And the mask comes off.

[Cailyn Alaynn]

You know what I always felt CoH was missing in the zones? Ambience!  It never really FELT like a real city... Starting from the looks and working all the way down to dogs barking, traffic jams, kids playing in parks, WEATHER!!!

Now I know people would complain if you remodelled places so they actually looked more like a real city (including more realistic roads and hills etc), but it'd sure help the ambience!

Imagine playing CoH in a zone that looked something like those in such games as Watch_Dogs or GTA V...

A friend and I have been playing through Watch_Dogs recently, and inFamous:Second Son not long ago... and I couldn't help but think "Imagine Paragon City looking this...Real."
Something I want to try and achieve in Revival, as best I can.
and I *may* have certain...plans in regards to weather.

[MWRuger]

Also keeping in mind the fact that a lot of objects from CoH have aged very poorly. My intent is to raise the bar for CoH's graphic fidelity. So a lot of asset's and especially textures have to be re-created from scratch, or quite heavily modified from the original.
Because of the fairly recent Revamp of the zone, Atlas Park has a benefit that most everything in the zone is only a couple years old. So not as much work needs to be done there. Praetoria will also share that silver lining.

As for the time consumption from the coding aspect... This is a huge reason why the agreement is in place between Revival and MWM to build off of City of Titan's code base. So...say...Instead of having to build a character system from the ground up, we'll instead be modifying one to fit Revival's needs. Seems to make more sense than having 2 teams building near identical code from scratch.

It is quite a large job, which is why I'm hoping to recruit some hopefully talented people to work on it with me. Don't expect it to be done quick, or to be in beta next month just because "It's just coh".

Also, I should have FloatingFatMan be my PR whenever I want people to think my work is REALLY hard.

Irish Girl, I repeat my offer to go back through this thread and collect up the folk that are offering to help and send you a list of them. I'll contact them and collect emails for you as well, if you wish. Then you can merge them with the ones who contacted you directly.

Even if you don't want me as a designer, I'm a whiz at really boring stuff like list management, drupal, and other officy stuff.

[Cailyn Alaynn]

[Cailyn Alaynn]

Speaking of stuff that I felt was missing freeways outside of Skyway. Just seems odd. Not saying put in freeway in other zones because I guess Skyway Freeway is what gives Skyway it's identity, but just seems off xD

I wondered about that myself... Skyway always just kind of felt like there were freeways just for the sake of having freeways. Very, very odd.
A couple weeks ago, I briefly considered nuking Skyway City from orbit and just making up some story as to why it didn't exist anymore. lol.

[MWRuger]

I wondered about that myself... Skyway always just kind of felt like there were freeways just for the sake of having freeways. Very, very odd.
A couple weeks ago, I briefly considered nuking Skyway City from orbit and just making up some story as to why it didn't exist anymore. lol.

Oh, don't do that! Let's fix it instead. I always that that Skyway should be a zone with two layers. One bright, shiny and in the sky (new buildings, hi-tech look) and another below the freeways (derelict buildings, sewer entrances almost maze like)


I would keep it as is to start and then revamp it after everything is working.

[Cailyn Alaynn]

Oh, don't do that! Let's fix it instead. I always that that Skyway should be a zone with two layers. One bright, shiny and in the sky (new buildings, hi-tech look) and another below the freeways (derelict buildings, sewer entrances almost maze like)
I would keep it as is to start and then revamp it after everything is working.

That's not a half bad idea, truth be told. But It'll be awhile before zones get any major re-vamping.

[Cailyn Alaynn]

Irish Girl, I repeat my offer to go back through this thread and collect up the folk that are offering to help and send you a list of them. I'll contact them and collect emails for you as well, if you wish. Then you can merge them with the ones who contacted you directly.

Even if you don't want me as a designer, I'm a whiz at really boring stuff like list management, drupal, and other officy stuff.

Repeat? Oh dear, did I miss a first offer? If so, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to... D:
Thanks for the offer, I'll pass for the moment. I want to set up something a little more organized over on the APR forums after the move.

[MWRuger]

No worries. Anything that will help, you need only ask.

It might not be fair, but a many people are pinning a lot of hope on your efforts. I just don't want that to become a crushing responsibility.

[MM3squints]

Oh, don't do that! Let's fix it instead. I always that that Skyway should be a zone with two layers. One bright, shiny and in the sky (new buildings, hi-tech look) and another below the freeways (derelict buildings, sewer entrances almost maze like)


I would keep it as is to start and then revamp it after everything is working.

This makes sense. There are lots of example of this that you can take inspiration from. FF7 Has Midgar where this is demonstrated



Another example would be from Deus Ex Human Revolution

[AlienOne]

Repeat? Oh dear, did I miss a first offer? If so, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to... D:
Thanks for the offer, I'll pass for the moment. I want to set up something a little more organized over on the APR forums after the move.

