Halls of Heroes

[srmalloy]

Seriously, the one thing I don't follow in your instructions is mention of "the force field". Did the SE corner of PI's map have one?  Most of the zone had no barrier.  If you swam far enough out, you would auto-zone to Talos. Just asking in the hope that this will become not moot.

If you swam/jumped/flew to the eastern edge of the zone, you'd run up against an invisible solid wall sort of like the ones that you'd see in instanced outdoor missions, except the transparency was dialed way up, making it invisible (like the one you could hit east of the BAF in Imperial City, although I think that was a bug) except for certain angles. You had to be a little careful not to hit the south edge of the zone, because you were liable to get popped into northeastern Talos, but you could skate back and forth along the eastern edge until you found the gap in the barrier and escaped to the eastern edge of the water.

[cohRock]

Thank you for the additional clarification, srmalloy.

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Back on topic, does Ion Quest have his Cloak of Darkness on?

https://images.weserv.nl/?url=r0k.us%2Frock%2Fgames%2FCoH%2FHallsOfHeroes%2FPinnacle%2Fimages%2FIonQuest.jpg

My page for Walk Softly mentions that it was counter-productive to choose Dark Armor with Titan Weapons, because no one could see you using them. Then I get to Ion Quest, and his first picture clearly shows his spines. So I'm not sure whether it is Ion's other armors which are making him dark, but still somewhat visible, or the spines attacks were specifically programmed to be seen even with Cloak of Darkness on.

[Nyx Nought Nothing]

Thank you for the additional clarification, srmalloy.

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Back on topic, does Ion Quest have his Cloak of Darkness on?

Spines would show with default Cloak of Darkness running sometimes.

My page for Walk Softly mentions that it was counter-productive to choose Dark Armor with Titan Weapons, because no one could see you using them. Then I get to Ion Quest, and his first picture clearly shows his spines. So I'm not sure whether it is Ion's other armors which are making him dark, but still somewhat visible, or the spines attacks were specifically programmed to be seen even with Cloak of Darkness on.

Uh, long before Titan Weapons was added to the game you had the option to set Cloak of Darkness to not hide the character model. (No fade or pulse.) The introduction of power customization included that as a setting for Dark Armor.

[cohRock]

Uh, long before Titan Weapons was added to the game you had the option to set Cloak of Darkness to not hide the character model. (No fade or pulse.) The introduction of power customization included that as a setting for Dark Armor.

<blank stare> ... and you didn't tell me this two years ago, why?? ;)

Seriously, I do wish I'd known that.

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The good news is, all primary pages have been written and uploaded, 134 of them in 30 days!  116 were individual character pages, the rest, indices of one sort or another.  The final three were characters from Virtue:

* Full Sneeze
* H HeLiBeBC NOFNe
* Horse to Water

I'm sure I'll be tweaking pages over time. If you ever happen to notice typos, factual errors, or something you think should be included, let me know. There is an email link at the bottom of every page.  I certainly would welcome that info posted here as well, along with any general comments you may have.

One page is still planned I'll include traces of (the very few) characters I've deleted over the years, plus my native folks from the first massacre a year ago, when the test server was permanently wiped. Of those, only one has been preserved in pixels.  Meet my necro/FF mastermind from Test, Pallor:

https://images.weserv.nl/?url=r0k.us%2Frock%2Fjunk%2FPallor1.jpg

[johnrobey]

I'm having fun perusing your Hall of Heroes!   8)

[cohRock]

I occasionally view the site on my Android cellphone.  With its 4-inch screen, my fat fingers don't do well accessing characters from the alphabetical index page. The names are just too close together.  That got me thinking, how could I make an easy modification that would make it easier to tap the right name?  So far this is what I've come up with:

https://images.weserv.nl/?url=r0k.us%2Frock%2Fjunk%2FstaggeredHoH_alpha.png

What you see is added information to each line.  Instead of just a column of centered names, I've staggered non-link text to the left and right of each name.  The extra text is yymm date and character level. (I screwed up the Black Eis line. Level was always supposed to be next to name.)

