Power Customization F.A.Q.

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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.

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Is there a reason why this can't be bypassed and rewritten and/or add a step to changed/filter the PFX information based upon a set parameters? It seems what could be stored on a character file, for example, would be the ability for a player to add yellow to a prsetermined green blast and make it blue. Or add more particles and make a blast more substantial. I realise it would be somewhat limiting

Another way to solve this I would think would be to add subcatagories to the PFX. If i want a green energy blast the PFX accesses a different particle effect with in the energy blast PFX.

OR if that wouldn't work a more limited options; have 5ish different looks for each power and create a PFX file for each. At least that would give some variation.

QR

I really enjoyed reading this and finding out more about the way CoX handles powers and graphics.

I'm not one of those people that want power customization with a burning need, but I do occasionally read through threads about this topic, and was lucky enough to see this linked to from that thread.

Very good post, BaB.

I too learned a lot. I can see now why full customization would be so difficult. Maybe not as much difficult but time consuming and resource devouring.

I dunno if this has been said/suggested yet, but I had an idea on how you could make Energy Melee(At least) customizable.

Turn it into an "Aura" on the hands. I know this wouldn't work for any of the other particle-based powers out there but I think this would work for Energy Melee, and maybe Energy Manipulation.

Just my 2 inf here.

I wonder, if there really was to be an expansion that would include power customization, and all that other cool stuff mentioned in the survey that some people had got, would there be separate people working on these improvements or would it be a matter of divving up time working on this possible expansion and working on the Update/Issues for the game?

hey power customization suld be purly cosmedic that way the powers would work properly and people still get what they want (bty forgive any spelling errors that was never a strong subject for me)

one idea would be to make it where the player could pick if they got it thru an item or themselvse then pick if it is chaneled thru the item or just add hand held costume parts just an idea

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Hey, BaBs, I've got a technical question about something I see a lot with my Ill/Rad hero.

Let me start by saying that I just re-read the first post in this thread and re-familiarized myself with why costume-based customization is insufficient as a path to full customization. Thanks for that, by the way. It was insightful and a damn sight more info than any other game's devs have ever given to their players in the games I've played.

Anyway, here's the thing I'm curious about - The animation for Radiation Infection and Enervating Field is a kind of upraised hand palm-down thing that summons a cloud of radiation onto the target. (A pretty good example of the distinction between FX on the hero and FX on the target.)

[edit]Now that I think about it, EF's animation is actually more of a "double-fist haymaker" move, which may mean that I'm mis-remembering some of the stuff I talk about below this paragraph and it's really just an artifact of EF combined with a visible Nemesis Staff. The wages of writing from work instead of having the game open in front of me.[/edit]

If I whip out my Nemesis Staff and then activate RI or EF, it doesn't "sheathe" my staff and then play the "radiation summoning" animation. Instead, it plays an animation where my hero swings the staff-head down towards the ground (as if he was trying hold it overhead with both hands and club something on the noggin with it) and then the cloud of radiation is summoned onto the target.

This is actually pretty neat looking and sometimes I'll do it on purpose just for giggles. Usually, it happens just because my attack chain happened to put the two powers in sequence.

Clearly, the Nemesis Staff isn't attached to my characters as a costume piece. Where is the animation coming from? Is my staff essentially treated as a temporary costume piece while it's visible? Are we in a kind of mid-way no-man's-land where it's trying to treat it as a customized weapon and so it lands on the default animation used by the NPC's that wield the staff? It's just a lucky coincidence that the attack animation happens to work alright with the target FX animation?

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In case Back Alley missed it, I wanted to be sure to bring this post up to his attention. It's a good question.

And I know it's a bit late, but thanks for the detailed post. Although I am in the boat with many others who think power customization and player created content will help see the franchise into the next level up against the competition. Unless you guys are just plotting for CoH2, in which case that's good too.

I'll be honest, I am an old table-top fan of Champions (now it's Hero system with version 5 right?), and had they opened on the same day I would have been on Champions because of that. But I have grown quite fond of Paragon City and it's crazy happenings. The 5th Column still isn't really back and I STILL talk about them.
So that's a good sign I am staying if possible. Keep up the great work.

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Hey, BaBs, I've got a technical question about something I see a lot with my Ill/Rad hero.

Let me start by saying that I just re-read the first post in this thread and re-familiarized myself with why costume-based customization is insufficient as a path to full customization. Thanks for that, by the way. It was insightful and a damn sight more info than any other game's devs have ever given to their players in the games I've played.

