k
yup
BAB I think it's great that you try to explain things like this to the players. However, you have explained the problem a number of times now and I don't think you need to do so any more. If people don't get it by now then you are just going to have to accept the fact that they will never get it.
I can tell just from the amount of posts you have written on this subject that you really care and have tried to do all you can. Saddly, it just can't be done. You have gone well beyond the call of duty on this issue. I give you permission to let this issue die. Please ignore any futher post or PMs regarding this matter.
Get Ex or LightHouse to sticky this thread and I'll be happy to link to it whenever people what to know why we can't have power customizing.
[ QUOTE ]
BAB I think it's great that you try to explain things like this to the players. However, you have explained the problem a number of times now and I don't think you need to do so any more. If people don't get it by now then you are just going to have to except that the fact that they will never get it.
I can tell just from the amount of posts you have written on this subject that you really care and have tried to do all you can. Saddly, it just can't be done. You have gone well beyond the call of duty on this issue. I give you permission to let this issue die. Please ignore any futher post or PMs regarding this matter.
Get Ex or LightHouse to sticky this thread and I'll be happy to link to it whenever people what to know why we can't have power customizing.
[/ QUOTE ]
That's kind of the idea here...I want to collate everything in one spot so that it can be refered to more easily.
Ok cool. However I do hope you will still post about other things. Im sure we can come up with something new to annoy you about. 
How about custom MM pets. I can annoy you for months begging for that.
BAB, since this is brought up just about everyday on the forums (Power Customization) is there a chance this will get worked with NC Norcal stepping up its COH team size, even with it being alot of work, I know you or posi said theres some other feature we've been requesting even more than PC...
Wait, what? I thought we already HAD power customization. I can make my powers, and everyone else's, any color i want!
...
Okay, so, i have too much fun playing with my monitor settings. =P
-STEELE =)
Allied to all sides so that no matter what, I'll come out on top!
Oh, and Crimson demands you play this arc-> Twisted Knives (MA Arc #397769)
If you ever arrive at step 2 you could migrate it to the game on a set by set basis instead of trying to to everything at one time.
"Beta now has Energy Blast in testing if no flaws are found it should be pushed live in about a week. Radiation Emission is the next on t he list to get PC treatment."
I know you don't like doing stuff like that but if you ever got that far some people might like to see it being moved over instead of waiting for everything to be done at one time. To try and be "fair" about which sets get PC first you could just go by which sets are on the most characters above level 25.
I'm half asleep and maybe a bit drunk so take from this what you will.
Good to see a little data to back up what the elite forumites claim to already know. Though they may be a little overproud to admit it, I think everybody should have learned something from this, such as the interplay of specific files.
I've always said it (or nearly anything else) could be done, but it's a matter of manhours, and this is confirmed here. However, to bring something new to the table, I'll point out that Cryptic is developing the technology, and it's hard to say what the future may hold for City of Heroes. Whether that kind of technology is being shared with the division NcSoft owns is hard to say.
Since Cryptic is planning on having PC out the door I'm pretty sure they won't have the issues NcSoft is having. It's easier to use a coffee maker to make coffee and tea then it is to use it to make Orange Juice.
No matter how much time you spend telling me how much work it is, I will still want power customization more than any other feature. I appreciate you putting so much time into this FAQ, though.
Issue 16 made me feel like this.
Warning: This poster likes to play Devil's Advocate.
BAB, thanks once again for the very comprehensive answers, especially this one. Quite an informative read, even though I already had a basic idea of why PC can't be done at this time.
I am curious about two tangents of the potential for power/weapon customization.
Without performing the massive overhaul necessary to implement PC as described above, and setting aside issues of fairness to those who are stuck with the powersets they already have, would it be possible in the creation of a whole new powerset to open up the capacity for any level of power customization as defined above?
Also, in regard to powers like fire sword and stone hammer, do the "weapons" for those powersets fall into the weapon category, in that they could be rebuilt to make use of weapon customization (regardless of whether anyone wants to for the sake of avoiding issues of thematic appropriateness), or is there some aspect of those types of powers (like the auras on the weapon itself) that makes this impossible, or at least untenable?
