You can run a music player app and City of Heroes at the same time.
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I agree, I don't really see the point for this. Unless perhaps you are talking about controlling the music player while focused on CoH, even then I don't know how much QoL this would provide.
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You can already do exactly that with something as simple as WinAMP, or whatever your favourite music player is. City of Heroes no longer crashes when you alt-tab it, and you can easily mute the in-game music (and you should either way) so you can listen to your own. I don't really see a point in doubling up that functionality.
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Originally Posted by Oculus Omega
I think it would be neat for you to be able to earn a music player so players could load their favorite music into a player and listen to it while playing. This would especially be nice when traveling by flight; it's so quite up there!!
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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There's a very good chance that anything like this they did would
A) Not be as good as dedicated program for music would be
-and-
B) Open up a hole in their security. Think about it, if you were downloading your OWN music into the game to be used in an in-game music player, there would be nothing stopping a talented hacker from getting in there and mucking about with program files. Currently, there is no real way into the game's base programming because we can't upload anything from our computers into the game. I'm sure especially good hackers can still get in, but why make that any easier? Especially in a feature that is completely unnecessary.
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Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately. |
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Actually we can, cossie files, MA arcs etc are all stored locally but can be uploaded to the game servers (obviously they go through validation). A music player would never upload anything to the server. And I've heard reference of people replacing sounds ingame with their own to remove things like annoying hums etc in the past (although it's technically against the terms and conditions of the game). So Point B is pretty much invalid.|
Originally Posted by ClawsandEffect
There's a very good chance that anything like this they did would
A) Not be as good as dedicated program for music would be -and- B) Open up a hole in their security. Think about it, if you were downloading your OWN music into the game to be used in an in-game music player, there would be nothing stopping a talented hacker from getting in there and mucking about with program files. Currently, there is no real way into the game's base programming because we can't upload anything from our computers into the game. I'm sure especially good hackers can still get in, but why make that any easier? Especially in a feature that is completely unnecessary. |
A) is perfectly valid though and pretty much the only reason you need. Why reinvent the wheel when people have access to loads of good music players already on their systems.
Plus what formats would you support? MP3 and AAC are licensed ones, not sure what CoH actually uses (lots of games use Ogg instead).
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Can't you just put on Windows Media Player? I do it with 1.5 GB of RAM running Windows 7 and Ultra Mode, you should be able to do it too.
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Originally Posted by Oculus Omega
I think it would be neat for you to be able to earn a music player so players could load their favorite music into a player and listen to it while playing. This would especially be nice when traveling by flight; it's so quite up there!!
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I already brought up a semi-detailed idea like this once:
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=209680
The overall census seemed to be 'What's the point?'
Despite that I would still enjoy something like this. /signed
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No, seriously. Can you formulate an explanation as to why that has any point? It doesn't matter if I agree with you or not. I just want to see what advantage an in-game music player has over currently functional, perfectly free third party players.
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Originally Posted by Risko_Vinsheen
The overall census seemed to be 'What's the point?'
Despite that I would still enjoy something like this. /signed |
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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It's a simple ease of use thing. It can be controlled from within the game itself rather than alt-tabbing.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
No, seriously. Can you formulate an explanation as to why that has any point? It doesn't matter if I agree with you or not. I just want to see what advantage an in-game music player has over currently functional, perfectly free third party players.
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
City of Heroes no longer crashes when you alt-tab it
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The point is to just make it simple. You won't have to alt-tab, look through your media player's playlist for a particular song, and hope the game isn't messed up when you go back in. For some people that last part isn't a problem, but the fact remains that that is still a problem for some people.
Like I said in my post, there was a program that did this for the game Jedi Academy and it was a very popular program, remains one of the most downloaded files of all time for that game.
Would this be for everyone? Obviously not. But there's people out there who would like to have it. Just like every other booster pack we've had, the Developers realize not everyone would want those things, but some people do. This doesn't even have to be a paid addition, it could just be added in in an Issue like Ultra Mode (Again, not a large portion of the community can use it or wants to use it. Not for everyone but still it's there if people do want it.)
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CoH does in fact use OGG.
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Originally Posted by Carnifax_NA
Plus what formats would you support? MP3 and AAC are licensed ones, not sure what CoH actually uses (lots of games use Ogg instead).
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http://www.fimfiction.net/story/36641/My-Little-Exalt
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OK, this I honestly can't see. The old crashes were caused by multi-core rendering turned on (i.e. /renderthread 1) back when the game didn't officially support it, and even then it crashed, at least for me, when swapping keyboard layouts. This has been fixed and I've seen no further issues reported. When did the game crash for you and how often does it do that?|
Originally Posted by Risko_Vinsheen
That's actually false. The game can still crash from alt-tabbing in certain situations. In fact my whole computer once crashed from alt-tabbing out of City of Heroes and I had nothing else running to do it.
