Features Nobody Noticed

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equally annoying? Stand in one spot, turn on an 'offensive' PBAoE aura power like Icicles or Hot Feet or Choking Cloud and then see how many emotes work for you. Completely kills wonderful setups for screenshots, such as my Fire/Rad Controller standing at the middle of her Hot Feet/Choking Cloud auras doing the 'jugglefire' emote while her Fire Imps dance around slapping a bunch of random mobs twisted up by the AoE hold and locked down with Fire Cages.

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No reason that Icicles or Choking Cloud shouldn't work with emotes. I will need to make a small change to Hot Feet though...I've been trying to fix these 'offensive' toggles as I find them so that they don't put you into a permanent combat state while active.

I'm actually a bit puzzled because most emotes should now work even while in combat mode. There should even be a number of emotes that work while in shield combat mode.

Have you tried in Issue 15?

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I dunno, but shields (as in the Shield power set) and emotes, especially Costume Change emotes = me being an unhappy camper.

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"All that crap is grey to me, no XP." - Positron 5/15/05 8:36am . . . The world stopped and silence ensued except for the sound of a crying infant off in the distance.

"Everyone needs to chill the hell out." - BackAlleyBrawler 11/13/08 3:26pm . . . Geeks around the world stopped and blinked.

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SO I noticed this a couple of months ago but no one I talked to had any idea what I was talking about.

Some Graveyard Gates swing open now when you bump against them. Tis I think is fantastic. If its something that has been around for years..oops. If it is relatively new....yaaa for gates.

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It's been around for a while, because you can even break them if you hit them hard enough.

I know I have broken the gates in IP that are next to the hospital (where the TF starts). Hitting them constantly with SS will cause them to fall off their hinges.

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You don't hit smiling monsters - Sister Flame

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This probably seems like a silly thing to be frustrated by, but I used /em flip to force characters into the idle cycle for screenshot and demo purposes.

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Use /em none, instead.

*edit*
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I kinda like the new version. Maybe what we need is /em idle so you don't need to use a workaround to get you into the animation loop you want?

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Just to address the other occurrence of this - /em none does just this. Breaks an emote or stance and returns you to the idle animation cycle.

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Never heard of that one. Nice to know. I always just hit the "Esc" key, though.

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We often sit and think of you,
We often speak your name;
There is nothing left to answer,
But your photo in the frame.
-Anon.

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equally annoying? Stand in one spot, turn on an 'offensive' PBAoE aura power like Icicles or Hot Feet or Choking Cloud and then see how many emotes work for you. Completely kills wonderful setups for screenshots, such as my Fire/Rad Controller standing at the middle of her Hot Feet/Choking Cloud auras doing the 'jugglefire' emote while her Fire Imps dance around slapping a bunch of random mobs twisted up by the AoE hold and locked down with Fire Cages.

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No reason that Icicles or Choking Cloud shouldn't work with emotes. I will need to make a small change to Hot Feet though...I've been trying to fix these 'offensive' toggles as I find them so that they don't put you into a permanent combat state while active.

I'm actually a bit puzzled because most emotes should now work even while in combat mode. There should even be a number of emotes that work while in shield combat mode.

Have you tried in Issue 15?

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I dunno, but shields (as in the Shield power set) and emotes, especially Costume Change emotes = me being an unhappy camper.

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I noticed that my Shielder goes into the standing position rather than staying in "ready to fight", after toggling on his powers. Maybe they were trying to get that to happen since a lot of Shielders complained about it, and something else went wacky because of it...

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Never heard of that one. Nice to know. I always just hit the "Esc" key, though.

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Escape takes you out of Combat Mode (which /em none actually doesn't), but it doesn't interrupt emotes you may be doing. Sitting, for instance, is immune to Escape, because it's not a mode, but merely an animation playing in idle mode. /em none just forces the default animation cycle. I've rarely had use for it, myself, but it's better than jumping up to interrupt emotes.

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They changed the screenshot filename format from this:

screenshot_2009-06-30-00-00-00.jpg
screenshot_yyyy-mm-dd-hh-mm-ss.jpg

to this:

screenshot_090630-00-00-00.jpg
screenshot_yymmdd-hh-mm-ss.jpg

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Great, now our screenshot filenames are not y3k compliant...

In all seriousness I have to assume that change "helped" something.
What that something was I haven't a clue. *shrugs*

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OK.. so who is going to make the utility to update the names of the hundreds of thousands of screenshots I have under the old format?

