Official - SuckerPunch's Planner for Issue 16

First things first! The URL to the new planner is: http://planner.cohtitan.com/planner

It's been almost 2 years since I've done any official update to my Planner, and I hope that this version is a worthy successor! This is not 100% complete, but I wanted to try and get something up-to-date and usable in your all's hands not too long after Issue 16 launched, and here we are!

Important Features Notice!

To remove a slot, Shift+Click the slot. There will be a more obvious way to do this in the interface in the very near future.

To remove a selected power, simply click on the name of the power.


Important Features Notice Number 2!

This version of the planner allows a 100% free-form way of building your characters. There are no "modes" restricting you from doing anything, you are free to build your character as you see fit.

If you want to pre-select all the important powers first (travels, Novas, Golden Dragonfly, whatever), feel free! The planner will populate those powers in the earliest available level it can.

You can even slot ahead too. If you are slotting a power that you haven't leveled "naturally" to, it will place those slots in the earliest levels available.

However, if you want to do "classic" planning and choose your power -> place slots all the way up to 50, you can do that to. There's nothing stopping you!


Missing (but coming soon) Features:
- IOs can't be set to a level. Not a major thing until I get the slotting effects stuff added in.
- IO sets don't respect uniqueness
- The slot selector isn't as pretty as I'd like it, especially for IO sets
- Can't toggle slot level display ( the little bubble over the enhancements )
- No 60 month vet reward option

Known Issues:
- Some IO sets may be missing their images (report these though!)
- Browse Builds link isn't active yet (takes you to a 404 page)


But what about the old site?

Good question. It's going to remain as-is for now. You can still access your old Planner account and builds by visiting www.cohplanner.com. However, it is highly unlikely I will be able to import the builds from that version to the new one. I hate to admit it, but the scheme I wrote for saving builds back then was... well ... I should be shot for doing it. It's that bad.

I know this stinks and will probably upset a lot of you, and the only thing I can offer is my sincere apologies for being a crappy programmer

The new Planner saves builds in a very portable format that should be future-proof since it's a web-industry standard for storing and sharing data. (JSON, for those curious).


A Note About Internet Explorer 6

It's no good. I will not be supporting it. It's almost 2010, please do yourself a favor and update to a modern browser.

If you're stuck using IE6 for work or some other beyond-your-control reason, and absolutely can not install a different browser, please consider trying to use Portable Firefox. This requires no installation and allows you to use a modern browser. Simply unzip the contents and run the application directly. I do understand if you have no other option, but for my own sanity I just can not target this browser any longer.


Bug Reporting

Be as detailed as possible! This is crucial. List out, step by step, the actions you took to accurately reproduce the problem. Doing this will allow to identify and fix the issue much faster.

I'd prefer it if you reported bugs in the Titan Forum, but I understand if you don't feel like doing that. Drop me a PM here if you don't want to use the Titan boards.



Whew! I know that was a long post, but I had a lot to cover! Thanks to those of you that read through all this. And trust me when I say that this is JUST the beginning of what you can expect from my Planner. I have a LOT in store!

I'm glad you've got it on wide release, now

I had to stop myself from talking about it eariler while posting about cross-platform Mids' >.>

Also, I think a lot of people are so used to Mids', that your interface will be intuitive

The very first link is broken for me due to the bold tags being inside the url tags

We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.

Yay. Now I can play with builds in work again on this Linux machine (you didn't think I was just beta testing with no personal motivation now did you )

Kudos for getting this up to date again SP, it's a great tool for quickly compiling and sharing builds. So now can we start nagging you for new features and updates?

I'm flabbergasted by the speed of your accomplishment, SP! A thousand thanks.

Now, on to the carping!

Well, some minor buggy things, anyway, which you might already know about. But just in case it's useful to you:

When you select a pool and select a power IN that pool, you can unselect the power but apparently never change the pool without reloading.

The initial two powers in a primary (the ones you can take either of at level one) seem to sort alphabetically. This doesn't really impact use, since both powers are correctly selectable at level one, except that the order the powers appear in on the character creation and power selection screens is fixed and that's NOT alphabetical. So, for example, the Shield set normally has
* Deflection
* Battle Agility

but your planner sorts B before D:

* Battle Agility
* Deflection

It's just jarring to see that.

That's minor stuff though. Overall, a great and needed effort!

Here's a bug for ya....

Choosing Arachnos Soldier, Bane primary and secondary, Choosing first (and 2-4) power pool and I get a weird list that isn't the pool powers (fail safe, self destruct, etc.).

Safari 4.0.2 (on a Mac w/ Leopard 10.5.7)

Glad you like it, Sailboat

I've added the issues to the bug tracker.

Thanks so much for updating your planner SuckerPunch! This is a big help to those of us CoH players who are stuck at work!

I just recently returned to the game due to the OSX compatibility. My old windows machine died, and I had to make a decision on what kind of new computer to get... and opted for the MacBook Pro for work, rather than a Windows box just for gaming purposes.

Thank you so much for this. Having a functional non-Windows planner was the only thing I was missing... and I was missing it real bad. Having access to this again has just made my day.

Very nice! I love not having to reboot into Boot Camp just to use Mids. Can't wait for the planned features.

I've just a request. Could you create a way to delete builds or save over old ones? Right now, I can foresee the builds on my account piling up as I save in-progress builds then complete them later, or update them later on.

Just pushed a build to the live server. Fixed a few bugs here and there.

9/17/2009 7:50PM EST

Fixes:
- CohPlanner.com homepage changed to reflect new URL of planner. Access to old planner left intact.
- Fury of the Gladiator IO Set image added
- After selecting an enhancement, you can now re-select an empty enhancement
- HOs now appear in the Power info modal window
- IO Sets now do per-power uniqueness checks. One-per-character uniqueness is not checked yet.

I forgot to add a hearty

Thank You!

to my earlier bug report.

So, there it is.

Just wanted to note that pool 3 and 4 and the PPP on VEATs is still wonky. Extra stuff shows up and the PPP has doubled up, written over each other entries.

Great job, SuckerPunch!

Quote:

Originally Posted by SuckerPunch Argh, more and more I dislike these new forums.

Everyone should stop trying to format your links, please. The skins highlight them already in their own unique way. If you don't like they way they look, then there are options on your end to make them all look the way you want (see my sig). Trying to force everyone to see them they way you want is not that nettiquettey. I'm especially looking at those used to the old Hero skin and try to make their links bold and green, which looks horrible on a Villain's skin.

Yes, but bolding a link doesn't break any "netiquette" as far as I'm aware. The fact that links are the same color as regular text is a bad design choice. All I wanted was to make it slightly more obvious there was a link there.