BlackSpectre

So when devs and GMs say it's better to contact them on Discord than at the Homecoming forums... how do we do that? Should we look for a voice chat being hosted by one of them, or just PM them on Discord rather than here? Also, is it better to contact them on Discord because they're logged into Discord more frequently because they're playing COH and voice chatting with friends? Just trying to get my head wrapped around the whole Discord thing...

Good suggestion. I was thinking about this exact thing today and concluded that the warning will likely change after I have researched, tested, and written up a new and complete list of launch parameters. All of the “safe” commands will be in a “working” list, while the unsafe ones will be in a “non-functional” list and I’ll put a warning in each parameter’s description page that needs it. Therefore the warning in the command line parameters page may not even be needed when it’s all done. That said, I’ll go ahead and change the color and underline it. Didn’t know about underline for color blind folks. Neat suggestion. Nope. Not yet at least. It’s likely that the most used launch parameters will be those that change graphics settings. If you look at any graphics related slash command page at the wiki you’ll see a navbox at the bottom of the page with all of the other working graphics commands. I’ve colored the most used of those purple, and the working graphics commands are likely safe. That might help for now at least. I’ll have a much better idea of which parameters would be the most used (and most useful) after I’ve tested all of them. It might take a while though. Looks like there's over 100 different parameters to look at and write up. Good news is I have a lot of free time opening up over the next month. 🙂 P.S. There is a short list of launch parameters Here That is all there is at the wiki right now, and is the best list I’ve found so far… which isn’t saying much. I’ve been looking through the game code to get more. There are players out there who know a lot more about launch parameters than I do, I’ve stumbled across one post whose OP gave a lot of useful know-how on a few commands. Wish it was easier to find posts about parameters.

Just wrote up this wiki article for Command Line Parameters. I was wondering if anyone has any critiques, suggestions, additions, or different word choices for the article... or is it good as is?

Oh wow! -usetexenvcombine is a command line argument and NOT a slash command! No wonder I couldn't see that it did anything! Thanks for this!

Hi ATC, Good find! That little quirk is caused by NOT closing the Options window before you use the slash command. If you use the command while the Options window is open, nothing will change. I'll mention it in the wiki. Slash commands sometimes circumvent or even conflict with the graphical user interface. Although the goal is to have them linked, the game code and the GUI are really two separate systems. Because of this, I've always closed the Options window if I was changing any settings. Didn't even think that someone else wouldn't. So thanks for catching this!

I have a set of common macros stored in a text file that I load into every character... $$macroslot 53 " 8 Team Select Next" "teamselect 1$$bind_load_file /binds/teamselect2.txt" ^^This is for easily checking to make sure everyone on my team is actually with my team and not with another team. Useful when running Trials in large leagues. It's a rotating "text macro." Macro SI "enterbasefrompasscode si-7230" macro "Edit Base" "editbase 1$$angle_snap 0$$grid_snap 0$$room_clip 1" macro "Invite 3 Friends" "get_local_invite globalname1$$getlocalinvite globalname2$$getlocalinvite globalname3" macro Hosting "LFG Hosting lvl $level $side mission team, pst" macro LFG "LFG Lvl $level $side $archetype LFT" Macro "Global Name" "getglobalname $target" Macro AFK "afk I'm AFK at the moment...$$startchat" I also have a Custom Window on every character that has both macros and pop menus. It houses a myriad of system settings among other things. Here's some pics...

We have Lockdown for Holds and Coercive Persuasion for Confuse, why not one for Disorient? It would make the disorient/stun powers much more useful. And I might even take a few for a change... The new IO doesn't even have to be part of a new set. Just make one from a current set a proc. In practice, I tend to avoid most disorient powers. They typically only effect minions, and frankly my AOE attacks take care of the minions quickly. It's the same reason I tend not to get sleep powers (hey! while we're talking about it, why not a +2 mag proc for sleep powers too?). Anyway, every single time I've been faced with choosing a disorient power, I've thought the same thing "If only there was a way for it to affect lieutenants or bosses, I'd totally take it! Dang."

I would really like the door found in many missions on the praetorian side... the door that actually slides open and shut... or a door like it... that works.

