Paragon Chat/Notes

Overview

These are the patch notes for Paragon Chat.

Starting with 1.0, Paragon Chat follows a rigid version numbering scheme:
1.0.0.0

Epoch.Major.Minor.Patch

Epoch: The epoch level indicates the maturity of the project and its underlying technology. It is increased only for versions that represent a fundamental shift in design, such as going from 0 (beta) to 1 (release).

Major: Major versions introduce large new features (entire systems) and in some cases may need user action or not be fully backwards compatible. It will be stated in the patch notes if this is the case.

Minor: Minor versions introduce smaller features that can be rolled in without disruption, quality of life upgrades, etc. User experience between minor versions should be consistent except for more features being available.

Patch: Patches include bugfixes, emergency workarounds, and other short-turnaround changes. New features will only be introduced in a patch if they are required to fix a problem, or are so inconsequential that no one would notice them.

Some early versions in the 1.0 series did not always display the patch level, or experimented in showing it in different forms. Internally, it has always been the fourth segment of the version number, and will be displayed that way in all future versions. Major and minor releases may omit the patch level from the displayed version number only if it is 0.

1.1.0.6 (Patch)

Badges

• Added two badges for the 15th Anniversary release.

1.1.0.5 (Patch)

Miscellaneous

• Add ability to load modifications from extra pigg files named addon-*.pigg. This functionality it not yet complete but is included as a stopgap until a more robust addon system is finished.

1.1.0.4 (Patch)

Progress

• Fix a nasty overflow bug that could cause a character to potentially lose some of their progress data (usually salvage) when logging in after more than 248 days offline.

1.1.0.3 (Patch)

Client

• Tweak the client's rendering engine to improve performance when drawing certain areas, for example looking across Pocket D at the blue side.

General

• Remove use of a Vista+ API that slipped in through a library. Should fix inability to run on Windows XP.

1.1.0.2 (Patch)

Bases

• Prevent XMPP rooms used for the broadcast channel in bases from being visible in the public directory of rooms.

XMPP

• Attempt to solve the occasional "phantom player" glitch by adding a timeout to detect a player that is no longer present, but that we somehow didn't get an 'unavailable' presence in the meta channel for. This is the same glitch that can cause you to receive local chat from people in completely different zones because they think you are still near them.

• Do not send position, velocity, or animation updates to the XMPP meta channel unless there are actually some players that are close enough to potentially be in visual range. This will signifantly reduce bandwidth usage when you're in a zone all by yourself -- say running around a base in edit mode.

Zones

• Use unlimited if available, or the maximum number the XMPP server supports, as the default zone cap for zones that do not have a persistent meta channel already initialized (including bases).

1.1.0.1 (Patch)

Bases

• Due to a version control mishap, the access control options were not available from the SG Registrar's "modify base" menu. This has been corrected.

1.1 Issue 2: All Your Base... (Major Release)

More info on this release is available in Release Notes.

Dateline: July 27, 2018 --
Welcome to the Paragon Chat 1.1 series! We're calling this the "all your base" update for hopefully obvious reasons -- the much awaited introduction of base editing to Paragon Chat.

If you're already running Paragon Chat, you don't need to do anything special; just let the auto-updater do its thing. If you're new to the program, you can obtain the program on Titan Network Forums. 1.1 continues the 1.0 series tradition of being completely self-contained and not reliant on any kind of registry keys or other machine-specific 'magic'. If you don't like where Paragon Chat is installed, you can simply move the whole thing somewhere else and it will just work.

Backups

• Paragon Chat now automatically creates backup copies of its database for safekeeping.

• The default location for these backups is a 'Backups' folder directly underneath the Paragon Chat root folder, however this can be changed from the options panel. Users are encouraged to choose a backup location within a cloud-synchronized folder such as Dropbox, OneDrive, etc.

• Database backups are saved in a 'Database' subfolder underneath the backup folder and are compressed with XZ (LZMA). 7-zip is a popular free program that can decompress these files if needed.

• The backup system comes preconfigured with settings that are appropriate for most users, but advanced users that want finer control over it can tweak the behavior. The following settings can be changed by opening Config\ParagonChat.cfg in a text editor while Paragon Chat is not running and adding new entries to the [ParagonChat] section.

BackupFrequency: The number of days since the last backup that must have elapsed before another backup is created. Setting this to 0 will entirely disable the backup system. Default: 1 (create one backup per day)

BackupKeepDays: The number of days to keep backups (not counting today). May also be set to 0 to only keep the very latest backup, or -1 to never delete old backups. Default: 14 (keep two weeks worth of daily backups)

BackupKeepWeeks: The number of weeks to keep the first backup of each week (not counting this week). May be set to 0 to indicate no special treatment for weekly backups, or -1 to keep weekly backups forever. Default: 8 (keep two months worth of weekly backups)

BackupKeepMonths: The number of months to keep the first backup of each month (not counting this month). May be set to 0 to indicate no special treatment for monthly backups, or -1 to keep monthly backups forever. Default: -1 (keep monthly backups forever)

• When the Paragon Chat database schema is changed to accommodate new features, a non-expiring backup of the database is made just prior to upgrading the database.

• Costumes are now automatically backed up in the Costumes subfolder of the backup location. A folder is created for each character underneath. The first time the character is logged in, each unique costume will be saved in a separate file. Editing costumes in the tailor will cause the backup file for that slot to be updated as well.

Bases

• The base editor is now available to edit personal and account-wide bases. For more details, see the Release Notes.

Costumes

• The tailor screen will now allow the 'next' button to be clicked even if there is not enough influence to proceed. Use of free tailor tokens is no longer required.

Events

• The 'confused zombie' trick will no longer cause a crash if you are standing too far away from the door when it activates.

General

• Certain graphics drivers (notably some ATI driver versions) do not behave well while the client window is hidden during preloading. This can cause long pauses with a nearly full "Waiting for client startup" progress bar when trying to log in. Added a workaround to address this issue and significantly improve start times for systems with these drivers.

