And the mask comes off.

[Felderburg]

If City of heroes 2 took place in Albuquerque, Taco Tuesday would be fin- hmmm, actually maybe not(for the record I do live there now).  Tanker and Taco Tuesday?

This is what I would expect from a CoH 2 - another city, or a more global approach. Sure, you could do a CoH 2 that took place in Paragon, but then you'd have to deal with figuring out what happened to all the old characters and story lines - if you just create the game in a new engine, and continue the story where CoH 1 left off, then I personally consider that to be more of a 1.75, than a whole new game. APR would be closer to 1.5, because it's not only going to pick up the story right where CoH was, it's going to include all the extant content as well.

I am also in Albuquerque, and the colors of the two sides would obviously have to be changed to red and green.

[blacksly]

Place it in Seattle, and add in Dragons and Trolls as Contacts. We already have hackers and evil corporations (see the Doctor's Friend arc), may as well go full-bore Shadowrun.

[LaughingAlex]

This is what I would expect from a CoH 2 - another city, or a more global approach. Sure, you could do a CoH 2 that took place in Paragon, but then you'd have to deal with figuring out what happened to all the old characters and story lines - if you just create the game in a new engine, and continue the story where CoH 1 left off, then I personally consider that to be more of a 1.75, than a whole new game. APR would be closer to 1.5, because it's not only going to pick up the story right where CoH was, it's going to include all the extant content as well.

I am also in Albuquerque, and the colors of the two sides would obviously have to be changed to red and green.

Tried going to see the balloons rise today, sigh, stupid wind kept them grounded .  I think the biggest challenge for any game taking place in Albuquerque would be the rich and diverse culture here, the sheer variety of artistry and the events one sees around here.  But go figure, it'd be interesting to see a game such as a super hero mmo take place in a location such as this.  My thoughts anyways.

[Super Firebug]

I get the impression that some are confusing [Title] 2.0, which denotes a major patch/upgrade to a computer program (or, for instance, George Lucas' frequent tweakings of the Star Wars movies), with [Title] 2, which denotes a sequel -- a different story which continues the same characters and overall situation from a previous release (e.g., the Final Fantasy series, or the individual Star Wars movies). I'm certainly having trouble keeping track of which one is being referred to by any given message here. :/ The first is a revision of the same release; the second is a whole separate release.
So, APR might be CoH 1, version 2.0 -- still the same game, but improved.

[LaughingAlex]

I get the impression that some are confusing [Title] 2.0, which denotes a major patch/upgrade to a computer program, with [Title] 2, which denotes a sequel -- a different story which continues the same characters and overall situation from a previous release (e.g., the Final Fantasy series, or the Star Trek movies 1-10). I'm certainly having trouble keeping track of which one is being referred to by any given message here. :/ The first is a revision of the same release; the second is a whole separate release.

I think a sequal is not just a continuation of the story but more the same world/universe myself.  I think my one of my favorite sequals was skyrim as while it's story is very different then Oblivion's, it takes place in the same world.  Another one I'm familiar with which does continue the same story and takes place in the same world is Myth 2: Soulblighter, with only a few characters from the original surviving.

Then of course, there is the marathon series, 1 and 2 were easily the best, with the development of Durandal as a character. At first he was absolutely hateful towards humanity, only caring about his own freedom and ultimately only really freeing the S'pht for his own ends.  Later games he's still very disregardful of anyones lives he controls(including/excluding the player character), and detached but still loyal to humanity view due to the programming that was built in.  Marathon Infinity was more of a fan-work in the story bungie allowed to be cannon, but explored in a way the player character more and the attachment/detachment from humanity(including the fact your forced to kill your fellow humans as much as the aliens).

I never considered any final fantasy game to be a sequal to the previous one, because while they do often have similarities in stories and even character names, those tend to be more a homage to a previous game then anything.  The star trek movies 1-6 I felt were certainly sequals, though 2-3-4 were chained one after another in a way. 

[Remaugen]

I tried to post this before, but an untimely crash lost my post, so here it take two!

Talk of setting the game in other cities got me to thinking of places that might offer a good unique flavor for "World of Heroes". Some of the mobs would be ones we already know, but others should be unique to the location.

