Issue 21 Beta Mac Client - Update


Alexander Hamilton

 

Posted

Currently the Mac Client has some critical issues when attempting to access the Issue 21 Beta.

  • Mac players are able to the play I21 Beta if they create Praetorian characters or transfer their characters from live to beta.
  • Mac players will get a crash when they try to access the Paragon Market. Mac players are unable to complete the neutral tutorial because one of the missions is to purchase the Knowledgeable badge from the Paragon Market.
We're working with Transgaming to resolve these critical issues, however we do not currently have an ETA for when these will be resolved. We'll keep you all updated and let you know just as soon as we have more information!

Thanks and our sincere apologies for this inconvenience.


Andy Belford
Community Manager
Paragon Studios

 

Posted

well, that you are still working with Transgaming is encouraging.

I'd also like to thank an NCSoft rep for stepping forward and saying something.


 

Posted

Darn... but as je_saist said, glad to hear that it is being worked on.

On the brighter side, I am glad this has been made public, considering that I can now play the time during the time that would have been devoted to installing/updating the beta server. I'll just overnight it, then wait to hear word.

Thanks Z!


@Winter. Because I'm Winter. Period.
I am a blaster first, and an alt-oholic second.

 

Posted

Do new characters have the option to skip the tutorial? I really want to try out a new character and the new creator!!!!!


Ideally, the tank will die precisely as everyone else starts fighting, allowing aggro to be spread evenly among the blaster. -seebs, "How to Suck at CoH/CoV" Guide

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Stealth_Bomber View Post
Do new characters have the option to skip the tutorial? I really want to try out a new character and the new creator!!!!!
You could try making a Praetorian.


If the game spit out 20 dollar bills people would complain that they weren't sequentially numbered. If they were sequentially numbered people would complain that they weren't random enough.

Black Pebble is my new hero.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Texas Justice View Post
You could try making a Praetorian.
Only VIPs can do that, and because of this issue Mac users keep getting flagged as non-VIPs, I think.



Johnny Turbo | Phanto
THE CHALLENGERS: Challenge Accepted
HONORARY MEMBER: WARE.gov (Said I couldn't officially join because I'm too good at PvP)

 

Posted

I was able to start a new character in Praetoria. But things are definitely wonky. I couldn't access Controllers or MMs. I logged back to the character screen and now it looks like all my slots are locked (even though I deleted one character to hypothetically have one free of two, if that's all I get).


Quote of the moment: This, too, shall pass.
Justice superteamers: We have a website now, in case the forums get closed early. If you've ever run with us, come visit us again before the curtain falls. We're running bucket list characters--anything you've always wanted to play but never got around to.

 

Posted

Starry,

The account server was down so you lost access to some features. I dont think it is mac specific.

Zwill,

I had a totally different issue which was far more critical. Both of my iMacs, which use different video cards (not at home, cant check) have the issue that increasing the resolution from 1024x768 to any larger resolution pretty much screws me. The game is clearly trying, but the increased resolution is spread logically beyond the screen, but the screen itself is still displaying at 1024x768 or some other smaller resolution. So it is as if I am zoomed into some arbitrary part of the larger logical image that the client is trying to draw. Moving my character at all makes the camera drive/point down and the perspective pulls up in the air slightly, but I still can only look down while spinning the camera around a point.

On one iMac I got lucky and could barely see the edge of the cancel changes button, but not on the other one. So one is totally borked unless there us a video settings file I can delete so that I go back to default.

Also, if it helps, even when the game is trying to run at 1024x768, which it kinda can do, there is the issue that the resolution isnt quite right. There are small black vertical bars on the left and right edges of the play area.

On a minor note, I also cant tab out of the new beta client. Weird. I have to exit fully.

Anyway, if this change/client goes forward, I wont be able to play at all and will have 3 useless accounts. Has anyone else reported this? I submitted the bug in the client with /bug but didnt have room for many details.

Am I the only one?

Thanks,

Lewis


Random AT Generation!
"I remember... the Alamo." -- Pee-wee Herman
"Oh don't worry. I always leave things to the last moment." -- The Doctor
"Telescopes are time machines." -- Carl Sagan

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by UnicyclePeon View Post
Anyway, if this change/client goes forward, I wont be able to play at all and will have 3 useless accounts. Has anyone else reported this? I submitted the bug in the client with /bug but didnt have room for many details.

