User talk:GuyPerfect/Archive1

Rogue Robots Discussion

Hello there!

I see you have done several changes to the Rogue Robots section... Well, I hate to be the bringer of bad news, but I think those changes are not correct =/

The named mobs you describe as Lieutenants are, in fact, Bosses. I can imagine what has happened: you found them during a mission while soloing and they were in Lieutenant form, right? If that's the case don't worry, it's a common error =).

Anyways, this faction does spawn bosses, even if they are named ones, and I suposse that it could positively spawn regular ones if I had a big enough group with me, that I have not.

Just to clarify, the Mark I models are Lieutenants. I have never seen them in the Rogue Robots faction, and they are notoriously evasive in the Council faction, where Galaxy, Cor Leonis and Vampyr Adjutants are all too common. And the Mk IIs are Bosses. Anyways, the Rogue Robots faction uses exclusively the Council models and names. In the case of the Warcrys, if memory serves me, the MK I and MK II are the same model, with the same attacks, but with a different category (Lt and Boss). Being so elusive, I havn't had much chances to experiment with them, but my own notes tell me this is the case.

So, resuming, I can prove the existence of the Rogue Robots Bosses, but not the Lieutenants (which I have never seen, but everything points at its existence). And if the rest of the faction keep the same name than their Council counterparts (as it is the case), it seems safe to asume that the Bosses' name will be "Mk II Warcry", just like the Council one.

If you have discovered the Mk Is (Lieutenants) please add them. What I can prove is that the named mobs are not Lieutenants, but Bosses:

Boss One

Boss Two

Boss Three

There is a good chance that the Bosses of this faction are MK II Warcries.

So I beg you to please change it back, once clarified that the category of these named bosses is...well, bosses =)

Yak

Lieutenants and Bosses

Checking if a mob is a Lieutenant or a Boss is very easy: all you need is a) at least a partner and form a team before entering the mission (a Lt already spawned will remain as a Lt even if more players join you in the mission) or b) raise a bit the difficulty level before starting the mission. Both of these methods will make the target mob spawn like a Boss if this is what he is. It's a long and boring process, but the results are 100% reliable.

Yak

I honestly wish Bosses would show up when soloing. As far as I know, no matter what reputation setting you put your slider on, no bosses will appear. - Snorii 08:42, 17 November 2006 (PST)

You two are talking different things, I beleive. Yak is talking about the scripted end-boss of many missions. These will be there, as bosses, if the difficulty is anything but the lowest. Snorii is talking about random bosses in random mob spawns, I think. Except for cetain missions that have a built-in heightened difficulty, you generally need 7 or more people on a team to start seeing bosses in the regular mobs. - Sister Leortha 09:03, 17 November 2006 (PST)

Not sure I follow what you are getting at. I'm just saying that I wish in general that Bosses would show up in missions when you are soloing. That way you could get information on bosses without jumping through hoops. - Snorii 10:54, 17 November 2006 (PST)

The ones that do not show up "in general", as you put it, as the random mob boss spawns. But the scripted end-of-mission bosses still show up. My point was that your statement: "As far as I know, no matter what reputation setting you put your slider on, no bosses will appear." is incorrect, because the scripted ones, which I'm pretty sure are what Yak was referring to, do still appear, and they appear as bosses if the difficulty is high enough. Now, sure, they are generally only one per mission, but they are there. And even that "generally" has exceptions, as there exist missions that will spawn bosses in regular mobs all over the place even when solo. (Ex. The "Wildflower" mission that spawns the Kronos Titan as an ambush can spawn Zeus Titans, a boss class, in many mobs.) These exception missions generally warn the player that they should bring friends. - Sister Leortha 11:17, 17 November 2006 (PST)

Ok, I see what you mean now. Thanks for the clarification. - Snorii 11:36, 17 November 2006 (PST)

o.o back before the missions slider, before the council/5th war.. and right after the nerf to blasters, they made the change where bosses would spawn as lts. As a blaster at the time, this was a life saver, I could solo missions without gulping a tray of insps again ^^ Story time asside though.. anyone have/though of puting up the original version of the rouge robots? the pre i3 one? I think I know where we can 'borrow' screenies of them from. --Sleepy Kitty 12:22, 17 November 2006 (PST)

