Suffice to say.... Walk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yN1zAsS3hyo) would make me happy. If only cause the forced not quite run feels awkward. But patience is a virtue.
Important: All of this is preliminary and is subject to change!
Exploration badges. Depends on if they can be done algorithmically, or if they depend on serverside data that would have to be reconstructed by hand.
So, bubbles? self-heal? healing aura's? rock armor? fire shield? ... nova?
- Simulated self-affecting powers such as armor toggles
It's on the wishlist, it's been mentioned before, I so hope it's possible to implement that. *fingers crossed*
- Costume change emotes
The console is enabled by the same thing that enables /mapmenu to work, so I don't think you can be disable one while leaving the other active.
well well well... What do we have here? :)
I have a small (ish) QoL improvement suggestion for Paragon Chat itself: make hitting Enter in the password field trigger Launch City of Heroes. Every time I've logged in so far, I've done this, and then remembered that I have to click or tab down to the button.
Done internally, will be on the next build. Don't want to release 0.97g just for that...
Done internally, will be on the next build. Don't want to release 0.97g just for that...
Hmm... would having citizens wandering down the bot-paths on the sidewalks or cars driving around be too much for this project?
I love this idea in theory... I am betting there would be lag issues if this were implemented, however...
Maybe there's a way to make those things client-side to avoid the lag?not likely... the walking NPCs were timed to the server... because they had to be able to randomly say things about randomized user accounts "did you hear they're making an action figure of X?", or spout off the time or date or usage stats when clicked, or whine about their purse getting ganked, etc.
Any chance we could get the Mission Architect interface added to Paragon Chat? I know you obviously wouldn't be able to do anything with it besides edit your locally stored characters, missions, groups, etc. But it's one of my go to things when I'm bored, and I'd much rather be doing it in PC instead of Icon. :)
Good idea! We'll go back in time and add it to version 0.97c, just to make sure it's done soon. :)
not likely... the walking NPCs were timed to the server... because they had to be able to randomly say things about randomized user accounts "did you hear they're making an action figure of X?", or spout off the time or date or usage stats when clicked, or whine about their purse getting ganked, etc.
Good idea! We'll go back in time and add it to version 0.97c, just to make sure it's done soon. :)Great job on that! Though if you guys have working time travel, why exactly didn't you go back in time and save our game already? ;)
We've been given the maps and friends that we can slowly do more stuff with. Our chefs are taking us from starving to ramen noodles. I'm not going to ask for better place settings as they try to make us steaks.
A big part of the problem isn't even going to be the walk path for peds, but server capacity. We just have to accept that the an XMPP chat server doesn't have as much capacity as the original game server did; period. I'd rather the slots be taken up with real people instead of hundreds of bots walking around the place...
Perhaps a better option is just to have a program running on the client machine that just sends peds to your local game, and it never goes to the server. Of course, that means other people won't see the same peds (or any if not running the app), but at least it doesn't clog the server with essentially useless bots.
Does that play out like Propel objects or alakazamreact? Everyone sees a different object because it was their client and not the server creating it?
I'd be down with that down the line after we have "franchises" for players to take home.
Wait, can I run the propel animation in game now or do I need a target?
It's just a low priority thing that is far more complicated than it looks. What the maps have, client-side, are specific points saying "an NPC can walk to here", not a "walk path" that includes information like "don't approach me from the north because there's a building in the way". Creating proper walk paths out of the navigation points is not trivial and there are more important things that have priority.
The actual generated walk paths (as well as all other information for NPC movement) were server side, and the client only has remnants on how they work for debug purposes.
I'm a hardware guy, not a coder, so I take your assurance that it's a far more difficult problem than it at first appears to heart. My point is more that there may be a way of achieving something to show peds & traffic that is considerably lower impact than the way it was originally implemented.
My reply was mostly to correct the assumption that "Ya know though... the walk-path information IS available on the client side." It's not, not in an immediately usable way. I am sure that once we do have the ability to show pedestrians, a way to show them that is very optimized will be found; but right now, that's putting the cart way before the horse.
Besides which, the walk path in some areas was completely crap, so I for one would want to redo them in places! :p
I've seen players use dual pistols and martial arts animations with no target just goofing off under atlas. However, no bullet streams or weapons were seen. My character would likely run Propel but it would come off as a slow motion alakazam.
That's due to some players hacking the files and turning the attack animations into emotes so they no long need a targetthis... what you're seeing is not the execution of an attack code, but the playing of an animation script which was originally bound to that attack when the game was still running. some players have rebound the animations as emotes rather than actions in order to add a bit more depth to roleplay. (basically it's the /em slap emote taken to the next level)
That's due to some players hacking the files and turning the attack animations into emotes so they no long need a target
Hey, shouldn't you name these versions?(https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2581/3779834896_8d76d04d75_m.jpg)
...
0.97m = MilkdudChat
hmmmm wonder if that could be done with an emp/def's heal all :)I would love to be able to do it with the Nature Affinity powerset. Those were gorgeous animations.
Good idea! We'll go back in time and add it to version 0.97c, just to make sure it's done soon. :)
FFM is not wrong that we need to save the bandwidth and server horsepower for actual players. But do keep in mind that CoH (mostly) worked at launch, with FAR less capable servers and networks than we have available now a decade later. My suspicion is that if you include what you can farm out to the clients, you may well have MORE raw processing power available than Cryptic did at launch.
A big part of the problem isn't even going to be the walk path for peds, but server capacity. We just have to accept that the an XMPP chat server doesn't have as much capacity as the original game server did; period. I'd rather the slots be taken up with real people instead of hundreds of bots walking around the place...
Perhaps a better option is just to have a program running on the client machine that just sends peds to your local game, and it never goes to the server. Of course, that means other people won't see the same peds (or any if not running the app), but at least it doesn't clog the server with essentially useless bots.
Pedestrians make much more sense to implement entirely clientside. Using a deterministic algorithm with a seed value that can be reasonably synchronized (UTC perhaps?) is probably the simplest route.
That's another possibility, although it requires Paragon Chat itself setting its own clock with NTP or something (most likely with a calculated offset from the hardware clock). You can't rely on everyone having properly synchronized clocks. And my spider-sense is tingling on doing it this way. I don't know why, but something tells me there's a catch I'm not currently seeing.
I'm flashing back to some of the adventures we had in Planetside back when SpeedStep was a new thing, and some people would be experiencing a subjective reality in which everyone else was moving in slow motion, and everyone else would see that person moving at hyperspeed.
Not that I think this is necessarily a specific problem we'd need to concern ourselves with (timing mechanisms for games have evolved greatly since then, even in the madness pit that is windows timers), but it's the kind of problem this approach makes me think about.
Even with NTP as a reference point, keeping clocks in sync across an unbounded number of users can be exciting.
surgile instagib tripple jackhammer ftw!
Pedestrians make much more sense to implement entirely clientside. Using a deterministic algorithm with a seed value that can be reasonably synchronized (UTC perhaps?) is probably the simplest route. However, pedestrians need to have paths precalculated for them, because some zones could have hundreds of pedestrians in them and running realtime pathfinding algorithms for them all seems like a huge waste of CPU. There's also currently no pathfinding at all, so work needs to be done on algorithms to find walkable paths over arbitrary 3D geometry, which is hardly a trivial task.
That's another possibility, although it requires Paragon Chat itself setting its own clock with NTP or something (most likely with a calculated offset from the hardware clock). You can't rely on everyone having properly synchronized clocks. And my spider-sense is tingling on doing it this way. I don't know why, but something tells me there's a catch I'm not currently seeing.
Even with NTP as a reference point, keeping clocks in sync across an unbounded number of users can be exciting.