Am I the only one?

Thanks,

Lewis
I had a similar issue on my iMac. When I tried to change the resolution to the widest setting it zoomed way in to show like a quarter of the screen area. I could see the control and clicked "cancel changes." I then moved the other menu controls so that I could access them from that same zoomed in area, reset the resolution again, closed the game. When I launched it again it was at the proper resolution.

It worked for me but it's too convoluted to expect everyone, especially free players to mess with.


Neutron-Star
lvl 50 Inv/EM tank

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Zwillinger View Post
Currently the Mac Client has some critical issues when attempting to access the Issue 21 Beta.
  • Mac players are able to the play I21 Beta if they create Praetorian characters or transfer their characters from live to beta.
  • Mac players will get a crash when they try to access the Paragon Market. Mac players are unable to complete the neutral tutorial because one of the missions is to purchase the Knowledgeable badge from the Paragon Market.
We're working with Transgaming to resolve these critical issues, however we do not currently have an ETA for when these will be resolved. We'll keep you all updated and let you know just as soon as we have more information!

Thanks and our sincere apologies for this inconvenience.
I know I'm beating a severely mangled and rotted dead horse here, but...

While you guys are at it, can you mention the Assertion Failures, the memory leak, the poor handling of graphics and the color profile hijacking?

Because these problems have existed since Issue 14 and it's high time they get fixed. The occasional "We know and we're looking into it" posts have been nice-- but that's all they've been. No follow-through. If you guys are speaking with Transgaming you really need to mention these 2-year-old mac client bugs and see if there's a way to quash them and report to us what you were told by Transgaming, whether it's "we can't fix it" or otherwise.


My guides:Dark Melee/Dark Armor/Soul Mastery, Illusion Control/Kinetics/Primal Forces Mastery, Electric Armor
"Dark Armor is a complete waste as a tanking set."

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Neutron_Star View Post
I had a similar issue on my iMac. When I tried to change the resolution to the widest setting it zoomed way in to show like a quarter of the screen area. I could see the control and clicked "cancel changes." I then moved the other menu controls so that I could access them from that same zoomed in area, reset the resolution again, closed the game. When I launched it again it was at the proper resolution.

It worked for me but it's too convoluted to expect everyone, especially free players to mess with.
Yes, I had the same thing on a MacBook, fixed the same way that you did.



Johnny Turbo | Phanto
THE CHALLENGERS: Challenge Accepted
HONORARY MEMBER: WARE.gov (Said I couldn't officially join because I'm too good at PvP)

 

Posted

I saw the resolution-change issue, too. Just managed to catch the edge of the "quit to desktop" button after I reset the resolution.

The memory leak thing is getting to be more of an issue. I reloadgfx all the time, but on new maps (eg, Praetoria) it's needed far more frequently. Now Atlas Park isn't even safe!


Quote of the moment: This, too, shall pass.
Justice superteamers: We have a website now, in case the forums get closed early. If you've ever run with us, come visit us again before the curtain falls. We're running bucket list characters--anything you've always wanted to play but never got around to.

 

Posted

Hey Lewis,

I had exactly the same issue...after changing the screen resolution I could not even see the Options window anymore.

Here's what I did. I opened the user.reg file that lives in your [USER] --> LIBRARY --> PREFERENCES --> City of Heroes Beta Preferences folder, and changes the values for "screenX" and "screenY" in the [Software\\Cryptic\\COHBETA] 1313004535 section to match my desktop resolution. "screenX" is the width, 1920 in my case, and "screenY" is the height, 1200 for me.

Obviously not a solution, but a workaround for the Beta test.


 

Posted

Hi Zwillinger,

Thanks for letting us know about these issues.

I am sure you guys are having your hands full with the account servers and that mess, but I really think that it's critical to address these issues with the Mac client soon and thoroughly, in other words throw a few more resources into this than are usually allocated (or appear to be allocated) to Mac related issues.

This game is sold as a Mac game, and I really do appreciate not having to reboot into Windows. It's one of the reasons I have remained a loyal customer for all these years.

Obviously not much has been done on the Mac client since it was introduced, and we were doing ok. Some issues, but playable for most (not in the least due to CuppaManga's invaluable help). But from as little as I have seen of the Beta and based on what I have read, Freedom is changing a lot within the game. I have a feeling that there will be some serious issues affecting how the new game client works within the Transgaming wrapper. I could be wrong of course, but we won't really know unless we can test all aspects of the Mac version of the game during the beta period!

