And the mask comes off.

[Ohioknight]

Remember, the engine is different from the game. The engine is simply what renders and runs the game. the rules and art and everything, are IP.

[Ironwolf]

There is as far as we know no actual incompatibility discovered yet. The issue is that when there is one - because that will eventually happen, if not with plain Win 9 then with Win 9 SP 1 (or whatever SP-equivalent terminology is used) or whatever comes after that - there won't be any way to patch the game and fix it.

Another thing is how long will it take to get people to move to Win 9?

I know many folks still use WinXp and Windows 7. Developers want to future proof their product - users tend to hold on to the old until it won't do what they want it to.

The good part of this is the old game if this is simply a snapshot of the last server backup would be quick to get running. To get the accounting side done would take longer than to get the game up I would imagine.

[epawtows]

I am curious. Would we have the ability to edit and add content to the CoH 1.5 version?

While I believe this has been answered by others already, since the question was directed at me:

Yes, content could be added to the CoH 1.5 version (that would be the version that runs in Unreal4, as opposed to CoH 1.0, the legacy CoH engine). 

[Potajito]

God this makes me so happy. Now let us give you our money!

[Harpospoke]

So for those asking what is APR?   

APR stands for Atlas Park Revival.  What is Atlas Park Revival? 

Atlas Park Revival is Irish_Girl's project to take the existing geometries...the meshes as it were of the existing environment of City of Heroes and recreate them using Unreal Engine.  To what end?  To create the environment for an updated City of Heroes game with a newer game engine.  So while the Issue23 build of City of Heroes will not be able to be updated at all due to lack of the original source code.  APR will be using a license from the COT (City of Titans) build, which uses Unreal Engine 4, to make the next generation of City of Heroes.  Same COH IP, similar COH game play, updated graphics and capabilities.  What is being dubbed City of Heroes 1.5.  This version will be able to be updated with new content, power sets, story arcs etc.

"Similar game play" sounds more vague than what Irish Girl posted yesterday.

[Harpospoke]

I suppose I could be convinced to bring some APR-related enlightenment to the masses.
Let's see here... Zone wise...

Atlas Park - The zone with the most work into it, by far. Perhaps 70% finished. All the streets are laid out, many of the buildings are in place, Trees are even starting to be put down in places.
Steel Canyon - 20-30% completed
Galaxy City - 20-30% completed
Independence Port - 10% completed
Founders Falls - 20-30% completed
Talos Island 10-20%
Perez Park - 10%
"The Hollows" - 10%
Sirens Call - 5%
Pocket D - 50%
and of course, the zone we unveiled our move to Unreal Engine 4 with...
Ouroboros - 95%

Technically, I can walk around any of the zones atm. I'm nothing but a Rikti Drone, and I've got no powers or anything.
Since we're going to be using a version of the City of Titans UE4 build, more work on character creation and powers and what have you is dependent on their work schedule. Not that APR is lacking in work in the mean time!

The geometries from the meshes are currently mostly pulled from Legacy CoH, but rarely are they un-modified. Many meshes have simply had to be re-built from scratch for one reason or another.
Don't even get me started on textures. -shakes head- 64x64 textures for the sides of buildings might have cut it in 2004.

I'm sure I'm forgetting stuff...I really should write all this down. heh

I would be willing to watch a video of you walking around in those zones.  Not boring at all to me. 

I see a lot of possibilities and it is great that the team is thinking out of the box.

For those worried about the Original CoH shutting down - this opens the possibility that you may be able to fund your own server. If you have funds once the game is in escrow and you can load that snapshot onto a server - nothing would stop you from leasing your own copy and hosting a server.

That's very cool....this would be a reason to think the game is never going away again.

I am still hopeful that somehow character data can be rescued. One of my biggest concerns if character data is not available are that many veterans will not return to the game. I was thinking about this last night and im coming from my own personal view and I know the shared views of others.. Its twelve years later since the launch of City of Heroes. I am not the person I was then. I am married now.. with a family.. different responsibilities that require more time. I dont have the time to sit and play hours and hours and hours on end like I did previously. And in all honesty I dont want to play the same content over and over and over AGAIN that I already have. If I had to start over and remake every character and earn and purchase all those enhancements all over again I just dont know if I would want to do that. Would I remake everyone.. no.. but they are some core character that I would and even those are 25-30 plus characters..

I just ran into this issue this morning.  I used to play with a married couple and we hung out on Skype while we played.   They, like me, played almost exclusively with lvl 50 characters.   We ran the various TF's together mostly.   The guy was way more into tricking out his characters with purples than I was.   We used to get into discussions about the merits of frankenslotting vs all purple sets.   He always went with purple sets no matter what.   Anyway...

