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New efforts!

Started by Ironwolf, March 06, 2014, 03:01:32 PM

Arcana

Quote from: Reiraku on June 24, 2015, 02:08:01 AM
They nerfed the acc on Dark Melee again!  ;D

Proving once again, the devs hate Regen.

Kyriani

Arcana... would there be any sort of legal ramifications if someone were to reverse engineer the I24 content from the I24 beta files? I mean, the I24 client (which is still available and many folk legitimately have from before shutdown) has a great deal of info in it and is mainly only missing whatever the server side stuff handled right? Then there's no "old dev in trouble" for swiping a copy of it before he got canned.

Arcana

Quote from: Kyriani on June 24, 2015, 02:17:08 AM
Arcana... would there be any sort of legal ramifications if someone were to reverse engineer the I24 content from the I24 beta files? I mean, the I24 client (which is still available and many folk legitimately have from before shutdown) has a great deal of info in it and is mainly only missing whatever the server side stuff handled right? Then there's no "old dev in trouble" for swiping a copy of it before he got canned.

Icon is already using the I24 content.  However, if you're asking is it possible to reconstruct game content from the contents of the client, what's in the client are the maps that I24 might use, what the new critters that were in I24 look like, a little bit (not all) of the possible dialog trees in I24, and in principle all of the powers used by every critter and the players as they existed in the last released beta.  What doesn't exist, and cannot be reconstructed except by the memories of the players that might have run it, are how the mission content was designed.  What spawned in the missions, when events were triggered, what objectives were there and what they did when interacted with - none of that is in the client.

So hypothetically speaking, if the negotiating team manages to get an I23 server working, someone could add Bio Armor to it from the data in the I24 clients.  They could not, without all but rewriting them, add the I24 missions.  That's what's possible at all.

What are the legal ramifications of doing that?  Probably not much, unless there's a stipulation in the licensing agreement that the server software cannot be modified by the licensee.  If that's the case, that would probably void that license and make the server go bye-bye.

Prism Almidu

Question for you, Arcana. What was your favorite aspect of the game? You clearly enjoyed wringing out every little scrap of data from it that you could :P, but was that it?

Arcana

Quote from: Prism Almidu on June 24, 2015, 02:43:34 AM
Question for you, Arcana. What was your favorite aspect of the game? You clearly enjoyed wringing out every little scrap of data from it that you could :P, but was that it?

My brother started playing in head start.  He showed the game to me.  I decided to get my own account.  I rolled an Energy/Energy Blaster called "Lady Arcana" and quickly got lost trying to figure out how to make the trams work.  Then I got flight and spent hours just flying around, and around, and around.

No matter what the devs did, no matter what they nerfed, no matter how weird, or broken, or just plain strange the content got, I could always just fly around, and remember when that was the coolest thing ever.

I've played literally dozens of MMOs since.  Flying in City of Heroes is still the coolest thing ever.  In 99% of all MMOs out there, just *getting* anywhere is a challenge, and not a particularly interesting or entertaining one.  In City of Heroes, getting there started with being able to fly there, superspeed there, or teleport at practically warp speed to get there.  And eventually, it got better.  The one thing City of Heroes did better than anyone, bar none, was that the City of Heroes development team actually thought about quality of life.  Not always as much as the players wanted them to, and not always as successfully as they should have, but they did not treat the actual act of playing the game itself as being something we were supposed to fight, tolerate, and overcome.  It was always a joy to just play.  Whatever I could do at all, I could just do.

That's what my favorite part of the game was.  I did not have to fight the game to play the game. 

Sinistar

here's a question for you: The character KIRITO from Sword Art Online, would you classify him as a broadsword/willpower scrapper,   or broadsword/willpower brute?

I keep thinking brute since when he got into battle his fury and power were pretty high, so I would think of him as a brute with an easy to raise fury bar, especially when he activated his dual blades skill in episode 9.

