I was thinking about the possible rebirth and the subsequent 'what should you have to pay for' question. I'm of the opinion you ought to have access to everything that was in-game at the time of shutdown for your initial rebirth fee. I'm throwing in the planned I24 updates in there as well.
Of course this leaves a lot of 'how would they make money questions'. I was thinking one great source, and to me an easy one, would be new powersets. Off the top of my head there were 5 in the works at various levels of completion: Bio Armor, Rad Armor, Rad Melee, Savage Melee and Wind Control. If you had to pay for each of those as they came out, plus extra character slots for the alts, that would be a good source of money for continued work on the game.
It would seem to me that adding even more powersets would be the 'cheapest' development option as you have lots of animations to draw from and several sets could be cobbled together from pre-existing ones.
Or am I just being naive? What does it take time and money wise to design a new powerset? Say we wanted a Wind Blast set or a Radiation Control set. What would that take? The numbers / programming would seem to be fairly straightforward. I'm guessing the real issue would be the artwork and animations.
Does anyone with experience know that answer to this?
dark depends on what version the game is in when ncsoft sells it. if it a disk image of the game and not the code of the game then we may be stuck with the last issue of coh. the new owners wont have any tools or old dev to help them change or add code to the data base/pigg files of the game. when coh was running there was a beta server that the dev could load new info and see if anything broke. the other big issues we have to watch out for is cost. ncsoft had deep pockets and coh had a good chunk of money each month going into ncsoft pockets. we have to be care full of how many players come back and stay. look at wow now and how many players they loose now each month. wow like coh game engine is getting real old. at some point people that own wow should thinking of rebuilding the game with a new engine and content.
Quote from: DarkCurrent on July 22, 2014, 10:38:57 PMOf course this leaves a lot of 'how would they make money questions'. I was thinking one great source, and to me an easy one, would be new powersets. Off the top of my head there were 5 in the works at various levels of completion: Bio Armor, Rad Armor, Rad Melee, Savage Melee and Wind Control. If you had to pay for each of those as they came out, plus extra character slots for the alts, that would be a good source of money for continued work on the game.
It would seem to me that adding even more powersets would be the 'cheapest' development option as you have lots of animations to draw from and several sets could be cobbled together from pre-existing ones.
Or am I just being naive? What does it take time and money wise to design a new powerset? Say we wanted a Wind Blast set or a Radiation Control set. What would that take? The numbers / programming would seem to be fairly straightforward. I'm guessing the real issue would be the artwork and animations.
Does anyone with experience know that answer to this?
The truth is that we know nothing about the tools required to add new power sets to the game, even if simply recycling pre-existing animations. In a perfect world, the data regarding a powerset would be read from an easily changed / extended configuration file, but we know for a fact that COH's codebase was a bitch to work with.
If the new owners do not get the required tools, the point becomes moot, really.
CREATING a new powerset is not all that hard. We have the information that Mid's (and cohwiki and others) used to show the power information, and that can be easily copied to create a new set.
The relevant issue is that creating the set means many different things, and at the end of the process, you have to somehow place that set into the game's code. IF they find the tools, or make the tools, that they can use to insert new powers/powersets, then they can continue to add sets into the game using existing graphics (they should at that point have the option to mix graphics, such as mixing one punch with the ice effects of another punch).
If they cannot find tools to insert powersets, then it doesn't matter how easy it may be to actually create them. They have to make their way into the code somehow.
One of the other things to consider with new powersets is that it appeared as if the Devs were always trying to do something new and different with them; not just recreate different combinations of existing powersets in slightly altered form. The stacking "blooms" of Nature Control, or the disintegration of Beam Rifle, for example.
IIRC, Wind Control was supposed to have a similar sort of "new" mechanic that I don't believe was fully implemented, and would make that powerset more troublesome to (re)create.
Quote from: blacksly on July 23, 2014, 12:24:59 PM
CREATING a new powerset is not all that hard. We have the information that Mid's (and cohwiki and others) used to show the power information, and that can be easily copied to create a new set.
The relevant issue is that creating the set means many different things, and at the end of the process, you have to somehow place that set into the game's code. IF they find the tools, or make the tools, that they can use to insert new powers/powersets, then they can continue to add sets into the game using existing graphics (they should at that point have the option to mix graphics, such as mixing one punch with the ice effects of another punch).
If they cannot find tools to insert powersets, then it doesn't matter how easy it may be to actually create them. They have to make their way into the code somehow.
Re-skinning a powerset is not the same as making a new one. Just copying over a mishmash of different sets to create a new one will not make it balanced. That is where the programming and tweaking comes in. They very thing they are unlikely to be able to do Also, I am not sure it is as easy to mix animations from powersets as you believe.
