Issue 21 Beta Mac Client - Update

Hm, I tried launching just now, and it's back to being unresponsive. So we'll have to muck around with the files every time we want to play?

---Dave

Ok. Now the launcher quits when I try to launch CoH beta. What gives?

Nevermind. Did as Z instructed and everything came on as normal.

Note; You also may have to reset you graphic preferences too (i did).

For me the patcher downloads the 0.0.0.0 to latest patch about halfway, and then indicates an error downloading, and then has to be started over again. This happens repeatedly so it's impossible to complete the download.

I'm currently trying to download the patch directly via a web browser (I got the URL from the Console log) to see if I can manually pull down the patch and extract it, as it's my only chance at getting it working right now.

EDIT, pasted from the log:

Sep 2 08:10:09 Silver-Hawk NCLauncher[8774]: Download failed! Error - The request timed out. http://cohbeta.patcher.ncsoft.com/Ci...10.1.0.ncpatch

Update again: Even after I got the up-to-date patch the Mac client itself was NOT included in the download. I'm going to have to go fishing on the patch servers to get it.

Update 3: This is not for the faint of heart. So far I got the patch files, and the new Mac beta client, but the NC Launcher is not accepting the files I downloaded as a valid patch, and insists on downloading everything again. Otherwise, it seems to be working.

Update 4: SUCCESS! Mac Beta client now working, version 1.0.6909 (I think that's what it was). Running on Lion, so if someone can tell me which font the Paragon Market uses I'll see what I can do about the squares appearing instead of text. This is the first time I manually patched a game! I wonder if this is how it's done before a game officially publishes?

UPDATE 5: Spoke too soon. It launched ONCE. Now some INI file is corrupted, causing the NC Launcher to be unable to launch Live, Beta, or Test. This is going to take me a long time to figure out and fix.

Ok. Another update. Z's fix works but I now find myself having to use it EVERYTIME I want to start CoH beta now. Weird.

The engineers are following this thread. They've been looking into what you guys are reporting and relaying information through me.

As soon as I've got more information I'll pass it along.

Thank you for testing!

-Z

I can confirm the work-around is working for me. Earlier I mentioned that I was seeing those blocky [x] characters in the Paragon Market, and I still am. However I suppose it's worth mentioning that I am running Lion 10.7.1

I was able to buy and receive the free badge (didn't buy anything else because I couldn't read point costs nor my own point total), buttons/navigation tabs appear to be working fine... aside from the missing font/characters, nothing unusual to report.

"There's villainy ... and then there's supervillainy. The difference is performance."
-Doc_Reverend

Zwill or whoever else in engineering can use this info:

NOTE: Testing this in Lion on a Macbook Pro

- The new Mac Beta client (or more specifically, Cider) is modifying the .reg preference files in City of Heroes Beta Preferences in a way that the NCSoft Launcher does not understand. That means whenever the client is launched (Cider launched, more accurately) those files are overwritten, and subsequent launches break until the City of Heroes Beta Preferences are tossed out.

- For those who have seen a string parsing error in your Console log instead of the Mac Beta client launching, the above is what's causing it. Toss out your City of Heroes Beta Preferences.

- I believe the font problem in the Paragon Market is related to the .reg file corruption. Those .reg files have a lot of stuff in them, and I can't spot the corruption immediately, but I do know they contain graphics information and font information.

- I'm a little confused at how testing of the Mac Beta client took place without using the NC Launcher (obviously the two weren't tested together), at least on Lion.

Hm. So is there a way to remove the preferences file without doing Zwil's file dance, and would that be enough to make it work again?

---Dave

Okay, I got to the end of the tutorial and was able to open the store and put Knowledgeable in my cart. Then I got a bug error message and the sound went to a loop of just part of the helicopter sound. It wouldn't accept checking out at that point, and I tried my usual "sound has gone bad" trick of switching in and out of 3D sound...at which point the game completely froze.

It didn't actually crash, but it shows as Not Responding and also wants 180% of CPU while churning away. Console tells me it had "3 zero tangents and 3 zero normals found in model 'Geo_Hips'" at which point there's a string of "got unknown socket family" followed by a number like 767, 618, or most commonly 512.

---Dave

ETA: On logging back in (after doing the Zwil-dance), I found that the purchase had gone through.