Presence

• Automatically decline global friend invites from people on your ignore list, instead of ignoring them and leaving them in a 'pending' state that may show up on the friends list under some circumstances.

• Work around a bug in Openfire that, under certain conditions, could allow a user to trick the application into accepting a global friend request without user input.

• More robust handling of global friend invites when either the inviter or invitee is offline.

1.0.15.4 (Patch)

Badges

• Add 14th anniversary badge.

1.0.15.3 (Patch)

Events

• Fix phantom half-working trick or treating.

• Adjusted timing for the "Winter's Gift" event. Instead of 12/7 through the morning of 1/7, the event now starts on 12/6 and ends at 6AM UTC on 1/6. This more closely follows the original intent of the event ending after the 12th day of Christmas.

1.0.15.2 (Patch)

Events

• A typo was causing the mysterious island to not be as mysterious as intended. It is one again properly mysterious.

1.0.15.1 (Patch)

UI

• Attempt to detect when running under Wine, and fall back to using the old Windows XP folder chooser rather than the new one introducted in Vista. This may make it easier to choose the COH installation folder on Macs, which seem to have an incomplete implementation of the new common file dialog.

1.0.15 (Minor Release)

Events

• For 2017 only, Trick-or-treating has been extended to run through Nov. 16.

Miscellaneous

• Non-local players managed by another instance no longer incorrectly regenerate hitpoints.

Powers

• Energy Flight is now exclusive to Peacebringers.
• New Peacebringer-exclusive powers added:
  • Bright Nova
  • White Dwarf
• New Warshade-exclusive powers added:
  • Shadow Step
  • Dark Nova
  • Black Dwarf

1.0.14 (Minor Release)

Event

• Added Trick or Treat event. The event runs yearly from Oct 1 - Oct 31.
  • Most doors in outdoor city zones are eligible. Some doors in common social hubs are excluded.
  • There is a 3 second cooldown after a successful trick or treat before another door can be clicked.
  • After being clicked, doors become ineligible for trick or teating for 10 minutes. Unlike the live game, this is rolling counter and they do not all reset at once.
  • There is a 50% chance of receiving a treat from the following list:
  • A piece of Halloween salvage: Statesman Halloween Mask, Lord Recluse Halloween Mask, Back Alley Brawler Halloween Gloves, or Hamidon Halloween Costume. (Common) This salvage currently does not have any in-game purpose, but as was done with the winter event, a vendor will likely be added as some point to trade it in for permanent powers or other items.
  • One of 33 temporary costume powers. These powers expire 14 days (real time) after being acquired. (Uncommon) Note: Each power has a separate entry in the drop table, so while their rarity is uncommon, they drop quite frequently at first because there are so many.
  • A candy cane. (Uncommon)
  • A rock. Single use temp power, can stack up to 10 charges. (Rare)
  • Box of 11 candy canes. (Very Rare)
• If you don't receive a treat, you'll instead get a trick:
  • A halloween-themed pop-up door message. (Common)
  • A redcap on your head! (Uncommon)
  • Transformed into a Rikti Monkey for 1 minute. They finally made a monkey out of you. (Uncommon)
  • Mot will reach up and 'tentaport' you to a random location. (Uncommon)
  • "Mot Chompers". Inspired by the Voracious Maw power from the Dilemma Diabolique Incarnate Trial. (Uncommon)
  • "Falling Sword". The sword cracks the ground and leaves a deadly blue patch that deal fast-ticking damage to anyone standing on it. Based on Battle Maiden's ability to call down falling swords (oddly called 'Spears') from the fight with her in the Apex Task Force. (Uncommon)
  • "Confused Zombie". A zombie got lost on its way to a zone invasion event. (Rare)
  • "Orbital Cannon". Instant death to anyone who doesn't move out of the target area. Loosely based on the Obliteration Beam from the final battle with Anti-Matter in the Keyes Island Reactor Trial. (Very Rare)
• The Trick or Treat event enables players to earn three new badges:
  • Clothes Horse - Collect 10 costume temp powers
  • Fashionable - Collect 25 costume temp powers
  • Ostentatious - Collect 50 costume temp powers

Gameplay

• The 'go to hospital' button in the defeat dialog is now functional.
• Hit Points and Max HP are now synchronized over XMPP, so other players' health bars will be somewhat accurate.

Miscellaneous

• Added a new easter egg, and a badge for finding it. Or maybe there is no badge, and this is just a twisted way to see how Gullible people are.

Powers

• The option to delete temporary powers from the power list window is now functional. Not-so-subtle hint: Using this ability is the only way to earn the Ostentatious badge without waiting until next year.

1.0.13.1 (Patch)

Network

• Fix service discovery issue that breaks MUC when connecting to XMPP servers that strictly implement RFC 6120 (notably Openfire 4.1 and later).

UI

• Force the COH client to register itself as high-DPI aware. This fixes the scaling issue when running fullscreen on Windows 8.1 or Windows 10 on a high-DPI monitor (generally 4k+ resolutions or tiny notebook screens).

1.0.13 (Minor Release)

Events

• When receiving a permanent flying disc from a gift box, remove the one-shot version of the power so that players don't end up with both at once.

• The Candy Keeper, located in the Ski Chalet in Pocket D, now acepts candy canes in exchange for a number of event badges, as well as the various powers (temporary as well as permanent) from the Winter's Gift holiday event.

Miscellaneous

• Close contact dialogs when the player moves too far away from the NPC that was clicked on to open it.

Zones

• Get the Candy Keeper's feet out of the floor.

1.0.12.4 (Patch)

Badges

• Added 13th Anniversary "Timeless" badge. All characters are considered to have this badge regardless of when the character was created.

1.0.12.3 (Patch)

Events

• Fixed a regression that would cause a crash when opening Mystery Gifts containing physics objects.

1.0.12.2 (Patch)

Zones

• Fixed issue with one of the ski courses (random which one, but usually the 'expert' aka easy course) not timing out and terminating the race if abandoned.