Dear NCsoft, if you go through with this shutdown you've guaranteed you'll not see another dime from me on any project you put out, ever.
http://xx-starhammer-xx.deviantart.com/
I'm not sure what all the fuss is about for a majority of the power sets that are not weapon based regarding the desire to customize. With fire, ice, storm and earth type powers I thought the developers did a good job at capturing what those should look like. I really can't think of a super hero who is like Purple fire guy, or Orange Ice dude. However radiation, energy, sonic, electricity and other more subjective powers I understand.
What I propose is a compromise of sorts. If the team were to look at the amount of powers where color customization would make sense versus trying to fit it in to every power (where it kinda doesn't really need to be done) then it might be easier to get it accomplished.
I know that there are a multitude of people that will disagree with the above, but I think that it might just provide us with a happy medium. Players who want a Purple energy blast can get it, but those who want a green fire blaster could settle for a green energy blaster.
***FREEDOM***
Agent Silver lvl 50 AR/Devices Blaster
Emergency Response lvl 50 Emp/Archery Defender
Frigidfist lvl 50 Ice/Ice Tank
Talismage lvl 50 Ill/Storm Controller
Scarlet Hand almost lvl 50 DB/Dark Scrapper
Wow. Thank you, BAB. I really appreciate the time and effort you took to explain this in such detail.
Indeed, your explanations were very thorough. Power customization would be very cool, but the frustrations behind it are more than understandable.
[edited for tackiness]
Surely there are enough people who want PC who know C that the busywork could be farmed out to volunteers.
And the costume-designer software, that too!
Open source content!
...
And a pony. A purple pony called Gumdrop who flies and knows French cooking and gets me into all the Issue Betas.
Thanks for the summery, though. It's greatly appreciated.
Very nice BaB, thank you for explaining it sooo very concisely. Anyone who thinks "well just do this and it's easy" now is simply being obtuse.
@PlasmaStream
"Big Bada Boom(tm)!"
1295 Badges
http://GuardianForce.Guildportal.com - Virtue
Niska: Are you Familiar with the works of Shan Yu?
/e standing_ovation
Good lord BABs, how long did that take you to write 
Thanks for taking the time to do it. It's very clear and after reading through it I can understand pretty much everything you talked about. Parts of it sounded like some nightmare programming final, which in turn made me go "@.@"
I feel for you guys in wanting to do it, but being unable to. However, I admire that you and the rest of the team continue to uphold your high standards of quality and thoroughness. I know people wouldn't like shooting their brand new purple fireball at an enemy and seeing orange fire burst out after it hit the enemy, or a limited selection of colors or some other half-way type system.
It'd be awesome if, with the future manpower, you guys could set aside a small team to work on at least Step 3 so that that can be set up for whenever full customization starts getting worked on and/or for future powersets that are designed to be customizable 
(QR)
Honestly, I'd say don't waste your time on power customization, just keep giving us the awesome stuff you always have been instead of breaking your brain over how to make it work, or stressing over people asking for it all the time.
Cause once you figure out how to make every power's color tintable so you can have green energy blasts but black energy fists, it will be accepted just like weapon customization was, but then "those" people will show up. What about the people who want to shoot fireballs out of their eyes? Or the guy who wants to have fly look like he's skating around on ice? Or the girl who wants a swordfish katana that uses fencing animations?
Point is, it will never be enough, and it will continue to snowball into more and more work, one step at a time, eating up more time and resources that could have been used on new content you could have cooked up twice the amount of when you were making sure your green laser eyes were green when they hit AND fired.
⊂二二二（ ＾ω＾）二二二⊃
@6X - Arc IDs: 9882
[ QUOTE ]
(QR)
Honestly, I'd say don't waste your time on power customization, just keep giving us the awesome stuff you always have been instead of breaking your brain over how to make it work, or stressing over people asking for it all the time.
Cause once you figure out how to make every power's color tintable so you can have green energy blasts but black energy fists, it will be accepted just like weapon customization was, but then "those" people will show up. What about the people who want to shoot fireballs out of their eyes? Or the guy who wants to have fly look like he's skating around on ice? Or the girl who wants a swordfish katana that uses fencing animations?
Point is, it will never be enough, and it will continue to snowball into more and more work, one step at a time, eating up more time and resources that could have been used on new content you could have cooked up twice the amount of when you were making sure your green laser eyes were green when they hit AND fired.
[/ QUOTE ]
I want swordfish eyes... GREEN swordfish eyes...
