Downloadable Mission Architect
By
Eternal Mydnyt,
Posted on: 2009-10-08 12:13 in Suggestions and Ideas
Interesting idea.
Theoretically you "could" do the MA offline with VI or Emacs... the description files are saved as plain text documents. I think this would work better as a web-browser interface though, given that portions of the player-base use the Cedega / Cider engine to play.
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Edit: I can see a couple of problems. The first is that several components of AE are unlocked via tickets. Extra Costumes, Extra NPC's, extra maps, and extra weapons immediately strike my mind. In order for an Out-of-game editor to work, there would have to be some way of either logging into the game to verify available extra content... or there would need to be a method to save the unlocked content web-visible servers. This probably isn't an impossible task to work around, perhaps it could be added by extending the *.storyarc file to include code that indicates all unlocked content... although anybody that edited the plain text could possibly set variables as unlocked that are locked in game.
The second problem is that the MA editor references other data files, such as custom costumes. Although such references could probably be stripped out or turned off, and only edited in game.
See I honestly dont have that much technical knowhow to know what most of that means. I just know that CoH is a resource ***** and destroys my systems performance. Probobly because i play with only 512 of ram and a video card from like 2001.
I would just love to be able to use the architect while being able to actually operate other programs as well
I thought Leandro was working on an offline MArc builder program...?
http://www.fimfiction.net/story/36641/My-Little-Exalt
I would think that a 3rd party developer might be the only way we see an offline MA kit. I doubt the developers would want to worry about two different code bases when they make changes within the MA, since one gives them enough troubles already 
I would love to see a downloadable version of the Mission Architect. I play City of Heroes on a low end computer and running it slows down everything else to a crawl... It would be nice to sit back and relax, chatting with some friends on my messengers while tweaking my architect missions.
I would not expect to be able to publish the missions. That would have to be done by logging into the game and visiting the architects studios but since the missions are saved locally anyways why not be able to work on them outside of the game?