There is a game very much like what you purpose though. It's called Champions. The powersets all feel incredibly familar because they are basically exactly what you are describing reskinned mishmash of various sets. So you have tons of powers to pick from that all are mechanically similar. Not much fun to play though.
Ultimately, we will have to wait until the game gets bought before we know for sure but I think it unlikely they will spend any money on developing new powersets for CoH1.
There are many other things that I would rather they fix/develop than more powersets, but each to his own.
Quote from: blacksly on July 23, 2014, 12:24:59 PM
CREATING a new powerset is not all that hard.
I would argue that creating a new poweset from the ground up would be quite a bit of work. It would require new art, animation, and particle effects on the visual side of things. Then there would be alterations to the UI and character creation interface. I have absolutely no clue how the game was designed, but I suspect that defense powers may have some reference as to what to do when powerset "x" is encountered (radiation, for example). Then there is all the "math" behind the scenes that determine damage, "to hit", etc...
The Dominator Assault sets are basically a mish-mash of several Melee and Blast sets. I don't think there were all that many complaints about that fact that it was done that way, and that Energy Assault is completely made up of powers that already existed in the game, mostly Energy Blast and from Energy Melee. It also needed no new programming.
Tweaking, yes. But IMO, tweaking the numbers of a set really is neither all that difficult nor is it a relevant part of creating a new set, because existing sets can (and have) had their numbers tweaked. Creating is the really the acts that begin somewhere and end with a new powerset accessible to players when they are creating a new character. And quite often these new powersets have to be balanced after some testing.
QuoteRe-skinning a powerset is not the same as making a new one. Just copying over a mishmash of different sets to create a new one will not make it balanced. That is where the programming and tweaking comes in. They very thing they are unlikely to be able to do Also, I am not sure it is as easy to mix animations from powersets as you believe.
Uh, re-skinning would mean just making a copy of a set with a new set of animations? I don't think anyone has said that would really be a new set. As for balance issues, whether you copy existing powers or create new ones, you have exactly the same issues... you need to make a solid set that is playable, interesting, not too weak, and not too strong. But that has always been the case, and sometimes the Dev team did it well, and sometimes not so well (Poison and TA, especially as they first came out, etc). I don't see why it would be harder (or easier) if powers are copied instead of created.
As for unlikely to be able to do so... actually, that's one thing that I can guarantee can be done. It is certainly possible to DESIGN a new set in Mid's that is balanced (though you couldn't test it). The problem is not designing a new set, it's inserting it so that new characters have access to select it.
Mixing animations... A power has a lot of attributes with a value. Endurance cost, Recharge, etc. There are probably several attributes that determine a power's animations:
1: Casting animation for the user: throwing something, projecting something, one hand or two hand, etc
2: Particle effects around the user
3: Body part used to generate the effect, and any particle effects specifically around it
4: Projectile (if any), and speed
5: Particle effects at the target after impact (if any)
There are going to be others also, plus any of the above may allow for variable colors.
Now, what if you take one power, say Bonesmasher, and change the variable for particle effects at the target to match the effects of Incinerate? You end up with something pretty close to Cremate.
There are several reasons to think that the powers have links to several possible animations, and select one casting animation, for example. We see lots of blasts using the same hero animation to launch the blast. It would make coding sense to just have a link to the animation instead of copying all of the animation's particulars for each power (so that if you find a problem and fix it, you can just fix the animation rather than having to fix it at each power). So changing the link to a different animation, or particle effect, should provide a slightly different look to the power.
I'm worried about getting the new powersets into the game, really. Mid's shows that it's possible to get the power data out. Once it's out, it can be put into a database, copied, and altered, to make new powersets (You can do this directly in Mid's, actually). Not all the data is in Mid's (since a character design program doesn't need the graphic info), but most likely all the data is in the same spot, so if you can get out what they did, then likely you can get the rest out. So, looking at it, I really think that it's possible to create a brand-new Dominator Assault set. First in Mid's to design it, then some additional work to set graphic variables for it, and you end up with a new set, ready to go in.
And here is where the effort may hit a wall. I can see that they may have (and should have) set up the power files so that you can just add to the end of them if you want to add new powers, or powersets. But they may not have done it that way. Maybe there is something in the middle of the program that would need to be changed to tell it that there are more power files available, and to load the extra 9 at the end of the file. If there is, how do you change it and recompile, without the source code? So, I'm not at all sure that we can actually activate a new powerset into the game.
But up until placing it back into the game so it's active, I think that is less of a problem than it's made out to be.
I hope they get all the tools and such. I'd much rather have an updateable game with new content than have my old character data back. I can always level new characters but a stagnant game is much less attractive to me.