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perl -e 'opendir (DIR, "."); while (($file = readdir(DIR))) {if ($file =~ /creenshot/) {$newfile = $file; $newfile =~ s/_\d\d(\d\d)\-(\d\d)\-(\d\d)/_\1\2\3/;rename ($file, $newfile);}}closedir DIR;'

Haven't tested it, but something like that should work fine. You can probably shorten it a bit by making the substitution straight into the IF statement, but it doesn't help readability. YMMV.

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Players' Choice Awards: Best Dual-Origin Level Range Arc!

It's a new era, the era of the Mission Architect. Can you save the Universe from...

The Invasion of the Bikini-clad Samurai Vampiresses from Outer Space? - Arc ID 61013

I've seen a lot of people suggest Perl scripts, but never really seen them explain how to get Perl for Windows or set up a command line shortcut to it.

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http://www.activestate.com/activeperl/

Comes with a windows installer, you can run it from cmd.exe

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Players' Choice Awards: Best Dual-Origin Level Range Arc!

It's a new era, the era of the Mission Architect. Can you save the Universe from...

The Invasion of the Bikini-clad Samurai Vampiresses from Outer Space? - Arc ID 61013

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http://www.activestate.com/activeperl/
Comes with a windows installer, you can run it from cmd.exe

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Now that's what I'm talking about Good advice and it should be enough to get a new person ready to run the given copy-paste script.

Still more a fan of writing programmes in an editor, though

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Something new:
Unyielding difficulty can spawn Bosses in the +1 spawn points for a solo character (The +2 spawns are too small for this). This might be the case for tenacious too.

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That seems more than a little odd. That's a significant bump in difficulty, and seems unlikely to be both intentional and (intentionally) not mentioned.

Then again, the patch notes this issue were complete garbage.

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It is true for tenacious (2nd diff) now as well. Boss spawned by himself, but it was *nice* to see for once. Was seen in a MA mission I created where the Boss mob never spawned before while solo, even on invincible. Now I can actually test my bosses :O

IIRC, it use to be like that when they first made the difficulty and team size changes a very long time ago. I really really really really really hope it just wasn't mentioned in the patch notes.

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I've already forgotten about most of you

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Something new:
Unyielding difficulty can spawn Bosses in the +1 spawn points for a solo character (The +2 spawns are too small for this). This might be the case for tenacious too.

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That seems more than a little odd. That's a significant bump in difficulty, and seems unlikely to be both intentional and (intentionally) not mentioned.

Then again, the patch notes this issue were complete garbage.

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It is true for tenacious (2nd diff) now as well. Boss spawned by himself, but it was *nice* to see for once. Was seen in a MA mission I created where the Boss mob never spawned before while solo, even on invincible. Now I can actually test my bosses :O

IIRC, it use to be like that when they first made the difficulty and team size changes a very long time ago. I really really really really really hope it just wasn't mentioned in the patch notes.

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Bosses have shown up in missions ever since they fixed the spawn scaling issues in I7 or I8. It wasn't frequent and was more common for some groups than others (the Lost had a lot of Anathema and Pariah bosses all by themselves, as did Malta with their Zeus Titans), but it wasn't uncommon to see, say, a mission that was 50% Paragon Protectros (the boss kind, from Crey) or one full of nothing but Freakshow Tanks, even when solo.

This hasn't changed, though I suspect the frequency with which it is occurring may have wavered if people are noticing it now more than before.

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I noticed that my Shielder goes into the standing position rather than staying in "ready to fight", after toggling on his powers. Maybe they were trying to get that to happen since a lot of Shielders complained about it, and something else went wacky because of it...

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Already did that.

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WRT Bosses at DiffLevel 2+...

From everything said by devs about the difficulty slider, there should have been bosses spawning at DiffLevel 2 and higher. When we were told that DiffLevel 1 on solo suppressed Bosses, it should have been inferred that when you're not solo or when the DiffLevel was higher, then you *should* be getting bosses.

But the 'weighting' of spawns didn't allow that for most factions (some factions did produce Bosses while solo at higher DiffLevels, such as the Lost, while most didn't). When I heard that certain 'farms' used exactly six players because a seventh teammate would cause bosses to start spawning, I was flabbergasted. Certainly, way before the sixth team member, there should be bosses in spawns.

So, if there are indeed Bosses regularly spawning for all factions when you're not solo or when the DiffLevel is 2 or higher, then it is definitely working as intended.

And if this was purposely done as an anti-farming tactic... it's about time.

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Speeding Through New DA Repeatables || Spreadsheet o' Enhancements || Zombie Skins: better skins for these forums || Guide to Guides

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Something new:
Unyielding difficulty can spawn Bosses in the +1 spawn points for a solo character (The +2 spawns are too small for this). This might be the case for tenacious too.