What about clients running on Macs? Good idea to use diagnotics client, or no?

Well, I broke down and looked over the various graphics slash commands at the wiki. Moved a bunch to the Non-functional and Unknown Functionality lists. Moved several from those lists to the Working Commands list, and vetted all of them. Tested commands and wrote up descriptions. I can't tell you how many times I've had to reset my graphics settings because I mucked things up! Testing is dangerous! LOL There's still a few commands that I have no idea about, and I put most of those in the Unknown Functionality list. I am not a computer graphics expert and only barely know what I am doing, so it's possible I've made some mistakes and placed commands in a list they shouldn't be in. Feel free to correct any mistakes you find. Unfortunately, not every graphics setting has a corresponding slash command, but there is still a surprising number of working graphics commands... about 46 if you don't count the UI commands. 🙂 https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/List_of_Slash_Commands

There is also a way to see what bind is on a single key… use /show_bind <key> Also Options—> Keybinds tab will show you most of the binds on a character. I usually use the Bind_save_file <character name.txt>. It saves the .txt file in the <COH Install Directoey>/Settings/Live/ (or you can set your own location). I just change it, the reload it on my character using /bind_load_file <file name & path>

@_NOPE_ offered his compiled version at one time. I used it. Worked great.

There’s flickering all over PRAETORIA. Kind of hard to report a bug on any specific area when there’s so much. That video I took was in Neuopolois, FYI. Because the flickering is all over the place I thought it might be due to a graphics setting.

Is there an easy way to stop this flickering? Sometimes it even happens when the camera is stationary... flickering_360p_30fps.mp4

Does anybody know what the /E3screenshot command does, or originally did? Here's what I know.. - the command was created to be used for the E3 expo of 2004. - the command alters the game state of the game so that screenshots will do... something? - the command has 2 arguments: 0 = disabled, 1 = enabled Guessing here, but I think it might be used in conjunction with the screenshot command. Such as /e3screenshot 1$$screenshot. Or maybe some other command? Obviously this was used by the developers and not players, so even though /E3screenshot is an access level 0 command, I'm guessing it was used with a developer command that players don't have access to.

This is pretty close... The problem with matching the color is that the main name is colored in a gradient... darker blue on the bottom, lighter blue on the top. The title is all one color, so it's never going to be exact...

I've been doing a lot of testing of /lodbias and various distance/detail percentages. It seems like a setting of 10 (1000%) is the best setting for me to use. I can still see the character details drop off when I'm at a distance of about 400 feet, but I have to be looking very closely and specifically homing in on a specific character to notice it. Otherwise it looks seamless at that setting. So if a slider were to be implemented, I'd recommend going all the way up to 1000%, but if we do that, might as well go all the way to 2000% (which is presume is the maximum). 500% still makes the loss of detail very noticeable and a bit jarring. For reference, I'm using a Samsung CRG9 ultra wide 5120x1440 monitor. I think it's worthwhile to improve the slider because the /lodbias settings are "overwritten" if the Graphics and Audio tab is selected in Options. Also I'm not sure if this is due to me, but settings higher than 200% appear to revert back after some time has elapsed (1 or 2 hours). I was busy writing up some wiki pages and doing some graphics settings research, and when I came back to the game the character detail setting was back to 200%. Happened twice. So adding the commands to the Extra Launch Parameters are not really the best option. In addition to the command line argument, I also need a macro on every character to change the setting back to 10 when it reverts. So yeah, still kind of a pain. It would be better to just set and then forget. A different solution that in some ways is superior to the command line argument is to manually edit the gfx.json file and set it to 10, save it, then write protect it so that the game can't overwrite it. This way you don't have to mess with it at all, but then you're also unable to change any graphics or audio settings in game unless you first enable the file to be over written again. I'm not sure which solution is more convenient. Of course, an updated slider would make this whole issue moot... and if the Character Detail setting is updated, might as well update the World Detail slider too. 🙂 ON SECOND THOUGHT... we don't really need a new slider. All we need is for the game to NOT overwrite the World Detail and Character Details settings whenever the Graphics and Audio tab are selected or the Apply button pressed UNLESS the slider was actually used. Then all we'd need to use is the /visscale or lodbias commands, and those are easy.