• Crescent City: Roughly based on New Orleans along the Gulf Coast, it might feature a Voodoo theme and perhaps humanoid mutant gators roaming the near bayous.
• Southwest: A rough combination of bits of Texas, New Mexico & Arizona. Cowboy & Indian cults, gang driven drug wars, UFOs and Little Green men, rattlesnakes, coyotes and roadrunners. It may be hard to define a cultural flavor without someone becoming offended by perceived stereotypes though.
• SoCal / West Coast: I think that Titan City may have this location covered.
• Emerald City / Northwest: Roughly taken from elements of Seattle and Portland, it could feature zones like "Jet City" (Boeing Field) and of course should have a "Space Needle". It might feature conflicts between the "Green Tree Huggers" and the "Angry Lumberjacks".
• Steel Town / Motor City: Roughly an industrialised combination of Pittsburgh and Detroit. Poverty stricken neighborhoods surrounded by factories, some run down or abandoned and others as shiny glowing examples of the pinnacle of industry. Organised Crime driven by The Family and of course Nemesis bots everywhere!
• Maple Leaf City: (Yes it is poorly named) Found along the St Lawrence River, featuring bits of Montreal, Quebec, Ottawa and Toronto. They will battle smugglers, homegrown separatists and stupid American tourists. (Sorry couldn't think of something else uniquely Canadian)
• Imperial / Royal City: Based largely on London, we will see proper Bobbies roaming the streets and battling soccer hooligans trashing the town after sporting events. Druids attempting to dispel technology, ghosts and rippers, perhaps the Tsoo have a foothold here too.
• Rio de Paz: This Amazonian / Central American City is based roughly on Rio De Janeiro with other South & Central American Elements. Perhaps we can see a different flavor of voodoo here as well as elements roughly inspired by the Inca's, Aztecs & Mayans. Here too we might see some of the drug wars.
• Asian City / Island Nation: (Had a real tough time coming up with a name for this one) This city will be situated on a large island and will draw elements from all the great Asian cities. Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore and Seoul should all lend flavor. Tsoo will square off against The Tongs and Triads, and both will fight with the more organised criminal gangs based on the Yakuza and Gangpae. Gargantuan Monster events are pretty much mandatory here as are runaway high tech corporations and technology based villains and cheesey martials arts / kung-fu movie scenes.
• Cape City: Drawn mainly from African elements, this one might be harder to keep politically correct, but as long as the city was kept polycultural it should be ok. Hidden intelligent, technological gorilla tribes are a comic book staple as are man-beasts. Perhaps we can see some Moreaus here, escaped from some mad scientists labs in large enough numbers to form tribes and gangs. Revolutionaries face off with huge mining companies and the primitive bushman comes face to face with the world of high technology.

Ok, so all the ideas are very rough and probably unworkable without resorting to some stereotypical connotations, but I felt like tossing it out there.

[Blackstar5]

Place it in Seattle, and add in Dragons and Trolls as Contacts. We already have hackers and evil corporations (see the Doctor's Friend arc), may as well go full-bore Shadowrun.

I've been playing the Sega version of Shadowrun lately.

[srmalloy]

That was one of my very few complaints as well.   Knowing exactly what was around every corner did tend to take the mystery out of it.

At one of the San Diego Comic-Cons that NCSoft and Paragon Studios had a booth, I asked Positron about the maps. it was clear that the maps were made from 'blocks' that were pre-defined and just stuck together in various ways to make maps, and I wondered whether it would be possible to either 1) create an editor for AE missions that would allow players to stick the indoor map blocks together to make their own maps, or 2) create a map randomizer, so that instead of having a limited number of maps that everyone had memorized, each time you went into a warehouse or office or Council/CoT tunnel you'd be facing a different layout. He said that I was right about the building blocks for the maps, but that the tools they had for manipulating them were too primitive, and required too much detailed hand tweaking in assembly, to make either of those options possible without a lot of time-consuming cleanup of the map-creation system. For example I'm sure everyone has, at some point or another, encountered a map where there's a black wall across a corridor, but if you walk into the wall, the corridor continues on the other side, and if you look back you can see the corridor you came from; this is what happens when the 'joints' between two map blocks are misaligned, and the rendering engine thinks the corridor ends where the join occurs.

With more time to work with it, it should be possible to clean up the 'edges' of the map sections so that each of the joints has a properly-defined size and position, which would allow either or both of those ideas to happen, but the amount of front-end work to make sure that everything can be positioned cleanly would make it a fairly long-term goal.

[Sinistar]

I've been playing the Sega version of Shadowrun lately.

Fun  game

[Harpospoke]

At one of the San Diego Comic-Cons that NCSoft and Paragon Studios had a booth, I asked Positron about the maps. it was clear that the maps were made from 'blocks' that were pre-defined and just stuck together in various ways to make maps, and I wondered whether it would be possible to either 1) create an editor for AE missions that would allow players to stick the indoor map blocks together to make their own maps, or 2) create a map randomizer, so that instead of having a limited number of maps that everyone had memorized, each time you went into a warehouse or office or Council/CoT tunnel you'd be facing a different layout. He said that I was right about the building blocks for the maps, but that the tools they had for manipulating them were too primitive, and required too much detailed hand tweaking in assembly, to make either of those options possible without a lot of time-consuming cleanup of the map-creation system. For example I'm sure everyone has, at some point or another, encountered a map where there's a black wall across a corridor, but if you walk into the wall, the corridor continues on the other side, and if you look back you can see the corridor you came from; this is what happens when the 'joints' between two map blocks are misaligned, and the rendering engine thinks the corridor ends where the join occurs.

