New efforts!

[avelworldcreator]

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/47/74/85/4774850c0422b2730bc1f4ebf413e78c.jpg

Arcana, that's not quite the way I had envisioned you! :o

[Vee]

That was before her neck tattoos.

[Tubbius]

Ok.  I love how people have taken something like a four-line post of mine and each person latched onto wonderfully distinct sections of it.  :)

Time for more "Rhythm of the Night," and, yes, my favorite Stalker from The Running Man is Captain Freedom.  Jesse Ventura played the role with GUSTO!

[blacksly]

That was before her neck tattoos.

But clearly after the cybereyebrow upgrade.

[Arcana]

Jesse Ventura played the role with GUSTO!

That movie is a scene-chewing bonanza from beginning to end. The most understated performances in it are the bodyguard who's job is to stand and look big and Yaphet Kotto who's job is to die.  Even Richard Dawson's microphone has bite marks embedded in it.

The 80s were a great time to be a cinema fan.

[Soul Resonance]

You know, part of the "happy mistake" of CoH was the community of players that arose within it.  You have to consider the possibility that even if we got City of Heroes back exactly as it was, the community that grows up within it won't be the same.  If the game can't adapt to that (which legacy won't be able to, because its development possibilities are strictly limited) it may still not be the game you remember.

We the community are not the same "we the community" that existed at launch, or I13, or shutdown.  We were a community of people that shouted in broadcast for help with Portal AVs, then we weren't.  We were a community of players that queued up for the Respec trial, then we weren't.  We were a community that fought for every enhancement drop, then we became a community that gave the things away because enhancements and inventions were so plentiful.  We were a community of hill-sitters for Hamidon, then we weren't.  We were a community that said you shouldn't bother agonizing over your build, then became a community of Mids-fanatics.  We used to street sweep, then we didn't.  We used to have dance-offs at the train stations, then not.  What we cared about and didn't care about changed over time.  What we found acceptable conduct by other players and what we didn't changed over time.  How we treated casual players changed over time.  I'll be frank: our collective in-game treatment towards (presumptive) female players was not very good initially, but as we matured as a playerbase that improved over time (somewhat).

Are we still going to be friendly to casuals?  Are we still going to ostracize abusively childish behavior?  Are we going to be relatively family-friendly in chat?  Are we still going to be able to find teams when we want, run the kinds of content that we want, be able to complete the difficulty we want, have the same amount of friends in chat we want?  All of those things have nothing to do with what server image we get, and everything to do with who we collectively are that plays the game.  That is really the most important part for many (not all) players.  And it is impossible to predict.

Impossible to predict, but most definitely probable. We'll have to be that community again if we want to thrive with relative ease(IO's and such). Plus, I think we'd want to, after the game's been down for 3 years.

[Twisted Toon]

I liked Fireball the best.

[Arcana]

I liked Fireball the best.

No.  Last season's loooooooooooooooooosers.

[GamingGlen]

Has anyone tried creating a City of Heroes paper RPG?

Several, but they will fail in the end.

CoH does not have powers or abilities concerning growing large (e.g., Ginormaca from Monsters vs. Aliens) or small (e.g, Antman), having great strength to lift or stop objects from falling down/crashing, X-ray eyes or any special sensory powers, and most likely a lot of other powers I'm not thinking of at the moment.  CoH does not have a skill system, so no Dr. Reed Richards (oh yeah, no Stretching powers in CoH) or Batman (he does a whole lot more than punching people and playing with his toys).

Plenty of other superhero RPGs exist that can cover those options. 

[Joshex]

You know, part of the "happy mistake" of CoH was the community of players that arose within it.  You have to consider the possibility that even if we got City of Heroes back exactly as it was, the community that grows up within it won't be the same.  If the game can't adapt to that (which legacy won't be able to, because its development possibilities are strictly limited) it may still not be the game you remember.

