User talk:Zombie Man

Hall of Fame

An arc gets hall of fame when it's been rated more than 100 times and the ratings average is greater than 4. At least, that's the way it was in Test. Those numbers could change on Live.

Once an arc achieves Hall of Fame, the player receives the badge and a new publishing slot and both are permanent. However, the Hall of Fame status isn't. If further ratings make the average score drop below the appointed threshold, then the arc loses the Hall of Fame tag and icon. Also, being chosen as a Dev's Choice also takes away the Hall of Fame tag and icon.

How do I force a specific level for my missions?

You just have to know how to 'play the system' a bit, in this case if you want everything a certain level, you put in an npc(whether it be ally, boss, escort, w/e) that is by default that level, in this case, I added an ally Lord recluse (54-54 Arch-Villain), which forces all entities on the map to increase to 54

if I wanted all 53, I'd put in Statesman(53-53 Hero)

52 Silver mantis....51 Ms liberty...etc

Edit: Just a side note that 54 is still the max, while heroic/villainous with LR will be all 54...increasing difficulty wont add level 55-57 enemies

How do I check the spelling of my missions?

1. Type up all your text with a word processor that has spelling and grammar checking capabilities. Then, copy and paste the text into the MA.

2. After you're done creating your mission, load up the mission found in your /mission subdirectory off of your CoH directory into a word processor with spelling and grammar checking capabilities. Be careful about saving that file, the file requires plain text coding and a word processor can mess that up. You'll be better off using your word processor to see where the errors are and then change them by hand in the MA interface.

How do I have two or more custom critters with the same name?

Create one with the name you want and save to a filename (e.g., you save "Gravestone Pounder" to "gravepound1").

Then create a second custom critter with the same name to a different filename (e.g., "gravepound2").

Empty Maps

Can I make a mission that doesn't spawn anything until you trigger some kind of event, like the trap for Nocturne in the Faultline Dam, and if so, how do I achieve that? I don't seem to have any control over regular spawns, other than saying what enemy group they are.

pohsyb: There are two main spawn types in most missions. One is used for ambush, boss, patrol or destroy object details, the other is used for battle, rescue, escort, ally, or defend object details. (Some maps have additional spawntypes that are not overrideable by the MA).

Lets pretend you picked a map with 15 of the first type and 15 of the second type. If you wanted it to be empty until your trap is hatched, you could add a patrol detail with quantity 15 and and a battle detail with quantity 15. Next, add a collection detail and have both the patrol and battle trigger on completion of the collection.

Allies and Rewards

Allies in a mission can 'kill-steal' from you. The amount of damage they do to foes is proportionally reducing the amount of xp, inf, or ticket rewards you would have gotten from defeating that foe by yourself.

Allies that are set on non-attack modes and only buff you can give you an edge... but just one at a time. Only one ally will buff you so that a large amount of non-attacking buffing allies won't be able to make you invincible. (At least, that's what's supposed to happen according to pohsyb in an in-game chat conversation.)

AVs

Ok, here is a list of AVs that I have come across, that do not scale to EB, they will always be an AV/Hero.

Arachnos:

Barracuda (52-52) Dr. Aeon (52-52) Ice Mistral (52-52) Magus Mu Drakhan (52-52) Regent Korol (52-52) Shadow Spider (52-52) Silver Mantis (52-52) Viridian (52-52) Wretch (52-52)

Freedom Phalanx:

Back Alley Brawler (53-53) Citadel (53-53) Manticore (53-53) Numina (53-53) Positron (53-53) Sister Psyche (53-53) Statesman (53-53) Synapse (53-53)

Vindicators:

Luminary (51-51) Malaise (51-51) Ms. Liberty (51-51) Mynx (51-51) Swan (51-51) Valkyrie (51-51)

Now, the problem with these AVs/Heroes, as I said, is they don't scale to EB on lower difficulties/smaller teams. There could be more in other factions, but I didn't really check.

These need to either be changed so they DO scale (maybe increasing the level range of them aswell to say 40-54) from EB to AV, -OR- when they are used in missions, the description of that mission MUST have 'Contains AV' instead of Contains Boss.

If you happen to run across any AV that doesn't scale, put the Faction/Name (level range)

Mission Compass

Tip: you can even combine compass text for non-related details. For exampler, you could make the compass plural "rescue the lost researchers" on a clicky pile of bones, ally rescue, and a boss.

Compass objectives with the exact same text will be combined, but that doesn't mean the required flag has changed.