I'm not one of those who wants power customization. It doesn't much bother me that huge, eight foot tall men have pink pom-poms that can kill me, or several of me if they do a pirouette first. But even as a person uninterested in the feature I want to thank BAB for sharing the gory details with us.
@Exabecquerel | 50s:
1 corr (fire/kin), 1 widow (tuna), 3 MM (bots/ff, demons/dark, demons/traps), 2 brutes (ss/wp, kin/sr)
1 def (kin/dp), 2 trollers (fire/rad, earth/storm), 2 scrappers (spines/dark, kat/sr)
BABs...
This was very helpful...and I appreciate the work alone associated with writing up this explanation. This helps someone like me who has zilch comprehension and experience of coding and programming. This was a great job.
(I'll still be wishing for powers customization, mind you...and an increased-options color palette for costuming and skin tones...and a pony...and some pie...)
~ Jonathan
Thanks BaB! I always thought it would be a good idea to have this all in one thread, so that newer players dont have to search around the forums to try and find a relevant post!
Very nice post, BAB. But, I hope nobody minds if I mention a few other problems that would have to be sorted out?
First, there are a couple of power sets that have a power that doesn't match the color of the rest of the set. /Thermal for corruptors is one, as is the fire defensive set. Both of these have a shield power that is more blueish-white than the normal color of the flames, to make it stand out. If PC went in, these powers would either have to start to match the colors of the set or they would require a second choice for colors.
The second problem comes when you start to stack powers. Let's look at Force Field for an example: You're on a team with three FF users. One has red bubbles, one has yellow, and one's still at classic blue. Now, how do you handle it when they start to put shields on their allies? Will a red shield and a yellow shield make an orange shield? What if Yellow has both personal shields, but Red only has one? Yellow-Orange shields? And then blue starts adding shields in, and... yuck. There's also the eyesore you'd get when they all fire up their big AoE shields and start moving around each other. It might look neat from a distance, but I'm sure anyone caught in such a mess would quickly discover it to be as headache inducing as the old Sonic effects.
Finally, there are powers that create other power effects. MM Robots cast their own Force Fields. The /Traps FF Generator does the same. MM Robots shoot red lasers, and MM Zombies hurl green "stuff". /Devices Trip Mines and Time Bombs create explosions of orange flame. And Trick Arrow is full of secondary effects after the arrow hits, including (Castle's favorate power) Oil Slick. And who's power customization would determine what color Oil Slick burns, anyway? When you have a team up of The Purple Archer and The Green Flame, having it burn orange just doesn't seem like an option...
"I do so love taking a nice, well thought out character and putting them through hell. It's like tossing a Faberge Egg onto the stage during a Gallagher concert." - me
@Palador / @Rabid Unicorn
[ QUOTE ]
Q: What is power customization?
[/ QUOTE ]
A: Good quesiton, depends on who you ask. Power Customization could mean:
<ul type="square"> [*]Being able to change the hue or color of your power's FX[*]Being able to change the way your FX look[*]Being able to change what your power actually does. Ie, more damage but less accuracy.[*]Being able to modify or add secondary effects to your power. Adding Fire damage to your broadswords[*]Being able to change the appearance of henchmen or pets[*]Being able to change your appearance while form shifted from powers such as Granite Armor.[*]Being able to change the animations related to your power[*]Being able to change the sound related to your power[*]Being able to change the name of your power[*]Any or all of the above.[/list]
When we talk about power customization, we're generally talking about the first couple of items...being able to change your power's FX in some way.
[ QUOTE ]
Q: What's so damn hard about power customization?
[/ QUOTE ]
A: The pipeline from power to effects just wasn't designed to be flexible. The powers designer creates a power def. This def defines all of the things associated with a power. What it's called, how much endurance it costs, whether it's a click, toggle, or auto power, its range, radius, etc. Power defs also contain a series of attributes such as doing this much smashing damage and this much energy damage. Power defs are softcoded, but they can't be changed on the fly or vary between one player and another. Power defs also call continuing FX on specific attributes. Ie, play the FX script for stone cages on the Hold attribute. So if the target is actually held, it plays the effect...otherwise it doesn't play anything. This is also softcoded as part of the power def and can't be change dynamically. Nothing related to power defs are stored on individual characters.