I was glad to see that you are referring to these problems as critical issues. Hopefully that means they are being treated as such. But I know you guys are busy and historically the Mac versions has never been a big focus, so I really felt the need to speak up and emphasize how truly important it is that we will be able to fully test the Mac version during Beta.

Personally I am hoping that Freedom will give many more Mac users the opportunity to try COH, and we all know about first impressions.

Thanks for listening. I truly appreciate this game and all the work you guys put into it.


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Xenos View Post
Personally I am hoping that Freedom will give many more Mac users the opportunity to try COH, and we all know about first impressions.
Pardon Xenos. I'd like to borrow what you said here and mod it a bit.

Personally I am hoping that Freedom will give many more Mac and Linux users the opportunity to try City of Heroes, and we all know about first impressions.

Okay, I think I'm done.


 

Posted

Xenos,

That worked. Thanks. I even knew those values were there but assumed it'd just cause the problem in the game. Glad you pointed it out.

Lewis


Random AT Generation!
"I remember... the Alamo." -- Pee-wee Herman
"Oh don't worry. I always leave things to the last moment." -- The Doctor
"Telescopes are time machines." -- Carl Sagan

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Zwillinger View Post
Currently the Mac Client has some critical issues when attempting to access the Issue 21 Beta.
  • Mac players are able to the play I21 Beta if they create Praetorian characters or transfer their characters from live to beta.
  • Mac players will get a crash when they try to access the Paragon Market. Mac players are unable to complete the neutral tutorial because one of the missions is to purchase the Knowledgeable badge from the Paragon Market.
Zwill - the crash is because a function or API that's available in Windows but not in Cider is being called *just before* the Paragon Market window opens. If Transgaming is too slow responding, that might help your engineers work around the problem.


Manga @ Triumph
"Meanwhile In The Halls Of Titan"...Titan Network Working To Save City Of Heroes
Save Paragon City! Efforts Coordination

 

Posted

I don't want to sound like a jerk or anything, but why hasn't this been fixed? This is like a fatal error and I want to give feedback on the whole issue but a massive part of the issue is unavailable to me because of this. Any idea on what the cause is?



Johnny Turbo | Phanto
THE CHALLENGERS: Challenge Accepted
HONORARY MEMBER: WARE.gov (Said I couldn't officially join because I'm too good at PvP)

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by JohnnyTurbo View Post
I don't want to sound like a jerk or anything, but why hasn't this been fixed? This is like a fatal error and I want to give feedback on the whole issue but a massive part of the issue is unavailable to me because of this. Any idea on what the cause is?
Manga already posted what the cause probably is. I've also posted the logs for the exact same crash under Transgaming's G.T.L. code-base.

As to why it has not been fixed yet?

If you want a gut-reaction / opinion... NCSoft decided to throw all their OSX / Linux users under a bus; Making the game compatibility so bad or the barrier to run so difficult that subscribers would go find something else to do. Presto, everybody homogenizes and chants the "Oh Great Microsoft" line. Neither Manga nor I were invited to the Beta before the VIP beta, which meant that the two players who have given the most feedback / aid to the developers and Transgaming to locate and determine these types of bugs... were not involved in any stage before the effective "open-beta".

Now, I cannot answer why NCSoft made that decision, if it was indeed the decision they decided to make.

My personal opinion is that it was a critically bad decision to make. I do not think that NCSoft has the luxury of deliberately antagonizing any portion of their player-base, but that is what NCSoft seems intent on doing.

Changing the direction apparently taken by NCSoft likely won't be easy. As evidenced by the .NET launcher and the Linux compatibility problem, I've been banging on that drum since... well.. January of this year when Second Measure mentioned the "new" launcher. Did any other subscribers get involved in attempting to address the problem / send feedback / "do anything"? Nope, not until AFTER the launcher change had gone into effect: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=267988

Kind of late there.

Apple users are pretty much in the same boat. The development decision / resource management was already set in stone. Everybody was scheduled. Now that the "die" as it were has been cast, only NOW are OSX subscribers starting to speak up. Again... a little late.

Sadly, until or unless the non-Microsoft-Windows-Operating-System users are more Pro-active in raising living hell for design directions... NCSoft really has no incentive to change the direction they apparently have decided to take.