Example: I make 4 non-required crates with text "Crates Left" and 1 required create with text "Crates Left". When I enter the mission I'll see "5 Crates Left" in the compass, but if I find the random required one first the mission will complete. -pohsyb

Deleting Custom Critters

This is maybe a bug? I'll add it to bug forum too... If I delete a custom critter group and then go to edit a mission that had that group in it, the group is still there. Perhaps have it clear the group automatically if they no longer exist? -player

It works the opposite way. The .storyarc file is self-contained, so it has the .critter and .villaingroup info baked in. If you edit a storyarc it will ensure those .critter and .villaingroup files exist.

If you want to remove a villaingroup file you should remove all references to it first or never edit a storyarc that contains that villain group. I think its better err on the side of NOT auto-deleting player created content. -pohsyb

ratings

Quote: Quote: Ah, so if I rated a mission from Zombie Man yesterday, I can't rate a totally different mission from Zombie Man today?

Thats not correct. The system (when its actually working right) is thus:

For Rating: Account A can rate any arc by Account B once. All subsequent rates on the same arc simply update the original vote.

Is that contradicting what you said earlier:

Quote: Internally one Account can only rate another Account X times every Y days. I think right now X=1 and Y=7. However you can re-rate as many times as you like.

Ok, I get how we can re-rate and 'update' the rating we gave and it won't register as a new rating.

But I was referring to your earlier statement about one account only allowed to give a rating to another account once per week. And then the poster you were responding to gave a concrete example of that, and you now say, no, that's not how it works.

Norman, coordinate!

re-rate = update. An update will do two things, change the rating average without changing the rating count and award any difference in rewards.

Lets run some examples:

1). I rate one of Zloths missions 2 stars. His rating is now 2 stars with a rate count of 1. There is no reward for a 2 star rating for Zloth.

2). I play a different Zloth arc and rate it 3 stars. He gets some tickets as a reward for 3 star rating.

3). I play the first arc again and decide its actually super awesome, I rate it 5. no one else has rated it yet so now the rating on that mission is 5 stars, still with one vote count. Also, he will get the reward ticket bonus for having a 5 star rate minus the 3 star rating bonus (since he already got that)

4). Wow I am super wishy-washy, I played again and hated it, one star rating. Someone else voted 5 star in mean time, so now rating will show 3 stars (1+5/2) with a vote count of two. No rewards are subtacted, we go with the highest reward rating.

5). A week later I play it again and rate it 5 stars. There is still only one other 5 star vote so now rating says 5 stars with a vote count of two. The time period on Zloth getting a reward from me rating him has expired so he will get a new 5 star rating reward.

This is what I want to be happening. It may be broken.

Text Formatting

Color and Size

Can also be accessed through the right-click menu on most text fields.

The general syntax is:

<color #000000>This text will be black</color>

where "#000000" is a html/hex code representation of a 24 bit colour.

You also have access to some other formatting tags through the menu, such as

 italics (<i>)
 bold (<b>) 
 and text size (<scale X> where X is between 0.8 and 1.2).

Substitutions

OK, tested it. These are the substitutions:

$name or $target - the name of the target of your villain/npc/whatever.

$supergroup - that person's supergroup, if none, returns "No Supergroup"

$class or $archetype - their Archetype

$level - their Level

$origin - their Origin

$heshe or $Heshe - substitutes "he" or "she" depending on gender (capitalized will cap the substitution)

$himher $Himher - same as above, using "him" or "her"

$hisher $Hisher - same as above, using "his" or "her"

$sirmam $Sirmam - same as above, using "sir" or "mam"

What does *not* work is $type or $AT for Archetype.

These work in chat:

$name - self name $archetype - self Archetype $level - self Level $origin - self Origin $target -target's name

Templates and the noinclude tag

I noticed you went through and fixed the categorization of the templates -- awesome job! It's been long overdue for getting done. However, there's a subtle mistake you introduced on a lot of pages that I wanted to make you aware of for future reference. When adding a noinclude section to the end of a page, you have to make sure you don't add any whitespace before the opening tag. For example, if a template consists of this:

|}

And you change it to this:

|}
<noinclude>[[Category:Example]]</noinclude>

You've just added whitespace to the template. On some templates, this can seriously break the functionality -- for example, if the template is meant to be used in-line, having linebreaks can really throw things off and break formatting in unexpected ways. The correct way to do it is this:

|}<noinclude>
[[Category:Example]]</noinclude>

The important thing is that the opening <noinclude> gets glued right up against the last character that is going to get transcluded into the article.

It's a very common and subtle error, just wanted to make you aware of it in case you have any further categorizing to do. -- Sekoia 01:29, 22 February 2010 (UTC)