What do you think?  I could really use some feedback here.

Would it be improved if I changed the date format from 0904 to Apr09?  This first pass I went with something easily sortable, but having 3-letter month names would seem to improve readability.

Any suggestion would be much appreciated, even something entirely different.

{added} Firecrackers keeping me awake, so I thought I might as well see what it looked like with the revised date format.
https://images.weserv.nl/?url=r0k.us%2Frock%2Fjunk%2Fstag2HoH_alpha.png
Note that I haven't yet decided on whether to make the mod, or what it will be.  I do think this one is more readable though.

[cohRock]

Although I'd still really, really like feedback, even if you don't like something, this may be the fat-finger mod:

https://images.weserv.nl/?url=r0k.us%2Frock%2Fjunk%2FstaggeredHoH_alphaHeads.png
(I included the "C" column so you can compare with what the page has now.)

Basically it will add 3 mini-head shots, followed by 3 lines of text, etc.  To avoid just one head-shot on a line, there can actually be from 2 to 4 mini-head-shots in the last group, as you can see above.  You can click either the text name or the head shot.  Also, hovering the mouse above a picture will show the character's name.

The head shots already exist, and I use them on each server's index page (e.g. Infinity).  Those are all 100 pixels wide, though.  For the mini-head shots, I'm using the same images, but telling HTML to show them as only 40 pixels wide.

What do you think?

Should I put a border around the images, which might help people realize they are clickable?
(The downside to me is that, to me, the red frames make the images look ugly.)

[cohRock]

Fat-finger mod posted. I went with something different than shown above.  You'll have to visit to see what it looks like.  Hopefully the page is better for both full size browsers and smartphones/tablets.  Looks good and functions well on my Android phone.

Try it out.  I'm especially curious how it looks on an Apple® device with Retina display.

With over 100 pictures, it can take a few seconds to completely load.  But I figure if that Pixar® guy isn't shy about his page with 365 pictures, I shouldn't be either.  Plus the head-shots will be pre-populated should you explore the site and visit any of the individual server index pages.

[cohRock]

... fat finger worries.  How 2012.

Now we're dynamic, with bigger heads and smaller busts than ever before!

That dude from Pixar® drove me to popup, but I have more 50s!

I've still got to dynamize my alphabetical index page, and most of the individual server index pages, but I'm getting there.

[cohRock]

If there are any web geeks amongst you, the following tale of web-design woe may be of interest.  For the rest, feel free to click the [back] button now.
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Like so many problems in the City of Heroes, it was Monstrous Monstress' fault.  She was driving the whole page crazy, and something had to be done.  Merely hovering the mouse over her name could cause unspeakable behavior!

So, of course, I'm going to speak about it.  Feel free to stop reading if not interested in the details of really weird web page behavior.

The problem has several roots.  We'll start with me implementing Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). One of the capabilities I liked was making links significantly change when the mouse passed over them. One of the changes was to set the text in bold. (Monstrous Monstress knew she could warp bold. She was evil with bold!)

Then there is my addiction to complex tables.  Why not start out a big four-column table with three columns, having the middle one span the two center columns below?  Don't worry, you'll find out.  (Monstrous Monstress already knew, and took full advantage.)

Finally, there is my unparallelled ability to ignore the obvious.  Is the four-column table getting too fat, because of a few long-named characters?  Shrink the text on those few lines.  Implementing a new class that shrinks the text in little pop-up panes?  Cool.  Oh no!  The pop-up text gets double shrunk for those cases where I had already shrunk the text.  How do I fix this?  Ask the good folks at HTMLforums.  (All the while, Monstrous Monstress was laughing.  She was already at work, playing trampoline with my web page -- even before I implemented the pop-ups.  Somehow I missed her evil happy howls.)