With more time to work with it, it should be possible to clean up the 'edges' of the map sections so that each of the joints has a properly-defined size and position, which would allow either or both of those ideas to happen, but the amount of front-end work to make sure that everything can be positioned cleanly would make it a fairly long-term goal.

Sounds like a leftover problem from Legacy that will not be imported into CoH 1.5.   

[Brigadine]

Place it in Seattle, and add in Dragons and Trolls as Contacts. We already have hackers and evil corporations (see the Doctor's Friend arc), may as well go full-bore Shadowrun.

Perhaps a skyraider Boeing hostile takeover?

[Brigadine]

This is what I would expect from a CoH 2 - another city, or a more global approach. Sure, you could do a CoH 2 that took place in Paragon, but then you'd have to deal with figuring out what happened to all the old characters and story lines - if you just create the game in a new engine, and continue the story where CoH 1 left off, then I personally consider that to be more of a 1.75, than a whole new game. APR would be closer to 1.5, because it's not only going to pick up the story right where CoH was, it's going to include all the extant content as well.

I am also in Albuquerque, and the colors of the two sides would obviously have to be changed to red and green.

or keep rouge isles and paragon but make their proximity more relevant?

[Brigadine]

Or perhaps just renumber the issues, "Vol 2, Issue 1" as the only outward change. . .

I kinda like that! To honor comicbook tradition we could combine some ideas and have:

City of Heroes
Forever
Vol 2 Issue 1

Or something in that general vein.

City of Heroes returns.... again

[Brigadine]

You won't be getting that; not a professional game studio, anyway.

Why not? Why cant a professional studio be made for City of Heroes 1.5 and beyond?

[FloatingFatMan]

Why not? Why cant a professional studio be made for City of Heroes 1.5 and beyond?

Money.

[Cailyn Alaynn]

What makes a professional game studio a professional game studio in your eyes?

[Roderick]

A company actively producing a product and the volunteer effort, while greatly appreciated, is behind us.  I think you guys are fantastic but I want a studio producing the product with engaging content and timely updates. 

....And I send money some where each month too to keep the lights on.

Irish Girl has been working hard, not just for free, but at her own expense - nobody's paying for her hardware or software for her - for years, ever since the shutdown.

She can't form a studio to work on it at this moment, because, technically, what she's doing would be Copyright Infringement and borderline piracy if she were to go commercial.

However, if and when the deal goes through, it's already been confirmed that this project will be official.  At that point,  getting funding, forming a real studii and hiring a team becomes a real possibility. If such a thing happened, what makes you think that the game would remain static at i23/24, as opposed to continuing with "engaging content and timely updates"?

[thunderforce]

She can't form a studio to work on it at this moment, because, technically, what she's doing would be Copyright Infringement and borderline piracy if she were to go commercial.

Then, Gratuitous Capitals aside, technically it is even if it's not commercial. "For-profit" has very little relevance to whether or not something violates copyright.

... of course, that is not to say that APR isn't a good thing.

[Roderick]

Then, Gratuitous Capitals aside, technically it is even if it's not commercial. "For-profit" has very little relevance to whether or not something violates copyright.

... of course, that is not to say that APR isn't a good thing.

I probably should have said "if she makes it available for distribution".

Copyright laws don't apply to things made for personal use, and what she's posted online is little more than fan art,  although Unreal isn't a very common medium.

If she starts distributing,  for profit or otherwise, then there are more legal issues than you can shake a stick at - until the deal goes through, and she becomes official.

[FloatingFatMan]

What makes a professional game studio a professional game studio in your eyes?

Several things will be needed, including but not limited to:

* Registered company
* IP rights
* Salaried employees
* Sufficient cash to deliver the product AND to keep it going post-release
* Porfolio

Without the salaried employees or portfolio, you're more likely to be considered an indie studio (which is what I consider MWM to be).  There's nothing wrong with indie studio's btw, but I was responding to someone who said he wanted a "professional studio" to be running CoH. 

No offence to you, IG, but I can't really see you making CoH 1.5 a full on professional studio this side of actually releasing something.  Perhaps in the future, but not for quite some time.

Besides, it's completely not necessary anyway.  Unlike the guy I was responding to, I don't see that a "professional studio" is even remotely needed.