• It is no longer possible to start a race on both ski courses simultaneously.

1.0.12.1 (Patch)

Chat

• Hopefully figured out the magic incantation to prevent the game client from randomly removing global channels from tabs when unexpectedly disconnected from the XMPP server.

• Upon login, 'orphaned' global channels that are joined but not present in any chat tabs are automatically added to the first tab in the client config, which is usually "Global". This should help restore channels to people who didn't realize they had lost them after a disconnect.

1.0.12 (Minor Release)

Badges

• New command: /set_title_name (also /settitlename) that accepts an internal badge name, such as Anniversary10 or AtlasParkExplorer. (Editorial Note: a list of these internal names is available here.)
• Yo dawg, we heard you like badges, so we added badges for your badges so you can earn badges while you're earning badges.

Events

• Two words: Ski Race

Powers

• New power: Recall Friend. Somewhat experimental, but seems to be working in limited testing.

System

• Implement some new powers system features: Teammate target type, power confirmation prompts, and support for secondary targets including range handling.

Zones

• Resolve issue with zoning in to the revised Pocket D map sometimes taking longer than usual.

• Added a map marker to the door that leads to the Ski Chalet to make it easier to find for returning players.

• Increased local chat range in Pocket D by 50%.

1.0.11.1 (Patch)

Zones

• Pocket D: Tweak positioning of some of the neon lighting to fix the worst offenders for graphical flicker. Rescue a couple in the green area that were buried in the wall.

• Pocket D: Fix the hero and villain transfer areas beyond the elevators.

1.0.11 (Minor Release)

NPCs

• Found a way to re-enable the default idle animations for many of the static NPCs throughout the game world. Mercedes Sheldon can finally get her legs out of the couch!

Powers

• New power: Hover. Its movement speed values are set to simulate Hover slotted with 1 flight speed SO, plus unslotted Inherent Swift.

• Super Speed numbers adjusted to simulate the power being slotted with 3 SOs, which hits the player run speed cap.

• Super Jump numbers adjusted to simulate the power being slotted with 3 SOs, which hits the player jump height cap. It was already at the jump speed cap before this change.

• Fly numbers adjusted to simulate the power being slotted with 3 SOs, which hits the player flight speed cap.

Zones

• In conjunction with Aeon Corp, DJ Zero has commissioned construction of a new wing of Pocket D to cater to adventurous clientele. This is a community-contributed addition. It was put together by The Demon Hunter, formerly of Virtue server, as a "what-if" of sorts. It's based on an idea was regularly brought up on the official forums while the game was live as an alternative to the (baffling from a lore perspective) Rikti War Zone location. It's also a test not only of how feasible it is to modify content, but as an early trial of some new tech developed for Paragon Chat to help facilitate it. A huge thank you goes out to DH for developing and contributing this amazing content!

• Added a map marker to the door in the Ski Chalet area that leads back to the main Pocket D complex.

1.0.10 (Minor Release)

Badges

• Placed the Cage Fighter badge in Sharkhead, next to Tommy, so that there is a way to obtain it without needing third-party addons.

• Added a way to obtain the Head of the Hydra badge in the Abandoned Sewer Network, so that it does not require manually editing configuration files to earn.

Events

• The Mysterious Island in Croatoa should no longer sometimes be extra mysterious and fail to appear after switching characters to another already in Croatoa (potentially causing some epic rubber-banding). No visible change as the Halloween event is not currently active.

Zones

• The Galaxy City Monorail stop is once again functional and open for business.

• Various key figures have returned to their rightful places in Galaxy City.

1.0.9.4 (Patch)

Badges

• Fix another dumb typo preventing the accolades from actually awarding when they hit 100% completion. Sigh.

1.0.9.3 (Patch)

Badges

• Fix dumb typo in badge loading code that prevented the zone accolades from tracking/awarding consistently.

1.0.9.2 (Patch)

Badges

• Fix one-off badge in front of the Imperial City tailor that does not follow the standard naming scheme.

• Add hooks to the stats system to allow badges to register for callbacks.

• Periodically refresh status of badges that have been affected by external events, such as stats callbacks, and re-check to see if the requirements have been met.

• Implement necessary logic for badge hints to appear once there is some progress towards obtaining it, as well as badge progress meters.

• Add Toy Collector badge for opening 200 presents scattered around the world.

• Add system support for badges which depend on other badges.

• Add system support for generic volume triggers that can be used to implement special handlers for multi-part exploration badges.

• Automatically load and activate exploration accolades for the majority of the zones which follow a standard naming scheme.

• Manually add exploration accolades for zones with issues precluding the automated system from working: Faultline, Independence Port, and all 6 Praetorian zones.

• Implement Rail Raider and, for the masochists, River Rat multi-part exploration badges.

• Implement Viva Praetoria meta-accolade badge.

Zones

• Make zone doors that do not link anywhere, but are tagged with an "OpenDoor" beacon open when clicked. This is used for a few doors in the Underground Praetorian zones.

1.0.9.1 (Patch)

Badges (Yes, Badges)

• Fix the exploration badges in Independence Port and Crey's Folly that were not awarding. These were broken because the original developers misspelled the zone in the badge name, but correctly in the volume name for earning it, causing a mismatch.

Powers

• Fix a bug that would cause a crash while loading if two adjacent powers in the powers array were both NULL during compaction.

• The primary trigger for this was exchanging gifts with other players, using up all charges of both Holiday Cheer and Mystery Gift, then moving to another zone.

1.0.9 (Minor Release)

Miscellaneous

• Go to place and thing happen. TODO: Write better patch notes.

Pocket D

• Add a special handler to check for the spawn points used for the gravity geyser on the ski slope in Pocket D and spawn the correct entity. Now those who like living dangerously can take the fork with the jump rather than the teleport.