Question.
We know the NPC/A.I/combat and walk paths are the most difficult thing to do from the MMO interview...and shouldn't expect that for some considerable time. That I understand.
But I have an intriguing thought...
Would it be possible to spawn the NPCs Mobs at their actual CoH spawn points as a GM (or could it theoretically be a capability...) in Paragon Chat. eg. Trolls in Hollows, Outcasts in Steel etc. Sure. They'd be non combat for some considerable time...but like the Easter Egg NPCs and other NPCs (eg. Ms. Liberty...) they'd add to the zone 'atmosphere.' They could cycle through their actual or random emotes..?
The spawn points are in the actual developer view mode?
I'd rather that than the walking civilian NPCs at the moment.
Just wanted to know if this was a possibility and whether it was resource hungry re: Paragon Chat. (Which seems to do deal ok with the persistent NPCs and the newly inserted Easter Eggs ok...)
Or whether an idea like this could be inserted into the Paragon Chat development Timeline..?
Azrael.
There are a number of technical and operational (read: griefing) issues with spawning NPCs. But Codewalker has already stated his intention to investigate allowing NPC spawning in private maps - i.e. allowing a player to create a map and become the administrator within that map, and within that map that admin would then be granted spawning rights. That way people could "opt-in" to such maps voluntarily (also, he's expressed some thoughts behind allowing certain kinds of power function in such maps, if and when he actually gets to making powers function in some capacity).
*nods. I see, Arcana. (But, GM spawning aside in private 'chat rooms'...which is on the timeline...) I was also specifically wondering if the 'spawn points'/mob indicators from the developer view mode could be used to put the mobs where they used to be in each zone?
...once the technical issues are resolved? (...and whether this could be made persistent each time you log in?)
Though I'm quite enjoying Paragon Chat and 'wandering around' as it for the moment.
Azrael.
It should be technically possible to do, but feasible only from the client side of things, just like peds and cars. Sure, it would be great to see the city getting some semblance of life beyond us running around, but we have to be realistic.
We have a -chat- server, that just lets us talk to each other and also, thanks to some extensions, lets us see each other and move about. We don't want NPC data going through the XMPP chat server as it would just take up valuable player slots in the zones.
We have Paragon Chat itself, which acts essentially as a sort of micro-server to the game. Taking the messages CW and team have managed to decode, sending it to the XMPP server, and reading messages it gets back and feeding them to the game client. This is where NPC spawning would be best to happen, with maybe occasional timebase synching between clients, though that would likely cause NPC's to rubberband a lot.
The important part here is, have the SCoRE team decoded the messages needed to tell the CoH Client to spawn villain mobs in the zones, and have they decoded the messages needed to spawn peds and cars and setup their pathing to send to the CoH client? Using in-memory hacks as per ICON is a lot different to reading and responding to client messages. If you don't understand the language, you just hear gibberish.
The other important part is, does the client PC have the horsepower to run the client AND an emulated mapserver, because that's what we're actually talking about here.
I was also specifically wondering if the 'spawn points'/mob indicators from the developer view mode could be used to put the mobs where they used to be in each zone?
Those only indicate locations that mobs can spawn. They don't have any useful information about what can spawn there, which positions in the group different NPCs should spawn at for different team sizes, etc. There is also apparently some kind of grouping algorithm because there are many of those clusters of spawn points that overlap, but the game would never (or very rarely in specific missions) spawn two overlapping groups on top of each other.
I always felt the spawning code in CoH had every other MMO ever, completely beat. You never had mobs spawn on top of you, when you loaded into a zone, there were never mobs on top of you... Mobs sizes were always manageable...
For me it was the dynamic spawn sizes. Never having to worry about "a huge group of foes" unless I set my difficulty higher to get them. Not to mention the mix of enemies within a particular spawn: you would never know if that group would have a Sapper in it or not, or even if it would be Carnival of Shadows, Malta, Nemesis, or whatever. Brilliant. I'm totally sick to death of other games with fixed spawning.
The problem is that Codewalker can't really do this in the same way the game's mapservers did, because he doesn't have central mapservers to work with.
I want a coffee talk face off of Arcana vs Codewalker. Just pick a programming or coding topic and let them go. I wouldn't understand 90 percent of it but I'd watch. With aspirin handy.
Sounds like he just needs to make new mapservers. Problem solved.
This is why I unsubscribed from the "technical side discussion" thread. It was interesting at first, then became way too much for me.
Will there be any artistic changes in the distant future like pedestrians with robotic arms or business cows?
Paragon Chat doesn't need central mapservers. It's a deliberate design choice.
Main reason I brought it up in reference to civillians is that for the most part they are background filler. So long as they aren't wildly different, people are unlikely to notice them being a little out of sync. So a reasonable approximation can work for them.
I always felt the spawning code in CoH had every other MMO ever, completely beat. You never had mobs spawn on top of you, when you loaded into a zone, there were never mobs on top of you... Mobs sizes were always manageable...
I had a thought, and it looks like some of that may be implemented in later releases. I was thinking that there could be some of us that download the tabletop rules for COH and the players makes their characters and they all meet up in a section of the map that is not being used and in say local they all play their RPG game with no powers but the map would be really way cool map just for role players with the Gm running the dice rolls if the dice roller was totally random the player could roll them in game.
It is an idea.
Layne B Landis
Important: All of this is preliminary and is subject to change!
There are probably a number of things I'm forgetting about and will be added to this list as I remember them.
Target Milestone: 1.0
Estimated Completion: Soonish
- Persistence of keybinds in the database
- Persistence of window positions in the database
- Persistence of power trays in database (needed for macros)
- Auto-update
- Account management
See list of accounts and characters at a minimum- Dice rolling command
- Whoall command
- Sentinel+ importer (may be deferred to 1.1)
- Prompt for closing main window while client is running
Target Milestone: 1.0.5
Estimated Completion: In a bit
- Global MOTD
- Cross-zone player search and notes
- Hide options to opt out of player search
- Door animations
- Limited server-wide GM abilities for moderators
(testbed for later use in private instances)
Target Milestone: 1.1
Estimated Completion: Sometime
- Travel modes emulating Fly, Super Speed, Super Jump, Ninja Run, Beast Run, and Walk. Teleport is a possibility but may have technical issues blocking it.
- Teams
- Supergroups (may be pushed back to 1.2 depending on tech issues)
Target Milestone: 1.2
Estimated Completion: A while
- Private instance support using arbitrary maps
- GM abilities in private instances
- NPC spawning in private instances
Target Milestone: 1.3
Estimated Completion: Longer than a while
- Base editor
- Integrate bases into private instance support
Target Milestone: Future, near to mid term
Estimated Completion: Sometime after 1.3
- Better cross-server support for federated XMPP servers
- Basic AI and means of coordinating non-combat NPC movements efficiently
- Simulated self-affecting powers such as armor toggles
- Lua scripting for client-side modifications
Target Milestone: Future, long term
Estimated Completion: Whenever
- Simulated attack powers, possibly usable on target dummies
- Handoff to realtime communication service for more demanding activities, such as PVP Arena matches
Wishlist
May be inserted into the roadmap as time allows or technical feasibility is determined
- Costume change emotes
- Exploration badges. Depends on if they can be done algorithmically, or if they depend on serverside data that would have to be reconstructed by hand.
Hey CW, do you think all these milestones can be completed by this year?
I always thought this, too. Most games feel like theme-park robots resetting for each new customer. CoH's mobs felt more fluid. I did notice that "I MUST GET BACK TO MY SPAWN POINT"/unaffected target running back to where you aggroed it look started popping up in Going Rogue. I wonder if some corners had to be cut to get it out on time and on budget.My impression was that a directive came down from NCSoft: This doesn't feel like an MMO. Make it stupid and annoying! I hadn't noticed the obnoxious resetting mob mechanic until Freedom hit.