Anyway, here's the thing I'm curious about - The animation for Radiation Infection and Enervating Field is a kind of upraised hand palm-down thing that summons a cloud of radiation onto the target. (A pretty good example of the distinction between FX on the hero and FX on the target.)

[edit]Now that I think about it, EF's animation is actually more of a "double-fist haymaker" move, which may mean that I'm mis-remembering some of the stuff I talk about below this paragraph and it's really just an artifact of EF combined with a visible Nemesis Staff. The wages of writing from work instead of having the game open in front of me.[/edit]

If I whip out my Nemesis Staff and then activate RI or EF, it doesn't "sheathe" my staff and then play the "radiation summoning" animation. Instead, it plays an animation where my hero swings the staff-head down towards the ground (as if he was trying hold it overhead with both hands and club something on the noggin with it) and then the cloud of radiation is summoned onto the target.

This is actually pretty neat looking and sometimes I'll do it on purpose just for giggles. Usually, it happens just because my attack chain happened to put the two powers in sequence.

Clearly, the Nemesis Staff isn't attached to my characters as a costume piece. Where is the animation coming from? Is my staff essentially treated as a temporary costume piece while it's visible? Are we in a kind of mid-way no-man's-land where it's trying to treat it as a customized weapon and so it lands on the default animation used by the NPC's that wield the staff? It's just a lucky coincidence that the attack animation happens to work alright with the target FX animation?

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In case Back Alley missed it, I wanted to be sure to bring this post up to his attention. It's a good question.

And I know it's a bit late, but thanks for the detailed post. Although I am in the boat with many others who think power customization and player created content will help see the franchise into the next level up against the competition. Unless you guys are just plotting for CoH2, in which case that's good too.

I'll be honest, I am an old table-top fan of Champions (now it's Hero system with version 5 right?), and had they opened on the same day I would have been on Champions because of that. But I have grown quite fond of Paragon City and it's crazy happenings. The 5th Column still isn't really back and I STILL talk about them.
So that's a good sign I am staying if possible. Keep up the great work.

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Keep in mind that Champions Online ISN'T using the Hero system at all. They only bought the rights to the environment/world, but have no license for the hero system.

I am only sort of "meh" about the world. I didn't know that, thanks for pointing it out though.

Well...if customization on all powers isn't possible - at least make blue Electricity to Villains available as well. Choosing between red and blue. I was really disappointed when I went to play a electr. corruptor and saw the red lightnings, doesn't feel to me like electricity and we should at least have the option. It's like limiting only blue flames for villains, instead of red/orange as usual, wouldn't be fair. Such limitations makes me wanna play only CoH. Please, could you look into this? It shouldn't be that hard, it's just one power....please?
Also, for future powersets, I'd like to suggest an all arcane/mystic powerset, with yellow eldritch beams and such. It would really rock. Sometimes you're creating a mage and you see yourself limited to either ice/fire, or elec/storm and such. A sorcerer should have a wider selection/varied arcane spells at their disposal.
Thanks for everything.

Hasn't it been said multiple times before they can't/won't do this due to the fact they'd have to redo the entire power engine and structures JUST so u can change a color? I don't blame them; the reason CO is able to is they thought about it ahead of time and they are building their system accordingly. It's really hard to throw in a new system ontop of an existing systsem w/o having to completely overhaul the existing; best start at scratch if your going to do that.

Yes! I'm well aware of that. Still, red lightning doesn't look right (villain's side). Should be the same look/effect as it is on the blue side. I won't play an elec/ build because of this very reason. Doesn't even make sense...

Hmmm . . . what I'm going to suggest is sort of a cheat but it should work . . .

Why not go back to the very basics, I'm talking 1980's level programming here, and use two string files? One attached to the character, and one attached to the power?

Then you could have a pointer in your partical program that would grab all the needed data from the characters $tring file, write it to the power $tring variable and poof, instant animation.

This gets rid of the problem where a power starts out customized and then loses it's color as it hits a villain, while not increasing memory use/bandwidth that much at all. After all those memory problems were why we used strings back when computers had less memory and storage than todays calculators and cell phones!

The new routine could default to using the old data should it ever encounter a null string, so corrupted or missing data wouldn't cause any huge problems. Sure it's tedious work, but . . . it would give us some cool abilities.

Plus since your not changing the entire engine, just adding some pointer code and a couple string files you can do it a bit at a time. Start out with one powerset and see how it works, then add another set every few months/weeks/etc . . . until you finally have it done.

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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?



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.