• There weren't that many different types of launchers and they were named consistently enough to guess which one goes with each spawndef. Went ahead and activated all of them so the other geyers in Pocket D should be working, too. Probably the Shadow Shard as well, but haven't checked if they're launching in the correct direction.

Powers

• The default tray for new characters now includes Teleport. Existing characters that don't have it will need to drag it from the power window to their tray.

UI

• Add a mapmenu macro by default to the power tray of newly created characters, to help new players get around.

1.0.8.1 (Patch)

Events

• Fixed an issue where opening a present would rarely show "You cannot enter" instead of the correct message.

• Fixed a bug preventing spawn state of presents from being remembered through map changes.

• Reduced the respawn timer on presents from 10 minutes to 5.

• Properly clear spawn point lookup table when zoning. This should prevent the occasional cases of presents randomly floating in midair.

Powers

• New travel power: Teleport. The new powers system was a big step towards a working Teleport, though it still took a few more enhancements to it (as well as the animation system) to make it happen. NOTE: Teleport in Paragon Chat works slightly different than the retail game. Instead of 4 seconds of a forced hover, after teleporting, you remain in dimensional flux, motionless and unaffected by gravity for 10 seconds. Attempting to move will break the flux early and drop you to the ground.

1.0.8 (Minor Release)

Events

• The Winter's Gift event has been revamped. There are many changes from the initial version.
  • Powers gained from opening gifts, such as the Holiday Rocket Pack, will now persist across sessions.
  • The Holiday Rocket Pack now lasts for 30 days after you receive it.
  • The Snowball power lasts for 14 days after you receive it.
  • The Snowball power can now be used on NPCs as well as other players.
  • Two new rare reward powers added, in addition to the one that already existed (which is now a permanent reward). These three special toys can be found only in Mysterious Gifts given to you by other players. Or yourself, if you're antisocial and dual-box it.
  • Candy canes can now be collected! Large boxes in the world may contain 2-4 candy canes. Small Mysterious Gifts from other players may contain 4-7 candy canes. Finally, the 'dud' gifts that only show a message now also reward 1 candy cane as a consolation prize.
  • Candy canes currently do not have a function, but future plans include adding a vendor to redeem them. The most likely use of these will be to obtain the various fun toy powers if you don't receive one from opening a gift. Getting a Snowball off-season (or perhaps a permanent one) is another idea under consideration.
  • The Snowball power now has a small chance of being found in the present boxes scattered around the world, rather than only in Mysterious Gifts. Mysterious Gifts from other players still have a much higher chance of containing a snowball and are a more reliable way to get one. Being hit by other players' snowballs enough times is another way to obtain it.
  • As the protocol for synchronizing powers has changed in this version, the Holiday Cheer power to give a gift to a player now requires that the target be running Paragon Chat 1.0.8 or higher. If you try to use it on a player running an older version, it will fail with an Invalid Target error to prevent you from wasting a charge on someone who cannot receive the gift.
  • Reduced the interaction time required to open present boxes in the world.

As the first week did not include any kind of persistence, for this year only the event has been extended to run through January 15, 2017. Subsequent years will run on the normal schedule of December 7 through January 6.

Powers

• A basic powers system has been added to centralize the standard behavior of powers rather than implementing everything ad-hoc.

• The power effects are still hardcoded, but the structure for things like range and target checks, how powers are added, etc. has been unified and a number of assumptions removed.

• The new system has many features designed to make powers feel more like actual in-game powers behaved, such as:

• • Power queuing
  • Recharge
  • Flexible toggle groups
  • Ability to disable specific powers (needed for the rocket board and friends)
  • Persistence of power ownership across sessions
  • Powers with a usage count
  • Time-limited powers
  • A standardized system for synchronizing power effects over XMPP without having to write a custom protocol for every power.

1.0.7 (Minor Release)

Events

Winter is coming (to Paragon City)!

The 2016 winter event, aside from being barely tested and probably bug-ridden, re-introduces the familiar activity of hunting presents hidden by a mysterious entity throughout the city.

Inside these presents can be found special rewards such as the Holiday Rocket Pack and other fun items. Also new is the ability to give gifts to other players.

NOTE: Rewards from opening presents are temporary and only last until you log off.

1.0.6 (Minor Release)

General

The City is of Night; perchance of Death But certainly of Night; for never there Can come the lucid morning's fragrant breath After the dewy dawning's cold grey air: The moon and stars may shine with scorn or pity; The sun has never visited that city, For it dissolveth in the daylight fair.

The City of Dreadful Night (excerpt) -- James "B.V." Thomson

October 15 - October 31

UI

• Fix anniversary badge images.

Zones

• Added an obvious exit from Outbreak and Precinct Five (Praetorian tutorial) near the spawn point. This is to help newcomers who do not know the map change commands yet avoid getting stuck.

1.0.5 (Minor Release)

General

• It is now possible to invite other players to teams. The usual commands work for this. You can also invite by global name using the normal @global syntax. NOTE: If a player is in a different zone and you have not seen them yet, you may not be able to invite by character name due to XMPP not having any kind of global visibility of that information. You can always invite by global name.

• XMPP processing is suspended while moving between zones. This should prevent chat messages from being lost while at loading screens.

UI

• The client will not automatically log out players who are AFK. Task force mode is no longer needed as a workaround to disable the auto-AFK feature.

Updater

• The supplemental client data file now has a version check to ensure that the client data is kept in sync with new Paragon Chat features.

1.0.2 (Minor Release)

General

• Third party software licenses that require attribution are now correctly included for components used by Paragon Chat. They can be seen along with the Paragon Chat EULA by clicking on a button in the options panel. These include MIT, Apache, and 4-clause BSD licenses. Acknowledgement for all components is included, whether required or not, now that the UI exists and we can do it.

• The Paragon Chat directory is now fully portable. Even once "installed", you can simply move it somewhere else, and aside from having to update shortcuts it should all just work. The AppData location is still preferred so that third-party addons can find Paragon Chat, but it is now only a recommendation in the installer rather than a silent default.