I always thought this, too. Most games feel like theme-park robots resetting for each new customer. CoH's mobs felt more fluid. I did notice that "I MUST GET BACK TO MY SPAWN POINT"/unaffected target running back to where you aggroed it look started popping up in Going Rogue. I wonder if some corners had to be cut to get it out on time and on budget.
Hey CW, do you think all these milestones can be completed by this year?
I can fully understand the NPC behavior being the most complex thing in the game, the CoH NPC AI was INCREDIBLE.
Probably one of the most ironic statements about CoH of all time.
Yeah... The actual NPC AI itself was dumber than a stunned herring. It was the spawn code that was nifty.
Yeah... The actual NPC AI itself was dumber than a stunned herring. It was the spawn code that was nifty.
Don't we already have that? Isn't that basically /mapmove?
Here it'd probably have to be a slash command, you'd go /meetup <name> and if they let you, you'd just teleport straight to them or more ideally, to a location close by so you don't just pop in right on top of them. It's just the 'if they let you' part that I'm not sure about, doing that within limitations of both XMPP and the CoH client might be difficult. But it'd be a useful thing if it could be done, especially in the current system with no travel powers available.
Am I reading this wrong: While Paragon Chat uses the CoH Client, outside of artwork and animations nothing is running on work done originally by Cryptic and Paragon Studios? That means all powers and commands are being done from scratch. Nothing will move like it once did or act like it once did.
Codewalker isn't working totally from scratch. The problem he faces is he's trying to assemble an entire commercial building full of do it yourself furniture in which all the parts for all of the furniture have been put in a single pile, and all the instructions are in Navajo.
I'm staring into the lines of thought in my brain of possible legal issues and trying to see the right question line and avoid the web: That said, Arcana, can you be held liable if you can recreate the Gameplay code too well.
TBH, it really does boggle the mind that publishers actively try to stop fans resurrecting dead products. Sure, they have the legal right to do so, but as they've killed the property, rendering it worthless, all they do by trying to squash fans is hurt their own PR.It's all about "don't play with my toys!" and yes, it is a profoundly childish mentality. But then many people higher up in corporations are clinical sociopaths who are prone to that mentality anyway.
It's very short sighted of them.
I'm staring into the lines of thought in my brain of possible legal issues and trying to see the right question line and avoid the web: That said, Arcana, can you be held liable if you can recreate the Gameplay code too well.
If I drink cherry coke, think it's awesome and recreate it's exact formula without ever asking that company for a hint or clue and then give it free to thousands of my friends am I in trouble? What if I charged for it and called it Rejolt cola? Is the formula illegal?
The EFF is working on an exception to the digital millenium copyright act for "restoring access to single-player or multiplayer video gaming on consoles, personal computers or personal handheld gaming devices when the developer and its agents have ceased to support such gaming". They will know if it passes in October. The initial version explicitly excludes MMOs in an effort to get it passed more easily, and they'll focus on MMOs if/when this passes.
https://www.eff.org/files/2015/02/09/2014-07_eff_gaming_exemption_comment.pdf
Supporting the EFF is the best hope of ever getting centralized COH game servers running again.
These are legal questions you shouldn't rely on my opinion for. If we're speaking academically, then no, the direct answer to your question is almost certainly not, but your question lies on dangerous legal grounds. For example, suppose you decide you like Cherry Coke so much you're going to experiment in your kitchen to make a drink you like just as much, with some kind of cherry flavor and some generic cola type flavor, and you find something that tastes an awful lot like Cherry Coke. In the strict legal sense, you haven't broken any laws (that I'm aware of). However if you like Cherry Coke so much you decide to analyze the formula for it and then try to come up with something that is not exactly the same but similar enough that it tastes the same, that's different. Now you are using knowledge of their formula to recreate their formula, and you could be in trouble there.
Recreating something that behaves like a City of Heroes mapserver isn't strictly speaking illegal. However, there are many ways to get there that *could* be illegal. NCSoft would be within their legal rights to assert a belief that the effort required almost certainly involved illegal steps of some kind, and sue to try to prove it through legal discovery.
The question of legality comes down to three separate questions which can have different answers. Does the act violate the law (is it in and of itself illegal). Does at least one step involved in performing the act violate the law (is it technically legal, but involves a step that is illegal). And would there be sufficient grounds for a property owner to sue for infringement, separate from whether they would succeed or not (does it look like infringement enough that a court would let someone sue you, regardless of whether or not you'd likely win).
There's also a question you're not asking. Would recreating the gameplay code be enough to get the game back? And the answer is no, the gameplay mechanics and technical infrastructure would not be enough. We need three big components to recreate the game, and we only have one. We need the game client, which we have. We need the game servers, which we theoretically could recreate. And we need the server-side content which is not in the game client, which someone would need to rewrite. Things like a script for how Positron's task force worked. Game content was mostly contained on the server side, and separate from creating software that replaced the server side functionality you'd need to rewrite the mission content (among other things). *That* most definitely infringes on NCSoft's copyright to that content.
Just an FYI, if it comes about that we end up having to rewrite the missions based off of what has been preserved in the Paragon Wiki, I am happy to volunteer my efforts in editing.
(Some of the spelling and grammatical errors that persisted in the game through its many years- not to mention same that came through in new content- really bugged the grammar Nazi in me. ;))
Per the wiki guidelines, you can correct them: http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Paragon_Wiki:Article_Guidelines#In-Game_Text
For reference, I play TSW and in that game you can simply click a name in chat and hit 'meet up' on the context menu. They get a popup asking if they want to let you meet up on them (with options in the settings menu for auto accept or deny) and if they let you you immediately teleport to their location - specifically, to the closest respawn point.
I hate to say this, because the core of who is here did like the lore of Paragon City and it's universe, but I'm big on three things: Custom characters, superhero powered combat and socializing. The story meant little to me! If we just got "mobs" to fight while allowing those three things I'm aces.
CoH - AE Universe edition where we populate maps with custom NPCs is all I really want. Even if I had to live with existing, base power abilities and no slotted enhancements. The issue is all of the server side stuff you talked about that makes that a reality.
I don't want the entire Major League Baseball property and things. I want a batting cage where occasionally my friend the batting practice pitcher throws and brush back pitch and mocks me a little.
My worry after that is some tool takes this work, mucks with it with 1000 chimps in 1000 re-skinning set-ups and tries to crank out ios or PC games before they're caught and we're stuck in the aftermath.
Something like this is tentatively planned for the cross-server support that's coming down the road. It's kind of necessary there, because if you have someone on another server (i.e. XMPP domain) on your global friends list, you can see that they're in Sharkhead, but if you go to Sharkhead you won't be able to find them since they're actually in a different zone on another server. A hypothetical 'meet up' function with your friends list would be able to have you automatically jump to Sharkhead@somewhere.else instead of Sharkhead@my.server so that you can see them.
I'm a liiittle bit confused by this. I thought that when I logged in to PC, my "identity" was "Felderburg@chat.cohtitan.com". So when I create global friends or what have you, they're tied to that identity. I also thought that in order to log in to a different XMPP server, I had to change my identity to "Felderburg@some.random.com". Which would be an entirely different identity, and therefore have an entirely different friends list.... or would it? Or is the global friends list tied in to the program itself on a computer, not the identity? Or would someone need to log in to a separate XMPP thing like pidgin to get this to work?