I loved CoH because they kept coming out with new power sets and costume pieces often in the last year of the game. I bought each one they put out, that wasn't free with my subscription. Each one would give me new ideas for characters to create. I was looking forward to wind control. It looks pretty cool on ParagonWiki.
I hadn't considered the UI code changes that would be required to add new sets. Even if the powers existed in-game (say you want to cobble together a dominator assault set), those UI changes would need to be put into the game so you could even select the powers at character creation, trainer level up, respec contacts, vetspecs, freespecs, etc.
I view all this, including everything I post, as harmless and likely, pointless speculation.
We simply do not know enough about how things worked when the game was running (mids not withstanding since they got numbers from the devs, the devs didn't use it for designing powers) and we do not know the capabilities or desires of the new teams. We don't what resources they are likely to have or what tools they will have to build or any kind of timeline.
Unless you are a former Dev, Codewalker, Guy Perfect, Arcanaville or a member of the reverse engineering team, you are just guessing like the rest of us.
But let's say you are a coder who worked on another MMO. Since CoH ran on a ten year old batch of code, heavily modified by many different coders and that no other game out there, including other Cryptic games is running on, it's unlikely to give you other insight into how this game worked or can work.
The only way it can cause a problem is if people take what's here as gospel or plan for going forward. But to me trying to figure out how you design powersets in game that you only have a vague understanding of how it works is like building castles in your imagination. It's fine as long as you don't try and move in.
Quote from: DarkCurrent on July 23, 2014, 06:06:08 PM
I hadn't considered the UI code changes that would be required to add new sets.
There's a lot of stuff hardcoded, but it's not
that bad. You have to create new powercat.bin, powerset.bin, and powers.bin files as well as translations for the text, but it will load new sets without having to touch the UI.
However, the team that's currently negotiating has made it pretty clear that they're mostly interested in the IP in order to make COH2, so I doubt there would be many resources devoted to the original beyond keeping it running. Out with the old, in with the new and all that. NCSoft would be proud.
Quote from: Codewalker on July 23, 2014, 07:33:39 PM
There's a lot of stuff hardcoded, but it's not that bad. You have to create new powercat.bin, powerset.bin, and powers.bin files as well as translations for the text, but it will load new sets without having to touch the UI.
However, the team that's currently negotiating has made it pretty clear that they're mostly interested in the IP in order to make COH2, so I doubt there would be many resources devoted to the original beyond keeping it running. Out with the old, in with the new and all that. NCSoft would be proud.
I am correct in assuming that those .bin files are compiled versions from a designer tool? For example, powerset designer v3.7 compiles the new dung powerset into the powercat.bin, powerset.bin, and powers.bin files. Or is it worse than that?
It's not a designer tool, the game client itself loads the data from flat text files and persists them in bin format for production release. All of the data appears to be generated that way. I can even tell you what the filenames are, since they are embedded in the header of the .bin file along with a timestamp, so that it can tell if the bin is out of date and needs to be rebuilt.
The release client doesn't have that enabled (presumably only debug / developer builds did), but the code still exists as the same parser is used for loading things like costume files and architect missions. I've tapped into it before with a debugger and it's perfectly capable of loading and saving both text and bin versions.
Unless by "designer tools" they're talking about the Excel sheets that were used to create the text files. One of these leaked in the early days -- around Issue 6 or so -- but honestly you'd probably be better off working with the text versions than trying to wrangle that mess.
Quote from: Codewalker on July 23, 2014, 07:49:00 PM
It's not a designer tool, the game client itself loads the data from flat text files and persists them in bin format for production release. All of the data appears to be generated that way. I can even tell you what the filenames are, since they are embedded in the header of the .bin file along with a timestamp, so that it can tell if the bin is out of date and needs to be rebuilt.
The release client doesn't have that enabled (presumably only debug / developer builds did), but the code still exists as the same parser is used for loading things like costume files and architect missions. I've tapped into it before with a debugger and it's perfectly capable of loading and saving both text and bin versions.
Unless by "designer tools" they're talking about the Excel sheets that were used to create the text files. One of these leaked in the early days -- around Issue 6 or so -- but honestly you'd probably be better off working with the text versions than trying to wrangle that mess.
Oh I am going to let people who know what the hell they are doing mess with all that. From my point of view this is like looking at a running car and trying to deduce how things under the hood work all the while being the guy who knows the guy who is a mechanic. Pretty sure it's internal combustion, probably fuel injection but number of valves and all that stuff? Meh. No idea.
I think it's fascinating when we do get a peek by someone who knows what's what, but I know my limitations. I love this stuff but my programming and system days are long past. I wrote some coding for an AS400 a long time ago and some basic and pascal for some Apple ]['s but that's it. But I always appreciate when someone explains it who knows it, so thanks! Also for Icon.