I kept him up to date on all this and sent him a message last night with what we just heard.   He just came out and said he wouldn't come back without his characters.  (He had a LOT more 50s than I did so would be losing much more)  That's two accounts lost right there.   

I'll be coming back of course.  I used to run two accounts because I liked to dual-box and team different characters together for fun.   I'll probably run two accounts again...can't be sure though.  The incentive for that won't be there at the beginning with a "fresh start".   A lot will depend on how quick I can get a couple of my old favorites back to 50 in playing shape again.   A little worried about my two Tankers I tended to play a couple of times a month.   I was a good enough Tanker for radio mishes and stuff, but wouldn't dare try to tank a TF.   Something tells me my Tankers won't be coming back.

[Marshman]

Well, I wasn't planning on staying solo! Especially since I code one BUGGY Hello World.

Hahaha!!  That line is extremely funny to programmers or former programmers over 40.  LOL.

[FloatingFatMan]

I kept him up to date on all this and sent him a message last night with what we just heard.   He just came out and said he wouldn't come back without his characters.  (He had a LOT more 50s than I did so would be losing much more)  That's two accounts lost right there.   

A bit of a short sighted view, really. Sure, he's lost his stuff, BUT, right now all his stuff is gone anyway. In fact, we might ALL just consider all of that stuff deleted and gone for ever.  I don't see that as a reason not to go back to the game though.. After all, it wasn't the stuff we loved, it was the game and the community, wasn't it?

If love of the stuff was more important than the love of the game, then I guess he never really loved the game anyway.

[hejtmane]

"Similar game play" sounds more vague than what Irish Girl posted yesterday.

There is a reason for the vague they have to get a team together (if NCSoft makes the sale) start having discussion with who ever the lead is on vision and what directions they want to take the storyline and game play. Also they have to convert from one engine to another so some things may not translate the same for what ever reason.

Heck UO is still running and it came out in 1997 and the game play changed over the years and had to change to keep working in the new OS not everything but parts of it had to change to keep the game running.

The reality is technology changes and you either change with it or it goes away

[Teikiatsu]

I kept him up to date on all this and sent him a message last night with what we just heard.   He just came out and said he wouldn't come back without his characters.  (He had a LOT more 50s than I did so would be losing much more)  That's two accounts lost right there.   

Time will tell.  After putting time and effort into something it's understandable that his immediate reaction is to wall up and not want to return. After a few days or weeks he may soften up and be willing to think about starting over.  What did he say about CoH2?

[FloatingFatMan]

"Similar game play" sounds more vague than what Irish Girl posted yesterday.

Even if all the game mechanics are copied exactly in CoH1.5 (which is the intent), it will STILL only play "similarly".

The only way you'll get identical gameplay, is in the original game, and even THAT has changed over the years. Really, read the box.  You'll find similar words to "Gameplay experience may change over time" printed on there.

[DragonLord]

I'm just like most of you very excited with the news from yesterday , I've watching these forums since Hail Mary started, been following it wherever and whenever I could checking back every so often for news of coh return. I would love to get the whole game back as a whole, but even if we don't they are going to get my full support . I came in to coh as one of the first beta tester group of people they sent emails too ,  the first hour I played it I was hooked and there I stayed till the end. I met a lot of great people over the years on coh , we played on just about every server because we filled up all of our slots before they gave of the chance to buy more slots, that added to the obsession for building more toons to play. We began on Justice as The Freedom Force, and then we branched out to the other servers under Alt-Holic Anonymous. I can't wait till the day that we get the word to login.

[Shard]

I am curious. Would we have the ability to edit and add content to the CoH 1.5 version?

That's very much up in the air as it's know parts of the toolset just aren't there anymore and what is is informationally incomplete.

*edit* Yay Reading comprehension.  More coffee before posts. That answer applies to CoHi23, not the 1.5/UE4 Adaptation.

[Von Krieger]

I know many folks still use WinXp and Windows 7. Developers want to future proof their product - users tend to hold on to the old until it won't do what they want it to.

I went kicking and screaming and had to be dragged from Windows XP by the near total lack of support/drivers for XP64.

So when I got a new PC, I went with Windows 7. I then proceeded to bludgeon it with a half a dozen programs so that the bloody thing looked and worked like Windows XP.

Like the changed Start > All Programs functionality, screw the new arrangement, I'm working off the better part of two decades worth of muscle memory. That was the first thing I changed.

[FloatingFatMan]

So when I got a new PC, I went with Windows 7. I then proceeded to bludgeon it with a half a dozen programs so that the bloody thing looked and worked like Windows XP.