I'm a liiittle bit confused by this. I thought that when I logged in to PC, my "identity" was "Felderburg@chat.cohtitan.com". So when I create global friends or what have you, they're tied to that identity. I also thought that in order to log in to a different XMPP server, I had to change my identity to "Felderburg@some.random.com". Which would be an entirely different identity, and therefore have an entirely different friends list.... or would it? Or is the global friends list tied in to the program itself on a computer, not the identity? Or would someone need to log in to a separate XMPP thing like pidgin to get this to work?
Codewalker could be thinking about implementing federation, where one XMPP server could be configured to "trust" another one, such that people who log into server A can send messages to people on server B without having to directly log into server B. Instead, server A forwards those messages to server B for the user, and returns traffic similarly. Server "jumping" is the easy way, but its a little clunky. Federation might be cleaner in the long run, but does require some cooperation between the server ops (Federation also allows for things like a global Paragon Chat channel that actually works across servers, like the global chat system City of Heroes used).
Isn't Skyforge in trouble for this. Anti-Malware programs were blocking a "worm" that was allowing player to player sharing at start up without the player's request. Sounds like this will be optional here though.
The one thing I want on the wishlist is to get the word bubble, or Typing Bubble, over the head when you are typing. When the game was live it was done by:
/bind enter "afk {insert witty message here}$$startchat"
example:
/bind enter "afk MM is preparing yet another insightful comment$$startchat"
This would put a bubble over your character's head that says "MM is preparing yet another insightful comment" whenever you hit the enter key to start typing.
If we could get that back it would be awesome. It just clued in people around you that you didn't fall asleep or that you were typing a really really long message.
I didn't even know you couldn't do that; never occurred to me to test. That sounds like a relatively simple thing that could be added to Presence. <presence xmlns="pc:presence" afk="Away from keyboard eating sammich" />. I'm just wondering if people do it a lot if it would be an abuse of presence to use it that way. But its sort of logical in that afk was the City of Heroes version of signalling a form of unavailable status.
The thing is that XMPP servers can talk to each other. That's how the protocol is designed and intended to be used.
...the 21 character global name limit that we can't exceed without crashing the client.
I could add a second command to do just the bubble but not the presence, which would only need to go to the zone meta channel be much lighter weight, but I'm not sure I can rely on everyone finding out about it and using it instead of /afk.
Make a /xmppafk command. There's already some xmpp specific slash commands, why not another?
I didn't even know you couldn't do that; never occurred to me to test. That sounds like a relatively simple thing that could be added to Presence. <presence xmlns="pc:presence" afk="Away from keyboard eating sammich" />. I'm just wondering if people do it a lot if it would be an abuse of presence to use it that way. But its sort of logical in that afk was the City of Heroes version of signalling a form of unavailable status.
Sorry, getting technical here. The technical thread is getting in my head. I suspect its not a difficult feature to add assuming the actual CoH protocol message is something known to Codewalker; its just a matter of priority. But it sounds like the sort of low hanging fruit QoL thing Codewalker might add in an alphabet release.
It was something used extensively by RPers. It was incredibly useful, especially for slower typists, as it let other RPers know you were typing a response and not just ignoring them.
Personally, I think the simplest solution there might be to just make the /afk we're all used to be the one used for the text bubble and have a new command like /xmppafk be the one that actually sets the proper afk status visible to chat clients. Sure, you'd still get people using the /afk command thinking it signals really being afk but at least that way you're not hammering the server every time someone uses the wrong command.
I didn't know you couldn't do that in Paragon Chat: I used to see it all the time in-game.
the game client itself (at least appears to) throw /afk commands when you idle out. Paragon Chat would have to figure out the difference between a player typing /afk and the game client generating an /afk. I don't know if that is easy, difficult, or impossible (given Paragon Chat's architecture).
Having said all of that, one possible way around this might be to change the way Paragon Chat processes commands so that /afk *cannot* be used in macros. [...] But if someone tries to "afk TypingNow$$startchat" the afk will not execute.
(Except I wouldn't call it xmppafk, because that's Bizarro nomenclature - the real afk is the XMPP afk, and /xmppafk is explicitly *not* an XMPP afk. I would call it "/chatafk" because that's basically what it is.)
Personally, I think the simplest solution there might be to just make the /afk we're all used to be the one used for the text bubble and have a new command like /xmppafk be the one that actually sets the proper afk status visible to chat clients. Sure, you'd still get people using the /afk command thinking it signals really being afk but at least that way you're not hammering the server every time someone uses the wrong command.
Personally, I think the simplest solution there might be to just make the /afk we're all used to be the one used for the text bubble and have a new command like /xmppafk be the one that actually sets the proper afk status visible to chat clients. Sure, you'd still get people using the /afk command thinking it signals really being afk but at least that way you're not hammering the server every time someone uses the wrong command.
If I had, I would never use it. I don't often afk anyway - at least, not when the game was active. I found that to be kind of rude. Sure - things happen - but somehow, I just managed to play through those things. Different lifestyle, I suppose, not having kids or pets needing attention.
I have no clue what Codewalker does for a living that distracts him from this, but I would gladly support a Kickstarter Project to support him enough to only focus on Paragon Chat.
Or even a Patreon subscription.
Please consider this, Codewalker! :)
If I had, I would never use it. I don't often afk anyway - at least, not when the game was active. I found that to be kind of rude. Sure - things happen - but somehow, I just managed to play through those things. Different lifestyle, I suppose, not having kids or pets needing attention.
Seriously, I had no idea all this discussion would develop over something like AFK.
As Codewalker said, this is how the sausage is made. Some (non-developer) players might think its argumentative or time-wastingly trivial, but when you're designing and building systems meant to be used by people, this is what you do all of the time. Some would even argue the most interesting part of writing software is the part where you're not writing software. Its the part where you carefully consider and make design decisions, and then get to see how those decisions play out when real people interact with what you've built. True for most forms of engineering, but the feedback loop is particularly strong with software.
That being said - if certain behaviors should be avoided to keep from overloading the chat system, just let me know. I'll avoid 'em.
I see that you're working on making Macros stay through different logins... this will be great. Can you also ensure that the /chatsave happens, too? Currently when I login I need to type /chatload to get my established tabs how I want them.
Maybe those who drive player events get certain badges as a reward.
[...]
There could be harmless "points" systems in place that a db-write could tally
Can anyone out there think of clever ways to get badges given the chat-focused constraints.
Exclusive badges are pretty much impossible to do with Paragon Chat's architecture. It's decentralized -- there's no single authority who can verify which badges are 'legit', so anybody would be able to claim they have whatever badge they want simply by editing the database or something similar. Any badges would have to exist within the confines of them being a self-challenge minigame rather than something to show off.
Chat tabs should already be saved in the db; that was working even before binds were. Make sure you don't have a default chat settings file sitting around that's resetting everything (UAC can cause /chatsave to end up somewhere different if you're not careful).
If you're planning on essentially 'simulating' travel through clever modifications of movement
Any way to get rid of that bugger?
-Tipsy
Chat tabs should already be saved in the db; that was working even before binds were. Make sure you don't have a default chat settings file sitting around that's resetting everything (UAC can cause /chatsave to end up somewhere different if you're not careful).
You need to log in to every character and load this file. It may take several /chatload iterations to get on and off every channel. I think this mostly depends on how many new channels you've joined.
This is what worked for me.
I mean, I'm equally in favor of the idea of just blanketly unlocking every title from the previous game for us select from, for overtop our character names.
/benpc allowed you to convert your visual model to an npc, but not all things were npcs.
Not to play devil's advocate
- I can't ever "Leave" a channel and have it stick. Some channels I joined when I first started eternally come up on my channel list, even after I click LEAVE upon the next login.