If you haven't yet, try /usecelshader 1 for an even closer comic book look.

Another UPDATE: Discovered the /lodbias command that can lengthen the character detail rendering all the way out to about 540 feet when set to 14.0. Beyond that, the NPC disappears entirely from view, so it's difficult to see if any setting greater than 14.0 has any effect. The NPC I used for testing was the Transact for Victory (P2W) NPC in Nova Praetoria. Also any /lodbias setting greater than 2.0 will not be saved when the game client is restarted. The command will need to be run each time you start the game UNLESS you add the setting as a switch to the Extra Launch Parameters in the COH Launcher (e.g., -lodbias 5).

That totally makes sense! This year I have a new HUGEMUNGOUS monitor!!! Thanks for your reply, Naomi. It's good to know that there's not much I can do about it right now. And @Arc-mage, thanks for the great link! People are so helpful! 🙂 In that youTube video, Positive Gamer only talks about /visscale. What would be amazing is an updated graphics setting guide for modern computers and COH. Wonder if one exists? Hmmm... prepares his search-fu... UPDATE: Oh wow! I've been experimenting, and just put EVERYTHING on Ultra and Max, and it looks great. Performance is fine, still 80-100 FPS except when there are a lot of players in the area... then no matter what settings I have FPS falls. Not a big deal though... movement is still smooth, no jitters or artifacts... all good. I'm running a M1 Max Mac Studio with 64GB ram.

Hi, hoping you can help... I've been noticing more and more than details on NPCs just disappear when I get about 50 ft away from them... details such as skirts, pants, hair, etc. I've tried /visscale and it doesn't appear to fix the issue. I've tried putting particle physics quality, world texture quality, and character texture quality all on Very High. Nada. Character Detail is at 200%, world detail at 500%. Max particle count at 50000. Any ideas?

Re: Teams sucking... I've gotten to the point that I no longer expect anything other than players who don't read chat going off by themselves to do their own thing... while in a team, no less! It baffles me a bit (why join a team at all?), but that's life. I don't expect the team to implement any kind of coordinated strategy. I don't expect teammates to work together. And I certainly don't expect anyone to know what they're doing or even care. Worse, I do expect people to go ballistic when even the most gentle, diplomatic suggestion is expressed. I expect everyone to have an inferiority complex and to imagine anything I say to be a put down or an attempt to bully them. I expect immediate negative reactions to just about any chat no matter how innocuous. BTW, although I have seen a lot of this in COH, none of this is specific to only City of Heroes. It spans across every game and social group on the internet (and off). Back on Live all of this used to bother and perplex me, but no more. In general, I expect every team or league to fail. If they don't I am always pleasantly surprised, and I express my gratitude to the team when success occurs. Frankly, I can usually carry every team, so it doesn't really matter what the other players do. The good news is that for most content a chaotic, disorganized team can still complete missions. Trials (and some task forces and even a few missions) do require the team to do certain things together in order to have success, so it can definitely be dicey. But... meh. If a trial fails, then I just start another league and try again. No sweat. I usually enjoy the attempts anyway. To see a league go up against a real challenge is actually kind of exciting, even if the challenge is the players themselves. Anyway, I don't let it bug me anymore. If it ever does, then I just form a new team/league. It's the nature of public Pick Up Groups (PUGs). To expect anything else flies in the face of reality. The alternative is to Friend players who match your play style, and attempt to group together as much as possible. It's called making friends, and once you have a core group of at least 4 players everything goes smoothly... often too smoothly. I do enjoy PUGs every once in a while just to bring a bit of uncertainty to the whole endeavor. It mixes things up a bit which can be a good thing in the long run. Bottom line is... don't let the people in the game upset you. It's a game. It's meant to be fun. 🙂

... and if you don't want to deal with code, very easy to do with either Notepad++ (Windows) or BBEdit (Mac).

I’d wager there’s a lot of “new” commands added to the wiki that most people haven’t noticed. 😀

…and translated I to multiple languages.