Author Topic: And the mask comes off.  (Read 1712228 times)

Pherdnut

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Re: And the mask comes off.
« Reply #860 on: September 04, 2014, 04:35:56 AM »
All talk aside, thank you guys for the work you've done. Seriously, it's just beyond belief. I'm 39. I played Space Invaders on an Atari 800 tape drive. I wrote for Game Informer magazine for a few years. I write code now. I know how this stuff usually goes as a gamer, a developer, and somebody who got a front row seat to much of the gaming industry for a few years just as the mega-publishers were really starting to assert themselves as IP-strip-mining douchebags.

Whether it pans out or not, I have never seen anything like this happen in my life. I was finally able to watch the Q&A video with Matt Miller about COH's end from way back because of your efforts (it was too soul-crushing before now). And just in case you don't recall, I think you should all be reminded of this particular MM quote:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYBzs5P3eBs

28:34

Quote
"...we've had discussions you know, like the designers the programmers and I, you know, who've all found other jobs and everything and we're like, could you imagine what would happen if they actually did succeed? In like getting City of Heroes back and like could you imagine them looking through our code trying to figure out exactly what made this game work? And everyone's like, 'That could never happen. They would... they'd be lost...'"

I'm pretty sure that guy loved this fanbase but he still underestimated it. I did too.
« Last Edit: September 04, 2014, 04:41:41 AM by Pherdnut »

hejtmane

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Re: And the mask comes off.
« Reply #861 on: September 04, 2014, 04:36:55 AM »
Ok guys, recall, this is still still very much tentative, so I would not recommend buying anything just yet.

Yet this is still more fun then logging into Diablo III trying to pass the time

How sad is that

Power Arc X

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Re: And the mask comes off.
« Reply #862 on: September 04, 2014, 04:44:53 AM »
I've only read to page 32 so far and seeing Alien One post about how Deschs guide to the Softcap helped him. It was Deschs guide that also helped me immensely but also reading Alien One, Sailboat, THB and Arcanavilles post on the CoH forums. I still have a copy of Arcanas MA/SR Mids build that was posted, was using it compare my build which didn't have all those purples she had.
   Anyways I just wanted to say Thank You to them for all the great information they shared on the CoH forums.

Codewalker

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Re: And the mask comes off.
« Reply #863 on: September 04, 2014, 04:45:39 AM »
I was finally able to watch the Q&A video with Matt Miller about COH's end from way back because of your efforts (it was too soul-crushing before now). And just in case you don't recall, I think you should all be reminded of this particular MM quote:

That quote always makes me gigglecackle like a mad scientist uncontrollably.

FloatingFatMan

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Re: And the mask comes off.
« Reply #864 on: September 04, 2014, 04:49:46 AM »
Why don't you download Unreal 4 and join the efforts?

Oh I've considered it. For the moment though, my work are keeping me busy studying for Microsoft certification, and that's taking up most of my free time. :(

Biz

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Re: And the mask comes off.
« Reply #865 on: September 04, 2014, 04:56:41 AM »
Would it be possible to do something similar to what was done with Ironwolf and the New Efforts thread? Where there is relevant info posted/added to the initial post? Maybe this could also be the questions answered section? Just to avoid the drama that occurred in the New Efforts thread where people were saying "OFF TOPIC/ HATE SIFTING THRU NONSENSE / BARK BARK BARK".

Spellcaster Hana

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Re: And the mask comes off.
« Reply #866 on: September 04, 2014, 04:59:09 AM »
Ok, so...by special request. New pictures of REALLY unpolished stuff.
Warning: Seriously under construction.
Images will be hidden under spoiler tags, so Agge doesn't smack me with her mod hat.

Spoiler for Hidden:

Spoiler for Hidden:
The plaza of Steel Canyon's University.

Spoiler for Hidden:
The first shot of Independence Port.
In this picture, you might be able to see the hintings of one of my favorite changes that I'm making.
If you're flying along, and you look out past the War Walls...You can see the rest of Paragon City in the distance.

Spoiler for Hidden:
Another shot of I.P. a tad closer to the bridge.

Spoiler for Hidden:
I have no idea where this is. I think it's from a different game. /sarcasm

Spoiler for Hidden:
This picture...is Paragon City from above. It should have the War Walls for just about all of the cities zones. Only Atlas Park, Independance Port, and Founders Falls have any of the zone detail showing in this image however.

Holy fudge! These looks awesome! Now I really want to play CoX again...
I know I shouldn't keep my hopes up until a decision has been made, but you have just given me more hope not to give up!  ;D
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Scendera

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Re: And the mask comes off.
« Reply #867 on: September 04, 2014, 05:01:40 AM »
I wonder  ... are there plans to include speech in the revamp?