As far as I'm aware, there's no way to /benpc a car, because the cars weren't NPCs. /benpc allowed you to convert your visual model to an npc, but not all things were npcs. You couldn't /benpc a Steel Canyon building, for example, or /benpc the Atlas tram station. I think the cars were also not npcs. For that matter, I don't think the pedestrians were npcs either.
Hey, cars are people, too! Errr, NPCs.That's actually a really interesting and critical point. And yes, that is how Vehicles work in CO... you literally transform into a new skin which is just non-humanoid and has different move points and hit points. I didn't realize that CoX was that sophisticated back in the day; I figured that it treated most, if not all NPCs as animated map objects rather than NPC spawns.
Car_Compact[1-5]
Car_Lux[1-5]
Car_Lux2[1-5]
Car_Sport[1-5]
Car_Sport2[1-5]
Car_Truck[1-5]
Cars_PPD
Car_Monorail
Car_Blimp
Anything that can move independently (i.e. follow a non-static path like pedestrians), or react to the world (like doors) is an NPC.
Even the gravity geysers in the Shadow Shard and Pocket D are NPCs, and non-static ones at that. Without the server-side spawndefs referenced by the map files, it's hard to say exactly what NPC should spawn at each location and what properties to assign it.
Now those aren't combat NPCs. They lack the attributes structure giving them things like hit points. They're more like contacts and trainers in that regard.
Hey, cars are people, too! Errr, NPCs.
I seem to recall having issues trying to /benpc cars and the Atlas blimp on the beta server, but I don't recall what the problem actually was. I've never tried to do anything that weird in Icon, so I just assumed (incorrectly) that wouldn't work.
Tipsy Tipsy Bang Bang?
(Aka, I'm old)
Tipsy Tipsy Bang Bang?
(Aka, I'm old)
If Fly could hit 88 miles per hour, you'd see some serious stuff.It struck me not long after CoH began that, given the approximate speed you could reach with Super Speed, the visual effect must have been an homage to Back to the Future.
Completed Items
Estimated Completion: Yesterday
Persistence of keybinds in the database
Persistence of window positions in the database
Auto-update
Dice rolling command
Prompt for closing main window while client is running
Something I'd like to be able to do is be able to save a few locations and jump to them. Maybe after we have travel-ish powers it would be redundant.
People can't use a reticle to find each other on maps, so we're relegated to out-of-Pocket-D RP to be relatively easy to find locations.
To stay sort-of on topic, I think it would be great if the Paragon Chat team managed to put in more little easter eggs for memorable elements of player-made history.
I've always found the problem with that being the fact that who exactly decides this history?
Sure, Ascendant was big on Virtue. On Freedom? Unknown. On Victory? Unknown. On the EU servers? Unknown. All due respect to him, Virtue was very fortunate to get dev-attention on a fairly regular basis due to its unique nature...but it was one server of many. And I really don't think it's respectful to the other servers to demand personal bits of history to be stuck here and there.
...
I'd say not so many 'tribute' Easter Eggs, please - simply because not everyone will know who this or that person actually was.
I've always found the problem with that being the fact that who exactly decides this history?
Sure, Ascendant was big on Virtue. On Freedom? Unknown. On Victory? Unknown. On the EU servers? Unknown. All due respect to him, Virtue was very fortunate to get dev-attention on a fairly regular basis due to its unique nature...but it was one server of many. And I really don't think it's respectful to the other servers to demand personal bits of history to be stuck here and there.
Hell, pretty sure those who resided on Victory at one point or another could easily ask for Satanic Hamster to be stuck next to Positron and Freedom could ask for a pile of dead bodies under Atlas following all those confuse bug instances.
I have all respect for people, but I do feel that to some extent we need to avoid filling it up with tributes to X, Y and Z from one server or another simply because it starts to lose meaning if that happens as the number of people who could potentially go 'who?' gets larger and the memory diminishes because of it.
Null's a fairly good example of an Easter Egg - he was there on all servers and to be fair his bit of text actually reflects the situation rather well.
Ascendant...as someone who's resided on both Virtue and Victory? Well, the Virtue part of me appreciates it but the Victory can understand full well why some people might just be going 'And who the hell is this?'. Heck, the RP and PvP communities were different animals altogether and to be fair, used the game a lot of the time as a similar thing - a method of social interaction.
I'd say not so many 'tribute' Easter Eggs, please - simply because not everyone will know who this or that person actually was.
Because, heck, when you get down to it the definition of what actually had meaning on each individual server varied. You kind of have to give props to everyone for their own parts - on Virtue you could easily credit any SG of your choice - whether everyone else felt they were relevant or not was an individual choice.
The way I personally view it was that if a player were significant enough to attract personal dev attention, and they died in a way tragic enough for the playerbase to desire devoting the resources, they deserve their spot beside Atlas.
The server he was from really means very little to me in this context.
The most any human can ever aspire to is to change the world around them and be remembered fondly, after all.
Known issue. I was silly and assumed that the client would be sensible, so Paragon Chat automatically rejoins any channels that the client has saved in the chat settings it sends. But it turns out the client doesn't actually clean those up when you leave a channel. It probably depended on the global chat server to tell it what channels it's a member of and to actually use.
I'll need to devise a new way of saving that information. Probably using the XMPP bookmark mechanism similar to other XMPP clients. That will make channel membership account-wide instead of per-character, but that's similar to how it worked in the live game anyway, so it shouldn't come as too much of a shock.
My feature request is 'be npc.'
This could be useful with the GM powers planned in medium term future releases. Be great for role play. It's possible in icon. I wonder how hard it would be to do it in Paragon Chat minus giant npcs re: grieving issues..? (I suppose there could be an ignore list for any giant npcs...?)
This is one that has been discussed previously, the problem is less technological and more operational, vis-a-vis griefing and other related issues. Its conceptually partially linked to spawning NPCs and would likely be addressed in similar contexts and in similar timeframes.
I always felt the 'red tram lines' on the hero maps was a wasted opportunity for 'City of Villains'. I felt a lot of work went into creating geometry heavy zones when really, all what was needed was villainous archetypes (which we got...) and the ability to 'take on' heroes. I would have restricted the 'scheming' and PVP'ing to 'red tram lines' in each hero zone...and...used the AE functionality to create 'nemesis' missions for heroes in the game.
vis-a-vis griefing and other related issues
This is something I've noticed. Already, there's griefers in the D harassing the RPers. It's easy enough to block them and move on - thank god for gignore that makes two people invisible to each other - but what is going to be done about these people when they're using the GM tools to harass? Is the gignore function enough to handle that? Or will a discipline system have to be put in place on the main PC XMPP server for people who misuse the GM tools?
Target Milestone: 1.1
Estimated Completion: Sometime
- Travel modes emulating Fly, Super Speed, Super Jump, Ninja Run, Beast Run, and Walk. Teleport is a possibility but may have technical issues blocking it.
I'm curious... once you've got the basic travel powers emulated, would there be any possibility down the road of also getting the purchasable travel powers to work (i.e. the the flying carpet, the rocket board, the void skiff, the coyote and panther transformations, and the steam jump power)? I'm sure they're more difficult than the standard travel powers to emulate, but I don't have the knowledge of how much more so.
Thanks,
D
All travel powers that cause you to specifically move in a particular way (which means: all travel powers that aren't teleport) work by a similar set of mechanisms. There are some odd hard coded exceptions for strange reasons, like the jump pack, but for the most part getting one travel power working is similar to any other, although each one can potentially take some extra work. The fundamental mechanism making all of them work is I believe identical, with minor variations.So, things like the Holiday Rocket pack (Jingle Jet) would use the same mechanism as the basic flight travel power (with just customized visual/sound effects? I would sooo love to see the Jingle Jet back some day. :)
TL;DR: Yes.