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by je_saist View Post
Manga already posted what the cause probably is. I've also posted the logs for the exact same crash under Transgaming's G.T.L. code-base.

As to why it has not been fixed yet?

If you want a gut-reaction / opinion... NCSoft decided to throw all their OSX / Linux users under a bus; Making the game compatibility so bad or the barrier to run so difficult that subscribers would go find something else to do. Presto, everybody homogenizes and chants the "Oh Great Microsoft" line. Neither Manga nor I were invited to the Beta before the VIP beta, which meant that the two players who have given the most feedback / aid to the developers and Transgaming to locate and determine these types of bugs... were not involved in any stage before the effective "open-beta".

Now, I cannot answer why NCSoft made that decision, if it was indeed the decision they decided to make.

My personal opinion is that it was a critically bad decision to make. I do not think that NCSoft has the luxury of deliberately antagonizing any portion of their player-base, but that is what NCSoft seems intent on doing.

Changing the direction apparently taken by NCSoft likely won't be easy. As evidenced by the .NET launcher and the Linux compatibility problem, I've been banging on that drum since... well.. January of this year when Second Measure mentioned the "new" launcher. Did any other subscribers get involved in attempting to address the problem / send feedback / "do anything"? Nope, not until AFTER the launcher change had gone into effect: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=267988

Kind of late there.

Apple users are pretty much in the same boat. The development decision / resource management was already set in stone. Everybody was scheduled. Now that the "die" as it were has been cast, only NOW are OSX subscribers starting to speak up. Again... a little late.

Sadly, until or unless the non-Microsoft-Windows-Operating-System users are more Pro-active in raising living hell for design directions... NCSoft really has no incentive to change the direction they apparently have decided to take.
Not so funny when you're the one being thrown under the bus, is it?


@macskull, @Not Mac | XBL: macskull | Steam: macskull | Skype: macskull
"One day we all may see each other elsewhere. In Tyria, in Azeroth. We may pass each other and never know it. And that's sad. But if nothing else, we'll still have Rhode Island."

 

Posted

I've been trying like crazy to get Mac users involved in the CoH Betas. I've said quite often that I can't be the only tester because 1) I don't have all available Mac hardware; and 2) because you never know when I won't be involved in a closed beta.

Well this round, (2) happened - I wasn't involved in closed beta - and you see the result. Nobody took my place, and now it took till the last minute for the broken Mac Beta client to be realized.

Open Beta means I21 release is anywhere from *very* close to imminent. Transgaming is very, very slow at fixing bugs. A broken Mac client very likely is *not* considered a show-stopping bug which will delay I21 release. So it's now very likely I21 will go live without a working Mac client.

I hope this isn't true, but if it is, I hope everyone learns from this that the fate of the Mac client lies with us all.


Manga @ Triumph
"Meanwhile In The Halls Of Titan"...Titan Network Working To Save City Of Heroes
Save Paragon City! Efforts Coordination

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by CuppaManga View Post
Well this round, (2) happened - I wasn't involved in closed beta - and you see the result. Nobody took my place, and now it took till the last minute for the broken Mac Beta client to be realized.
Kinda wanted to re-emphasize this point since I don't think I made it strong enough in my other post.

We might be the most visible players who advocate/support/help *nix users run CoH.

We can't be the only ones "stepping up to the plate" though. We need other players to be pro-active, not re-active.

And yes, to get one point out of the way, the specific bug in question right now, the Paragon Market crash, should have been caught internally by anybody at Paragon Studios... which raises the question of why wasn't anybody in Paragon Studios running the Beta atop OSX to begin with.

Now I'll make the argument that Paragon Studios needs to be running Windows, OSX+Cider, and Linux+GTL (or WINE, but GTL is transgaming's product) internally. Even if NCSoft isn't paying Transgaming to wrap the game under G.T.L. and make a separate binary download, running those three combinations of operating systems still gives the developers more reference points for potential bugs in the system. Badly written or sloppy code that may compile fine and run on Windows might trigger an error on Cider/G.T.L. The more points of data the developers have on hand to see how the code actually works is more information that can be used to clean up and optimize that code, and the greater the chances are that critical bugs will be found earlier in the development process... before those bugs make their way into public releases.


