[Guide] Installing City of Heroes, Beta, & Test From Scratch, the Short(ish) Version

WanderingAries · 01-20-2012 11:51 PM

Installing City of Heroes, Beta, & Test From Scratch, the Short(ish) Version

This guide assumes that you haven’t done Anything at all beyond logging into the forums to read up on City of Heroes. IE: You don’t even have the NCSoft Launcher installed! I’m going to do this as if I was brand new to the game, but read enough on the forums ahead of time to do a more customized installation. The most important thing to note about this guide is that I do Not have access to an intel Mac, so this will be for Windows/Bootcamp users only.

Installing the Launcher:

Firstly, you’ll need to download the NCSoft Launcher so that we can pull down the current version of City of Heroes. As of this writing you can find it here:

http://na.cityofheroes.com/en/my_acc..._of_heroes.php

This will download the file COH_Installer.exe into a folder that you choose or have set to default for downloads. Once that is downloaded, then you need to decide where you want to install the Launcher, Live game, etc. Personally, I find it better for me to have my games separated from the rest of my apps into a Games folder and not the standard Program Files folder that XP likes to use. I also do this for Windows 7 (when I was using it) because of other issues that I read about on here related to permissions or some other OS related game issues.

Basically this is what my directory looks like with windows being on its own partition (C:) and my applications/games on a separate partition (D:). You can still do this with a single partition just make sure to change the drive letter to C: where I’ll have D: listed below. I would go ahead and create these folders ahead of time so that you can simply point the game’s installation to them.

D:\Games\NCSoft\Launcher (Houses the Launcher)
D:\Games\NCSoft\City of Heroes (Houses the Live version of the game)
D:\Games\NCSoft\CoHBeta (Houses the Beta version of the game)
D:\Games\NCSoft\CoHTest (Houses the Test version of the game)

Now that those are setup, go ahead and run the COH_Installer.exe file. The first thing it talks about is system requirements (you need .Net 2.0 and the Launcher) so you can go ahead and hit the next button. The second screen is the User License Agreement, you’re obviously agreeing because you want to play the game! IE: Hit the “I accept” and then Next button again. Now it asks where you want to install the Launcher. This is where you point it to the folder we created above (D:\Games\NCSoft\Launcher). Once you have that entered hit the Install button (I think that’s what it says) and let it finish. It will complete by having the Launcher loaded in front of you.

Next step is to download and install the Live version of City of Heroes. Notice that it gives you a Customize option on the screen. This is where you can tell it to point to the folder we created above (D:\Games\NCSoft\City of Heroes). It also seems to want to create a desktop shortcut for the game. I don’t use it because that’s one less icon on the desktop, but that’s up to you whether you want it or not. Personally, I have the default Launcher shortcut on the desktop and use it instead of having three different icons primarily because it makes controlling patch downloads easier. Once you have it pointing to the right folder, then let it download/install the game. While it is true that you can gradually use the game while it downloads (in stages) I would recommend just letting it finish the download uninterrupted.

At this point you should have the most current version of the Live game installed. With the launcher still open, let’s go ahead and make some tweaks to the Launcher’s/Game’s settings that’ll pre-empt future headaches. These adjustments should make it so that your overall game experience includes fewer headaches related to stuff like memory leaks and GPU woes.

On the Launcher, go to the File menu and choose Settings. It seems that most people recommend Not having the Launcher running after you load the game so I’ll give you those adjustments even though that’s not what I have. To do this, on the General Tab, make sure that nothing is checked (there are two boxes) and in the “After Launching Game” section choose “Exit Launcher”.

The Auto Update Tab is kind of a personalization thing. You can either leave it alone and it’ll automatically trickle-download game updates while the launcher is open or you can go as far as telling it Not to download giving you full control over the times that you update the game. Again, I leave this one alone.

The Advanced Tab is where one would tell the game to allow you to run “Multiple Instances” or to put it another way, Dual-Box on the same system, thus allowing you to run more than one game account at the same time on the same computer. While I don’t do it often, I do have that option checked. The other option listed talks about sending usage data to NCSoft so that they can troubleshoot issues with the Launcher, etc. Most seem to leave this unchecked, but honestly I’m not sure how big of a system resource impact this poses. Either way I’ll leave that one up to you.

Customizing the Live game settings

Right clicking the arrow next to the City of Heroes button in the Launcher will bring up the options for the game. At this point you want to select Properties so that we can make a tweak that’ll save you headaches later as most of us tend to do things like run to the forums for help or youtube when somebody posts a funny link ingame channel. Under the Extra Command section you’ll want to put the following exactly as written and then hit the OK button:

-maxinactivefps 5

Take my word for it, this will be a good thing!