Wishlist Item:
At the character select screen would it be possible to get back the blue background for hero characters and the red background for villains? Right now it always seems to be the red background, I'm looking to get updated screenshots such as this (http://www.coxhomestead.com/coh/poses/sand_wasp.jpg) instead of them all looking like that (http://www.coxhomestead.com/cov/poses/phantomime.jpg).
All travel powers that cause you to specifically move in a particular way (which means: all travel powers that aren't teleport) work by a similar set of mechanisms. There are some odd hard coded exceptions for strange reasons, like the jump pack, but for the most part getting one travel power working is similar to any other, although each one can potentially take some extra work. The fundamental mechanism making all of them work is I believe identical, with minor variations.Thanks, Arcana!
TL;DR: Yes.
Wishlist Item:
At the character select screen would it be possible to get back the blue background for hero characters and the red background for villains? Right now it always seems to be the red background, I'm looking to get updated screenshots such as this (http://www.coxhomestead.com/coh/poses/sand_wasp.jpg) instead of them all looking like that (http://www.coxhomestead.com/cov/poses/phantomime.jpg).
The colour of the background is dependant on whether you're creating a hero, villain or rogue. Mine is always blue.
So, things like the Holiday Rocket pack (Jingle Jet) would use the same mechanism as the basic flight travel power (with just customized visual/sound effects? I would sooo love to see the Jingle Jet back some day. :)
The colour of the background is dependant on whether you're creating a hero, villain or rogue. Mine is always blue.
I thought that was the case as well, so far all my screens are red and I've made nothing but heroes. Made a villain, still red (as expected). Guess I'll revisit tonight after work to see if I'm wildly misremembering.
Are other folks seeing different behavior? Can they trigger blue/red backgrounds as desired?
I would like to have my clockwork pet back and be able to color it. ;D
....If not, then if possible, least restore the Badges we can search for and collect :roll:
while we wait for the game to return.
Those people won't have GM tools in the public Pocket D. Only server admins will have those tools in public zones.
Once the private instance support is finished, they'll have GM tools in their own private copy of Pocket D should they create one. But you won't have to deal with them unless they invite you to their instance and you accept. And even then you can leave at any time.
Yes I'm necroing, I'm evil who cares?
Now could these "dummies" potentially be made to look like any form of NPC like, say...Longbow?
And maybe have a form of health?
And maybe be subject to physics which would cause them to fly all over the place?
Yes I'm necroing, I'm evil who cares?
Now could these "dummies" potentially be made to look like any form of NPC like, say...Longbow? And maybe have a form of health? And maybe be subject to physics which would cause them to fly all over the place?
Obviously the priority should be on making them look like Skuls. Because then we can Go. Hunt.
So, I'm not used to doing what my friends call "forum surfing", basically going through forums trying to find answers, so I'm just gonna ask my questions in here, since it seems the best place:
Do I need to do anything special to update my Paragon Chat launcher, or does it do that automatically?
Will characters I make on Paragon Chat transfer over to CoT when it comes out?
What Forum should I go on to see new updates that come out for Paragon Chat?
Lastly, can someone give me an estimation to tell my Dad as to when Paragon Chat will have NPCs to fight and a form of XP and leveling up?
Thank You for your help!
Something I RALLY want CoT/ Paragon Chat/ WHATEVER! to have is pet cusimization, CoH didn't have this, I feel like in the power custim. when you make your character is a good place to put it, like, you should be able to choose how your zombies look and stuff like that
At the moment the only thing I'm working on is surviving a stressful relocation on top of an already-too-full schedule.
It's already there.
My Wishlist:
Character I.D. Profile: Format features or code permissions, i.e. BOLD (code < b >< /b >)- Also a little more character space. Permission to insert jpg or png url image in profile.
Character Creation
(This might seem like an odd Wishlist item, but it's inspired by a few role-playing friends.)
1. Thin male bodies, chests not buff.
2. Dual Gender creation, or co-gender character creation, use of male or female faces and bodies.
More character creation Wishlist.
2 Upper Cranium Details (glasses + horns is one example)
2 Neck Detail (collar + scarf is one example)
2 More Chest Details for layering. (t-shirt, open vest, chain over chest as example)
More Skirts, and Kilts opened for female characters.
MEANWHILE. Until 1.2 - Since we can't form Super Groups, might a temporary feature be added by having a Super Group tag float under character name, for those that form Super Groups in forums.
The End.
Oh my God you're right!
So this is so Awesome. Thanks again ;D
Character Creation
(This might seem like an odd Wishlist item, but it's inspired by a few role-playing friends.)
1. Thin male bodies, chests not buff.
2. Dual Gender creation, or co-gender character creation, use of male or female faces and bodies.
4) In the meanwhile, how about a treasure hunt? Remember the Midnighter's base where you click on a skull at the front desk and it gave you a message and a clue as to where the next message is? We know that Codewalker can put unique messages on doors and clickies so how about a similar thing with a story that takes you across the city trying to find the next clue?
I wish Mender Sally would return to Ouroboros!
Maybe it will extend to auras one day...and much later actual power activation against...
Azrael.
Do I hear you volunteering to be our target practice?
it reminds me of all of the mistakes that lead CoH downhill
What mistakes...?
Too many to list, but a whole lot less than in other, lesser, games.
(IMHO)
I'm not familiar with how you have Paragon Chat set up, or what you have to use, so I'm not really complaining, but if you could, I know personally my whole family would appreciate it GREATLY if you could somehow make Paragon Chat like the older version, or atleast the initial theme it started out with, Hero Creation and everything else can be the same, but I know everytime I go to the login screen and see the "City Of Heroes: Freedom" logo, and the new song, it reminds me of all of the mistakes that lead CoH downhill, and less all the memories I have playing that wonderful game when I was younger. ;D
Sincerely,
Es~Trella
I remember a patching app (forgot the name) that allowed players to insert a custom graphic on the login screen instead of the default... Otherwise, hunting that program down yourself and using it on your I24 client may bear quicker fruit than waiting for this.
In terms of the wishlist, any chance of ever getting the NPC costume options opened up freely to everyone? I know there's a backdoor way to access them, but I'm not that computer-confident.
on the XMPP end I do know there is the functionality possible cause pidgin does have a room list and in other Jabber chats I have there is a player count per room.
Personally I think this is a terrible idea because the most legitimate purposes for this is trolling because there is no hide command.yet.
I logged in at one point and no-one was in the D I saw people saying in paragon-chat everyone was in a GMed event but had no idea where it was and no one answered when I asked. so I just logged out.
people attract people. and being able to easily see where people were would have kept me playing. adding a person count Zone list would encourage themed RP in other areas which may encourage more activity in general.
On a private server, I imagine you could. However, imagine how disruptive that would be on the public server where everyone goes.
I'd love to see enough people on-line to cause that problem.All it takes is one person. So, no, it's unlikely that Random Joe will get any kind of powers like that on the Titan version.
Having the 'Team' feature so you can track other players on a map, or at least see where they are would be most helpful. Otherwise it's like 'I'm on the east side, but the light pole that faces south, with the crate that's near a trash bag.'MARCO!
I think that it might be fun to have snowball fights, coolant fights, fire extinisgher fights and throw a disc from player to player. Non-damage PvP system.
Any chance of something like that happening.
MARCO!POLO !! :D
Sure, they just need to write a functional powers system, targeting system, powers effects, particle effects, models, animations...
Sounds great, can't wait.
Mostly I've been working on the paragonchat_1_0 branch, which has 92 commits since it was branched and about 21,000 lines of code added or touched in some way.