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| The point is to just make it simple. You won't have to alt-tab, look through your media player's playlist for a particular song, and hope the game isn't messed up when you go back in. For some people that last part isn't a problem, but the fact remains that that is still a problem for some people. |
And if you wanted to play a specific song from that list, you'd still have to find it manually. Because I highly doubt you'd get as decent a jump-to-file support in a home-made music player as you do in WinAMP. Hell, the folks at Paragon Studios still can't make their text editors respect Ctrl+End and not run lines off the text box.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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It has done it recently, and usually does it at least once a month. I know of one person who simply doesn't alt-tab at all when using the game because of issues it causes.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
OK, this I honestly can't see. The old crashes were caused by multi-core rendering turned on (i.e. /renderthread 1) back when the game didn't officially support it, and even then it crashed, at least for me, when swapping keyboard layouts. This has been fixed and I've seen no further issues reported. When did the game crash for you and how often does it do that?
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
OK, I'm not sure I follow you here. Lack of Alt-Tabbing I can see, but how does having an in-game player save you from having to look through playlists? UT2004 had an in-built music player, and all that did was dump my songs in a playlist that I still had to look through, pretty much identically to how I have it set up in WinAMP. If you're talking about just loading a random song and going with it, most players I'm aware of can do that, too, without having to fiddle with play lists.
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Originally Posted by Risko_Vinsheen
As for extra feature that could be added (Cyborg had combat auras, Magic had Costume Change Emotes, Science had the Super Tailor) could add in an MP3 player functionality. Set up a playlist outside of your game and when in game with simple slash commands can manipulate it like any other media player.
/play *songtitle* /pause /nextsong /prevsong /vol%% (replace the %% with a number to manipulate volume levels, i.e. /vol67 to put the volume at 67% full) /nowplaying (just as the name suggests, would tell you what song you're currently listening to) Back when I played Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy there was a player made program that did just this. A music player you could control from within the game itself. And when you used one of the commands it would give you a message that only you could see to tell you what song is now playing or whatever. |
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Originally Posted by Risko_Vinsheen
And yeah I usually have my Zune software running while I play but it's not so much the draw on the computer's resources that putting an ingame media player would take care of, it's the having to alt-tab whenever you want to skip a song or something.
For a quick example. Let's say you wanted to listen to Diary of Jane by Breaking Benjamin, you'd have to alt-tab out and look through your playlist for the song. Whereas if the player was tied into the game. All you'd have to do is: /play Diary **Now playing: Breaking Benjamin - Diary of Jane** or say you know what number the song is in the playlist: /play #21 (or whatever) **Now playing: Breaking Benjamin - Diary of Jane** The Jedi Academy program that gave me this idea has functionality to help if you have a number of songs that share the part of the title you're trying to play. Might be a good idea to put that in this too. So... say you type something like. /play Call **4 songs in playlist with title 'Call'** /play Call Me When **Now playing: Evenescence - Call Me When You're Sober** And if you don't know the number of the song you want to play? Maybe add in a playlist functionality. /playlist Might bring up a window listing off your playlist with their number beside them |
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Huh... OK, I guess if it's a real problem I can't really criticise you for it.|
Originally Posted by Risko_Vinsheen
It has done it recently, and usually does it at least once a month. I know of one person who simply doesn't alt-tab at all when using the game because of issues it causes.
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| The issue with looking through the playlist comes when you're the kind of person who has hundreds or more songs in your playlist. If you're given a command to go directly to a song without having to look for it then wouldn't you use it too? |
Again, I don't get it. I've read your "relevant parts" and all you're doing is describing a more cumbersome variant of the options currently provided by WinAMP.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Have you tried VLC? I've had a lot of success with it. It has an 'Always on top' feature and 'minimal' mode that allows me to play my media with ease while always having a ready interface overlay on top of whatever it is I'm doing in CoX.
One of the nicer aspects I've found with it is that I'm not just restricted to songs, but movies as well if I don't mind resizing the view window down a bit. Since I don't have convient access to a television given the location of my computer, it's nice to still be able to watch DVDs or whatnot while playing.
On a side note, I remember Champions Online released with a frontend for Winamp, but I don't remember using it very much despite having downloaded Winamp exclusively for play through the frontend. Couldn't tell you why I ditched it, but I'm sure their was some aspect of it's use that I was unhappy with.