We the community are not the same "we the community" that existed at launch, or I13, or shutdown.  We were a community of people that shouted in broadcast for help with Portal AVs, then we weren't.  We were a community of players that queued up for the Respec trial, then we weren't.  We were a community that fought for every enhancement drop, then we became a community that gave the things away because enhancements and inventions were so plentiful.  We were a community of hill-sitters for Hamidon, then we weren't.  We were a community that said you shouldn't bother agonizing over your build, then became a community of Mids-fanatics.  We used to street sweep, then we didn't.  We used to have dance-offs at the train stations, then not.  What we cared about and didn't care about changed over time.  What we found acceptable conduct by other players and what we didn't changed over time.  How we treated casual players changed over time.  I'll be frank: our collective in-game treatment towards (presumptive) female players was not very good initially, but as we matured as a playerbase that improved over time (somewhat).

Are we still going to be friendly to casuals?  Are we still going to ostracize abusively childish behavior?  Are we going to be relatively family-friendly in chat?  Are we still going to be able to find teams when we want, run the kinds of content that we want, be able to complete the difficulty we want, have the same amount of friends in chat we want?  All of those things have nothing to do with what server image we get, and everything to do with who we collectively are that plays the game.  That is really the most important part for many (not all) players.  And it is impossible to predict.

after taking a close look at their modelling and texture layouts I can see some of the "happy accident" side of the game as well, they even broke some core professional UV layout rules like "only use nxn size square textures in powers of 2 (2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024 ETC.)" and "always use the whole texturemap area"

when it comes to the community however, it all depends who the newbies can rely on, if they rely on us then we become figures they look upto for help and such, if that because the case then we can introduce them to dance-offs and the trainstation, AE teams Mish teams in Pi, Respec trial queues, giant monster hunting squads, non-hill-sitting at hami raids, helping with portal AVs, street sweeping ETC. and they will listen.

[GenericHero05]

Captain Freedom   8)

And just for the record, if those three people hadn't won my (places pinkie to corner of mouth) billion dollar Powerball jackpot, I would have cheerfully thrown 10 million at the negotiation just to "grease the skids".

I'd have used that 10 million as payment to the Yakuza to make the deal go through and maybe inflict a little payback for our suffering.

[Solitaire]

I'd have used that 10 million as payment to the Yakuza to make the deal go through and maybe inflict a little payback for our suffering.

Yakuza is Japanese if I remember correctly, you would likely need the Korean equivalent "Kkangpae" which is the Korean mafia.

[Arcana]

after taking a close look at their modelling and texture layouts I can see some of the "happy accident" side of the game as well, they even broke some core professional UV layout rules like "only use nxn size square textures in powers of 2 (2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024 ETC.)" and "always use the whole texturemap area"

In the old days, power of two textures were necessary in some older video cards, but I don't recall the limitation that they be square: they could be rectangles with each side a separate power of two.  The reason for the power of two restriction was that older cards used some speed optimizations that were only valid for textures whose dimensions were powers of two.  I didn't poke around the textures in CoH too much, but I thought they were all power of two rectangles.

I'll admit I'm not an OpenGL expert or a video card historian, so if someone else would like to either confirm or correct: I thought texture dimensions were recommended to be powers of two, but did not need to be identical (square).

[Joshex]

In the old days, power of two textures were necessary in some older video cards, but I don't recall the limitation that they be square: they could be rectangles with each side a separate power of two.  The reason for the power of two restriction was that older cards used some speed optimizations that were only valid for textures whose dimensions were powers of two.  I didn't poke around the textures in CoH too much, but I thought they were all power of two rectangles.

I'll admit I'm not an OpenGL expert or a video card historian, so if someone else would like to either confirm or correct: I thought texture dimensions were recommended to be powers of two, but did not need to be identical (square).

one example was even up to the nintendo gamecube, nintendo's hardware only accepted square texture images for the GCN it was 256x256 or nothing actually. So I'm guessing they had to be square, or maybe they only did it because they figured it's more memory effective to make them square.

[MegaWatt]

Several, but they will fail in the end.

CoH does not have powers or abilities concerning growing large (e.g., Ginormaca from Monsters vs. Aliens) or small (e.g, Antman), having great strength to lift or stop objects from falling down/crashing, X-ray eyes or any special sensory powers, and most likely a lot of other powers I'm not thinking of at the moment.  CoH does not have a skill system, so no Dr. Reed Richards (oh yeah, no Stretching powers in CoH) or Batman (he does a whole lot more than punching people and playing with his toys).

Plenty of other superhero RPGs exist that can cover those options.

i am geting to the point where i want to remake the various groups in Mutants and masterminds and have my game night people i dont know.....run the golden roller missions or fight Malta.

