UberGuy

At this point, the only "concern" I have (if you can call it that) with releasing my code is that it's really not in great shape for anyone else to use. It's not at all "plug and play", in no small part because I develop and run it on Linux rather than Windows. (Sounds like that would be no problem for you though.) Getting the code into shape for others to use and build on is 100% something I would like to get to, but it taken a back seat to actually keeping the site up to date and feature complete. Since all of this is work I do in my spare time, I haven't yet put in the time to make the code more user-friendly, even for a fellow Penguinista. What I could do, and I have given thought to how I'd most usefully go about it, is bundle up the "raw" data as a zip file for others to use, downloadable from the site. This is not the data I actually feed the site's web pages, but the very raw data that comes out of my forked version of RubyRed's Rust code, before I feed it into the Python code that massages it for use on the site. That's something I can do with pretty limited (but non-zero) effort. By the way, Ruby's code actually does emit enhancement data. Just turn off the filter for the power category "boosts" in the config file. By default it's set up to filter out anything that's not an actual player character power/powerset, but that filters out enhancements. I'm pretty sure Boostsets support was added too, but I haven't used Ruby's version since before that update, so I'm not sure how/if it's exported.

Yeah, doing any Patron's arc unlocks access to all the pools. If you want the badge for a different patron, you can just hit up Ouro. (Basically this was made possible so people could collect the badge for all four instead of being limited to just one.)

I may not have a lot of time tomorrow morning, so I've gone ahead and deployed the updated site. Apologies to anyone who tried to visit it in the last 20 minutes or so, as an updated deployment script basically broke the site by screwing up the mime-type on all the site's files. Modern browsers aren't fans of executing Javascript that isn't marked with the right mime type. I have not finished updating the help (I've barely started) so for now, here's the lowdown on what's new. Dark/Light Mode Selection First, the biggie: the new Dark theme feature is now live. The easiest way to get to it is via the little moon/sun icon on the header bar. (In Light mode the icon is a moon, and in Dark mode it is a sun.) Light mode is still the default, but this icon is in the header on every page, so it very easy to change. Clicking it will change the theme between light and dark on the fly with no page reload.. Like all the site's settings, this is persistent per-browser. (Per user if you use browser IDs/profiles.) You can also access this setting on the main settings page, along with another related setting. (See the next section for details.) A few icons and other site visuals were updated to be more visible / legible in both display modes. Colorful Power Details There is a new feature where the "long help" for powers is displayed using in-game color codes, just like you would see if you looked at the power info window. (See the teaser preview three posts up.) This "Colorful" mode is always enabled in Dark mode. If you prefer Light mode, you can still display the colorful power descriptions using the 2nd setting in the screenshot above - this is enabled by default, so if you don't like it, you can go to the settings page to turn it off. This feature, called "Colorful", works by painting the top-of-page power details in a panel that uses dark mode. If you want to use classic Light theme without the colors, the alternative setting is called "Monochrome", which simply removes all colors from the text. Several of the in-game colors are simply illegible on a white background, so you aren't given the option of displaying color on Light mode without the dark panel. Breadcrumbs There has always been an icon on all the powers, powerset and power category pages which, when hovered over, allowed you to see the whole power "path", including which ATs could access a given power category. The old icon was hard to see in dark mode, and had always required extra interaction to access the links. I only did that because originally I was concerned about there being space on the page for the breadcrumbs, but as the pages has evolved it's clear that space does exist. Rather than update the old icon, I've simply removed it. For powers and powersets, the breadcrumbs are more obvious, sitting in the open right next to the power name. (See the picture in the next section below.) The list of ATs that map to a power category is still a popup icon (and I realize I forgot to change it so it's easier to see in Dark mode). This is because that list is sometimes quite long, like in the case of the Pool category. Displaying that as a single breadcrumb isn't practical, so the old icon remains there. I'll fix its size and/or color though. "Lifecycle" Settings Many powers, especially temp powers or "sub powers" granted to implement special aspects of other powers (like Super Speed's Momentum) have special settings that limit their use, either by limiting how many charges you get, how long they stay around, or how long you can run them (for toggles). These were never displayed previously, but there is now a power "Activation Details" icon which shows the details. The icon is a clock face encircled by rotating arrows. Powers that Ignore Max Toggle Distance A number of toggle powers exist which, once cast, let you run the toggle at any distance. This is now displayed on the Activation Details. The icon is an pale blue infinity symbol. Alpha/Live Data Links When I first added the ability to switch between Alpha and Live data, I also added the ability to create links that specify which of those data sources to use when displaying the data. However, you had to create those URLs manually. Now there's a way to get the site to create them for you. When you click on the "revision" string on the top right of the header bar, there is a new link you can click on to place source-specific link to the current page in your clipboard. (Known issue - you can currently do this from pages like the settings and help screens, where it makes no sense. That's harmless and the resulting links still work, so I will fix it later.) Better Cache Control Asking folks to clear their brrowser cache after major updates is not very good web site etiquette. I've tuned the cache control responses the site will give both to your browsers and the CDN that will cause your browsers to much more aggressively check if there is a more recent copy of the site code (so HTML/CSS/JS). I have the settings set less aggressively on the data files that drive the site - your browsers will check for a new copy on their own if their copy is at least a day old. This means the site is far less likely to break outright for you when I update the code, but will still pick up new data in a reasonable time frame. all without sending tons of unnecessary requests to the site for data that doesn't change a lot. As long as I ensure the site code is updated in backwards-compatible ways when breaking data changes are pushed out, you will get the code sooner than the data and all should be well. If you want to get the latest and greatest code and data less than a day after I make a big release (like after a game patch lands) you may still need to clear your browser file caches. Known Issues The help pages are still out of date. I hope to work more on updating the help pages this weekend. The "AT breadcrumb icon" on powercat pages is a bit hard to see Fixed, I hope! The "Create link to this page" feature shouldn't be available on pages with no game data behind them. Fixed! The little "connecting" arrow for popup boxes is the wrong color in Dark mode. Fixed!