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Well thank you for the information on WinAMP. I've never used it so I don't know anything about it.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Um, WinAMP allows you to do exactly that. Hit J to activate the Jump to File feature, then start typing. It matches to any part of the word. When I'm looking for, say, Best Day Ever by Bowling For Soup, I hit J, type in Soup and hit Enter. That's actually easier than typing /play soup, and it also allows me to pick the exact song. For instance, if I want to play the LazyTown Theme, I don't have any single identifier that's unique. Searching for Theme reveals the Mario Brothers Theme, the Bubble Bobble Theme and probably a few others I don't remember, and searching for LazyTown revels my entire LazyTown music collection. There's nothing I can type /play for.
Again, I don't get it. I've read your "relevant parts" and all you're doing is describing a more cumbersome variant of the options currently provided by WinAMP. |
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Originally Posted by Foundsavant
Have you tried VLC? I've had a lot of success with it. It has an 'Always on top' feature and 'minimal' mode that allows me to play my media with ease while always having a ready interface overlay on top of whatever it is I'm doing in CoX.
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Overall though. I think a good number of players would use a feature like this if given the option. If it's not for you though then I don't see any issue with just leaving it be. There's no harm in options.
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Light of the Phoenix - lvl 50 Fire/Emp Controller; Snow Panther - lvl 50 Cold/Ice Defender; Dragonfly. - lvl 50 Willpower/Fire Tanker; Magic Minx - lvl 50 Ill/Rad Controller; Dust Walker - lvl 50 Storm/Dark (Sand) Defender; And more...
Star Trek online has this... kinda. It doesn't play your files, but it provides a remote control embedded in the in game UI from which you can control one of a list of separate media players, like iTunes and Windows Media Player.
I play with two monitors and so changing songs is just as easy for me to click out of the current window, so I don't use it much. I honestly don't know how much use I would get out of it if I didn't, though. At best, I would say "sure, if the devs wanted to work on it while taking a break from something else, why not?" but I certainly don't see a media player being the kind of thing that would justify hours of development time otherwise.
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I would like an ingame access to my music, replacing the current music, without having to resort to thrid-party software.
"Samual_Tow - Be disappointed all you want, people. You just don't appreciate the miracles that are taking place here."
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This is a bad idea, since the in-game music isn't designed to be "background music" but rather "zone introduction music". Just a brief tune to set you in the mood for the zone.|
Originally Posted by Anti_Proton
I would like an ingame access to my music, replacing the current music, without having to resort to thrid-party software.
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There are looping musics in places like Pocket D or the Sewers - but these aren't really "music", they're just little invisible tokens on the map that broadcast sound, like how mission objectives broadcast that distinctive glowie sound.
I still don't see how you can't just turn off all the music and use WMP or WinAmp or VLC or whatever.
It's not that we can't use a third party program like WinAmp, Realplayer, whatever.
It's just an option. This argument is practically the same as going to someone who just bought a new MP3 player and asking them why they couldn't just buy a 3 year old MP3 player. Why? Because they didn't want to. They wanted the new one. Simple as that. People who want an ingame music player want an ingame music player.
I would like to point out though that I actually had two system-wide crashes occur just today while I was alt-tabbing out of City of Heroes. Only crashes that occurred today and they only occurred when I was in the game and held alt and pressed tab. So that kind of throws the whole alt-tabbing is safe reasoning out the window.
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I still crash occasionally when I alt-tab. Maybe the specific circumstances you've experienced have been fixed, but alt-tabbing still has problems for others.
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
OK, this I honestly can't see. The old crashes were caused by multi-core rendering turned on (i.e. /renderthread 1) back when the game didn't officially support it, and even then it crashed, at least for me, when swapping keyboard layouts. This has been fixed and I've seen no further issues reported. When did the game crash for you and how often does it do that?
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I also had a similar suggestion: QoL-Itunes/Windows Media controls.
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I hate to compare other games, but Champions Online had this feature (iTunes controls) from the start. There is a reason why: convenience for the users. This is why it is a Quality of Life feature. Quality of life features have to be looked at in a different light than other requested features. This one has no downside for regular users in that if you don't use it you don't see it. Zero bandwidth is needed. Nothing is being touched over the Internet.|
A small Quality of Life request: Can we get control slash commands and icons to control music players (ITunes, Windows Media Player, Winamp, etc.)? Having the song title appear as either a generic system message or in a new "music" channel would be a great bonus. To clarify what I'm saying, I would like a play/pause, stop, next track, and previous track commands or buttons. A system message could possibly capture the track being played and show it to the player. Bonus would be able to increase or decrease volume. All this would only be local, so you would only hear what is playing on your own media player, not anyone else's. |
It doesn't need to be a full-blown media player.
iTunes has a Software Developer Kit (SDK) to control iTunes with other programs. This would allow Paragon Studios to send and receive information to iTunes. The iTunes SDK "allows programmatic control of iTunes from languages like JScript, Visual Basic, C#, and C++" or Applescript. The function calls are exactly the same as any other internal function calls. The SDK has all the references needed to call the functions requested above (track listing, play, pause, stop, next track, previous track, volume).
Apple has made a library of routines to access iTunes. This is similar to what nVidia and ATI do with their graphics cards. What the developers at Paragon Studio have to do is hook into this library (Apple provides the specs and documentation, and would work with Paragon Studios to get it set up) and call the related functions. This is basic object oriented programming. In fact, they could assign this to a new programming hire as a means to get them up to speed on how the game works (it is that simple).
Winamp has Multimedia keyboard functionality built in for keyboards using the standard signals. So does Windows Media Player and iTunes. CoH can send those signals. Winamp also has an SDK, same with Windows Media Player.
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Here's what I don't get, though - if the three-year-old MP3 player is just as good and in just as good a condition as the new one, why buy a new one? I can understand the sentimental value of having "new" stuff, but if it has no benefits over the old stuff, you'll have people raising an eyebrow.|
Originally Posted by Risko_Vinsheen
It's just an option. This argument is practically the same as going to someone who just bought a new MP3 player and asking them why they couldn't just buy a 3 year old MP3 player. Why? Because they didn't want to. They wanted the new one. Simple as that. People who want an ingame music player want an ingame music player.
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I'm not questioning your desire for an in-game player, especially if you crash on Alt-Tab, which itself is reason enough. But "just because" is not a good argument, even for quality of life.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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There's a BIG problem with player-specific plugins, in that they're player-specific. You talk about iTunes, but I don't have, use or even WANT iTunes. I don't want a Media Player plugin, I don't want a VLC plugin and BY GOD I don't want a Real Player plugin. It's hard enough just to keep that piece of adware out of my startup, I don't want more plugins for it. If we did have a plugin, I'd want it to be for WinAMP, which others have already explained they don't use.|
Originally Posted by Snow Globe
iTunes has a Software Developer Kit (SDK) to control iTunes with other programs. This would allow Paragon Studios to send and receive information to iTunes. The iTunes SDK "allows programmatic control of iTunes from languages like JScript, Visual Basic, C#, and C++" or Applescript. The function calls are exactly the same as any other internal function calls. The SDK has all the references needed to call the functions requested above (track listing, play, pause, stop, next track, previous track, volume).
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It's like this - certain keyboards come with "interface buttons," such as "play next song" or "open browser" and such. The problem? Multimedia keys only work with the piece of crap that is Windows Media Player, the browser button only ever calls the ****** Internet Explorer and the e-mail button calls up Microsoft Outlook. Why would I WANT to call up Microsoft Outlook?!? In essence, it gives me several keys that not only do I not want to use, but are often highly problematic because the programmes they call up are the Microsoft brand of fat and bloated, take hours to load and slap me with registration wizards that I have to confirm thrice that I want to cancel out of.
I don't want an ap for iTunes. I want one for WinAMP. I'm sure others don't want an ap for WinAMP, but would like one for iTunes. So what do you do?
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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The buttons on my Microsoft keyboard bring up my default programs (Outlook for mail, Chrome for internet). If you've never changed the default from the windows ones that's on you not the function itself.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
It's like this - certain keyboards come with "interface buttons," such as "play next song" or "open browser" and such. The problem? Multimedia keys only work with the piece of crap that is Windows Media Player, the browser button only ever calls the ****** Internet Explorer and the e-mail button calls up Microsoft Outlook. Why would I WANT to call up Microsoft Outlook?!? In essence, it gives me several keys that not only do I not want to use, but are often highly problematic because the programmes they call up are the Microsoft brand of fat and bloated, take hours to load and slap me with registration wizards that I have to confirm thrice that I want to cancel out of.?
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The music controls don't work in VLC but I'm downloading WinAMP to see what it does (not expecting them to work actually).
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Tool bar, search engine swap, itemt hat wants to run on windows start...third party registry scanner?
Yeah WinAMP is they way to go to avoid bloatware and resource wasting...
I think it would be neat for you to be able to earn a music player so players could load their favorite music into a player and listen to it while playing. This would especially be nice when traveling by flight; it's so quite up there!!