Man if only Dual Blades in CoH did as well as in SAO.....
In fearful COH-less days
In Raging COH-less nights
With Strong Hearts Full, we shall UNITE!
When all seems lost in the effort to bring CoH back to life,
Look to Cyberspace, where HOPE burns bright!

Ohioknight

Quote from: Arcana on June 24, 2015, 02:51:47 AM
I rolled an Energy/Energy Blaster called "Lady Arcana" and quickly got lost trying to figure out how to make the trams work.  Then I got flight and spent hours just flying around, and around, and around.
No matter what the devs did, no matter what they nerfed, no matter how weird, or broken, or just plain strange the content got, I could always just fly around, and remember when that was the coolest thing ever.
...Flying in City of Heroes is still the coolest thing ever.    In City of Heroes, getting there started with being able to fly there, superspeed there, or teleport at practically warp speed to get there.  And eventually, it got better.  ...  they did not treat the actual act of playing the game itself as being something we were supposed to fight, tolerate, and overcome.  It was always a joy to just play.  Whatever I could do at all, I could just do.

That's what my favorite part of the game was.  I did not have to fight the game to play the game.

So very very much THIS.  You made me goddamn cry, Arcana.
"Wow, a fat, sarcastic, Star Trek fan, you must be a devil with the ladies"

Twisted Toon

I always thought flying was the coolest thing in the game. I had characters with Teleport, Super Speed, or Super Jump. But, the majority of them had Fly...or a three slotted hover and three slotted Swift that made them "hover" as fast as you could Sprint.

I didn't take Fly because it was safe. I took it because I liked to fly.
Hope never abandons you, you abandon it. - George Weinberg

Hope ... is not a feeling; it is something you do. - Katherine Paterson

Nobody really cares if you're miserable, so you might as well be happy. - Cynthia Nelms

Sinistar

Quote from: Twisted Toon on June 24, 2015, 03:44:21 AM
I always thought flying was the coolest thing in the game. I had characters with Teleport, Super Speed, or Super Jump. But, the majority of them had Fly...or a three slotted hover and three slotted Swift that made them "hover" as fast as you could Sprint.

I didn't take Fly because it was safe. I took it because I liked to fly.

FLight was my favorite power for traveling,  the only toons of mine that had teleport were stone armor and Warshades,  some toons for thematic reasons had super speed but I'd always two slot hurdle and have combat jump running so that walls,  boulders, buildings, cracks in the ground wouldn't be a sudden speed stopper :)

But flight was the one. :)
In fearful COH-less days
In Raging COH-less nights
With Strong Hearts Full, we shall UNITE!
When all seems lost in the effort to bring CoH back to life,
Look to Cyberspace, where HOPE burns bright!

Von Krieger

Quote from: Felderburg on June 22, 2015, 08:26:35 PM
Speaking of Freem, I was at Comic Con '08 and somehow completely missed the Freem shirts literally right next to the NCsoft booth. Does anyone know where I can get one?

I think I have one that I won on the coffee talk by literally using superpowers on the show.

I managed to guess the number Zwillenger rolled on a d100 based entirely on the sound the marker made when he wrote it down on a sticky note.

It's nowhere near close to my size. I think it's at my mother's house ATM, since my trophy shirt wasn't a necessary thing to bring to my new apartment.

Arcana

Quote from: Sinistar on June 24, 2015, 02:54:26 AM
here's a question for you: The character KIRITO from Sword Art Online, would you classify him as a broadsword/willpower scrapper,   or broadsword/willpower brute?

I keep thinking brute since when he got into battle his fury and power were pretty high, so I would think of him as a brute with an easy to raise fury bar, especially when he activated his dual blades skill in episode 9.

Man if only Dual Blades in CoH did as well as in SAO.....

I am not an expert in Sword Art Online, but here's the thing about Brutes.  Although colloquially and evocatively Brutes were supposed to get more powerful with "Fury", the actual mechanic was that they became more powerful the more they actually fought.  A CoH brute could not simply will themselves to become more powerful.  They only got more powerful when they hit or were hit.  Super Strength Rage is more of the "will yourself to become more angry and powerful" power.