• The bootstrap (installer) now features a user interface and prompts the user where to install Paragon Chat, as well as offering repair and uninstall capability. Uninstall is just a synonym for delete, but it gets asked for a lot because it is somehow magical in some people's minds.

• Patch notes are now automatically generated from the commit log, to help keep straight which notes should go with which release, as well as to lessen the work required to prepare each new release.

• The ParagonChat.exe and ParagonChatClient.exe binaries are now signed using a Titan Network certificate. This certificate is from our self-signed CA, so it will not pass Authenticode validation. A "real" certificate would be nice, but requires either a legal entity such as a corporation, or to bear the name of an individual developer. However, despite not being a trusted-by-default certificate, it still provides a way for Antivirus vendors to uniquely identify authentic Paragon Chat/Titan Network software as coming from the official source. This gives them the ability to whitelist all of our software at once if they choose to - even new updates - and if enough people report false positives it may ease the pain in the long run.

Stability

• Fix a bug that could sometimes cause a crash if the client was exited and restarted multiple times.

Updater

• Fixed some timing issues with the update process that could potentially cause long pauses during updating.

User Interface

• Multiplex the progress bar with a priority system to better handle cases where multiple tasks that want to use it are running at once.

• The options panel is now functional. It can be accessed by clicking on the gear icon on the main window and allows configuration of several useful settings which persist between sessions:

• • The Issue 24 location can be modified in order to fix situations where it is moved after the initial setup.
  • The Issue 24 files can be subjected to a long verify if file corruption is suspected. After the verify completes, any issues such as missing or incorrect files are listed.
  • Custom command-line parameters can now be passed to the client. This is "smart" in that changing them should work even with client preloading - it will restart the client in the background if necessary. Once you have logged in to the game, any changes to these will of course not take effect until the next session.
  • Paragon Chat can optionally be configured to remain open rather than automatically exiting when you close the client (the pre-1.0 behavior).
  • Client preloading can be disabled if desired.
  • An option to allow multiple instances (also known as multibox mode or shareddb mode), which can be changed on demand without having to restart Paragon Chat.
  • An easier way to access offline mode.
  • An option to turn on enhanced debugging that may be useful to help troubleshoot problems.
  • In addition to the automatic update settings, which were moved to the new options panel, a button was added to force a check for updates. This feature always reports success/fail status and reports the latest version that is available on the update server.
  • The experimental database browser was moved from a hidden control-click sequence to a button in the options panel.

• Fixed a bug that caused music to not play on the login screen and at character selection.

• Restored the original 'enter game' sound effect.

• Fixed a bug that caused chat logging to ignore the setting in the options menu and always act as if it was enabled.

• As many people have gotten used to it being on by default, changed the default "Log Chat" option to enabled. It can be disabled on a per-character basis and/or saved to the default options.

• The "Log Private Messages" setting was not affected by the bug and continues to default to 'off'. That option creates a subfolder for each player who messages you.

1.0.1 (Minor Release)

• Added special case handling for super speed and super jump to make their effects stack, so that they can be activated at the same time.

• Added Energy Flight.

• Added Rocket Board.

• Added Magic Carpet.

• Added Void Skiff.

1.0.0.5 (Patch)

• Reset some extra state when going back to the login screen. Fixes a client crash when selecting body type after backing out to the login screen and then going forward to an empty account with no characters.

• Add 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th anniversary badges for the event. These are hardcoded and all characters are considered to have them, regardless of when they were created.

• Implement slash command to select badge title (/set_title_id). Add support for sending a badge title to the client. Add support for sending a badge title in XMPP presence stanza (badgetitle attribute). Add badgetitle column to character table in database and bump db schema version to 20 in order to remember it between sessions.

• Added sneak preview of some experimental special effects for the anniversary celebration. Can only be activated using an authenticated developer build as these effects are highly experimental and there are a number of problems with them that could be exploited: slowing down clients to a crawl, crashing them, or inducing epileptic seizures.

1.0.0.4 (Patch)

Move makeshift account management to settings button because some people's control key is broken.

1.0.0.3 (Patch)

Fix detection of single-account databases for auto-logon.

1.0.0.2 (Patch)

Add "hidden" terrible account management tool to help some people find lost characters.

1.0.0.1 (Patch)

Add more detailed error messages for possible loading problems.

1.0 Issue 1: Commencement (Epoch and Major Release)

More info on this release is available in Release Notes.

Dateline: March 30, 2016 --
It's been a long time coming, but Paragon Chat has left beta and reached 1.0. Does that mean it's done? Far from it, we're just getting started!

First and foremost, a big thank you and round of applause for everyone who volunteered to help test the development series leading up to 1.0. Because of their efforts, many of the possible issues with upgrading from 0.99 have already been found and fixed.

So what's new in this version? There are two answers. One is not very much -- featurewise, there is about as much difference between 0.99 and 1.0 as you might expect from the version numbers. The other answer is that a tremendous number of things have changed behind the scenes in the inner workings of Paragon Chat. Things which will make development of new features easier and faster!

Mostly, 1.0 is all about polish and user experience. It's designed to be easier to install, easier to use, faster to load, and generally just work better overall.

Upgrading

Several important things have changed. The first time you run Paragon Chat a quick wizard helps you set it up, and if necessary upgrade from older versions. Thanks to feedback from testers this should be quick and painless, but if you do encounter issues, let us know and someone will try to help. There are two key things to keep in mind.

1. Paragon Chat lives in your user profile. This won't mean much to non-technical users, but the takeaway is that Paragon Chat installs to your user account, not the computer. That means it never needs to be run as an administrator and avoids User Account Control headaches on Windows Vista/7/8/10.

The main window has a button to take you to the Paragon Chat data folder. If you ever need to access its files for whatever reason, that button will take you to the right place.

2. Paragon Chat needs Issue 24 installed, but treats it as read-only and never modifies it in any way. I24 doesn't even really need to be "installed", Paragon Chat just needs to be able to read the files from it, so a simple copy of the folder will do. Anything you create while using Paragon Chat goes into the data directory mentioned in #1. Screenshots, costumes, chatlogs, all of it.