[Thunder Glove]

... I dreamed that the negotiations had succeeded, and as a test, they were putting up a partial version of the game with the character creator and the various tutorials (yes, even the old ones).  I remember being so happy.

[Arcana]

one example was even up to the nintendo gamecube, nintendo's hardware only accepted square texture images for the GCN it was 256x256 or nothing actually. So I'm guessing they had to be square, or maybe they only did it because they figured it's more memory effective to make them square.

I know there existed some (older) hardware that was optimized for square textures, but I didn't think PC video cards circa the time of CoH's development required them.  Power of two optimization, yes.  Square, not that I recall.  Also, CoH was originally written to target OpenGL and had a primary software renderer if I'm recalling correctly, and would thus not necessarily have any intrinsic hardware-specific texture limitations in its implementation.  I'm not even sure they tried to optimize for hardware acceleration: at the time the client was being implemented hardware accelerated OpenGL in home computers was not exactly common.

[Solitaire]

Been reading Massively Overpowered this morning and the Global Chat article where there was a paragraph regarding emulators, is this possible with CoH or are there legal implications that prevent this from happening. Have the other teams which have emulators gotten prior permission from the companies to explore this avenue?

Sorry if this has been asked before.

[Arcana]

Been reading Massively Overpowered this morning and the Global Chat article where there was a paragraph regarding emulators, is this possible with CoH or are there legal implications that prevent this from happening. Have the other teams which have emulators gotten prior permission from the companies to explore this avenue?

Sorry if this has been asked before.

1.  It is technically possible, but very difficult.  Lots of MMOs have different groups that start "emulator" projects (which is a misnomer: these are all actually reverse engineered servers, not emulators).  Most fail.  Some succeed on some level.  Few succeed in all respects.  Most take years.  There are very few people I'm aware of technically capable of such an undertaking for City of Heroes.  If anyone was working on such a thing, it would not be in their best interests to tell anyone about it.  The existence of this thread alone should compel them to keep absolutely quiet.

2.  Yes, there are lots of legal issues that could potentially interfere with such a project.  In the case of CoH, two separate legal challenges exist.  Actually reverse engineering the server could be construed as violating the EULA we all were supposed to agree to when we began playing the game.  This is a legal grey area, and not all countries have the same laws regarding the enforceability of the EULA in this sense.  The stronger issue is that much of the game content existed on the server side only and would have to be recreated to make any "emulator" work.  This would almost certainly run afoul of copyright laws which are much less ambiguous and much more uniformly enforced in most western countries.

3.  I'm unaware of any reverse engineering team or private server team trying or succeeding to get permission, at least official permission.  There might be some unofficial "we;ll look the other way" kind of permission going on for some efforts, but I think it is highly unlikely a reverse engineering team could actually get legally binding permission to do so.

[Solitaire]

1.  It is technically possible, but very difficult.  Lots of MMOs have different groups that start "emulator" projects (which is a misnomer: these are all actually reverse engineered servers, not emulators).  Most fail.  Some succeed on some level.  Few succeed in all respects.  Most take years.  There are very few people I'm aware of technically capable of such an undertaking for City of Heroes.  If anyone was working on such a thing, it would not be in their best interests to tell anyone about it.  The existence of this thread alone should compel them to keep absolutely quiet.

2.  Yes, there are lots of legal issues that could potentially interfere with such a project.  In the case of CoH, two separate legal challenges exist.  Actually reverse engineering the server could be construed as violating the EULA we all were supposed to agree to when we began playing the game.  This is a legal grey area, and not all countries have the same laws regarding the enforceability of the EULA in this sense.  The stronger issue is that much of the game content existed on the server side only and would have to be recreated to make any "emulator" work.  This would almost certainly run afoul of copyright laws which are much less ambiguous and much more uniformly enforced in most western countries.

3.  I'm unaware of any reverse engineering team or private server team trying or succeeding to get permission, at least official permission.  There might be some unofficial "we;ll look the other way" kind of permission going on for some efforts, but I think it is highly unlikely a reverse engineering team could actually get legally binding permission to do so.

Thanks for the information Arcana very insightful, so the emulators that are currently out there SWG, Warhammer Online have all had permission from the original owners to go ahead? And provided information required to complete said emulators?