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That seems more than a little odd. That's a significant bump in difficulty, and seems unlikely to be both intentional and (intentionally) not mentioned.

Then again, the patch notes this issue were complete garbage.

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It is true for tenacious (2nd diff) now as well. Boss spawned by himself, but it was *nice* to see for once. Was seen in a MA mission I created where the Boss mob never spawned before while solo, even on invincible. Now I can actually test my bosses :O

IIRC, it use to be like that when they first made the difficulty and team size changes a very long time ago. I really really really really really hope it just wasn't mentioned in the patch notes.

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Bosses have shown up in missions ever since they fixed the spawn scaling issues in I7 or I8. It wasn't frequent and was more common for some groups than others (the Lost had a lot of Anathema and Pariah bosses all by themselves, as did Malta with their Zeus Titans), but it wasn't uncommon to see, say, a mission that was 50% Paragon Protectros (the boss kind, from Crey) or one full of nothing but Freakshow Tanks, even when solo.

This hasn't changed, though I suspect the frequency with which it is occurring may have wavered if people are noticing it now more than before.

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See my comment about the MA mission I created that does include bosses but *never* spawned the boss mobs while solo at *any* diff setting. I ran this thing a lot solo for testing purposes and always had to rely on others for input on the bosses who ran it with teams.

I think Zombie Man summoned it up well. Again, I'm hoping this was a bug/exploit/mistake fix and wasn't put in the patch notes by mistake.

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I've already forgotten about most of you

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When I zone, I now replay my power activation animations for my toggles when I hit the destination zone. I am not sure how it chooses what to play - it only plays one if you have multiple toggles running.

I can't say I'm real fond of it.

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I can say I actively dislike it - I hate the animation for Integration and interrupt it if at all possible. Now I get to see it every time I zone.

And the issue about mayhem ambushes seems to extend further; I ran the Tarikoss SF last night and there were no ambushes in the Longbow mission after getting the scientist.

My guess is something in the patch broke a lot of ambushes, as opposed to an undocumented feature.

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You can now name your builds!


Great hidden features!

Worst patch notes process in 6 issues!

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Speeding Through New DA Repeatables || Spreadsheet o' Enhancements || Zombie Skins: better skins for these forums || Guide to Guides

You could name your builds before - I forget when that was added, but I already had mine named a month ago for my Widow.

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You can now name your builds!


Great hidden features!

Worst patch notes process in 6 issues!

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This has been in for some time, I believe. I was able to name my builds when I burned my freespec this past weekend.

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Arc #345863 - When The Bough Breaks
"Curse you Perry the Plata...wait, is that Love Handel?" - Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz, Phineas and Ferb

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You can now name your builds!


Great hidden features!

Worst patch notes process in 6 issues!

[/ QUOTE ]This was added last isue, but was bugged when it went live and was corrected in a patch a bit later.

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You can now name your builds!


Great hidden features!

Worst patch notes process in 6 issues!

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Zombie man!!!

Just when I thought you are a living incarnation of Paragon Wiki, you go and say something like this. Shame on you! Tsk tsk tsk!

:P

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<QR>

The Mission Teleporter now has a "proper" icon, instead of the red X

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I liked the Big Red X. You can never miss it on the icon tray. Now the new button looks like the temp phase shift power.

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Yup. Hate this one. Give me the X back any day. Now can't have it anywhere near my Phase Temp Powers.

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You can now name your builds!


Great hidden features!

Worst patch notes process in 6 issues!

[/ QUOTE ]This was added last isue, but was bugged when it went live and was corrected in a patch a bit later.

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I just checked and none of the interim patch notes mentioned it was fixed.

The patch notes process of last issue wasn't that great, either.

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Speeding Through New DA Repeatables || Spreadsheet o' Enhancements || Zombie Skins: better skins for these forums || Guide to Guides

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You can probably shorten it a bit by making the substitution straight into the IF statement, but it doesn't help readability. YMMV.

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Nothing helps Perl readability.

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The Way of the Corruptor (Arc ID 49834): Hey villains! Do something for yourself for a change--like twisting the elements to your will. All that's standing in your way are a few secret societies...and Champions of the four elements.

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You can now name your builds!


Great hidden features!

Worst patch notes process in 6 issues!

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Ouiser Boudreaux: What's the matter with you these days, M'Lynn? You got a reindeer up your butt?

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You can probably shorten it a bit by making the substitution straight into the IF statement, but it doesn't help readability. YMMV.

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Nothing helps Perl readability.


[/ QUOTE ]There's lots of ways you can improve the readability of perl, such as not using perl!

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