If you can start a fight at full fury, so to speak, you're not a CoH brute.  You're maybe a CoH Scrapper with an Assault Hybrid toggle.  Alternatively, the other explicit "I will myself to be better" mechanic in CoH were inspirations.  Any archetype could use those.

Personally, I thought Dual Blades was a decent set.  I had a Dual Blades/Willpower scrapper that I thought worked very well.  Although I came to like Staff Fighting better as a weapon set, DB had a lot to like.  Sweeping Strike, for example, had really good DPA for an AoE, albeit a melee cone.  And it was a visually fun set to watch at least for me.

Kyriani

The thing I found that made dual blades enjoyable for me was to ignore the combos. My first db character was a scrapper and I picked most of the attacks and tried using all the combos... and it just... wasn't fun and didn't feel very effective. Later I tried DB as a stalker. I picked enough attacks for a consistent attack chain and ignored how they intermingled for combos. I ended up having 2 combos just by virtue of my attack chain and placate, only one of which I used with any regularity (the sweep) and only because it just happened as part of my rotation. The empower was the other combo I had and I rarely used my placate so I rarely used that combo.

Playing that way made the stalker both fun and effective for me. I never did manage to level the scrapper past... I dont even recall... 33 maybe?

Arcana

Quote from: Kyriani on June 24, 2015, 07:41:33 AM
The thing I found that made dual blades enjoyable for me was to ignore the combos. My first db character was a scrapper and I picked most of the attacks and tried using all the combos... and it just... wasn't fun and didn't feel very effective. Later I tried DB as a stalker. I picked enough attacks for a consistent attack chain and ignored how they intermingled for combos. I ended up having 2 combos just by virtue of my attack chain and placate, only one of which I used with any regularity (the sweep) and only because it just happened as part of my rotation. The empower was the other combo I had and I rarely used my placate so I rarely used that combo.

Playing that way made the stalker both fun and effective for me. I never did manage to level the scrapper past... I dont even recall... 33 maybe?

I can't exactly remember how I did it, but I laid out my power tray in such a way that the three combos formed patterns in my power bar.  Going left to right did one, going right to left did a second one, and doing a loop in the middle did the third.  After a while, it became natural to simply activate whichever pattern seemed to be available and the combos would just happen.

The Fifth Horseman

Quote from: Joshex on June 23, 2015, 10:26:41 PMLord Nemesis, in the pit, with the trolls.
Everything is a Nemesis plot.
We were heroes. We were villains. At the end of the world we all fought as one. It's what we did that defines us.
The end occurred pretty much as we predicted: all servers redlining until midnight... and then no servers to go around.

Somewhere beyond time and space, if you look hard you might find a flash of silver trailing crimson: a lone lost Spartan on his way home.

Joshex

Quote from: Arcana on June 24, 2015, 01:36:46 AM
There is no such thing as left-over defense.  Hypothetically speaking, suppose we are dealing with a chain effect where the target of the attack is then granted an attack that triggers the next hop in the chain.  It goes like this:

Initial attack: attacker +100% tohit, +100% accuracy.  Target: 50% defense (to type).  Assume attacker is player, target has identical combat level (no combat modifiers, aka no purple patch).

Result: Base chance to hit for player vs even target: 75%.  Net chance to hit target = (1 + acc) * (Base + TohitBuffs - Defense) = (1+1) * (75 + 100 - 50) = 2 * (125) = 250%.  This is capped to 95% maximum tohit ceiling.  Attacker rolls tohit roll: if roll <= 95%, target is hit.  If roll > 95, attacker misses.

Assume attacker hits.  Target is granted chain attack.  Target1 then attacks Target2.  Target1 is a critter, presume minion.  Also presume Target2 identical level.  Attacker base chance to hit target = 50%.  Net chance to hit target = (1 + acc) * (Base + tohitbuffs - defese) = (1 + 0) * (50 - 50) = 1 * (0) = 0.  Net chance to hit increased to the minimum tohit floor of 5%.  Attacker rolls tohit roll, if tohit roll <= 5 then hit, otherwise miss.