Given all the discussions over in the forum with GuyPerfect and his demorecord still shots, and the fact that we are kinda taking over Guy's talk page with this discussion here... :)

Are the 5th Column and previous versions of the Rogue Robots still in the game files? If so, then if we know the item names, Guy can just go generate new versions of the old looks. :) - Sister Leortha 12:32, 17 November 2006 (PST)

should be, other than altering the story missions, it was mostly just replace X mob with Y. o.o all the art seems to still be in the piggs. some of it is still in game (coucil earth, cough cough) --Sleepy Kitty 13:37, 17 November 2006 (PST)

Indeed, there are actor specifiers for the 5th Column versions of all your favorite fiends and lackeys. War Wolves, Vampyri, Arch Villains, robots, the works. I'll probably do those as soon as experimentation with Clockwork has ended. GuyPerfect 14:02, 17 November 2006 (PST)

asterix

My bad, I got my spelling from a Mr. Bean episode. He read a page or two from ASTERIX before he went to bed. I shall now spell it "asterGuyPerfectisk". --Konoko 22:22, 22 November 2006 (PST)

Envoy Mission name

Hi GuyPerfect,

You recently changed the name of the last Envoy mission. The mission name is supposed to be what appears at the bottom of the box when a contact gives you the option of taking a mission and is usually different from the mission objective, which is what you appearently replaced it with. As you can see below, the name of that mission in the listing was the correct one. -- StarGeek^{Talk page} 18:17, 27 November 2006 (PST)

Ah, okay. I thought it was supposed to coincide with the mission title in your navigation window. My bad. -GuyPerfect 18:22, 27 November 2006 (PST)

No worries. The text that appears in the Nav window is what appears under Mission Objectives. -- StarGeek^{Talk page} 18:49, 27 November 2006 (PST)

Snaptooth

Hey, GuyPerfect:

Good work with the Red Caps images.

Only one (minor) thing: while I was checking Snaptooth's attacks yesterday, I had the chance to see that this year he has a red, bright aura he didn't have last year, at least that I can remember. I was wondering if he's using the same model he was using the last year, and if not, if the PIGG files could be checked and the new model added to the page as well.

--Yakovlev 02:24, 29 December 2006 (PST)

It's the same NPC identifier. Given the fact that the aura in question is red/pink sparklies, I would be willing to bet it was like that for Valentine's Day as well. If not, then they made a change to the model itself for this holiday event. Either way, there is only one Snaptooth model and it has red sparkles. It just so happens to be that the image I took didn't happen to have any of the aforementioned sparkles in it. --GuyPerfect 10:38, 29 December 2006 (PST)

So it's the same model, then. I don't remember him having an aura back in Valentine's event, and I'm sure they changed something as he could transform himself in a Boss first and in an Elite Boss later, something he can't do now. Or perhaps the aura was there and I didn't see it? I don't think so, but that was like ten months, so who knows. Well, I suposse the model will do, even without the aura. Thanks for checking it.

--Yakovlev 05:25, 30 December 2006 (PST)

GM Spawn Points

StarGeek has a list of Giant Monster Spawn Points. You might want to collaborate with him on the various spawn sites. I gave him a couple for Ballista that I found in my demo files. Cheers, - Snorii 11:07, 26 January 2007 (PST)

I have plans to do that when the time comes. Right now, ParagonMaps is preparing to kick into a new stage of development, but once that's ready, I'll definitely be networking with others in regards to locations of things. --GuyPerfect 11:33, 26 January 2007 (PST)

Screenies with white background

I see you uploaded a few screenshots of enemies with a white background. Care to share how?

I've tried to do something like this before by replacing certain textures with white ones (the warwalls, concrete_main and others) but when I tried them in-game, some walls looked properly white while others were completely or semi-transparent, ruining the effect. I think it was a bug with the texture creator I was using (PiggViewer v1.61); which software did you use to replace the textures, if this is the method you use? If it's not a software issue, what's the trick to make the textures behave? -- Leandro 08:14, 10 February 2007 (PST)

It's actually not textures at all. In order to isolate the characters in the scene, I load them in a custom demo file with no map, which ends up with a layer of clouds in the sky, then nothing but the sky color. Just for good measure, I move them 5000 units down to get the clouds out of the picture. Of course, that means they'll be on a blue background, which is where the hacking comes in.