I am now completely exhausted, out of ideas, and pissed off. After trying to get the CoH Beta to work reliably for several hours now, my reward is for the NC Launcher to become irrecoverably damaged, even for launching the Live or Test clients!

*** If you are using Lion and care about being able to launch City of Heroes reliably to the Live servers, DO NOT attempt to use the new CoH Beta client at this time ***

I'm in the middle of attempting in futility to repair it, but I have a feeling this is going to involve a lengthy process of tossing out ALL of my CoH clients and the Launcher and all its prefs and starting over from scratch. I'm angry enough now that I'm going to say the NCSoft Launcher is a complete piece of garbage without even the simplest level of error recovery, so that it can end up in such an irrecoverable state.

EDIT: Now I feel a little bad about being so harsh. I'm tired and frustrated after a really difficult and stressful day capped off by hardware failure on my PC on a holiday weekend. But I'm still going to add that I am willing to help make the NC Launcher much more robust and less error prone *if* the devs are willing to work with me. If that sounds slightly arrogant it's because I pretty much know exactly what went wrong and how it went wrong.

(warning, code talk here) From the crash log it seems there is a function called parseINIFile in a custom NSObject called INIFile. In there, assumptions are made about what strings are going to be in one of the .reg files and where they are located (I believe the file is user.reg). By "assumptions", I mean the code is looking to find certain pieces of text in certain exact locations of the file. No thought was made to what happens if Cider writes the file differently in a new version, *which is what it does now*. This was a grievous oversight on the part of the Launcher developers and something that will not work well except in early testing just to "get it to work". Also, the at least one of the storage objects used in INIFile are not "nil"-ed after use. That means if you leave NCLauncher running after it corrupts the beta client, subsequent launch or patch attempts of the Live client or the Test client *will corrupt those too*. And that's how I got into the situation I'm in right now.

EDIT 2: On further thought, similar lack of object "nil"-ing may be what causes the NC Launcher not to save its own preferences correctly, making changes to the application locations not "stick" between launches.

@Cuppa

You can do what you want and get as angry as you want.
You have done more here then others.
Your Aces in my book

Oh tried what was asked. Locked up as usual

I completely agree with plainguy above.

Cuppa, the effort you put in is so much more than anyone could ask for, especially those of us who are not quite as codesavvy and have NO IDEA what's going wrong when stuff breaks. You help us break and un-break the mac client to make it hopefully better. Thank you.

Zwil, the effort you put in to keep us anxious and noisy minority customers informed is probably part of your job description. But you deserve major props too. Thank you for being open, communicative, and making a real effort to get us heard.

Je_saist, you deserve thanks too, for staying on top of finding people to bug to fix their product (Transgaming) and for being such an advocate for better cross-platform functionality.

The engineers deserve thanks as well, for and quashing the bugs we find (and then breaking something else! Isn't software development fun? ). We'll break everything so you can unbreak it! o7 Also, welcome to our little hole.


Gotta say, this whole thing is feeling more like a real beta test than anything I've actually tested on any beta server.


Now after my little appreciation soapbox, I'm unable to see if my purchases are going through, since A: I can't see my points and B: the client continues to freeze and crash if I attempt to make a purchase. It's seeming that they aren't, as I can't make a beam rifle character (and the VIP server isn't letting me on to see if I've gotten that rocketboard. ) Did the filedance, didn't help.

While I'm on a roll annoying all the devs with detailed comments about CoH and the NCLauncher (more code talk ahead, beware!):

It seems the current client versions are being stored in Cider's config files. I don't know if the CoH client itself sets those, but it's also possible the NC Launcher does, which is a Bad Idea (actually that even breaks with Windows programming standards, one app changing another's registry information). I do NOT know if this is because the CoH client requires that to be set properly for it to start and log in, but if that's true, there's a better and safer way to do it (like a file in the client install similar to the checksum).

If, though, NC Launcher is accessing Cider's config files to find the install location, it's really better off guessing based on what kind of places the install usually is (in "coh", or "Program Files/City of Heroes" or "CoHBeta"). It would actually detect the install far faster than parsing its way through .reg files anyhow.

Now does anyone have a guess at what font is used in the Paragon Market so I can take a shot at why it doesn't display?

EDIT: Oddly enough I discovered there *is* a separate file the game client stores its version number in.