Paragon Chat

Overview

Paragon Chat is a standalone chat program created by Codewalker and Leandro that allows the City of Heroes client to access an XMPP chat server. The City of Heroes client was distributed for free to anyone who wished to play for free by NCsoft while the game was in operation, and XMPP servers and programs are available as open source software.

Patch notes for Paragon Chat can be viewed here.

A development roadmap and features wishlist can be viewed here.

Installation

Paragon Chat requires the final Issue 24 beta files to run. If you have the Issue 24 files already, you are good to go! If you do not, you may install with a launcher (Tequila or Island Rum), as explained in the Titan Icon article, or you may download Issue 24 directly from SaveCOH.com. The launchers can also be used to download and patch Paragon Chat.

Alternately, if you have the final beta files already, you can manually download the program file and place it in the same folder that "cityofheroes.exe" is located in. NOTE: Paragon Chat did not auto-update prior to version .98. Older versions will require manually downloading the new version. After version .98, Paragon Chat is capable of downloading and installing new patches itself, so a launcher is no longer required for auto-updates.

Logging In

Your XMPP username, and thus your Paragon Chat "global name", is determined by your Titan Network username. Note that if your username has a space in it, your XMPP name will have an underscore instead, e.g. Bob Dole on the Titan Network would be Bob_Dole for logging in to Paragon Chat. The case with which you type your login name is now used to set the preferred capitalization of your global handle. If you log in with all lowercase, your global name will be lowercase (e.g. bob_dole becomes "bob dole" in game). If you log in with mixed case, your global name will be mixed case (e.g. Bob_Dole becomes "Bob Dole" in game).

To log in to Paragon Chat, type in your username@chat.cohtitan.com in the Login field, and your Titan Network password. Click Launch City of Heroes or hit enter. This will take you to the City of Heroes login screen, with fields for Local Account and password. You can type anything into these fields, as they are not outwardly visible (the password can be literally anything, even a single period, because it is not passed to a login server). However, you may want to use the same Local Account name every time, because character data will be saved on your computer per username typed here (caveat below). Once logged in, you can create a character and enter the game world the same way you would with a working server!

Once in the game, Bob Dole's "global name" would now be "Bob Dole".

See you in the City!

Editor's Note: Your character data is stored by the username you put in the "Local Account" field at the City of Heroes login screen. If you want to use characters you've already made, you'll want to use the same Local Account. However, you can use different Local Accounts to store a whole new set of characters, especially since City of Heroes limits character count to 48 per server and Paragon Chat only has one server. Thus, Bob_Dole@chat.cohtitan.com may have Bob Dole Heroes as one login to house 48 heroes, and he may also use Bob Dole Villains to house 48 more characters that are villains, and they will all have "Bob Dole" as their global name. Note that names are unique per XMPP login, so you can't re-use names even if you use different Local Accounts at the City login screen.

Chat By Program/App

You can chat without actually being in Paragon Chat! Just point a compatible XMPP client (like Trillian, pidgin, Monal, etc.) to chat.cohtitan.com, log in with your Paragon Chat information (e.g. username: bob_dole, domain: chat.cohtitan.com), and search for a "Conference" or "Group Chat" or whatever your client calls it named "paragonchat" - this will join you to the Paragon Chat global chat channel. You can join zone Broadcast channels by looking for the appropriate chat room with no spaces (e.g. Atlas Park is listed as atlaspark).

You will not have a presence in-game, so position-based chat like Local and Emotes aren't available, but you can chat with people in Broadcast and global channels.

See this thread for a little more detail and to troubleshoot errors.

User Agreement

(From Paragon Chat, July 1, 2015) I agree to be awesome, in all things, all of the time.

Slash Commands

General Commands

/tell, /t, /private, /p, /whisper

/t @somebody, message here

Sends a private message. This shows up as a tell to other PC users, or as a direct instant message to someone using a standard XMPP client.

/say, /local, /l, /s

Local chat. Sends to people within a 100' radius (50' in Pocket D). This is implemented behind the scenes as multicast direct messaging, so it does not show up to people who have joined the zone's broadcast channel using XMPP.

/e, /me, /em, /emote

Either performs an emote animation if the name is found in emote.cfg, or sends to the emote text channel which functions exactly like /local but with a different chat bubble graphic.

/yell, /y, /broadcast, /b

Zone-wide broadcast chat.

/request, /req, /sell, /auction

Request channel. Functionally identical to broadcast, but is a different color and can be sorted into a different chat tab.

/chan_join

/chan_leave

Joins or leaves a global channel. These are actually client-side commands, but listing them for completeness.

/chan_send, /send

Sends a message to a global channel that you are a member of.

/chan_invite

Sends a global channel invite. Not really very useful right now since Paragon Chat doesn't process incoming invites. Standard XMPP clients might, though.