From someone who plays EQ2...trust me, it's not as awesome as you expect. Occasionally kinda cool, like the Sarnak newbie quests, but more often annoying, glitchy, and repetitive.

HEATSTROKE

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Re: And the mask comes off.
« Reply #868 on: September 04, 2014, 05:04:46 AM »
ive definitely tempered my enthusiasm.. I havent looked at Mids for a whole two days..

Remidi

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Re: And the mask comes off.
« Reply #869 on: September 04, 2014, 06:32:06 AM »
I played Space Invaders on an Atari 800 tape drive.

My first computer game was Pong.  Yes, I'm that darned old.  But I still remember that rush from knowing that the thing on the screen was moving because *I* told it to.  I think that's why I love CoH so much.  No other game has captured that pure feeling of being in control of my own computer universe.

Mental Minister

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Re: And the mask comes off.
« Reply #870 on: September 04, 2014, 06:36:44 AM »
Holy fudge! These looks awesome! Now I really want to play CoX again...

You said it after seeing these pics I want to hit the Super Speed and rip through Paragon
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amrobinson

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Re: And the mask comes off.
« Reply #871 on: September 04, 2014, 06:39:43 AM »
It suddenly occurs to me, have I stopped and said "thank you" to all of the wonderful people who have done so much to bring back our beloved City of Heroes?

The only MMO I really have cared to play?

Hmm....
"I'm sorry, did you want to be set on fire as well?" - Dark Malice, 50+ Fire/Dark Corruptor
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amrobinson

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Re: And the mask comes off.
« Reply #872 on: September 04, 2014, 06:40:35 AM »
THANK YOU ONE AND ALL!!!
"I'm sorry, did you want to be set on fire as well?" - Dark Malice, 50+ Fire/Dark Corruptor
- Freedom, Champion servers

Number9

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Re: And the mask comes off.
« Reply #873 on: September 04, 2014, 06:41:23 AM »
My first computer game was Pong.  Yes, I'm that darned old.  But I still remember that rush from knowing that the thing on the screen was moving because *I* told it to.  I think that's why I love CoH so much.  No other game has captured that pure feeling of being in control of my own computer universe.

I'd add no other MMO has given me the feeling of character ownership.  Closest thing to a paper and pencil RPG vibe Ive found in an MMO.
Formerly of Virtue server: Number 9, StormBird, Magic8Ball, Fyv, and many others I care not to mention in the desperate hopes I get to recreate them and use their names once again.

Arcana

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Re: And the mask comes off.
« Reply #874 on: September 04, 2014, 07:08:04 AM »
Sooooo...

I have to put this disclaimer in: I'm not a part of the downix licensing team, or for that matter a part of any of the CoH2.0 dev teams.  So I'm most definitely not speaking for any of them nor claiming any special insider knowledge on that particular score.  I have read the thread, and 850 posts and a bunch of emails telling me to read 850 posts, so I thought I would share my thoughts, mostly because this development is interesting and partially because I haven't posted a wall of text about City of Heroes in a couple of years.  So, partially responding to whatever I remember from the thread, and partially responding to questions people have asked me out of band:

1.  I'm sure downix has his reasons, but I'm not sure announcing a deal in the works to us was the best move prior to the deal actually being finalized.  Go ahead shoot me now.  Its energizing for the community, and that's great, but barring some special circumstance I'm unaware of, in all honestly I believe we can do nothing to help them, and we could always accidentally create a circumstance that hurts them, and I would rather they succeed than know about them trying.  Mostly, I'm just saying this because more than one person has asked me.  But I recognize the position they were in, and I'm not explicitly going to knock the decision.  I just hope it all works out.

2.  With MWM and H&V and whatever is behind door number [redacted], does this matter?  Heck yes it matters.  For me, I think if they succeed, the licensed engine could be the bridge between the original game and the successor games not necessarily in the way I think many others are thinking: somehow making characters there and eventually moving them to the successor game(s).  I think the great thing about a licensed I23 City of Heroes is that it could be the community builder that preserves and grows the community and potential playerbase for any successor games that are almost certainly still years away.  This community has remained surprisingly (to me) still active, if significantly muted, over the time since shutdown.  But an actual playable game would be a useful anchor to the CoH community.  It would be a sign of success we could all point to.  It could be a way to evangelize the gameplay and player community we all miss and want back.  And it could help bring success to 2.0 projects by priming a generation of potential customers and players.