Before you get all excited, almost all of that is stuff that while I might think it's really cool, most people probably won't care about. It's not terribly exciting from an end-user perspective, except that it lays the groundwork for adding more exciting features later.
Some highlights include:
Tighter integration with the COH client. At first this is just to fix some issues like the 127.0.0.2 problem on WinXP and macs, but it's done in a way that opens the door for more interesting things.
Multithreaded data loading for faster startup.
Improving the new user experience -- making it easier to install Paragon Chat and locate your COH files for it to use.
Complete separation from the Issue 24 beta install directory. Paragon Chat reads the files from there, but now lives completely in its own location and never needs to write anything to the COH folder. This helps avoid UAC issues for people who still have it under Program Files.
User interface improvements and polish.
Better debug logging and lots of other features to aid in development.
Fixing and cleaning up a lot of stuff that was rushed in order to get Paragon Chat usable enough to be beta-worthy, and doing it the right way.
Fixing most of the issues with long path names and non-ASCII characters in directory names.
Mostly I've been working on the paragonchat_1_0 branch, which has 92 commits since it was branched and about 21,000 lines of code added or touched in some way.
Before you get all excited, almost all of that is stuff that while I might think it's really cool, most people probably won't care about. It's not terribly exciting from an end-user perspective, except that it lays the groundwork for adding more exciting features later.
Some highlights include:
Tighter integration with the COH client. At first this is just to fix some issues like the 127.0.0.2 problem on WinXP and macs, but it's done in a way that opens the door for more interesting things.
Multithreaded data loading for faster startup.
Improving the new user experience -- making it easier to install Paragon Chat and locate your COH files for it to use.
Complete separation from the Issue 24 beta install directory. Paragon Chat reads the files from there, but now lives completely in its own location and never needs to write anything to the COH folder. This helps avoid UAC issues for people who still have it under Program Files.
User interface improvements and polish.
Better debug logging and lots of other features to aid in development.
Fixing and cleaning up a lot of stuff that was rushed in order to get Paragon Chat usable enough to be beta-worthy, and doing it the right way.
Fixing most of the issues with long path names and non-ASCII characters in directory names.
Not sure if this has been submitted. Is it possible to install new Advertisement signs in Paragon Chat?I know it would depend on how hard it is to implement, but I just wanted to chime in and 'second' this idea.
Like the Major Flanders, Up. Up and Away signs? ???
During the CoH game, I once saw a Tony Hawk ad....so I know it has been done before.
I'm not suggesting serious ads- like for Allergy medicines or Acne, just something Fun to liven things up in
Paragon Chat.... :roll:
I know it would depend on how hard it is to implement, but I just wanted to chime in and 'second' this idea.
Any ETA on adding Beast Run? While it's not a high priority for me i do know some people have been asking about it. And hey, at least it's not Teleport. 8)
I'd agree with that. Contemplating the naval while Rome burns comes to mind. But Cryptic/Paragon did some very good work. The basics of the game. The Archetypes. The 1-50 levelling. Combat. Interface. ITF was a great piece of post - Cryptic work.Sort of a massively lagged reply, considering how long ago this was posted, but I thought it was interesting that I disagree with you on most of this ;)
Less successful for me?
CoV. Sideways move. 'Pressing' limited resources over twice the area. Rather than filling the 'empty' zones with MORE content. :D
Rogue. Compounding this error. More great zones. Beta tested mission content. (So my Duo partner thought...)
Incarnates. A fracture rather than a progression. (Not like the game I'd come to recognise at all...like a pre-op for CoH 2.)
Lack of moving to a modern gaming engine. Some say the graphics were starting to look dated. (Me? I just loved how it played.)
Mission types. All seemed to familiar after doing 1-50 a few times.
NOT going back to original archeyptes sooner and making them 'more so.'
Perhaps not creating individual archetype mission arcs for 1-50 for each type. (A lot of work? Better than closing down. The 1-50 journey was too samey for some.)
Game was too slow. (Too fast for me. But why not allow one server to switch on perma Hasten for all as inherent. SB buff as inherent for all who want to play that fast. Me? I'd just slip around maps with that...)
Hmm. Key expansions? Sideways moves that didn't build on the core game in the right way. Splintered the player base...while not really addressing. Not adequately building on what made the core game so great.
...and for the money invested...did these 'key expansions' give a return of investment for NC Soft in terms of revenue and play base expansion?
Worse. Did(?) some things alienate key parts of the player base that didn't come back.
Subjective opinions. But they can cause erosion of a player base.
Some may disagree. But how come CoH is dead while some dreadful mediocre MMOs still survive.
Was it a lack of advertising by NC Soft only? Cultural? Politics. Egos. Fickle MMO fans? Lessons learned too little too late?
*wrong thread. I know. But it just came out... ;)
Azrael.
Oh uh... I had intended to post this with my last post, but forgot. A feature suggestion, which I think would be the biggest benefit for people who might want to code bots or server-side plugins for this with the smallest possible amount of code investment for you, Codewalker, would be to have a debug console mode that would display (And optionally log) every network message that PC intercepts from the CoH client, and every message it sends back to the client, and a config file allowing a simple CoH protocol to xml stanza mapping...
I suppose I could always poke at the code in the Woofers github if I wanted to learn a bit of the protocol though. Assuming they actually got anywhere with that project anyway.
and things that made the game faster, easier
you were a SUPERHERO who could stand in the midst of 10 mobs and smash them all
Codewalker do you think there is a chance that the explore badges will ever be active again for collecting? And if when exploring the zones you clear the black covering on the map it stays clear even when zoning back and forth? Great work with PC already love being able to explore the zones again :)
If I had a realistic wish list (no combat) it would be:
Explorer badges, base building, and to tie some mission maps to doors (not sure where). I know I can get to the mission maps, but it'd be fun if clicking on a door brought you in a building for one.
Codewalker do you think there is a chance that the explore badges will ever be active again for collecting? And if when exploring the zones you clear the black covering on the map it stays clear even when zoning back and forth? Great work with PC already love being able to explore the zones again :)I found this...
The badge markers are in their locations, they can be seen if you're close (they have a quite short draw distance). The invisible volumes used to trigger exploration badges are present as well. However, the name on the volume does not match the name of the badge and there's no known correlation between them.
Most likely said correlation was in the Requires field of the badge, however that field is flagged ServerOnly and is blank in badges.bin. Presumably so that players couldn't peek and find out how to get badges that don't have an explicit hint string.
Thanks for the find, looks like not going to happen any time soon :(
Well, with the Wiki, we do know which badges are where. So I'm confident that there is a way to make tags, and implement something that replicates the function of the server.
'Simulated Badge Hunting?' ;)
Azrael.
I had previously been holding off on stuff like that because power trays couldn't be customized, and the one default tray had limited room in it.
Now that they are being saved correctly, it's doable for new ones to be added as time allows, similar to Beast Run where it's not on the bar by default but can be dragged there from the powers list.
Note that Cosmic Flight is somewhat of a special case since it comes from the Peacebringer inherent set. If and when we ever get a proper concept of character-owned powers (this will be necessary to get custom weapons to be available), it's possible that non-Peacebringers may lose access to it at some point. So if this does get added and you plan to use it, roll your character as a PB to be on the safe side!
Personally, I'd rather have the PB/WS forms, if that becomes possible! :P
but is it possible to update the first post with a grid or table of features
planned version to implement (or) version implemented
planned date to implement
difficultiy to implement rating
Also, current status: Working on a metric crapton of backend framework necessary to make something work that will cause a lot of people to flip out. Before you get too excited, it's something that's already on the roadmap. But it's close to being functional enough for initial testing./e tantrum
Also, current status: Working on a metric crapton of backend framework necessary to make something work that will cause a lot of people to flip out. Before you get too excited, it's something that's already on the roadmap. But it's close to being functional enough for initial testing.