Power defs also point to another file called a PFX. This file contains a series of things that happen on events. The first half deals with animations. Play these animation bits when the power is activated. Play these when the power hits someone. This animation takes X amount of time before the damage should actually happen and takes Y amount of time before another power can be used (ie activation time). The 2nd part deals with the effects in a similar way. Play this FX script when the power activates. Play that FX script on hit. PFX scripts are also softcoded and can't be changed on the fly, yadda yadda yadda. These are also not stored on individual characters.
The FX scripts are a series of events and particle emitters. The color of particles are part of the particle scripts set as RGB values. Particles CAN inherit RGB values from the player, but they have to be attached directly to a costume node to do so. Also can't be changed on the fly, also not stored on characters.
So all of the things that determine what effects plays, when they play, where they play, and what color they are are all softcoded. They're in one location, shared by all players with the same power, and can't be changed dynamically or stored individually on each player.
[ QUOTE ]
Q: So how come weapon customization works...what's the difference between it and power customization?
[/ QUOTE ]
A: Weapon models used to be called through the PFX scripts as an activation effects script. Every single PFX for every power in a weapon set calls the exact same activation effect. It's in fact one of the things the game uses to determine whether or not you already have your weapon out. What we did for weapons was we removed the weapon from the common activation effects in the PFX scripts and stuck it on the player as a costume piece. That gets us an always visible weapon that can be swapped out for other costume pieces (ie weapons), color tinted, etc. Unfortunately, we don't want the weapon always visible, so the next clever bit was we stuck it on the player as an animated entity. Weapons are essentially the same thing as wings, or the crab spiders backpack, or Black Scorpions tail. They have their own sequencer that says, Play this move when you get these animation bits'. Animated entities attached to the player models inherit those animation bits from the player model it's attached to. So when you use a power like Slash, the PFX says 'set these mode bits on the player'. The animated entity custom weapon sword inherits those mode bits and starts playing the move where it's visible. While the player is in weapon combat mode, the sword is also in weapon combat mode and is visible. When the player gets out of weapon combat mode and goes into regular combat mode or back into the ready state...the weapon model goes into its default ready mode (it only has 2 modes...weapon combat, and ready)...where it's flagged to not draw. Perfect. Customizable weapons for everyone.
That concept can't really work for anything else...not completely anyway. For everything else that's not a weapon, ever power points to a different PFX which all use different attack effects, activation effects, hit effects, etc. Each PFX in a non weapon powerset generally doesn't have a lot in common with any of the other power's PFXs. So we can't just take one thing out that's shared by everything and stick it on the player as a costume. There are some exceptions to that. We could do it for some things, like the spines that come out of your hands for Spines or the red(pink) pom-poms of Energy Melee...but that's about it.
Now, that whole concept can be extended to do a bit more. It should theoretically be possible to move all of the attack effects and activation effects from the various PFX in a powerset into the sequencer for a null costume 'weapon' for the other powersets. So for example, fire blast would get an invisible 'weapon' model as a costume piece. That costume piece is an animated entity and it inherits all of the anim bits from the player. So when it gets the bits to play the Flares animation, the sequencer move for the 'weapon' would play the attack/activation FX for Flares. This gets over most of the hurdles for power customization. It's attaching effects to a costume node so the effects can inherit the costume node's color...similar to how auras are color tint-able. And it should capable of playing any effects that happen on or from the player. Glowy energy melee hands, fireballs that you hurl, lasers that come out of your eyes...all that stuff.
What it can't do, is play effects on anyone else. The powers system determines if a power hits or not. There's no way for something on your player model to know that you've actually hit anything...no bits for it to inherit and trigger the right animation (hit anim bits play on the target)...no way to know where to put the FX if it could be triggered. Same thing with continuing effects. The power system keeps track of when the attributes are true or not, whether or not to play the continuing effect, what effects script to play, and what to play it on...you, the enemy, a bunch of enemies, your team...whatever. That information doesn't go to the player. So attack effects and activation effects...we could do similar to custom weapons. But hit effects and continuing effects, we can't.
Weapon customization did open up some avenues of exploration and got us thinking more outside the box, but ultimately we found that specific pathway to be a dead end. There's just no way to intercept hit or continuing effects, so every powerset would have some sort of disjointed half customized, half standard look. That's just not acceptable for us, so the only solution is to pursue some other avenue that can handle full customization of every effect associated with a power.
All of that, is stage one of power customization. Figuring out how to retool the system so it can actually work. That's the part that involves writing the new code and making the necessary changes to all of the player power defs and/or PFX to support it.