So at this point you have both the Launcher and Live game installed. From here you can either go play the Live game or follow the next set of steps to do a patch-install of the Beta and Test versions of the game. I say patch-install because the game will patch the pigg files accordingly, but it’s still faster!

Installing Beta

Our first step to installing the Beta version of the game is actually to Copy to Live version into the Beta folder we created above (D:\Games\NCSoft\CoHBeta). Open up the City of Heroes installation folder as well as the CoHBeta folder in two separate windows. Now you want to Copy (not Move!) the files from the Live folder into the Beta folder. Once that is done, then we need to change a file in the Beta folder. Find and open the file named Launcher.ini as we need to change this to reflect the fact that this is located in the CoHBeta folder. This step is quite simple, where it says City of Heroes change it to say CoHBeta (which happens to be the name of the folder you’re in BTW). Save and Close the file as we are done with this part.

Next we need to open the Launcher again. You should see the COH Subscriber Beta option listed. Right click the arrow next to this like we did with the Live version and open the Properties window. Go ahead and put in the same Extra Command like above. The Installation Location should say “Not Installed” at this point so go ahead and click the Browse button to make it point to our newly populated CoHBeta folder. Once all the changes are made, go ahead and hit the Ok button and it will ask if you want to install the Beta version. Obviously we do or we wouldn’t have gone this far so go ahead and hit Ok. Let it do what it wants to do until it’s completed and that will set us up with both the Live and Beta versions installed.

Installing Test

As with the Beta folder, you need to copy the contents of the Live folder into your Test folder (D:\Games\NCSoft\CohTest) and change the LauncherID.ini file within the Test folder so that it refers to CoHTest. This one’s a little trickier as it’s going to involve editing an XML file, but I’ve found that this saves playing with the registry. Assuming you’ve followed this guide as written, then you should find the file named GamesAddendum.xml in the following folder:

D:\Games\NCSoft\Launcher\Config\Default

We don’t want to Open the file, but actually edit it as opening the file will simply display its contents in a browser. Right click the file and choose Edit. This should open up the file in Notepad so that we can edit it. I found this rather eye straining, but it is a little safer than the registry. Look for the line that talks about CoHBeta. It should read something like this:

Code:

 
<ID>CoHBeta</ID>
<LastStartLocation>D:\Games\NCSoft\CoHBeta</LastStartLocation>
<UserGameArguments xsi:nil="true" />

If you look a little higher, then you’ll see something like this referring to CoHTest:

Code:

 
<ID>CoHTest</ID>
<LastStartLocation xsi:nil="true" />
<UserGameArguments xsi:nil="true" />

This is where things are easier than the registry. Copy the line that talks about the LastStartLocation for Beta and replace the corresponding line in Test so that test now reads like this:

Code:

 
<ID>CoHTest</ID>
<LastStartLocation>D:\Games\NCSoft\CoHTest</LastStartLocation>
<UserGameArguments xsi:nil="true" />

Save and close this file as you are almost done with Test. Now open the Launcher again so that we can tweak Test just like we did with Live and Beta. Right click the Test link and change the Properties so that the Extra Command matches what we put for Live and Beta. Click Ok when done and Right click Test once more. This time choose Repair instead of Properties as this will update the files within the Test folder as well as make sure the rest of the files are correct. Once that is completed, then you have all three versions of the game installed!

I realize that this was a bit of a read and I said Short(ish) Version, but I feel that this is much easier and faster than messing with the icons and letting the game patch stuff the old way.

Important Notes:

Hyperstrike made a wonderful quick reference Guide to the launcher here: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=254442

If you’re like me and have downloaded the unofficial map add-ons and icon replacements from BadgeHunter.com, then it will save you time if you actually install them right after installing the Live version of the game. This way when you copy those files into Beta/Test, then you’re only installing the add-ons Once! Well, atleast until the i22 related maps are updated, then you’ll need to manually install those files in each folder. Additionally, since I also use things like Mids Hero Designer and Titan Sentinel, I find it easier to install those in either the NCSoft Folder (under Mids/Titan accordingly) or directly in the City of Heroes folder (also using the corresponding Mids/Titan subfolders) just to keep things along the same logic as why I chose the custom folders in the first place.

BadgeHunter: Host to the custom ingame/online Maps and icon packs that likely everyone uses as well as the original(?) badge hunting utility site.
http://www.badge-hunter.com/index.php?app=uportal

Titan Network: Host to everything from the unofficial Paragon Wiki to the popular Mids Hero Designer.
http://www.cohtitan.com/

Thanks for reading! Please be gentle with comments as this is my first attempt at a Guide for CoX. >.<

WanderingAries · 01-20-2012 11:51 PM

I really wish I knew why this made the paragraphs so wide on the screen. :-(