You've never seen a web page bounce?  I don't have a video, but here are two images demonstrating it:

https://images.weserv.nl/?url=r0k.us%2Frock%2Fjunk%2FHoH_MMshift1.png https://images.weserv.nl/?url=r0k.us%2Frock%2Fjunk%2FHoH_MMshift2.png

The mouse doesn't show in these pictures, but you can see the mouse-over event in the second.  The text went bold and her pop-up displayed.  The pop-up has nothing to do with this weirdness, though.  Just the bold.

Can you see how the whole table contents shifted down?  Let's run thru a full cycle.

• move mouse over Monstrous Monstress' name, causing hover event
  
• her name goes bold forcing column wider in the inward direction
  
• the centered text block at top, colspan'ned to be two wide got skinnier
  
• the centered text block reformats itself, adding a new row of text
  
• the entire table contents shift down that one line
  
• Monstours Monstress' name moves below the mouse. hover event ends
  
• her name is no longer bold and column goes back to normal width
  
• the centered text block above regains its normal width, loses extra line
  
• the entire table contents shift back up that one line
  
• Monstrous Monstress' name is now under the mouse again, causing hover event
  
• her name goes bold, etc., etc., bouncy, bouncy, evil, evil, unto the ends of time!
  

When the obvious spits in my face, I do notice.

• Split the table into two, making the top three-column part its own table.
  
• Remove div from outlier lines, which shrunk their text size.
  
• Remove normal override from the span declaration for those pop-ups.
  
• Reformat the actual indexing table, from four-column, three-row to three-column four-row
  

Stay alert, web authors.  Monstrous Monstress may have been foiled this time, but I assure you, her villainy lives on.

(Should anyone desire to see this effect in action, i preserved the original page, as alphaIndex_4col.html. I could only see it in Firefox.  I did not see it happen with IE or Chrome, but that could have been not getting the page width right.  The magic, problematic width depends on browser width and your default font size. Note: this post is slightly revised from what I posted on the afore mentioned HTMLforums.)

Wow, you stayed this long and aren't a web geek?  I'm impressed!

[cohRock]

What is likely my final page, for The Deleted, is now up.  It's not complete, but there is sufficient content for it to be put online.

I'm posting about it now because of the bottom, "Test Server Commentary" section.  It talks a lot about PvP.  I seldom PvP'd, though, and would appreciate feedback and corrections.  Thank you.

[Madadh]

And yes, he was a hero from the CoH comic books.  The story was Smoke and Mirrors by Troy Hickman, issues 4-6.  He later adapted it directly into the game, as Twilight's Son Task Force in Ouroboros.

Easily one of my fav stories in the game.  Never knew it was from the comics, or was a Troy Hickman story till post shutdown.

[Madadh]

That's not true. It took me until the day before shutdown to get clear instructions, but the route I was given worked: You head down to the southeast corner of the PI map, then head north along the east force field; a little way up from the corner, there is a gap in the force field that you can get through at the right angle that will let you into the water outside the force field. From there, head east until you reach the edge of the map, then go all the way down to the 'ground' under the map. Head back WNW along the ground until you're under the Arena, and then type '/stuck', and you'll be ported into the Matrix room.

I always got in there from the top, right on Monkey Island.  Log out near a 1/2 buried door, then log back in, and that has you enter below the map.    Then proceed to fly to the arena as you did.  I gave tours a lot, tho, and often just ported people in, it wass SO much easier to do that.

Heck, there were prolly abot 3 other ways in, too.   Kinda bummed I didn't get a chance to pop back in one last time...


EDIT:  Just noticed that SKEWLINES scooped a chunk of my comment.  Credit where due, and all.....  Glad to have the confirmation it wasn't just a figment of my memory...

[cohRock]

I love HTML5.  It made it super-easy to add optional music to my HoH Home Page.

Should I credit the music as "Williams Square" or "William's Square"?