That also means that starting with 1.0, any client mods you want to use need to be installed specifically for Paragon Chat rather than in the I24 folder.

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Installing

If you already have an older version of Paragon Chat, simply run it and let the auto-updater do its thing. You just need to have the update setting on anything other than "Never check".

If you're starting fresh or for some reason the auto-update isn't working, download the installer here:

Download

Unlike previous versions, you don't need to save this file anywhere special. Just run it and it will download and install the latest version of Paragon Chat (no more ending up with old obsolete versions). You can delete the bootstrap file when it's done.

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More detailed patch notes:

New Stuff

• Beast Run!

• Position and state of power trays are saved between sessions.

• Macros!

• Arrangement of powers in trays is now saved as well.

• UI Polish - Clean up main window, login screen, streamline the whole thing. It is now much more friendly to accidental misclicks and less likely to exit early when you don't want it to, or try to start up a second instance while the database is locked.

• Beast Run!

General Improvements

• Multithreaded startup makes loading much faster.

• Much greater use of threads in general makes things smoother and more efficient on multi-core CPUs.

• Client file access is now redirected to locations within the Paragon Chat install directory, so that it can be self-contained.

• Override default graphics settings to prefer windowed mode, in order to avoid issues with the client selecting a resolution that cannot be natively displayed and resulting in parts of the UI being cut off. If you do prefer fullscreen, you will need to select a specific resolution from the graphics settings window.

• Automated client management make startup and shutdown much cleaner and less error-prone.

• Multi-instancing should be much easier as the TCP and UDP ports are assigned dynamically. Be sure to use -shareddb to put Paragon Chat into multibox mode.

Fixed Stuff

• The emote menu now has all items unlocked. Previously they would work if you typed the name, but still showed up as locked on the popup menu if it was one that required a badge/store purchase.

• Usernames and folder names with international (non-ASCII) characters should no longer be a problem.

• Pathnames longer than 260 characters should now work as well.

• Loopback issues on Windows XP should now be fixed, making the -localhost workaround unnecessary (-localhost no longer has any effect due to the connection setup being changed).

Miscellaneous

• Drop OpenSSL. It used to be a hot mess, now it's just a plain mess. Switch to mbedTLS instead.

• About 220 other changes, most of them related to infrastructure and backend tech.

.99j Beta

The only change in 0.99j is fixing a bug introduced in 0.99i would cause new installs that don't have a database yet to fail to create one, resulting in the 'database corrupt!' error on startup.

The bug didn't affect anyone who upgraded from an earlier version, so for all practical purposes, 0.99j is identical to 0.99i for existing users.

.99i Beta

January 25, 2016

• Global channel membership decoupled from the client's per-character settings (which it tends to lose for no apparent reason) and made account-wide. "Account" in this context means the game account you type on the COH login screen, not your XMPP account.

IMPORTANT NOTE: As there is no clean way to migrate from per-character to per-account channel membership, this means you will lose all of your global channels when upgrading to 0.99i. The good news is that since it's account wide, you only need to rejoin the channels once, and they will permanently stick now.

If you switch to characters created before joining a channel, even though you join the channel at login, they may not be in any that character's chat tabs and need to be added. The same thing happened on the live game. Saving and loading chat settings can help here.

• The chat channel settings used by the game client should be somewhat less likely to randomly disappear now.

.99h Beta

January 18, 2016

• Added code to trick the client into thinking that it's in task force mode so that it doesn't automatically log players out when they are AFK.
• A nonzero helper status is now sent to prevent the annoying popup window when logging in.
• Characters are now checkpointed to persistent storage upon zoning, updating their bio, or modifying a costume in the tailor. This helps prevent rollbacks in the event of a program crash.
• Nonzero inventory sizes are now sent (1 recipe, 1 invention salvage, 10 enhancements) in order to prevent the tabs from being permanently red.
• Technology Preview:
  • Added initial implementation of jumping movement mode to the XMPP protocol, used by the two following power simulations:
    • Added fake power Ninja Run.
    • Added fake power Super Jump.

Known Issue: Paragon Chat does not have a real powers system, but only hardcoded approximations. It currently does not support having more than one active power, so it is not possible to run both Super Jump and Super Speed at the same time. This is planned to be addressed in future updates.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The jumping physics synchronization is only a rough preview. It is likely to appear somewhat glitchy to other players, especially if you release the jump key before reaching maximum jump height. However, it's still an improvement.

• Updates to several external libraries that are used by Paragon Chat.

.99g Beta

November 30, 2015

• Fast track patch for a critical issue in the HTTPS file download code that was preventing successful updates.

.99f Beta

November 30, 2015

• Fix a minor bug that no one would have ever noticed, but would bother me to leave unfixed.

.99e Beta

November 30, 2015

• The auto-update feature now uses https (TLS encrypted) connections. This is not a security change, as the updates were already signed with strong cryptography, but rather an attempt to prevent some broken transparent proxies from interfering with the auto-updater.
• Presence subscription handling is now much more robust. This should resolve some of the odd issues with sending global friend invites while people are offline.
• The ignore list UI now works after zoning. Previously, the ignore functionality itself would continue to work, but the list would appear empty when viewed in the friends window after changing zones.
• In-game time of day, as well as other time-sensitive events now use the XMPP server time so that they are synchronized even if the local clock is wrong. For this to work on third-party servers, an XMPP server that supports XEP-0202 is required.
• The filter to change afk to tpg in compound keybinds is now more careful to only change actual commands rather than text in the middle of a word.
• Winter is coming.