3a.  Without the source code, are we crippled in terms of adding or altering content?  Not necessarily.  The game content was not explicitly "programmed" into the game engine, it resided in database files that its no secret people have been decoding and reverse engineering since the days of Iakona (and me, and Codewalker, and lots of others).  It is possible, if difficult, to add things like power sets to the game without the explicit source code.  It might require some hacks to make work, but nothing outside the wheelhouse of, say, Icon's developers.  When Codewalker threatens to keep nerfing regen in I24, that's not just possible, but way too easy for him.  Without the appropriate dev tools, some things would be a lot harder than others - like say making those damn escort critters actually follow your ass correctly - but nothing's impossible, even without source.  Difficult, possibly prohibitively so in some cases, but anything that only involves data (geography, entity definitions, power definitions, basic mission design) is probably at least somewhat modifiable without source.

3b.  Why is source off the table?  Almost certainly IP issues.  High risk zero reward for NCSoft.

4.  Why license the engine and the IP, but not the character data?  Its possible NCSoft doesn't want to open a legal can of worms.  Legally, I believe they have the right to relicense that data due to the provisions of the EULA, but what if some players do not want us to have their character data?  Its possible.  They may not have a legal leg to stand on, but its probably not worth it for NCSoft to take that risk.  And while I don't think this is true, if the only copies NCSoft currently has of the character data are in backup files that also contain other stuff, like say chat logs?  They may not want to go anywhere near the stuff, or take the one in a hundred chance that some operator somewhere accidentally releases the wrong thing to a third party.

5.  Is there a conflict of interest in having MWM people form an entity to control the licensing of CoH IP?  I certainly can't speak for them, but I don't think that's necessarily true.  The question is what the mission statement of that entity becomes, if they succeed.  If their up-front mission statement is to in effect create a sort of RAND licensing model for allowing all reasonable projects that want to incorporate that material access to it, and those terms are explicitly and publicly stated, I don't see a problem.  Part of that mission statement would be a completely hands-off approach to how any downstream project eventually forks that material into their own vision for their own game.  If they can do that, I don't see a problem.

I should also point out that alternatively, there's no explicit requirement to "play fair" as it were.  Its great if they choose to do so, and they seem (from what I've read) to want to go in that direction.  But worrying about whether they can live up to that seems highly premature before they actually reach a deal and before they actually announce the specifics of how they intend to manage the property if they acquire it.  I would say if they manage to pull this off, they are entitled to more than a little latitude in how they decide to manage its use.  It sounds like a tremendous amount of effort sustained over a long period of time.  If they succeed, as far as I'm concerned they've earned the right to handle that part any way they want.

6.  Should we be worried the game client won't work by the time they get access to the game?  Well, on the one hand the game client did work in Win7x64, and I think I tested it in Win8 beta successfully.  Win9 might break it, but if it does it will likely be in the OpenGL support, which might be tweakable to make it work regardless.  Personally I don't think this is as big a deal as downix suggests.

Also, Windows 8 sucks.  Even Microsoft is backpedaling from it faster than a bear with an umbrella at the circus.

7.  About that game server.  If they get it, I wish them luck making it work.  Its not impossible, of course, but I know a little something about how the game servers worked, and without saying something that will get me banned from the ... oh wait, I forgot, I'm not rambling on the game forums this time.  Because I'm not affiliated with any group or team, I can't get anyone in trouble but myself here, so I'll just say for those speculating, no, the game server wasn't a bunch of Linux boxes or anything like that: it was Windows based.  It had several moving parts.  It was clunky.  When someone decided to herd up all of Crey's Folly and nuke it and crashed the entire Freedom server, someone was probably RDPing into something and restarting something.  Like manually.  Running CoH servers on a large scale (i.e. enough players to run a Magisterium or more) is not just about spinning up some AWS instances and running the installer.  Its about loading the right hamsters in the right wheels next to the right water bottles and then cleaning their cages periodically while making sure they don't fall asleep or eat each other.

And they get hungry.

8.  Am I concerned MWM solicited Kickstarter money when they were working to try to license CoH?  Not at all.  This was, and still is a long shot.  I funded the Kickstarter knowing that many Kickstarter developments fail, that even if it succeeded in shipping a game it might not be a game I ultimately wanted to play, that no matter what happened it would be years before I saw final results, and knowing that there were other things in motion that might or might not preempt that work.  I don't know anything more today than I did when I funded the Kickstarter, and I don't honestly believe anyone else really does either. 