Stage 2 is a massive overhaul of every single effects script used by player powers that we're going to customize. Right now, the colors for the various effects are softcoded into the particle emitter scripts. Most of our particle emitters use grayscale textures that are tinted to an RGB value through the particle script. In order for a particle to inherit the tint from an outside source (currently only from a costume node it's attached to), it has to be set to red. So 255,0,0 as an RGB value means that particle is going to inherit 100% of the costume nodes RGB color. The more white a particle's RGB value is the less color it inherits. Most basic example of this would be the effects for Energy Blast powers. Those are all tinted various colors, from blue to white. All of those particle scripts would have to have their RGB values shifted to red instead...So there would be a pretty big chunk of work required to 1) tracking down, collating, and duplicating all of the FX and particles scripts currently used by powers 2) change all of the RGB values used by all of the particle scripts so that they can inherit the color from an outside source.
On top of that, we also have some particle scripts that use pre-colored particle textures. Dark Miasma is a good example of that. We also use geometry in some of our FX scripts, and most of them use some sort of pre-colored texture So things like the bubble for Force Fields, that teal blue-green is the color of the texture that's on that sphere. Those particles and FX geometry would have to have new grayscale textures made for them and then they would need to duped and set up to use color tinting.
Stage 2 isn't difficult work, it's just a ton of it. There are tens of thousands of FX and particle scripts that would need to be tracked down, duplicated, and modified.
Stage 3 is hooking all this up into some sort of system or UI to allow you guys as players to change your fireballs from red-orange to green. Most logical place for that is the costume editor, probably something similar to how you currently deal with auras or custom weapons. Other ideas involve special color enhancements that you can slot into powers, console commands that you could type in, options set in the graphics menu, etc. Those are all implementation ideas...probably the easiest step of the whole process.
Can it be done? Sure. Given enough time almost anything can be done. But is it more important to do than all of the various other things that can also be done in the same amount of time? That's the step where power customization as a feature has repeatedly fallen off the list and pushed back to the next issue. We still continue to discuss it, trying to figure out some way to do it in a way that won't require as much new code, or won't require so much time from an FX artist to make it happen.
[ QUOTE ]
Q: Why not make a version for each power that you can chose, and then assign a pre-colored FX script to those. Red Flares, Blue Flares, Green Flares, etc?
[/ QUOTE ]
A: Duplicating powers and PFX in that way makes it very difficult to maintain those powers. We did this for the prestige sprints and it certainly can work, but if we were to do that for every player power then that's a huge amount of duplicate data just to have the visuals changed. The likelihood of bugs related to powers would increase exponentially. Every time Castle would go in to fix a bug with Flares, he'd have to fix that bug for every 'color' version of Flares.
Its also a ton more work than being able to just take the current FX/particle scripts, dupe them one time, and set them to a common tint-able ready color. If we had to manually tint variants for every FX script then its a ridiculous amount of work.
It's also limiting the options for players. What if the shade of yellow we pick isn't the exact shade of yellow-orange, or yellow-green that you were really hoping for. Even sticking to Red, Orange, Yellow, Blue, Green, Violet, White, and Black would be duplicating the power defs for every player power 8 times. And would you guys really be happy with such a limited set of options?
So, its a ton more work for us, exponentially more upkeep problems for Castle, and less options for you guys. Not going to do this even if it does work.
[ QUOTE ]
Q: Why not make enhancements that add color or change the color of your powers?
[/ QUOTE ]
A: Enhancements won't just magically make color tinting happen. Something like this is more of an implementation suggestion, or how a player might actually go about changing the color of their power effects after power effects can actually be changed.
[ QUOTE ]
Q: We get that it would take a long time to rebuild all of the powersets to be customizeable...but could new powersets be built so that they are customizeable from the start?
[/ QUOTE ]
A: New powersets could be easily be built specifically for color tinting, but we still currently lack the system to take advantage of that.
[ QUOTE ]
Q: What about the hammer from Stone Melee, or the swords for Ice Melee and Fire Melee? Could those be made into custom weapons too?
[/ QUOTE ]
A: Technically, yes...they could. Still, I think we'd prefer to hold off on these particular powers until we can deal with being able to customize the whole powerset. Otherwise we could paint ourselves into a corner by making the elemental weapons customizeable and then not being able to make the rest of the power FX customizeable because of that.