.99d Beta

November 17, 2015

• Text overrides put in place so that the game login screen reads "Local Account". This should maybe hopefully reduce confusion about what exactly this field is for and where the characters are stored. Okay, probably not, but worth a try.
• Local account names (used to distinguish character lists) are now case-insensitive. If you have previously created multiple accounts differing only by capital letters, they will be merged together.
• Reverted the change to unlock the crab backpack, disabling it for now. As the VEAT costume does not have a "None" backpack option, if it is unlocked, it cannot be unselected and you are forced to use the crab backpack. Existing costumes with the backpack will continue to work, but it will not be selectable during character creation or at the tailor until a solution can be found.
• Option added to always show global names above character avatars, in addition to character names. This is off by default and can be enabled in the options menu, under the Miscellaneous section near the bottom of the first tab.
• Fixed a bug that could result in a handle reference leak in certain circumstances, ultimately resulting in phantom characters persisting after logging off and back on.
• New command: /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:
• New command: /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.
  • Note: If you create a keybind that contains "$$" and "afk" in it, the "afk" will be replaced by "tpg", which is a short alias of /typing. This is to help migrate legacy keybinds imported from saved files.
• The global friends list now shows the away status of friends, both those using Paragon Chat's /afk command as well as XMPP presence.

.99c Beta

November 14, 2015

• The /mapmenu command has been revamped. Instead of using the full-screen debug menu, a pop-up dialog similar to the trams is now used. Additionally, the zones are broken up into categories to make navigation easier.
  • IMPORTANT NOTE! If you find that all of the zones are being grouped under the 'Other' category, you may have a custom zone.cfg file installed that overrides the default zones. To restore the correct behavior if this happens, you will need to delete %APPDATA%\Paragon Chat\Config\zone.cfg
  • If you are making a keybind, you can jump directly to a category page by specifying its name with the command. i.e. /mapmenu Rogue Isles will take you directly to the list of villain zones.
  • As the debug menu is no longer needed, the fake accesslevel has also been removed. This will prevent the occasional odd pop-up messages. It also disables use of the drop-down console, but that console does not offer anything that can't be done from the chat window, it's just an alternate interface.
• It is now possible to change alignment without having to delete and re-create the character, useful if you accidentally pick the wrong one during character creation.
• Minor changes to a couple NPCs.

.99b Beta

November 10, 2015

• The trains are one again running on time, at least inside the station. They won't be stuck in a loop and should be synchronized between clients if your computer clock is accurate.
• Trams, Ferries, Black Helicopters, Vanguard Teleports, and a bunch of other menu-based travel options now work. The destination lists were manually entered based on the information from Paragon Wiki, so hopefully they're reasonably accurate.
  • "Old" (non-destroyed) Galaxy City map drops you at a tunnel and its tram doesn't work. This is a known issue: the devs deleted the NPCs, doors, and spawn points from the map (presumably to keep people from being sent there for missions). These will need to be hacked back in, in a future release (no timeframe).
• Seamless zoning in Praetoria will now send you to the right spot. It should no longer drop you under the bridge or out of the map completely.
• Basic functionality of waypoint system is now working. It does not guide you through doors, but just points directly at whatever you have selected on the map.
• Door easter eggs revamped and now work differently. Some are easier to find, some are harder to find. There are a number of new ones. Mutually exclusive messages that don't make sense together no longer appear at the same door. Monorail easter eggs removed now that those are working normally, but another entire category fleshed out substantially.

.99 Beta

August 23, 2015

• Power icons will now show up for freshly created characters without requiring them to log out and back in first.
• Technology Preview:
  • Added simulated Fly power to test protocol extension for alternate movement types.

.98f Beta

August 23, 2015

• Technology Preview:
  • Added simulated Super Speed power to test synchronization of power effects.
  • Known issue: Super Speed is not customizable no matter what the tailor claims. Power customization is not yet implemented in either the tailor or on the power itself.

.98e Beta

August 23, 2015

• Added a fix to prevent the client from resetting the active chat channel to the most recently added global channel when zoning.
• Leaving a global channel will force it to be cleared out of the saved client settings when logging off, to prevent it from being rejoined at next login. Important note: This is only a temporary workaround. In the future it is planned to migrate channel membership serverside so that it is account-wide and tied to a given XMPP account, to more closely imitate the behavior of global channels in traditional COH.
• Fixed an issue with the order of rotations being applied incorrectly on incoming messages when pitch is nonzero.
• Technology Preview:
  • Added simulated Walk and Sprint powers to test alternate movement modes and power tray interaction. Please give these a workout to make sure that the tech works properly.
  • Known issue: The power trays are hardcoded for testing. Changes to their order do not persist across zoning or logging out.

.98d Beta

August 3, 2015

• Fix bug causing a sporadic crash during loading.

.98c Beta

August 1, 2015

• Fix Windows XP compatibility. IMPORTANT NOTE: If you are encountering the issue of failing to locate your COH installation on Windows XP, you may have to manually redownload ParagonChat.exe and overwrite your existing file with it.
• Eliminate flickering of text on progress bar, and make it easier to read on themes using a dark background color.

.98b Beta

July 31, 2015

• Fix a bug that could cause a crash if a malformed JID was added to your roster by a third party client.
• Optimization and performance improvements.
• Change auto-update mechanism to install new Paragon Chat binaries inside its AppData directory, avoiding UAC issues as well as conflicts with third-party updaters.
• Truncate overly long broadcast/local chat messages instead of exiting on an assertion failure.
• Fix issue where adding someone to your ignore list while also logged in via a third-party XMPP client could cause the list to not be loaded in future sessions.
• Improvements to positioning code to prevent other players from sometimes appearing to slide halfway across the map when first zoning in.
• New slash command /whoall shows a list of all players in the same zone. It also displays diagnostic information indicating if someone is invisible to you, and why.

