New efforts!

[Biz]

A screenshot that looks fairly simplistic from the poly count and engine tech side, and looks good almost entirely due to detailed texture and normal map work.

Give me those textures and I'll make you a scene in the COH engine that looks almost identical.

Hope you've got plenty of video RAM.

You always ruin ignorant people's fun

[Myrmydon]

A screenshot that looks fairly simplistic from the poly count and engine tech side, and looks good almost entirely due to detailed texture and normal map work.

Give me those textures and I'll make you a scene in the COH engine that looks almost identical.

Hope you've got plenty of video RAM.

Maybe they should add you to the Dev team.

[HEATSTROKE]

Maybe they should add you to the Dev team.

whose to say he isnt already ?? hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

[Myrmydon]

whose to say he isnt already ?? hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Wolf did say that some of them are in here.

[AlienOne]

A screenshot that looks fairly simplistic from the poly count and engine tech side, and looks good almost entirely due to detailed texture and normal map work.

Give me those textures and I'll make you a scene in the COH engine that looks almost identical.

Hope you've got plenty of video RAM.

You're on. Those textures are available right now, and I could talk to someone with access to them.

Seriously though, the Unreal engines have never required high system requirements because of the fact that the textures are baked in (I seem to remember mentioning this earlier).

These were the system requirements for Unreal Tournament III (circa 2007):

CPU:   2.0+ GHZ Single Core Processor
CPU Speed:   2 GHz
RAM:   512 MB
OS:   Windows XP/Vista
Video Card:   NVIDIA 6200+ or ATI Radeon 9600+ Video Card
DirectX version:   9.0c
Sound Card:   Yes
Free Disk Space:   8 GB

...and those textures were way better than CoH's ultra mode--and the "recommended" video card requirements were 256MB video RAM.

Unreal Engine 4's system requirements for video RAM is 1GB. I've got 3GB, so I should be good, if you'd really want to pull this off... ;)

Makes me wish I had actually thoroughly studied that 1,000 page "Mastering Unreal Technology: The Art of Level Design" book when I bought it instead of skimming through it and resigning myself to designing simple deathmatch levels back in 2004... I'd probably have a much better job than I have now. :P

[Remaugen]

Dammit mods! Give us a LIKE button!!

I know it's a late reply but I have wished for this as well!

Unless they completely change the mechanics it can't feel like DCUO. DCUO is arcadey combo and close to twitch gaming. CoH is not.

But let me ask this, did Ultra mode destroy the feel of the game? Not for me and I suspect many others.

But it's confusing to me to advocate that dumping the lore and moving everything to a new city DOESN'T destroy the feel of the game, but porting to a new graphics system DOES.

In my perfect CoH World here's what we would see:

1. CoH brought back to issue 24 and left running

2. CoH ported to a new engine with the old content and an update for fixes.

3. New content developed for the new engine. New zones, new powersets, new arcs, new possibilities built on the core of the game we all loved.

It wouldn't include real world cities for the exact same reason that you don't see it in any other superhero game, possible legal entanglements. Some cities and states trademark images and symbols and will C&D you if you don't pay use fees. Secret World which does use real world cities restricts the area and also uses few if any recognizable landmarks. Same reason that you never see a church anywhere in CoH and damn few clergy. No reason to bring up religion in a superhero game. Why alienate even a part of your userbase when you don't have to?

I loved Ultra Mode, but my PC and slow connection made it rough at higher settings and the trials were completely impossible.

I strongly agree with this vision as well, but the geek in me would love to see some handshaking/code sharing between the CoH team and the CoT team. I realize that it is probably unlikely to happen, and maybe unrealistic to even ask for, but the idea of character portability between the two games makes my geek gland tingle. Being able to travel between "Alternate Universes" for tasks forces, missions or badges, or costume parts. . .

Wow! I would even pay in bacon ingots for this!


