New efforts!

[Nyx Nought Nothing]

I thought it was more they fully bought the engine, but still have to credit Cryptic for it, which is why the Cryptic logo still showed in the log in screen after NCsoft started publishing City of Heroes. I could be wrong, though.

There were several times over the years on the old official forums where it was stated that the City of Heroes IP was purchased outright and the game software/engine was acquired by NCsoft as a perpetual lease with the option to make (2?) other games using the engine. i don't know the details of the agreement, but it's quite possible that NCsoft is not allowed to sell the game engine itself and anyone who bought the IP would have to contact Cryptic if they want to use the engine itself. Since it's been years since i last read the relevant posts and i never saw the actual agreement that's about all i can recall about the engine's legal status offhand.

[Aggelakis]

The IP and the engine are separate. You can buy one without the other. You can use one without the other.

You can take the IP (that is, the content, the look, etc.) and apply it to another game engine. THIS WILL TAKE A METRIC CRAPTON OF WORK (because the code is so intertwined with the engine) but it is doable.

You can take the game engine and slap a different game's IP onto it. THIS WILL TAKE A METRIC CRAPTON OF WORK (because the CoH engine is proprietary, convoluted, and often downright stupid) but it is doable.

Please stop saying that you can't do it. You can. It just takes a helluva lot of work.

[Cailyn Alaynn]

You can take the IP (that is, the content, the look, etc.) and apply it to another game engine. THIS WILL TAKE A METRIC CRAPTON OF WORK (because the code is so intertwined with the engine) but it is doable.

I can attest to that. Somehow, I imagined it'd be much easier when I started... Heh.

[The Fifth Horseman]

And to what Aggelakis said above... you can take the server code and IP and build a new client for it. "Engine" in software lingo can mean a load of different things, just the same as if you said "device" regarding electronics or similar. Depending on what has been defined as the "engine" in question , the workload may vary from rebuilding everything from scratch to replacing individual components of the client.

AS for those questioning whether Cryptic might have an older version of the client, any self-respecting software company (or team) uses source control. That means every change to the application code is registered precisely and as long as they have not switched their source control system, imported only the code itself into the new one and then got rid of the old one completely (ie no backups), it should be theoretically possible to get any prior revision of the application source.

Just FYI.

[Cailyn Alaynn]

They might not have bothered to hang on to a piece of software for a game they have not owned for many years. Hard drive space isn't free.

[Thunder Glove]

Discussion about what constitutes IP, engine, and/or code aside....

I'm cautiously hopeful, and I'm looking forward to new information as it arrives, but I'm not yet excited.

"Excited" will come if/when all the NDR agreements are lifted and an official announcement is made about the game's grand re-opening.

[The Fifth Horseman]

They might not have bothered to hang on to a piece of software for a game they have not owned for many years. Hard drive space isn't free.

1. We have heard in the past that a) NCSoft apparently leased the engine and b) Cryptic is using engines derived from it
2. We're talking code, not assets. Code takes orders of magnitude less space than the actual assets.

[blacksly]

They might not have bothered to hang on to a piece of software for a game they have not owned for many years. Hard drive space isn't free.

In a business budget? It's basically free. We buy 1TB hard drives to store snapshots of our student data (I work for a school district), even though I can't recall the last time that we actually had to go back and retrieve data from a database backup. They're that cheap. For a one-time "store the code and the last data" purchase event, the price of storage would be completely inconsequential.

[Styrj]

To follow up on what blacksly mentioned about the cost of HD space, Newegg has Seagate 2TB 64MB cache NAS HDs on sale for $110 w/free shipping.  That's cheap enough even for me (living on a retirement check  ).

[MWRuger]

I used to back things up on optical drives but HD  space is so cheap that I just get a portable, back it up there and the web. I admit a part of this decision was made because of the increasing size of files, particularly media.

I still do Blu-Ray backups for a few things, but mostly, multiple hard drives.

[ShadowMokadara]

Please stop saying that you can't do it. You can. It just takes a helluva lot of work.

I don't know if anyone has outright said bringing it back is impossible or that Ironwolf can't do it. I just like to state, just as you did, realistic facts.

[Ironwolf]

Oh, at this stage I don't think you will need me.

Another group is moving forward and they have the contact at NCSoft needed and the price to purchase the game. Now I don't know what "purchase the game" entails.

I know in early conversations the group expressed interest in the IP only - not the actual game engine - now as some have said here it may be not easily possible to divorce the code from the engine or the price may be inclusive. Those are not things we knew about in the earlier talks. The discussions I was involved with were - will NCSoft talk to anyone?

Yes, all the information I had on any offers made was that NCSoft did talk and listened to the offer. Once that was resolved the problem was some of the rumors that had gone around. The $80 million price tag tied to the Texas state sales tax increase - was proven not to apply. It was calculated at that price if all game sales for NC Interactive had to be tied into the purchase of the IP - they don't.