Speaking of which... I created a forum account over there, but I can't seem to post. Every time I click post, nothing happens except the post button changing to a "saving post" message, but the post never appears.

Also, that Deus Ex pic is AMAZING.




EDIT:
Nevermind, seems fixed today. I was trying to post yesterday, and it wasn't working. I was just able to post a couple minutes ago.

[Burnt Toast]

I miss base editing Base editing was almost like a whole game in and of itself to me. I taught a lot of people base editing and was paid by several SGs to do their bases for them. While it had it's limitations...those limits pushed me harder to find a way around them. The clipping issue was my biggest beef, but am proud to say I found ways around that and no base I ever did for pay or my own base had clipping/flicker issues. Sigh... memories.... hopefully when CoHi23 comes back I can get back to playing...and building

[Cailyn Alaynn]

EDIT:
Nevermind, seems fixed today. I was trying to post yesterday, and it wasn't working. I was just able to post a couple minutes ago.

Yeah, I had Neo (who runs the website) fix it yesterday. People should be able to make accounts and post normally.

[Relitner]

I kinda get the impression that some folks think CoH1.5 won't be too difficult to do, when in fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Whilst it IS in effect, just copying the existing game, it STILL has to be written from scratch! All the assets must be re-created (zone maps, mission maps, objects, textures, animations), the UI written, the power mechanisms design, the mission system done, the chat system, enhancements, inventions, IO's, -everything-.  The only slightly easier thing it's got going for it is that we know the numbers for the powersets.

It's every bit as big a job as the successor projects, and will be MUCH more prone to criticism as it's meant to be replicating CoH.

It's not impossible, but it's absolutely NOT an easy job, by any shake of the imagination. Don't expecting it to launch with Windows 9 (which is the initial impression I got from Nate's post, and I'm sure others thought that too).

Irish_Girl has a HUGE job here, and I wish her all the best for it, but it's not gonna be quick.

I'd aluded to this early on in the thread, that it requires man-years of effort and many, many simoleons for an established software shops to stand up an MMO of this magnitude. I do believe that CoX 1.5 is absolutely doable on a volunteer basis, but I also believe it won't happen any time in the short-term.

I applaud both Irish_Girl and Nate for their individual efforts on these projects. It takes a special kind of person to shoulder that kind of work on his/her own time, presumably in addition to commitments from gainful employment they may already have.

[downix]

Personally, I think the original CoH base system is one thing you should NOT try to replicate. It was ugly as sin and made it a right chore to get anything decent looking.

You can do better, loads better. :p  Personally.. I kinda like how they do it in DCUO.  Just a collection of big empty rooms you can decorate how you like. Just don't gate the furnishings behind drops and let the users buy additional rooms to add on to it (including multiple levels).

This is much along the lines CoT is planning.

[Without_Pause]

As far as the rest goes...from what I understand Valiance Online, and Heroes and Villains have both turned down the offers of inclusion into the CoH-verse.
That would just leave Revival, City of Titans, and Legacy City of Heroes under the banner.

I'm not sure how VO's copy/paste of CoH is going to fly if they aren't part of the deal.

[downix]

Do you have a rough(very rough) estimate for how long it should be for a deal decision? ie weeks, months, ets or will everyone refreshing this conversation cause tony to implode from bandwith costs? 

It could take months, honestly. Until the deal is set it is slow going.

[bugzee]

I remember looking at the COH pigg files a while back and seeing that the maps and pretty much most of the content in the game were in them and not the executable. So if this proposed deal does materialize, we still may be able to add new content and maps to the game. I would like to hear from some others who have done more exploring of the .piggs. None of us have seen the server side of things however. Have you explored the COH files? Do you think adding *some* content is at least possible?

[edit] Went back a few pages and saw that others noted the same ideas. Good to see that the subject came up!

[Raven]

That was probably Paragon's reasoning too, and thus it got forgotten about!

Dot the i's and cross the t's, dear! :p

True on the city feel. I always wanted to race the cars running beside them or jump on the roof and car surf down the street. 

[MWRuger]

This makes sense. There are lots of example of this that you can take inspiration from. FF7 Has Midgar where this is demonstrated



Another example would be from Deus Ex Human Revolution

I like this! I would probably go less futuristic but that's the basic idea for sure.

[AlienOne]

I'm not sure how VO's copy/paste of CoH is going to fly if they aren't part of the deal.

I've played one of the alpha builds of VO, and I wouldn't call it a copy/paste at ALL. There are similarities (it's about heroes and it's based in a city), but copy/paste would involve using same names, storylines, powersets, locations, designs, etc.... They have utilized NONE of that.

That's essentially like calling DC Universe Online a copy/paste of City of Heroes just because it's a heroes game. You can be a spritual successor superhero game that plays similarly without being a copy/paste.