The Big Giant Icon Thread

[Aggelakis]

I was afraid to step inside Icon after hearing some people tell me they lost costumes they were fond of.

If you didn't "next" through and complete the costume change, you could ALWAYS "back out" and keep your original, no matter how many invalid parts you had (through removal or rearrangement).

[ImperialChain]

Hey everyone. SO I think I found out why certain maps wouldn't load on my computer on icon. I recently upgraded to a Windows 8 and now everything runs fine but I was using a vista before. Could that be why the maps didn't work? I just copied the files directly from my old computer to my new one and everything worked out well.   

[darkgob]

When in doubt, blame Vista.  Late with your car payment?  Vista's fault.  Accidentally scratch an adjacent car while parking?  Damn Vista again.  Your favorite MMO is canceled for no reason?  ...Okay, NCSoft and Vista.

[The Fifth Horseman]

Not highly likely, but given Vista's track record...

[JetFlash]

Did you actually do an upgrade, or did you do a fresh install of Win8?  Upgrades for Windows versions don't usually work well...

[JaguarX]

  Your favorite MMO is canceled for no reason?  ...Okay, NCSoft and Vista.

And Disney and EA and Vista once more.

[SmugglyWuggums]

Did you actually do an upgrade, or did you do a fresh install of Win8?  Upgrades for Windows versions don't usually work well...

Sometimes it does. Years ago, I installed the release candidate of Win 7 and several of my favorite apps, including COH/V. Then, against MIcrosoft's advice, I used a few hacks and my company's volume license and DVD to upgrade that install to Win 7 Enterprise. All this time, I've been uing that same system and even added several extensive development environments such as Delphi Rad Studio (several versions), Visual Studio 2005, 2008, 2010, 2012, several video apps, DAW software, successive verions of MS Office fom 2003 to 2010, and of course some more games, notably cox, dcuo and CO. All worked with minimal issues.

Three months ago, I put Win 8 Enterprise on top of that existing build and my system works better than ever. I did have to uninstall 3 rarely used apps that were not compatible. But my rig boots in under a minute and is more stable than ever.

[ImperialChain]

I actually got a whole new computer with Windows 8 installed already. Like with my old vista which had all the files up to date in both i23 and i24 versions of the game, I could only get into the city zones but not any mission maps.

I just directly copied the game files over from my vista to my new computer and everything worked out work with no problems.

[Elfin]

I finally took the time and figured out how to get the pop menues to work. Was pretty easy I was like oh duh LOL. Really freakin Awesome!!! I love them. Only thing was I couldn't get some of the dance emotes to work. Jukebox ones seem to be the only ones that work. Any way very cool thanks.

[Phaetan]

Did you see my note that emotes are far pickier when used on yourself instead of an NPC?  Some of them (and I know popdance and discodance are among them) are essentially for NPC models only at this point.  At least you can force your costume on the NPC before commanding them to dance for your amusement if you want to see your favorite alt boogie down.

[Night Sable]

WOW!  Today is truly a great day as I downloaded ICON, made a character and flew around Atlas Park.  I want to say thank you so much to those that developed this as it is a nice reminder of the greatness that was CoX.  I really enjoyed making costumes and alts, so this helps fill in some of the void.  I have tried CO, DCUO and The Secret World, and I have not found any of them a real replacement for the greatness of CoX.  THANK YOU!

[Phaetan]

Might I recommend you grab the popmenus?  They are really quite useful.  Having zones, NPCs, and emotes just a keystroke away is very convenient.

[Tyger]

LOADING bases should happen at some point; I'm hoping 1.8 but no promises. As much as I'd like to do editing, it probably has too many dependencies on server-side operations to be feasible. But if you can load bases, then editing the base map outside the game becomes possible.

Editing a text file representation of the base. You can't easily edit them in demo files because they're compressed and encoded there, but the schema is in memory so it's doable to write them to a text file much like .costume and .storyarc files.

When you say 'in memory' you mean the client and not your own brain, right?

I would love this simply because my last project that I furiously edited in the last moments of the game was ruined by a misplaced floor tile and it would be nice to be able to fix it by ANY means.

[Azrael]

Just in case the smiley isn't enough of a hint, darkgob is being facetious (or he's just wrong). It's common knowledge that RE work began before the shutdown, and is ongoing.

*smiles gently.

Azrael.

[Azrael]

The entirety of the costume editor exists within the game client.  All that's needed is a way to convince the client to run it without the game servers.

Unfortunately, the client doesn't have any idea how to do mapserving.  It would be just within the realm of possibility to start the game client with you in it: that's just a demorecord playback of sorts.  But the game client would have no idea how to spawn things, execute a world event, control spawned entities, calculate the effects of powers or anything like that.  That means no enemy spawns, no critters with any AI, no combat. That would require replacing the game servers with code that was capable of doing those things and sending them in the appropriate manner to the game client to process.

*Hmm.  Ofc.

The indelible spark of life.

However, the Golden Goose resides in the client.  Character Creator.  The class defining Powers are there in the Demo area.  The gold standard interface.  The unforgettable zones brimming with character.  The NPCs are in there.  The animations are in there.

Yeah.  Just need the missions/combat/AI.  And those are 'server' side.

An annoyance (for me) that Paragon/NC Soft never included that stuff so the game could be played solo.  That way, surely a Peer to Peer client expansion could have been far away? 

It's code.  There are clever people out there.  Many of whom are morally outraged at the actions taken by a corporation with little consideration for their customer's investment.  And yes.  'We' have little to show for it now in return.

I shall be following Coh's 'progress' with great interest.

Icon.

There's a word for it.  'Hope.'

Azrael.

[Azrael]

Icon is a separate effort from the efforts to restore a complete game, but I think it was an important demonstration that Codewalker is intimately familiar with how the client works.  From that, I'm hoping that people imply that when we say that we have the APIs mapped out that it used to communicate with the server, while Icon isn't definitive proof of that statement, we're not just making stuff up.

Not that I'm accusing you of accusing us of making stuff up, but others have implied that recreating the server is beyond our capability.  While Icon isn't definitive proof that we'll be able to, I'm hoping that it's evidence of what we are capable of, and by extension, that it will give people who may be thinking "I don't know, it's been almost seven and a half months and they still haven't finished bringing the game back yet" a bit more faith in our efforts.  Aside from the fun of playing around with it and giving people access to commands that only developers had access to, it's intended to be a morale booster and a cool toy to play around with until we have something even cooler to show off.

Amen.

Azrael.

[MaidMercury]

Thanks Codewalker.
I'm playing with Icon, learning how to use menus.
It's nice to see Atlas, trainers again...as long as I don't jump, (char remains stuck floating)
walking is fine.

[Goddangit]

I've been peeking in occasionally to keep track of efforts, writing letters, etc., but I really haven't had anything to say until now.

I really miss CoH.  I'd love to play it again, even if it were only soloing.  But unless I win the PowerBall and get an obscene amount of money to shove under They Who Shall Not Be Named's noses...  I guess I'll have to wait.  Maybe forever.

I never thought I'd ever stand on the City Hall steps in Atlas Park again.  It felt really good to visit some of the old haunts.  And it meant a lot to me.

Thank you, Codewalker.

[Tubbius]

Waddle the Penguin, still vigilant in Paragon City, but the little penguin is confused: where is everyone?  What happened to all his friends?

[Heroette]

I am still there on the Justice Server.  Waiting for the time to see my friends again.