/gfriend @global

Sends a global friend request to the specified user. Paragon Chat users will get the familiar popup. XMPP users will be prompted in an application-specific way that someone wants to subscribe to their presence.

This command does work with character names, too, if the character has been in zone with you recently enough for your client to remember their character name. Note that since character names aren't unique, you might not be friending the right person if there's a duplicate, so it is recommended to always use global names if possible.

/gunfriend @global

Removes a global friend without prompting.

/ignore, /gignore

Adds a player to your account-wide ignore list.

/unignore, /gunignore

Removes a player from your account-wide ignore list.

/afk

Sets yourself as AFK, with an optional message. This is fully integrated with XMPP presence and you will appear as Away to people running an XMPP client. As XMPP presence updates are rather heavyweight, using this in rapid succession is highly discouraged, and there is a rate limiter in place to prevent it from being used too often. If you are looking for something to use in a keybind to show people you are typing, you want /typing.

/architect

When standing near an Architect terminal, opens the Mission Architect window. You can create or update missions, though they cannot be tested or played at this time.

/costume_change, /cc

Changes costumes to the specified number.

/customwindow name

Creates a custom macro window titled name. Displays macros that are available across all characters. This window will only persist if your installation folder contains a /data/customwindows folder (create one if you don't have one already).

/roll

By itself, it will roll a 20-sided die. The results of the die roll are shown to players in local chat range. It takes parameters in several different forms:

/roll 100

Roll a 100-sided die

/roll 3d6

Roll 3 6-sided dice and add them together

/roll 4 8

Roll 4 8-sided dice and add them together

/roll @global 2x12

Roll 2 12-sided dice and add them together, and send the results only to the player @global (not to others in local range)

The maximum number of sides of a die that can be used are 100,000. The maximum number of dice that can be rolled at once is 100. Keep in mind that large dice pools have a higher probability of rolling totals in the middle of the possible range, approximating a bell curve distribution. For multi-die rolls, the individual results can be seen by the player who issued the /roll command in the Combat To-hit roll channel.

/stuck

Teleports you back to the zone entrance point.

/typing

Causes an AFK-style bubble to appear over your head, with the intent that you are using it as a typing notification. As with /afk, it accepts an optional text message up to 48 characters long. This only appears to people near you and does not affect your AFK status as far as friends in other zones or on XMPP are concerned. It has no rate limit and does not trigger AFK auto-replies.

/whoall

Shows a list of all players in your current zone. It also displays diagnostic information indicating if someone is invisible to you, and why.

Changing Maps

With version .97 and newer, typing /mapmenu opens a list of maps to choose from, categorized by type/location of map. This list is generated based on the zones listed in the zone.cfg configuration file. You can add maps to this file manually if there are no zone number conflicts. In Windows, the file is located at %APPDATA%\Paragon Chat\Config (copy that to Windows Explorer and it'll open the real location). In Mac, the file is located at ???. If you do not have access to this slash command, update Paragon Chat per instructions given above.

Editor's Note: Adding maps causes all of the zones to be grouped under the 'Other' category. To restore the correct behavior if this happens, you will need to delete zone.cfg, described above.

If you are making a keybind, you can jump directly to a category by specifying its name with the command. i.e. /mapmenu Rogue Isles will take you directly to the list of villain zones.

Typing /mapmove # will send you a static map/chat room. Please note, it is not currently possible to move from one instance of a map to another, e.g. from Atlas Park 1 to Atlas Park 2. You will be placed in the oldest map instance with space available.

The following numbers correlate to specific maps:

1 - Atlas Park

3 - Cimerora

4 - Midnighter Club

5 - Kings Row

6 - Steel Canyon

7 - Skyway City

8 - Talos Island

9 - Independence Port

10 - Founder's Falls

11 - Brickstown

12 - Perez Park

13 - Boomtown

14 - Echo: Dark Astoria

15 - Crey's Folly

16 - Ouroboros

18 - Abandoned Sewer Network

19 - Echo: Faultline

20 - Terra Volta

21 - Eden

22 - The Hive

23 - Sewer Network

24 - Outbreak

29 - Galaxy City

36 - Nova Praetoria

37 - Imperial City

38 - Neutropolis

39 - Underground Nova Praetoria

40 - Precinct Five

41 - Destroyed Galaxy City

42 - Underground Imperial

43 - Dark Astoria

49 - First Ward

51 - Underground Neutropolis

52 - Night Ward

55 - Fort Trident

56 - The Crucible

60 - Rikti Crash Site

61 - Peregrine Island

62 - The Hollows

63 - Tunnels of the Trolls

64 - Firebase Zulu

65 - Cascade Archipelago

66 - The Chantry

67 - The Storm Palace

68 - Paragon Dance Party

69 - Striga Isle

70 - Breakout

71 - Mercy Island

72 - Port Oakes

73 - Cap Au Diable

74 - Sharkhead Isle

75 - Nerva Archipelago

76 - St. Martial

77 - Grandville

78 - Bloody Bay

79 - Siren's Call

80 - Warburg

81 - Recluse's Victory

82 - Croatoa

83 - Pocket D

84 - Faultline

85 - Rikti War Zone

86 - The Abyss

87 - Monster Island

XMPP Specific

/xmpp_set_jid

/xmpp_set_password

/xmpp_set_server

Manually sets the username, password, and optionally xmpp server to connect to. If no server is set, the appropriate server for your JID is determined by an SRV lookup, or failing that, a direct connection to the domain part of the JID. Setting these affect the next connection made by /xmpp_connect.

These are normally not needed as this is handled automatically by the login form when you start Paragon Chat.

/xmpp_disconnect

Disconnects the active XMPP link. This will result in all other players disappearing and chat no longer functioning, though you can still use /mapmove and local-only features like tailors.

/xmpp_connect

Connects the XMPP link. Useful if you get disconnected.

/xmpp_add_global @global jid@domain

Manually associates a global name with a JID, overriding the automatic global name assignment, and saves it in your local database so that the JID always gets mapped to that @global.

/xmpp_forget_global @global

Removes the JID associated with the given global and removes it from database persistence. The next time the associated JID is seen, automatic global assignment will be used.

/xmpp_set_muc_service subdomain.domain

Sets the name of the MUC (conference) service that Paragon Chat uses. This is normally automatically discovered for the xmpp server that you log into, but can be manually set if your server doesn't support discovery, or if you want to connect to a MUC on a different server than you logged in to. Does not take effect until you /mapmove to another zone. For advanced users only.

/xmpp_chanjoin "channelname" jid@domain

Similar to /chanjoin, but allows you to manually specify the full JID of the XMPP room to associate with the channel. Possibly useful on servers with s2s federation enabled.

/xmpp_chaninvite "channelname" jid@domain

Sends a channel invite to a full JID, otherwise works the same as /chan_invite.

FAQ

Help! I'm invisible!

Update to the newest version! You should stop being invisible.

Help! I'm seeing invisible people!

Tell them to update to the newest version! They should stop being invisible. You should also update if you haven't!

Help! I'm invisible or seeing invisible people and have the newest version!

There are still some issues with costume data being sent between players. The developers are actively working on narrowing down causes. If you're still invisible please post in this thread to possibly help track stuff down.

Help! I can't log in due to a "Cannot connect to DB server" error!

The most common reasons for DBserver errors are:

1. You're on Windows XP. Workaround: You can try using the -localhost flag, which has worked for a few Windows XP users. Version 98c may have fixed compatibility - update!
2. Your anti-virus or Windows UAC is interfering with Paragon Chat. Solution: whitelist paragonchat.exe in your anti-virus and/or run PC as admin (right-click, "run as admin") to stop triggering UAC.
3. You're closing the Paragon Chat window before logging into City proper. Solution: don't close the Paragon Chat window.
4. You have another copy of Paragon Chat running in the background already. Solution: check your running programs and close it.

Can I change costumes? Can I use the other costume slots?

Yes! Visit any tailor, including the nonstandard ones in Pocket D and the Rikti War Zone.

How do I create a new global channel? How do I join an existing global channel?

Both of these simply require /chanjoin name.

How do I see who's on?

You can't see everyone who is on, but you can get a list of who is in your current zone by using /whoall. Also, if you /gfriend someone's global name, they will show up in your Global Friends list. And if you are part of a global channel, the member list will show up in the friends list pulldown tab. A good "guesstimate" of how many people are on is to look at the Paragon Chat channel, since everyone joins that by default and only people who have manually removed themselves will not show there.

Does the zone music work?

Yes. Either your options are set to zero, or you need to change zones to re-trigger the transition.

Does Mission Architect work?

Yes, to an extent. You can click on the consoles or type /architect while standing near them, and edit your exiting missions or create new ones. However, you can't test or play them yet.

Are there travel powers?

Yes, mostly! As of version .99 Beta, Super Jump, Super Speed, and Flight are in testing, in addition to Ninja Run. Teleportation is a whole 'nother kettle of fish, so that may be delayed some time.

Do the trams/etc. work?

As of version .99b, yes! "Old" (undestroyed) Galaxy City has some issues that will be addressed in a future patch. TUNNEL was not included as /mapmove and /mapmenu are better. (If you really want to roleplay using TUNNEL, stand next to it and mapmove.)

Are there supergroups?

Not yet. Soon(tm)!

External Links

• Paragon Chat Announcements
• P.C. FAAAQ
• P.C. Roadmap and Wishlist
• Tequila launcher for Windows
• Island Rum launcher for Mac