.98a Beta

July 21, 2015

• Fix an issue that can result in a rare crash of Paragon Chat immediately after login. It could be triggered if users of certain third-party XMPP clients are on your roster (global friends list) and their last action on the account was to go offline using that client while you were also offline.
• Notify the player via an error message in the chat window if their costume does not pass validation and is causing them to be invisible to other players. This only happens in the case of manual database edits, for things like changing the scale to be too large or small. There is no change to the validation behavior; this is just a notification so you know that it's affecting you.
• Unlock a few missed costume parts: Wisps Aura, Resistance hair, Praetorian Clockwork pieces, Sport set.
• Unlock Crab Spider backpacks so they can be used in the tailor.
• Note: The download link above has not been updated to 0.98a; it is still 0.98. This is partly to test the auto-update mechanism.

.98 Beta

July 21, 2015

• Paragon Chat is now able to check for newer versions of itself on startup. It has 4 settings for this option:

Never check

Notify when a new version is available

Automatically install minor upgrades

Automatically install all upgrades

The UI for this is still a work in progress, but it is functional.

• The Launch button is now the default button and will activate when pressing Enter in the login form.
• A workaround has been added to attempt to address the issues encountered by users who have Unicode characters in their user profile path.
• Separating multiple commands with $$ should now work correctly.
• Basic chat variable expansion has been implemented and several of the more common variables have been added, such as $name, $archetype, $origin, $battlecry, and $target.
• Keybinds and window layout are now saved to the database and persisted between sessions. Tray contents are not yet implemented.
• A /roll command for rolling dice has been added. 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 @global 2x12

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

/roll 4 8

Roll 4 8-sided dice

/roll

Roll a 20-sided die

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.

As Paragon Chat is a cooperative program it is impossible to guarantee that rolls have not been tampered with, so it should not be used for anything serious that the honor system is not sufficient for.

• The local chat radius in Pocket D has been reduced to 50 feet.
• The /getglobalname and /getglobalsilent commands have been added. This should make player notes more or less functional. Be aware that player notes were not designed for non-unique character names and may run into issues with them.
• An -offline command-line parameter has been added. Running Paragon Chat with this parameter disables all network access requirements and allows you to log in without an Internet connection in order to manage characters, edit costumes, etc.

When running with -offline, the XMPP login form is disabled. Many functions are not available without an XMPP connection. A connection can still be set up manually once loaded into a zone with the various /xmpp advanced commands if desired (see the Slash Command thread for more information).

• The progress bar now provides some text feedback about the task in progress.
• The main window can now be closed while Paragon Chat is still loading.

0.97f Beta

July 14, 2015

• New config file "string.cfg" includes missing P-Strings for many NPC names. This allows them to spawn in the map, and you can override the names (locally) by editing this file.
• Will strongly warn if you try to close Paragon Chat while the City of Heroes client is running. Fixes "Cannot Connect to DBserver" for those who were closing Paragon Chat as soon as the game opened.

0.97e Beta

July 13, 2015

• Fixed yet another cause for the invisible player bug, this one having to do with floating point rounding errors causing inconsistent encoding of face scale sliders at certain border numbers.

.97d Beta

July 12, 2015

• Costume parts with a texture and a mask should once again be selectable.
• Correct product codes are sent to the client to make the tutorial optional.
• Powersets that were formerly purchasable should once again be selectable during character creation.
• Version number added to the main Paragon Chat window as it was being cut off of the title bar on Windows 8 and with certain font sizes.
• The Paragon Chat logo should now be visible on computers running Windows XP.
• The version of Paragon Chat that someone is running can now be seen in the player information window.
• Two new easter egg NPCs added. One is obvious. The other is not.
• Re-instated presence optimization that had been reverted due to invisibility bug.

.97c Beta

July 12, 2015

• Fixed yet another completely different cause for the invisible player bug, this one not related to costumes at all and would also interfere in reception of local chat.
• Enables the Architect building consoles. Clicking on them (or typing /architect while near them) will bring up the Architect UI. Of course you cannot test or play the missions, but if you just want to view and edit your existing mission files, or make new ones, now you can.

.97b Beta

July 12, 2015

• Revert "The zone that your character is in is now correctly only sent to global friends". It was causing characters to randomly not appear after zoning.

.97a Beta

July 12, 2015

• Fixed the capitalization fix to actually work.
• /customwindow <name> will create a new custom window for macros. However, they will not save unless you already have a data/customwindows folder.

.97 Beta

July 11, 2015

• Fixed another possible cause of the invisibility bug.
• New command: /mapmenu opens a menu listing all zones defined in zone.cfg for easy travel.
• Changed the accesslevel reported to the client from 0 to 1. This allows access to the console as well as the /url slash command in order to use the in-game browser. Be advised that the in-game browser is quite old and likely has security holes; use it for trusted sites only.
• Added many more emotes that were previously badged-locked or part of purchasable packs. These will still show up as locked in the menu, but can be used by typing their name.
• Fixed super tailors / cosmetic surgeons to allow gender changes.
• Fixed a great many costume parts to be correctly unlocked both at character creation as well as in the tailor. If you find some are still missing, please report them here.
• Known issue: Choosing a powerset with a custom weapon will cause all costume slots to show up as locked until you visit the tailor. Using the tailor will remove the weapon and unlock the slot. This is a harmless cosmetic issue.
• The case with which you type your login name is now used to set the preferred capitalization of your global handle. It no longer uses the username as reported by the XMPP server, which for Openfire was all lowercase.
• The zone that your character is in is now correctly only sent to global friends. It is no longer leaked to global channels in XMPP presence data. Reverted.

.966 Beta

July 10, 2015

• Added a diagnostic hook to allow developers to gather costume information to track down further invisibility issues.

.965 Beta

July 8, 2015

• The version number is now displayed in the title bar.
• Fixed yet another different cause of the invisible player bug.
• The Ski Chalet is now visible!
• Incoming costumes from other players are validated to ensure their scales are in range and they do not contain any FX that are not designed to be applied to a player costume and might crash your client.
• The 'Store', 'Manage Account', and 'Support' buttons in the in-game browser are no longer completely useless.

.96 Beta

July 8, 2015

• The only change in this version is that hopefully the invisible player bug is fixed. Anyone with 0.96 should be visible to all players.

.95 Beta

July 7, 2015

• Release!