 The Paragon Wiki Archive documents the state of City of Heroes/Villains as it existed on December 1, 2012.
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User talk:AustinSmith
Welcome!
Hello, AustinSmith, and welcome to the Paragon Wiki! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Feel free to fill out your personal user page so we can get to know you. There is a collection of Userboxes you can easily add there. Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date.
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Again, welcome! -- — 
talk / contribs 20:49, 30 December 2018 (UTC)
Zone Images
Hey Austin, just wanted to thank you for going through and adding image galleries for the zones. It helps to add a visual reference for people and was something that, surprisingly, hadn't been done before. I'd actually thought of doing this recently myself, and was hoping that I'd saved unedited versions of the screenshots I took for the exploration badges and history plaques. Sadly, I didn't, so I appreciate the time you're taking to do it.
I do have a couple thoughts for you, the first of which is primarily for housekeeping purposes. When uploading images, standard wiki practice is to categorize them so they are properly identified and sorted. This can be done by simply adding the tag [[Category:Zone Name Images]] somewhere in the description. Many zone image categories already exist, but the tag can still be used even if that particular one doesn't yet. I've gone back and added tags for the images you've already uploaded, creating some new categories as needed, but including that with the initial upload would help save a bit of time and double work.
The other thought is more of a personal wish that, as long as you're taking the time to go through every neighborhood, it would've been nice to see these shots taken with Ultra Mode cranked up to really show off the zones. I can understand if your computer might not be capable of handling it, and that's fine. It's just that I know how Ultra Mode can make environments really pop after having taken hundreds of screenshots, myself. If you like, I can share the settings I used when getting the shots for the exploration badges and the history plaques.
In any case, though, welcome to Paragon Wiki, and thanks for your contributions. — talk / contribs 03:58, 28 February 2019 (UTC)
- I had to google "how to reply on wiki talk" because I'm so new to the editing scene, LOL. Hope I'm doing this right. Anyways, howdy! Thanks for appreciating my efforts in doing what I can to contribute to the memories that was City of Heroes. I know it's not exactly a steady stream of photos, but I do what I can when I can.
- I am unfamiliar with most standard practices, which was why I considered uploading the pictures at all a daunting task. Any pointers and advice is much appreciated; I want to be able to present the best work I can. I searched around for the edits you made to my image uploads and I see how the category tag works. I'll be sure to keep that in mind going forward.
- It's honestly a miracle I can run ParagonChat on my Mac laptop, but I can get Ultra Mode to work. Honestly, that's a brain fart on my part; I had it turned on for the first few photos (Bloody Bay & Croatoa if memory serves), but I switch between toons a lot and forget my graphics settings don't save between characters.
- Thanks again for your support! AustinSmith (talk) 04:51, 28 February 2019 (UTC)
- Hey, I'm glad you're taking the initiative to learn all the Wiki stuff. It's been kinda dead here for a while, so it's refreshing to see someone bring new ideas.
- As far as Ultra Mode goes, these are the settings I use on my PC. I don't know how much your laptop can handle, but I'll lay them out here anyway, if only so I can keep track of it for myself.
- Graphics
- Screen/UI Resolution - Windowed
- 3D Resolution Scaling - 1920x1138
- Gamma - 100%
- FSAA - 4x
- Advanced Graphics Settings - Enabled
- Ultra Mode Options
- Environment Reflections - High Quality
- Water Effects - Ultra Quality
- Advanced Shadow Settings - Enabled
- Advanced Occlusion Settings - Enabled
- Advanced Shadow Settings
- Shader - High Quality
- Size - Medium
- Distance - Far
- Advanced Ambient Occlusion Settings
- Occlusion Strength - Strong
- Ambient Resolution - Quality
- Blur - Trilateral
- Advanced Graphics Settings
- Suppress FX When Close - Disabled
- Particle Physics Quality - Medium
- World Texture Quality - Very High
- Character Texture Quality - High
- World Detail - 200%
- Character Detail - 200%
- Max Particle Count - 50000
- Environment Reflections - (Same as above)
- Use Geometry Buffers - Enabled
- Anisotropic Filtering - 4x
- Texture Crispness - Smooth
- Shader Quality - (Same as above)
- Water Effects - (Same as above)
- Depth of Field Effects - Disabled
- Bloom Effects - Regular
- Bloom Amount - 100%
- Desaturation Effects - Enabled
- Advanced Shadow Settings - Enabled
- Advanced Shadow Settings
- All same as above
- Advanced Ambient Occlusion Settings
- All same as above
- In addition to these settings, I also use "/visscale 4" every time I log in, which renders everything as far into the distance as the engine will allow. Disabling depth of field effects also makes things more visible.
- If I remember correctly, FSAA above 4x doesn't make much difference, especially at lower resolutions. Some of the settings can really cause a hit to your FPS, but since you'd just be using them to take pictures and not be in combat it might be tolerable. If you toggle to another program while you've got the game running, using the switch "-maxinactivefps 5" in the startup options will help keep the background activity down.
without UM
with UM