Unlike FFM, I can't wait till 1 Sept to ask:

Are we there yet?  ;D

[gypsyav]

I completely agree. A few tweaks could happen, like The Secret World's ability to constantly move during combat

A resounding NO!!!!! to this. I don't have the reflexes needed to move constantly during combat and hate that dynamic.

[AlienOne]

A resounding NO!!!!! to this. I don't have the reflexes needed to move constantly during combat and hate that dynamic.

COMPLETELY agreed. This is the one dynamic of gameplay that CoH had that was unique from other MMOs... If you want the move while you fight/dodge dynamic, you have literally just about every other MMO out there to choose from... CoH had its own dynamic, and that fighting dynamic is (I believe) one of the core parts of CoH gameplay.

Take that away, and you literally take away part of the soul of the game.

[hejtmane]

I think anyone that'd complain about this minor annoyance being removed is the same kind of person that'd complain about the train lines being moved together or travel powers being available at level 6 or fitness being made inherent.

They're masochists, and their love of pain shouldn't be inflicted on everyone else.

There where people that complained when they added the icons for vendors on your map. Back in the olden days I2 and I3 that was not the case you had to figure out where they where and just memorize the location. It got to the point I only picked two origins because hey it was easier then trying to figure out where the rest of them where depending on level. I knew where every Mutant and Magic where at one point. That or  a map pack or the internet site with the maps or printed out copies of the map and location.

Some people like headaches I am all for in depth game play I do not want to play memory match cards every freakin time I log on and need something

[hejtmane]

minor correction travel powers were available at l4 :), I loved that they made fitness inherent, because it caused my characters to feel different and powerful, without worrying about end. cost for awhile.

They changed it to 6 at one point use to be 14

[Mistress Urd]

A resounding NO!!!!! to this. I don't have the reflexes needed to move constantly during combat and hate that dynamic.

There was a little bit of "super Mario" in CoH but at one point some friends of mine pulled me into DDO that had a very high super Mario content, so several players had issues falling to their death or unable to deal with any reflex trap bypass. Frankly, I'm happy CoH doesn't have much super Mario in it, I had no problems with it in DDO, but I sometimes had to wait an hour or more for people to jump over 5 stones and not fall into lava.  :P It became faster to just grab their resurrection stone and carry them to the other side.

[Des_Tructive]

There was a little bit of "super Mario" in CoH but at one point some friends of mine pulled me into DDO that had a very high super Mario content, so several players had issues falling to their death or unable to deal with any reflex trap bypass. Frankly, I'm happy CoH doesn't have much super Mario in it, I had no problems with it in DDO, but I sometimes had to wait an hour or more for people to jump over 5 stones and not fall into lava.  :P It became faster to just grab their resurrection stone and carry them to the other side.

Oh my... TSW actually has a few missions where you have to precision jump. Sadly, no hand/eye aptitude in the world can help solve these when you're suffering from latency issues. I ended up writing a script for the missus and myself to solve the issue with minimum hassle. Big resounding "NOOOOO" to seeing that in any incarnation of CoX.

Speaking of scripts, though: I would love to see CoX become more mod-friendly. The amount of great things you can do in TSW with mods is awesome.

[Serpine]

There where people that complained when they added the icons for vendors on your map.

Vendors with icons didn't bother me, but I do admit I disliked that the ability to edit your costumes at trainers was added. I liked the feel of going to an actual building to get your look (not to mention physical proportions, or even gender) tinkered with.

[Luna Eclypse]

COMPLETELY agreed. This is the one dynamic of gameplay that CoH had that was unique from other MMOs... If you want the move while you fight/dodge dynamic, you have literally just about every other MMO out there to choose from... CoH had its own dynamic, and that fighting dynamic is (I believe) one of the core parts of CoH gameplay.

Take that away, and you literally take away part of the soul of the game.

I DITTO THIS! Move and dodge dynamics drive me up the wall, it's one of the reasons I hate CO's combat so much. Let's make sure this issue stays at the top of our list of concerns if the new devs get the game going again and feel like they need to change the basic fundamentals for whatever reason.

