPS AND ALL THE CUSTOM WEAPONS STUFF WORKED RIGHT?!"

[/ QUOTE ]
And the animation/movement timing. And the knockback. And stealth. And Kheldian shapeshifting. I hope that oven is built for endurance, this is going to be a long, calorie filled trail.

You've never had my brownies. These things inspire people to greatness (and the sugar rush will ensure they get there).

Ghirardelli chocolate (much easier to get were I working/living in San Francisco), Godiva liqueur, creme de cacao, at least one other flavor alcohol of choice, and a few other little ingredients that give my brownies their unique magic.

(NO, YOU WILL NOT FIND THAT STUFF IN THERE.)

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

Now how are we supposed to believe these brownies are so good without you sending all of us some to test for ourselves??

[ QUOTE ]
Now how are we supposed to believe these brownies are so good without you sending all of us some to test for ourselves??

[/ QUOTE ]

QFT!!!!

I'll even pay the shipping to me!!

I sense a "Meet and Greet" being scheduled in Phoenix sometime soon, and you can then test them for yourselves. Otherwise, pick a major 'con somewhere in the Southwest and we'll give it a go.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

PS - I've never shipped food before, I don't know how well that would go over.

Southwest only? I can't talk you into visiting Atlanta for DragonCon?

Not when DragonCon is the same weekend as Anime Vegas!


Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite