Addon software?

Hi! I'm afraid this question may get me in trouble, but I think it's legit.

I have seen people refer to various hackery which modifies CoH. The ones I've seen include:

* A program which runs alongside CoH and records statistics about your gameplay.
* Some data file upgrades which add additional information to the minimap displays for the city.
* Texture/model mods, such as an "all-nude" model mod.

My basic question: Are ANY of these legit, or permitted by ToS? I'm coming from a background in a game where all three of these would be not only bannable offenses, but bannable defenses that the game software would actively seek out and detect. On the other hand, in that game, there was an actively-maintained API for user-created user interface modifications in game.

From what I've seen of CoH, my guess would be that all of these are allowed, but not necessarily supported or encouraged. I say this because I don't see anyone complaining about references to them, and I see a lot of people recommending them without much hassle. But I'm not sure.

And honestly, I can live without the all-nude mod, because given peoples' taste in costumes, I can't see that ending well.

But the stat-tracking thing sounds really fun to me (I might be a TINY bit obsessive about data collection), and the map addon similarly sounds fun.

I've avoided referring to these by name because it may be that they're considered exploits or hacks; if they're not, I'd be happy to provide actual names that people could look up. And similarly, if stuff like this is allowed, I'd love to know what else is out there.

hehehe, that might be a real can of worms you're opening there.

I'd have no idea on the policy regarding those, other than to say they have
specifically said altering the client software is a no-no...

Then again, there's a guide in the forum describing how to replace game sounds
that, if not condoned, certainly has blind eyes turned towards it, because,
technically speaking, it alters clientside files...

From an historical perspective, it's my feeling that the map add-on and the
stats-keeper had/have their uses, and in the case of the former, actually led
directly to in-game patches that placed most (if not all) of those things on
the game map - clearly the devs decided that function was a useful addition -
eventually.

The game also originally had minimal real numbers, and early versions of the
stat program, along with several other factors have probably had their influence
in the current combat attributes windows we have now.

While it's still not as comprehensive as the add-on, it's at least a more helpful
than before, and arguably a directional prod of sorts to the devs.

Finally, I'd speculate that if the "add-on" is parallel (ie external) to the
game client, rather than integrated with the client, it's got a much better
chance of being "tolerated", provided that it also doesn't give unfair advantage,
or remote (ie botting) capabilities. Mind you, that's pure speculation on my part.


Regards,
4

Ah-hah! I'd been wondering how the stats-gathering could possibly be legit enough to have a public page where they post it complete with source code. Monitoring chat logs makes sense. I may grab that, then, since it sounds legit. (And hey, sure the van's a bit rusty, but FREE CANDY. No one mean would give out free candy, amirite?)

I will point out, though, that you are unlikely to get a redname response on this at all. The reason being that they do not wish to set a precedent for "allowed/not-allowed" with their comments.

I'd suggest taking a look at the Vidiotmaps site - there's an FAQ around there somewhere that explains why they believe that the use of the map pack is legitimate, but at the end of the day, it's pretty much what I described above: Modifying the game files themselves? Breaks EULA. Adding a file that layers over the game files and that only affects your game experience? Allowed.

My expectation would be that the only way I'd see a staff response to this would be if it were definitely not allowed. I just wanted to get some feedback on this before I went downloading stuff that I don't trust. (I do like that the stat-monitor thing looks to be open source. Yes, I can actually read source in a few languages, and I think I will before I run anything. I'd rebuild it myself, but I don't have a compiler on the games machine.)

The Vidiotmaps maps overlay and Herostats have been used by the CoH community for years . . . Vidiotmaps actually won a player's favorite website award. Both of those are certainly safe and highly recommended.

Thanks, I feel safer now. I've been using vmaps for ages, but I only heard about herostats today, and my first response was "OMG WANT" followed immediately by "wait, is that even ALLOWED?"

Tragically, I lose -- HeroStats can only display stuff in-game in Windowed mode under Windows 7, and the crappy un-updated video drivers on my laptop are such that that knocks about 70% off my frame rate. (And I can't use the card vendor's drivers, they crash badly on this hardware.)

And any costume mod such as the "all nude" mod is for your benefit only. Other players see that character in whatever costume piece that got bumped to add in the nude costume piece (usually one of the bikini parts).

List of add-ons click here

Technically, the Map Pack does violate the Eula. While it does 't modify any of the games files, it does modify the client. Mind you, from what I've seen/learned over the years, the mod "hole" is probably easy enough for them to fix if they wanted to.

However - the map pack (becausenof how useful it is) as well as the sound mods and a few powers (mainly sonics) mods are ignored/"I can't hear you Lalalala" - especially the sounds that cause migrianes.

It's simpler to forbid any mods and ignore these few QoL ones than risk sanctioning any and havng to defend denying others.

It doesn't modify the client. The client was already designed to pull it's resources from the /data folder. All the map pack does it put files there to read.

It's more of a developers short cut, a way for animation, art, models and sound to be tweaked and tested without the need of rebuilding the various pigg files. Now the fact that someone discovered that ability, unless that was the folder structure way back in the original beta of the game, is intriguing.