[Aggelakis]

minor correction travel powers were available at l4 :), I loved that they made fitness inherent, because it caused my characters to feel different and powerful, without worrying about end. cost for awhile.

They changed it to 6 at one point use to be 14

AP said l4 - as in L4. They were opened up at level 4 with CoH Freedom, not L6.

[Neutrio]

Sounds like UE4 is not only quite robust, it is quite popular.


Given this popularity, it occurred to me that UE could (perhaps already has) become a popular target for hacking, vulnerability exploit, etc.


NOTE:  I am not saying that UE is vulnerable or that devs shouldn't use it - i.e. I am not anti-UE or crying doom. :)


I couldn't find anything (not that my search-fu is that good) to indicate UE has been hacked or had a history of vulnerability.  I found some threads that mentioned that a proper server doesn't trust the client to arbitrate the outcome of what it claims it did, it should just report what it did to the server & the server determines if what the client said it did was indeed what it truly did.


As I understand it, the CoH engine was a home-grown engine that Cryptic made.  It appears to me that the CoH engine wasn't distributed & was used for other Cryptic products (perhaps not many of those either).  So that, to me, kept it from being as "big a target" for those unsavory types to look at subverting it.  The CoH engine was impressive to me & certainly got the job done quite well for my needs despite being a "spaghetti code with black boxes" (or were those meatballs?).


Anyway, I was just curious how UE (or any other MMO/game engine) stacked up against other popular products like Windows, Java, Flash, etc.

[AlienOne]

Anyway, I was just curious how UE (or any other MMO/game engine) stacked up against other popular products like Windows, Java, Flash, etc.

Good question... I guess the best place we have to look for reference is DC Universe online, since it is a superhero MMO created in the Unreal engine.... Has anyone heard of any major hacking going on in that game?

I know Sony itself was hacked for account information a year or two ago, but I do not think that was in any way related to the Unreal engine in any way--I believe it was a direct attack on Sony's account servers.

Anyone have any in-depth knowledge on this? Codewalker?

[hejtmane]

AP said l4 - as in L4. They were opened up at level 4 with CoH Freedom, not L6.

:o looked like 14  stand corrected since i quit taking travel powers with Ninja run I almost forgot we had any

[Angel Phoenix77]

AP said l4 - as in L4. They were opened up at level 4 with CoH Freedom, not L6.

sorry that was a lowercase l :) ill correct my l into a L

[Thirty-Seven]

The amount of great things you can do in TSW with mods is awesome.

I couldn't disagree more.

I feel like mods can actually destroy a game.  There were all types of timers and damage calculators, and other plug-ins in TSW that became expected pieces of kit for serious folks.  I forget what the end-of-arc missions were called.  But they were similar in mechanics to CoH Trials in which the principal action takes place on a single map, and ends with a boss confrontation that often has do-the-wrong-thing-and-insta-die mechanics.  These could be accessed by certain mods, and it allowed folks to get ready for them and have certain powers queued up ahead of time allowing people an insurmountable advantage over folks who didn't have them.  As such, the forum community began to talk as though everyone used these.  Personally, I felt they were cheating and refused.

They weren't cheating... because you weren't circumventing the game, but they seemed to defeat the spirit of those combat events.  They were MEANT to be difficult and force you to pay attention to the visual cues and move and attack accordingly.  I never actually played the game long enough to get beyond beating the second or third one of these "Trials" but some of the endgame ones were pretty punishing.

TL, DR:  Mods that alter the visual aesthetics of a game are cool, ones that give users a drastic advantage in game-play over others is not, IMO.  So, in CoH terms, the VidiotMap mod was awesome and I approved of it because all it did was cut out the middle man of using the Wiki to find all of the completely out-of-the way badges that you needed for the various accolades.  However, if there were a mod that would tell you where a green patch would appear in the Keyes iTrial before it appeared, well... I'd call foul (and I hated getting that badge... a lot).