I have been playing with 'tumble weed' in First Ward.... Interesting you can kick them around.i was under the impression that debris and objects like the tumbleweeds were specific to each client in much the same way as the objects summoned by Propel. You can kick that tumbleweed all over the place, but no other players will see the same tumbleweed in the same place since that's handled entirely within each player's client and is not tracked server side.
:D
I was thinking, if they could somehow be adjusted so the 'down counter' (they disappear) isn't so short,
players might be able to 'kick' them around and play soccer? It would be something to do in chat.
Just an idea to give some life to paragon chat
i was under the impression that debris and objects like the tumbleweeds were specific to each client in much the same way as the objects summoned by Propel. You can kick that tumbleweed all over the place, but no other players will see the same tumbleweed in the same place since that's handled entirely within each player's client and is not tracked server side.
I have been playing with 'tumble weed' in First Ward.... Interesting you can kick them around.
:D
I was thinking, if they could somehow be adjusted so the (they disappear) isn't so short,
players might be able to 'kick' them around and play soccer? It would be something to do in chat.
Also, current status: Working on a metric crapton of backend framework necessary to make something work that will cause a lot of people to flip out. Before you get too excited, it's something that's already on the roadmap. But it's close to being functional enough for initial testing.
(hoping against rational hope that it's base-editing WAY ahead of schedule)https://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php?topic=12299.msg212872
As high as playing repel ball is on my personal list ofDuring the first winter event there were a bunch of players holding games of Hydra hockey on the frozen lake in Perez Park. It was probably the most fun i ever had using Force Bolt. (Well, more like third most.) But yeah, i can understand why Repel Ball is not something that's currently practical.demandswishes, sadly 1 second latency due to XMPP batching is just way too much to credibly do something like that.
Even if that weren't an issue, trying to do multi-master synchronization of physics is a very difficult problem that there isn't a true solution for.
I have been playing with 'tumble weed' in First Ward.... Interesting you can kick them around.
:D
I was thinking, if they could somehow be adjusted so the 'down counter' (they disappear) isn't so short,
players might be able to 'kick' them around and play soccer? It would be something to do in chat.
Just an idea to give some life to paragon chat (https://i1094.photobucket.com/albums/i451/BlueDalek/Tumbleweed_zpsf276aeph.gif)
Last year we had random snow in various zones for December, which was awesome! Thanks, Codewalker and crew.
Is there any possibility that at some point in December this year we might get lit Christmas Trees (like the ones around the ski chalet) in Atlas Park?
Is the Jingle Jet data on our PC's, or was it a server-side bit of code?The Jingle jet was an FX with the music and flakes built-in. You can edit the database to give yourself one but you'll be invisible.
Just wondering if there's a way to either add it back for the holidays, or 'skin' a rocket-pack to look like a Jingle Jet and (heck, while we're at it, let's ask for the moon!) shoot snowflakes out the back, and have that little Jingle Jet music? Aw, that sweet, sweet Jingle Jet.
"1" "9" "11" "NULL" "NULL" "V_COV/ITEMS/HOLIDAY_ROCKETPACK/TEMP_POWER_HOLIDAY_ROCKETPACK.FX" "NULL" "NULL" "None" "Capes" "Back Packs" "-21504" "-1" "0" "0"
And then CodeWalker went and just gave us all the Jingle Jets for CoHmas !! Huzzah!
Speaking of making the zones less barren I've wondered if the zones could spawn area-appropriate foe-NPCs. Even if all they do is stand there folding and unfolding their arms like the trainer NPCs it would make the zones feel more like they used to be. I know from Icon that the spawn points are baked into the maps and from game experience I know the spawns were kind of randomized/timed. Even if the mobs were static, or spawned and despawned randomly it would be really cool to fly around Perez Park and see clumps of Hellions and Skuls again. (Especially if I can throw a frisbee at them or boink them on the head with a foam bat)
Is it possible to recreate peds and traffic in PC? It doesn't matter really if it's not consistent across the network, having it purely locally rendered would still bring the city back to life for us!
Probably had the flag to push players out of the way ...
I hated being pushed out-of-the-way by passers-by. Made me fell like, "Sure, you risked your life and defeated The Malta Group, but what have you done for us lately?"
Couldn't find much mention of it anywhere else, but I'd love to see the old Giant Monster NPCs such as Lusca in Independence Port again. If I remember correctly most if not all of these guys stood in one spot until agro'd. They'd be great as decoration.
Well, Sally is in Croatoa.
Well, Sally is in Croatoa.
Feature | Version | Est. Release |
Supergroups | 1.0.14 | SOONTM |
Supergroup Base Editing | 1.0.15 or 1.0.16 | SOONTM |
NPC Vehicle Traffic | 1.0.20 | SOONTM |
NPC Foot Traffic | 1.0.22 | SOONTM |
Option | Disposition |
Tables | Out |
Weekly Updates | Out |
Letting us know what you might be working on | Out |
That being said, it's more fun if we don't know what's coming. Then we can be awed by the progress.
With 30 users per map, the server's workload is manageable, but add just one more and POOF!
Sorry, Tahquitz. I couldn't resist. :)
I should not be laughing at this but I am. The more I thought about it the funnier it got. :P
Target Milestone: 1.2
Estimated Completion: A while
Private instance support using arbitrary maps
GM abilities in private instances
Costume change emotes
NPC spawning in private instances
Supergroups
More base love!
Target Milestone: 1.3
Estimated Completion: Longer than a while
???
To be determined.
Not really teasing on purpose, all the stuff I had on the roadmap for 1.3 ended up getting shuffled around and moved to other milestones. So that left me with an empty milestone that I now have to figure out what's going to go there.
LUA scripting IS mentioned on the timeline. 1.2?
My mere suggestion. As implemented in SEGs? You need to learn coding. But if the LUA could be put into a shell GUI for non-programmers as a kind of button generator. Eg.
1. Contact.
2. Mission.
3. Interior Mission Map.
4. Zone.
They could be a series of variables for each one. ie. a bunch of contracts. A bunch of 'go here/come back' missions. All the interior maps. All the zones.
Put a dice generator next to each one. (You know, like next to the costume generator....) And you could randomly generate the content (from a list of possibilities) for each one. Allowing 'non-programmers' to create content quickly while the 'real' programmers use LUA to take it to the next level.
The plan in my head I've had for a long time with regard to LuaMission consists of two pieces:
1. A fairly low-level API for controlling encounter groups (spawn points), receiving events, setting mission objective text, sending chat window text and progress meters, etc.
2. A standard library written in Lua built around that API geared toward providing pieces that work like "standard" missions. Something along the lines of allowing a single ObjectiveDefeatAll("Vahzilok", "Defeat all the baddies!") call to set up the variables needed for a mission. A GUI editor that looks similar to the in-game AE interface - or maybe the AE interface itself - could be fairly easily built around these pieces.
Beginners could fairly easily create missions in notepad by copy/pasting examples that use the library (or a GUI editor if someone builds one). Advanced designers could bypass parts of the library, or not even use it at all, do to more interesting things and create nonstandard game mechanics.
I haven't looked at what SEGS is doing in a whole lot of detail, but from what I've seen of their Lua API so far -- it's a fairly unique take on Lua and not how I would have done it. So while #1 will likely be quite different from the SEGS implementation and not compatible, there's no reason that #2 couldn't be ported to work on top of whatever they decide on.
I would love it if Paragon Chat could import bases that use the i25 items. :)