Repeat for Target2 as attacker, Target3 as target.

Every time a power is triggered that affects a target, either it autohits (because its flagged "autohit targets") or it rolls a tohit roll.  That tohit roll must be less than or equal to the chance to hit.  The chance for an attacker to hit a target is computed based on the base chance for that entity to hit anything, modified by combat modifiers (aka the purple patch), then modified by tohit buffs/debuffs of the attacker and the defense buffs/debuffs of the target, a 5% minimum floor is applied to this number (what I referred to as the intermediate floor), *then* that number is multiplied by the total accuracy of the attacker, and then by the total accuracy of the attack (these were separate and did not sum together), and then a final 5%/95% floor/ceiling was applied to that number.  That was the final chance to hit the target.  This was computed every time a power was activated against a target, and used the exact values of each property for the attacker and the target for that power at that time.  Except for the case of the streakbreaker, attacks had no memory.

very interesting so the next part of the chain looses tohit buffs and has a lower base chance to hit. I'll admit I didn't even do a base chance to hit. And attacks had no stat memory, that's useful.

I can also see why they coded attacks, makes for a shorter script. I'm still gonna try to calculate against each damage type a power might have in bane, but I need to think out the best way to code that. I've already given attacks adjustedaccuracy memory, and gave targets damagetotake memory, I have yet to set the clear operations, I suppose I could give attacks 1 memory slot for each possible outcome, that would do it. but still the programming bends will be quite long. (I should also be aware that Damagetotake will need to serve multiple attacks and I only have 40 text characters to do it.)

10 main bends (counting special damage types), then each main bend would have 9 secondary bends, then 8 tertiary bends and on and on.

Me thinks it's nice but too much work for now, I can always add it later.
There is always another way. But it might not work exactly like you may desire.

A wise old rabbit once told me "Never give-up!, Trust your instincts!" granted the advice at the time led me on a tripped-out voyage out of an asteroid belt, but hey it was more impressive than a bunch of rocks and space monkies.

FloatingFatMan

Quote from: Arcana on June 24, 2015, 07:06:21 AM
I am not an expert in Sword Art Online, but here's the thing about Brutes.  Although colloquially and evocatively Brutes were supposed to get more powerful with "Fury", the actual mechanic was that they became more powerful the more they actually fought.  A CoH brute could not simply will themselves to become more powerful.  They only got more powerful when they hit or were hit. 

That's Kirito to a T.  Gets more powerful the more he fights and the more he gets worked up.

downix

*pencils in nerfing Regen*

Sinistar

Quote from: FloatingFatMan on June 24, 2015, 04:44:48 PM
That's Kirito to a T.  Gets more powerful the more he fights and the more he gets worked up.

Indeed. in SAO once the fight got underway, Kirito easily gained fury and power, and that was before he became a dual wielder.
In fearful COH-less days
In Raging COH-less nights
With Strong Hearts Full, we shall UNITE!
When all seems lost in the effort to bring CoH back to life,
Look to Cyberspace, where HOPE burns bright!

Twisted Toon

Hope never abandons you, you abandon it. - George Weinberg

Hope ... is not a feeling; it is something you do. - Katherine Paterson

Nobody really cares if you're miserable, so you might as well be happy. - Cynthia Nelms

Raven

Quote from: Sinistar on June 24, 2015, 04:10:13 AM
FLight was my favorite power for traveling,  the only toons of mine that had teleport were stone armor and Warshades,  some toons for thematic reasons had super speed but I'd always two slot hurdle and have combat jump running so that walls,  boulders, buildings, cracks in the ground wouldn't be a sudden speed stopper :)

But flight was the one. :)

What I loved about flight. I would fly high through the city then land on a roof top and run to the other end then jump off, fall a bit and start flight again. Was always fun. :)