You can't use the Data directory to replace the sky definition files, which means I have to patch the changes into the PIGGs themselves. The file in question is /scenes/skies/sun_DEFAULT_BlueSky.txt if you're interested. That's the one that loads when no map is used. Line 140 starts the noon-time sky definition, which specifies fog, clear and lighting colors amongst other things. Changing those values to white makes the demo playback with a character on a white background.

I'm not sure if PiggViewer will let you patch files into the PIGGs themselves, seeing how the global checksums wouldn't be updated and the game would replace them on boot, but I don't know. I've been somewhat working on a custom PIGG manager myself for a while, since I feel PiggViewer is clunky and insufficient in some capacities. It's nowhere near ready for a public distribution, which means I can't let you get ahold of it at this time. But that's what I do to get the white backgrounds and good camera angles.

--GuyPerfect 11:13, 10 February 2007 (PST)

Good stuff. I did think about replacing the sky color but I never figured out where it was. The issue you mention about checksums making the game re-download the PIGG can simply be bypassed by keeping a copy of the PIGG file with white background and use it specifically for demo playback, using a .bat file to swap the "white sky" pigg with the original pigg, calling COH to play the demo, and then swapping them back:

 cd piggs
 ren (gamepigg).pigg (gamepigg).bak
 ren whitesky.dat (gamepigg).pigg
 cd..
 cityofheroes -demoplay %1 -otherswitches
 cd piggs
 ren (gamepigg).pigg whitesky.dat
 ren (gamepigg).bak (gamepigg).pigg

That way Cohupdater.exe will never "see" the patched .pigg and it won't try to "fix" it.

-- Leandro 12:53, 11 February 2007 (PST)

What I do is keep the modified misc.pigg in the CohDemo directory instead. I don't use the test server all that often, so I don't have to mess with that file often either. --GuyPerfect 12:56, 11 February 2007 (PST)

If you're curious, this is the template .cohdemo file I use for my character snapshots. A few things to keep in mind:

• The number just right of the 0 in each line should be different for each entity
• The PLAYER line should only go on one entity
• The NPC line specifies the demo model ID. Change this to whatever you need
• The POS lines for CAM and entity specifies their XYZ location. -5000 is my norm for Y
• The PYR lines are angle, expressed in RADIANS, again XYZ. Remember that X is a rotation about the horizontal axis
• The MOV line specifies the model's stance. READY is the default, but other stances can be used
• The 60000 line just tells demo playback that something happens 1 minute into it. Otherwise, it will keep resetting
• The bottom section is an effects setup for the Quantum Array Gun. If you want to use it, put it between the "0 1 MOV READY" line and the "60000 1 MOV READY" line
• Only move the camera when you have multiple entities on the screen. Use the entity POS otherwise
• The camera's angle should never need to be changed. Use the entity PYR instead

1 0 Version 2
0 0 Time 12
0 CAM POS 0 -5000 0
0 CAM PYR 0 0 0

0 1 PLAYER
0 1 NPC Model_ID
0 1 POS 0 -5000 -10
0 1 PYR -0.2 0.1 0
0 1 MOV READY

60000 1 MOV READY

0 1 FX Maintained 198 WEAPONS/NICTUSHUNTERRIFLE.FX 0
0 1 FXSCALE 10 10
0 1 ORIGIN ENT 0 0
0 1 TARGET ENT 1 0
0 1 MOV 1ST_BUCKSHOT

--GuyPerfect 11:40, 10 February 2007 (PST)

semantics

^^;; baaa semantics! while the info is now on that page.. o_o does it look horribly plain to you? I just want to drop some pictures in it to spruce it up! (not that there are any -.-)--Sleepy Kitty 22:28, 3 March 2007 (PST)

I assume that you are referring to the Character Name Policy Change page, in which case, I would leave it more or less as it is. At this time, it's a moot point and the article simply exists as a casual notice of what once was. No need for sprucing at this point; all I did earlier was make an article out of jotted notes. --GuyPerfect 22:31, 3 March 2007 (PST)

@.@ I know, it just looks so plan to me though.. o_o ack! I just realized.. neither of us ever added it to a category.. --Sleepy Kitty 22:39, 3 March 2007 (PST)