Quote from: Codewalker on July 23, 2014, 07:33:39 PM
There's a lot of stuff hardcoded, but it's not that bad. You have to create new powercat.bin, powerset.bin, and powers.bin files as well as translations for the text, but it will load new sets without having to touch the UI.
However, the team that's currently negotiating has made it pretty clear that they're mostly interested in the IP in order to make COH2, so I doubt there would be many resources devoted to the original beyond keeping it running. Out with the old, in with the new and all that. NCSoft would be proud.
Well if it's not
that bad and the community wants it, I imagine a new team could be persuaded to throw out new sets every now and then while working on CoH2. Especially if the powersets I mentioned earlier (Bio Armor, Rad Armor, Rad Melee, Savage Melee, Wind Control) already have some work done on them. I know Bio was pretty much done at closure. I'd assume the other powers were at various stages of completion beyond 'drawing board', so maybe they could be finished fairly soon-ish. Or again, maybe I'm just naively wishing.
If you could toss in 3, 4, 5 sets over the course of a year, that would at least give players something new to mess with and generate some capital while they wait for CoH2 (the end goal of a new dev team).
Quote from: TheDevilYouKnow on July 23, 2014, 06:45:32 PM
I view all this, including everything I post, as harmless and likely, pointless speculation.
But to me trying to figure out how you design powersets in game that you only have a vague understanding of how it works is like building castles in your imagination. It's fine as long as you don't try and move in.
Uh... so I'm premature in already having ordered curtains and a matching area rug?? :gonk:
Quote from: blacksly on July 23, 2014, 09:07:08 PM
Uh... so I'm premature in already having ordered curtains and a matching area rug?? :gonk:
Yeah, but I hear the view is awesome!
Quote from: TheDevilYouKnow on July 23, 2014, 06:45:32 PM
I view all this, including everything I post, as harmless and likely, pointless speculation.
We simply do not know enough about how things worked when the game was running (mids not withstanding since they got numbers from the devs, the devs didn't use it for designing powers) and we do not know the capabilities or desires of the new teams. We don't what resources they are likely to have or what tools they will have to build or any kind of timeline.
Unless you are a former Dev, Codewalker, Guy Perfect, Arcanaville or a member of the reverse engineering team, you are just guessing like the rest of us.
But let's say you are a coder who worked on another MMO. Since CoH ran on a ten year old batch of code, heavily modified by many different coders and that no other game out there, including other Cryptic games is running on, it's unlikely to give you other insight into how this game worked or can work.
The only way it can cause a problem is if people take what's here as gospel or plan for going forward. But to me trying to figure out how you design powersets in game that you only have a vague understanding of how it works is like building castles in your imagination. It's fine as long as you don't try and move in.
They did use the numbers for designing power sets later in COH history. I wish I remembered the formula but they had some guide lines by damage, recharge and activation (old power sets from the early day broke that but they eventually started having a basline). That is why when the rumor of spines change to lunge and barb swipe rumors came out I nailed the numbers because they stuck to their formula. Alot of that kind of came about when Posi took over so anything before a certain period did not adhere to those rules why some sets where all over the place.
Cough cough Barbswipe
Actually in PvE activation time didn't factor into how strong a power was at all, at least for far as formula was concerned. Damage, recharge, and endurance had a formula for computing them, though.
I think I have that, and the AoE endurance cost formula, in a spreadsheet somewhere, as for the lulz I ended up making my own Kheldian-esque AT (https://web.archive.org/web/20120911150713/http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=276795) from scratch, with actual numbers.
I learned them from Arcana.
Recharge is (Damage Scale - .36)/.16, so 4 at DS 1.
Endurance is 5.2 per damage scale, so 5.2 at DS 1.
A 5 damage scale attack would take 29 seconds to recharge and cost 26 endurance.
How much damage 1 DS equals depends on your AT and level. For a blaster's ranged attack 1 DS is 62.56 at level 50 or 9.5 for a level 1 brute's melee.
The AoE formula is a lot harder to decipher from looking at it.
I think activation is more a factor for balancing than strength, as is animation time and redraw.
The lower those are the faster you can spam them in combat. My favorite blast set, dual pistols, was getting shorter animation times in I24. It was already a fine set in my view and this would only have helped.
It was these little tweaks in balancing that the Devs did that really showed a global view. They were willing to try and balance all powers and sets on a global basis and risk player rage if need be. That is a delicate act of juggling that I don't think can be done easily by players or modders. It's easy to make a broken set but damn hard to make one that doesn't unbalance the game when it becomes FOTM.