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What if you stored a modified version (ie the color we picked) on the end users system rather then server side, then if a power got changed, when the user logs in, his/her version gets updated with the color differences.

Override files that would be updatable, so the client would check flares and see that the current version (stored on the pc side) is different from the server version and then update (but keep colour changes).

Note: This would hopefully only effect the looks, rather then what the power does (ie. Damage) which would have to remain server side.

This way, my Fire blast is pink, but everyone else see's the default colour, kind of like how Propel works, I toss a Forklift but someone else see's a toilet.

This way you could have the changes you want but Castle would only have to change one thing.

Just tossing that out for consumption

So a Power Def contains things like Range, Endurance Cost, etc.
All of whom are adjustable with enhancements.
Can't we simply modify the existing enhancement system?

Example: Blaster Powerset: Ice Blast.
Let's say we add a 0 second hold component to each ranged attack, with a hold graphic that doesn't display until 1/10 second of hold time has passed.

Supposing we added a second row of Specialized Enhancement Slots per power, for purposes of greater Power Adjustment.

Now if I change nothing, my first attack functions and looks like a normal Ice Bolt.
If I add a single Specialized Hold Enhancement, my damage drops down, hold duration increases, and the hold graphic is now visible after 1/10 of a second has passed.

But what about an Immobilize component also? Well I can't think of a way to add graphics for Immob =and= Hold.
Would have to pick one or more attacks and add Immob component and delayed Immob graphic, instead of Hold.

Ok, so it's a far cry from Total Customization, but Total Customization might never come.

I'm sure to some this is a dead issue, but... will City of Heroes/Villains ever see any new powers as opposed to weapons? Don't get me wrong, I can't wait to see the new Quad Blade, and Super Duper Liquid Hot Magma Helmet... but seriously... not regrouping or re-coloring powers, NEW POWERS! not weapons... any insight? anytime soon? anyone?

For things like the PomPoms and other fist type powers couldn't we consider these as weapons? Make them have a draw sequence where the player powers up (perhaps using the Haste animation) and then the fists glow using a weapon style. It won't fix the blasts, but then we won't have pink pompoms and they can stay out as long as we keep the power activated.

It still wouldn't fix the ranged powers, but for mele powers it would work.

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For things like the PomPoms and other fist type powers couldn't we consider these as weapons? Make them have a draw sequence where the player powers up (perhaps using the Haste animation) and then the fists glow using a weapon style. It won't fix the blasts, but then we won't have pink pompoms and they can stay out as long as we keep the power activated.

It still wouldn't fix the ranged powers, but for mele powers it would work.

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The melee powers still have power effects (IIRC, the pom-poms are already done as a kind of weapon model, I am mot talking about those) and they wouldn't change color.

If my pom-poms of doom are green, why are the impact sparks still pink?

It's the same issue that caused the developers to not let spines get customization - too much of the set has *effects* in addition to the weapons models.

1)It's not gonna happen, but I'm going to ask anyways
Blue Lightning!! Please, the red electricity does't look right.
2) A new powerset exclusive for magic users: with eldritch bolts, arcane holds, magical force fields and what-you-have.

It seems my dream of a mercs MM with a catgirl army, or a necro MM with barfing clown minions, will remain only a dream...

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It seems my dream of a mercs MM with a catgirl army, or a necro MM with barfing clown minions, will remain only a dream...

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I'm still hoping for a Demons pet set. Imps for the low-level minions, something similar to the CoT succubi for the mid-level and then something similar to the CoT behemoth or Horny from Dungeon Keeper for top-level pet.

I still think that female pets will never be simply because the lack of maturity of the average gamer.

Ive always wanted a female based set based on sonic powers. Unsure the tier 1 pets would be, maybe some kind of beast, a flyer perhaps but the tier 2 could be a pair of Sirens, mostly control effects. Tier 3 would have to be a banshee, essentially a sonic blaster.

Sonics would also have to be ported over as a secondary.

Ive wanted this since MM's have come out but as I said I just dont see it happening because of all the lovely names and character concepts it would spawn.

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...Unsure the tier 1 pets would be, maybe some kind of beast, a flyer perhaps...

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All about the Harpies right there.

I24 Proc Chance = (Enhanced Recharge + Activation Time) * (Current PPM * 1.25) / 60*(1 + .75*(.15*Radius - 0.011*Radius*(360-Arc)/30))
Single Target Radius = 0. AoE Non-Cone Arc = 360.

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...Unsure the tier 1 pets would be, maybe some kind of beast, a flyer perhaps...

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All about the Harpies right there.

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Ah excellent, that would fit.