 

Posted

Ok, here's what I don't understand...the issue with the Paragon Market is impossible to miss and seems to affect ALL Mac users. Does that mean that no Mac players were in the closed beta??? (I know I wasn't, and I am astonished to hear that Cuppa (who I consider our unofficial Mac Rep) wasn't either.) How could this problem have been missed?

This issue certainly should certainly be considered a show stopping bug. However small the Mac player population is (would be nice to have some numbers, wouldn't it...), this game is being sold as playable on a Mac. I am prepaid for a bunch of month and this would prevent me from playing the game in any meaningful way. So there is a real issue here...and if Cuppa is right that the launch might be imminent, this does need to get addressed first.

Any thoughts on best course of action? Cross-posting on the Beta Forums? PMs?


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by je_saist View Post
As evidenced by the .NET launcher and the Linux compatibility problem, I've been banging on that drum since... well.. January of this year when Second Measure mentioned the "new" launcher. Did any other subscribers get involved in attempting to address the problem / send feedback / "do anything"? Nope, not until AFTER the launcher change had gone into effect
je_saist, take a gander back to the last pages of this forum and check out just how long us mac users have been trying to get our **** fixed.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Xenos View Post
Any thoughts on best course of action? Cross-posting on the Beta Forums? PMs?


I've done some cross posting in the past; it's ended up with about 100 people going "THIS SHOULD BE IN THE MAC FORUM" and the thread gets deleted. I've been /bugging and reporting the problems with the mac client since DAY ONE. I was one of the first people to USE the mac client when it was in it's earliest stages, and back then it worked great. There was a cider wrapper update shortly after I14 and the entire client went to Assertion Failure hell, and so did the apparent attention from the Devs.

What happened to Ghost Falcon? What happened to the rednames actively involved in keeping an eye on this? There are posts from 2009 outlining the exact same problems we're having today!

All I want from Paragon is a definitive answer to each of the following questions:

Can you fix the mac client's Assertion Failures?
Can you fix the memory leak?
Can you fix the improper caching of graphics to memory?
IS THERE ANY REASON I SHOULD KEEP USING THE MAC CLIENT?

That last one is especially important; the mac client has been in a state of absolute crap since 2009 and every 3-8 months we get a bland message from the devs stating "We're looking in to it." WE NEVER GET ANYTHING MORE THAN THAT. As far as I can see there is no reason whatsoever to continue using the mac client.

It's broken. It's been broken for two years. The devs haven't done anything but placate us. There is no confirmed fix on the horizon. When Freedom is implemented the mac client will be unusable.

At this point we're all better off just dual-booting and leaving this thing to rot UNLESS we get a definitive, detailed explanation of why we should keep using it.

TL;DR Version:

I want closure. Rednames: Either tell me you can fix it and to hold on a little longer, or tell me you can't so I can abandon my macside client and just dual-boot like I did before it launched.


My guides:Dark Melee/Dark Armor/Soul Mastery, Illusion Control/Kinetics/Primal Forces Mastery, Electric Armor
"Dark Armor is a complete waste as a tanking set."

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Xenos View Post
Ok, here's what I don't understand...the issue with the Paragon Market is impossible to miss and seems to affect ALL Mac users. Does that mean that no Mac players were in the closed beta??? (I know I wasn't, and I am astonished to hear that Cuppa (who I consider our unofficial Mac Rep) wasn't either.) How could this problem have been missed?

This issue certainly should certainly be considered a show stopping bug. However small the Mac player population is (would be nice to have some numbers, wouldn't it...), this game is being sold as playable on a Mac. I am prepaid for a bunch of month and this would prevent me from playing the game in any meaningful way. So there is a real issue here...and if Cuppa is right that the launch might be imminent, this does need to get addressed first.

Any thoughts on best course of action? Cross-posting on the Beta Forums? PMs?
gav@transgaming.com - transgaming CTO
matt.robinson@transgaming.com I forget what he does
daniel@transgaming.com - Senior Graphics Architect

I'd pop an email to these guys since the limitation appears to be in the Cider/G.T.L. code-base.

As far as player-pop goes, remember, statistics can say many things. There's no way of knowing how many subscribers have OSX systems and don't use those OSX systems to login because of on-going bugs and errors with the OSX Cider-client. There's also no way of knowing how many players have OSX systems that don't know they can download the OSX-Cider wrapper from their NCsoft account even if they did not buy the "Mac Booster" from the store.