9.  My vision isn't trite.   :P

10.  Power Arc X: when the servers come back on, come see me for those purples.

11.  Pherdnut: I spent over six months getting to about 70% awareness of how the animation system worked and how it interacted with the combat engine when the game was still alive, circa 2007ish.  At that time, I probably knew the details as well as anyone.  It almost melted my brain.  Every other question I asked BaB was "Why?  Why?  WHY???"  And he'd just shrug.  The game implementation is like that, only more of your brain leaks out of your ears.  That's why Codewalker is the only player I fear.  He likes it.  That's Cthulhu kinds of wrong.

12.  Irish_Girl: I'm happy to see all that work on glintercept is still being used.

13.  Nyx:  http://www.octanecreative.com/ducttape/duckvsduct.html

14.  TonyV:  notice I posted the off-topic stuff in a post with a ton of on-topic stuff.  I still remember my forum-jitsu.

-A

Cailyn Alaynn

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Re: And the mask comes off.
« Reply #875 on: September 04, 2014, 07:18:01 AM »
That quote always makes me gigglecackle like a mad scientist uncontrollably.

That's because you're (no offense) totally nuts, C.W.
Oh, and from what I've heard...you probably know more about CoHs code than the Paragon devs did.
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LaughingAlex

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Re: And the mask comes off.
« Reply #876 on: September 04, 2014, 07:18:49 AM »
I just asked someone about this whole thing as well and they were concerned with it.  They fear that should this go through NCSoft will just use the licsence to shut CoT down when it comes out.  So whats really happening to the IP itself?  We know they are licensing the binary of the game engine but what about the IP.  Who's licensing the IP itself, the company that buys the IP entirely or NCSoft?
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Ankhammon

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Re: And the mask comes off.
« Reply #877 on: September 04, 2014, 07:26:34 AM »
If it were Node.js, it would be easy. But we can't all live in divine providence : D

Actually I'm really psyched about UE4 and embarrassed at myself for not realizing how big of a deal it was while moping over COH's apparent death. 19 bucks for anybody? It's a game changer. Still not as painless as Node.js is on the install equation mind you but nothing is perfect.

I feel the same way. To the point that I almost want to wait for CoH 1.5 and not play CoHI23 at all.

Like that would ever happen. :)
Cogito, Ergo... eh?

Ankhammon

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Re: And the mask comes off.
« Reply #878 on: September 04, 2014, 07:34:34 AM »
Whether it pans out or not, I have never seen anything like this happen in my life. I was finally able to watch the Q&A video with Matt Miller about COH's end from way back because of your efforts (it was too soul-crushing before now). And just in case you don't recall, I think you should all be reminded of this particular MM quote:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYBzs5P3eBs

28:34

I'm pretty sure that guy loved this fanbase but he still underestimated it. I did too.

That quote from Matt makes me think of a developer I used to know. He put a time bomb in some of the old code just in case he ever got layed off. He had to reset it every month or so to stop it from going off.
He always thought no one would ever be able to find it or determine what it did.

I got the axe a couple months after he told me so I never found out if anything ever happened from it. Then again, the company did go under just a little while after that... hmmmm.
Cogito, Ergo... eh?

Cailyn Alaynn

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Re: And the mask comes off.
« Reply #879 on: September 04, 2014, 07:36:12 AM »
When Codewalker threatens to keep nerfing regen in I24, that's not just possible, but way too easy for him.
That's because CW is scary.

Why is source off the table?  Almost certainly IP issues.  High risk zero reward for NCSoft.
I believe it's because pieces of the code base are shared between City of Heroes, and NCSofts other games. They don't want to give away code they actively use.

Also, Windows 8 sucks.  Even Microsoft is backpedaling from it faster than a bear with an umbrella at the circus.
No comment. (-whispers- Sucks, SO much.)

7.  About that game server.  If they get it, I wish them luck making it work.
Yeah...Somehow that sounds about right...

It almost melted my brain.  Every other question I asked BaB was "Why?  Why?  WHY???"  And he'd just shrug.  The game implementation is like that, only more of your brain leaks out of your ears.
No small part of the reason some of us are jumping at the excuse to move to a new engine...

That's why Codewalker is the only player I fear.  He likes it.  That's Cthulhu kinds of wrong.
See above. Codewalker is crazy. Also, scary. Crazy scary.

Irish_Girl: I'm happy to see all that work on glintercept is still being used.
I've made quite frequent, and extensive use of it so far.

TonyV:  notice I posted the off-topic stuff in a post with a ton of on-topic stuff.  I still remember my forum-jitsu.[/quotes] So far he's been nice enough not to throw anything at me for sliding off topic at times. Maybe he just didn't notice. -ninja-


I just hope it all works out.
So do we all. So do we all...
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