What a horrible thing to do to Windows 7! The poor thing! You mutilated it!

[hejtmane]

I went kicking and screaming and had to be dragged from Windows XP by the near total lack of support/drivers for XP64.

So when I got a new PC, I went with Windows 7. I then proceeded to bludgeon it with a half a dozen programs so that the bloody thing looked and worked like Windows XP.

Like the changed Start > All Programs functionality, screw the new arrangement, I'm working off the better part of two decades worth of muscle memory. That was the first thing I changed.

I left as is when I upgraded to win7 but I do Infrastructure support so I have to keep up with the changes my main WS at work for my job is a server OS I been using 2008r2 for about 3 years now as my workstation. I have to deal with anything from 2012r2 to 2003 so my muscle memory is screwed having to hop between all the differences amazing you will start typing a command and you are like crap that does not work in that OS and have to remember what the old one is 

[Harpospoke]

A bit of a short sighted view, really. Sure, he's lost his stuff, BUT, right now all his stuff is gone anyway. In fact, we might ALL just consider all of that stuff deleted and gone for ever.  I don't see that as a reason not to go back to the game though.. After all, it wasn't the stuff we loved, it was the game and the community, wasn't it?

If love of the stuff was more important than the love of the game, then I guess he never really loved the game anyway.

He's a nice guy.  No real reason to insult him.   The definition of "the game" is not the same for everyone.   Some think of it as just the blank state of the game, others see it as what they personally built it to be.

He loved the game a lot.   He and his wife are just playing another game now that they have built into a state where they enjoy it very much (they want me to join them but other games don't interest me frankly).   

Time will tell.  After putting time and effort into something it's understandable that his immediate reaction is to wall up and not want to return. After a few days or weeks he may soften up and be willing to think about starting over.  What did he say about CoH2?

That may indeed be the case.   He didn't comment about CoH2 (or even CoH 1.5).   I plan to keep in contact with them since we played together so much.

Even if all the game mechanics are copied exactly in CoH1.5 (which is the intent), it will STILL only play "similarly".

The only way you'll get identical gameplay, is in the original game, and even THAT has changed over the years. Really, read the box.  You'll find similar words to "Gameplay experience may change over time" printed on there.

That's true and of course the reason some people stop playing games.

Either it will feel like CoH or it won't.   I plan to find out.   Knowing they are going for the same feel is important to me.

I was commenting that "similar game play" sounds more like what CoT is going for.   That's different than what Irish Girl said:

There's a touch of misunderstanding going around, that moving to Unreal means that something about the gameplay will change. That's simply not true.
Is it likely that adjustments to certain things will be made during Beta? Yeah, just like during CoH. The devs would test, and adjust.

That sounds like the goal is much more than "similar".

[AlienOne]

A bit of a short sighted view, really. Sure, he's lost his stuff, BUT, right now all his stuff is gone anyway. In fact, we might ALL just consider all of that stuff deleted and gone for ever.  I don't see that as a reason not to go back to the game though.. After all, it wasn't the stuff we loved, it was the game and the community, wasn't it?

If love of the stuff was more important than the love of the game, then I guess he never really loved the game anyway.

I feel where they're coming from. I'll still play, but I won't be able to get what I had back. I'm ok with this, but others aren't. And that's ok too.

He's essentially saying that when his characters died, the game died with them. I'm not so sure that accusing him of "never loving the game" is in order though, considering how much time he had put into it. Perhaps the love of the game and the love and care he put into his characters is too much for him to bear parting with. That doesn't mean he didn't love the game. In fact, it could mean exactly the opposite. Perhaps he loved the game TOO much. People were very, very attached to their characters. I'm not afraid to say I shed some tears when it finally hit me that I wouldn't be able to ever play my Warshade (as he was) again. This game meant something to people.

[pinballdave]

When you downloaded the game and played City of Heroes pre-sunset, the NDA protected the PLAYERS from having their data shared willy nilly by possible unscrupulous sales to company that you didn't intend to have YOUR personal data. As far as the current people wanting that information assigned in the Revival, I am sure MANY do not want that data shared/sold to another party.

[Goddangit]

For those worried about the Original CoH shutting down - this opens the possibility that you may be able to fund your own server. If you have funds once the game is in escrow and you can load that snapshot onto a server - nothing would stop you from leasing your own copy and hosting a server.

I really wish that were the case, but if they're buying the IP and only leasing the engine I really don't see how The Holding Company would have the ability to legally provide the server snapshot.

But its a wonderful thought.  And thank you for getting all this rolling.