At this stage - I don't know what the purchase might consist of. The CoH engine is old and described as a cobbled together spaghetti mess by anyone who worked on it. NCSoft may now be aware of this and so the "engine" may be fairly worthless on its own. Not to be discouraging or to insult our beloved game but how much should someone pay for a 10 year old cobbled together mess that has been out of service for 16 months?

Consider NCSoft paid $8 million originally to Cryptic and a period of profit sharing. There was development true but the core is still the 10 year old engine with custom bolted on graphics updates. I won't guess any more on what is on offer - we hopefully will find out soon enough!

[ShadowMokadara]

I do agree on the washed up game engine bit. With the rose colored glasses off, City of Heroes would look very shoddy to the average gamer.

Thank you for your efforts. Now all we can do is wait.

[blacksly]

I do agree on the washed up game engine bit. With the rose colored glasses off, City of Heroes would look very shoddy to the average gamer.

I'm not so sure about that.

I see screenshots for new games, and think "Wow, that looks amazing!".
But... screenshots are taken on top-end gaming rigs, at the highest settings, since you don't care about frame rate.

Playing CoH, I don't think I ever had the graphics turned up past about 50% on anything, in order to move more smoothly. When you're superspeeding or teleporting around, it's more important to have fast smooth movement than high resolution.

So, computers are better now, on the average, than when CoH was shuttered. So, now, more players can raise the graphics... is CoH played at gaming frame rate that much worse than modern games played at the same frame rate? Sure, it can't compare at the top end of graphics, but there are lots of gamers out there whose machines can't handle those top end graphics, whether from CoH or a new game. They'd have to turn down the new game's graphics to 20%, while running CoH at 60%... at those settings, CoH may be worse, but would it be significantly worse?

[ShadowMokadara]

It's not that City of Heroes looks bad. Not to me, at least. If it is compared to newer games, it does not hold up to the eye of someone who's not experienced City of Heroes and its greatness first hand. Many modern gamers obsess over the hottest new graphics and CoH kind of looks like early PS2 era on Ultra.

Let it be known that I do not care about graphics. I loved CoH for its customization (aesthetically and mechanically) and gameplay.

[Nyx Nought Nothing]

It's not that City of Heroes looks bad. Not to me, at least. If it is compared to newer games, it does not hold up to the eye of someone who's not experienced City of Heroes and its greatness first hand. Many modern gamers obsess over the hottest new graphics and CoH kind of looks like early PS2 era on Ultra.

Let it be known that I do not care about graphics. I loved CoH for its customization (aesthetically and mechanically) and gameplay.

There are two things that come to mind in regards to comparing to CoH to newer games...
1) i've tried a fair number of the newer games, including TSW, FFXIV, ESO, and WildStar, and on Ultra Mode most of the newer models and pieces released post Ultra Mode still look pretty decent by today's standards, especially in the context of a comic book superhero themed MMO. Quite of few of the older assets are a little decrepit looking at this point and the character models could use a revamp, but it still looks better than any early PS2 era games i can recall.
2) DDO is much newer than CoH. Take a look at it.

[Triage IV]

I would put up a slow flight over Founders Falls against ANY other game's graphics.  Actually, the graphics in CoH would do fine, head to head against ANY other game on the market.  It's a matter of personal taste.

[silvers1]

Personally, I think the only graphics that looked dated in CoH were the environment and some of the GUI controls.

I always loved the character models and felt they were as good or better than anything I've seen since.  Sure, some newer games make their models
look more lifelike... but this is a comic book based game.   We could use better faces, hair, and hands - but everything else is fine.

The combat animations in CoH beat everything else hands down.  Just take a martial arts character for example.   Not even a contest.

The power effects in CoH also beat everything else I've seen.  Man, I miss my Plant/Storm troller....

[HEATSTROKE]

I had no issue with the way CoH looked.. I am not playing to be stunned by graphics.. I am playing for gameplay.. CoH had that in spades for me.. I would have been happy playing on Ultra Mode now that I have a PC that can run it full tilt..

[ShadowMokadara]

I had no issue with the way CoH looked.. I am not playing to be stunned by graphics.. I am playing for gameplay.. CoH had that in spades for me.. I would have been happy playing on Ultra Mode now that I have a PC that can run it full tilt..

I'm in entire agreement. I myself have no problem with how City of Heroes looked, but I remember showing it to lots of people who were arrogantly saying that it looked crappy and how Crysis and stuff looked so much better. It's like "Well, yeah I can't argue with that but because something looks better doesn't mean something else looks bad".

I can also sympathize. I only got my new computer very late 2011, where I spent most of its time on SWTOR rather than experiencing CoH in Ultra. How foolish I was!