I have a bunch of new features ready. I haven't seen anyone complain about issues with the site, so I'm going to aim for a deployment of the new code on Friday, with the idea that cache expiry settings will make the new version of the site ready for the weekend. Meanwhile, I'm working on the help pages, which are woefully out of date.

This is what happens when I take a day off for recovering from my 2nd COVID-19 shot, but don't actually feel that bad.

That's very interesting. Most things that make you harder to teleport give you resistance to teleportation, not protection. Self-teleport powers are unresistable, so any resistance doesn't apply to your own teleport powers. Probably that Lore pet power should be changed to provide resistance, not protection. Edit: Also reported here.

One more update for the weekend, but this one is just a heads-up to be on the lookout for any unexpected changes. In order to prepare the site for "theme" capability, (specifically, to allow for a "dark" color scheme for the site), I had to go through all the site's styling and convert hard-coded color specifications into variables. There are a surprising number of unique colors on the site, and a lot of places where colors are declared in order to handle things like mouse-over color changes or alternating table row colors. I made some small changes to the site's current styles, consolidating some similar-but-not-identical color schemes down to shared values and then cleaned out some unused cruft from the CSS. While I made spot checks as I made changes and these suggested I didn't break anything major, given the number of styles I touched I may easily have missed something. There's also a small chance the changes won't work for folks due to older browsers, though I don't think it's likely anyone is using the ones that would break. (A lot of other stuff on the site would probably break first.) If anything is busted, it will most likely manifest as missing colors, especially on dynamic events like mouse-over, input focus, etc. If you do see anything weird, try clearing your browser's file cache first, as getting just the updated CSS or just the updated HTML would definitely look wrong. The changes are at pretty basic places that browsers shouldn't cache weirdly, though - I didn't have to do any cache clearing during my testing. I plan to let the current setup bake for about a week and watch for complaints of breakage. If nothing crops up, I'll leverage the existing changes to enable switching to a dark mode theme. In the meanwhile, I'll use my local dev environment to work on actually creating a color scheme for that theme which hopefully won't look awful.

Pushed out a couple of small changes. Displayed recharge times for powers were being rounded to the nearest whole number, even though the raw data wasn't this way. This has probably been going on since I created the site. Props to @Bopper for noticing and reporting it. Added a requested feature - each accepted boostset category icon on the top right of every powers page is now a link to that boostset category's page. Thanks to @Captain Powerhouse for suggesting this. It hadn't occurred to me that this was now possible since I had added pages for boostset categories, and it was quite easy to add.

I didn't even know that was a thing. That's specifc to Blasters, and none of my Blasters have blast sets with snipes. Corrs and Defenders don't get a range boost for using their snipes.

If one had a built that gave fast snipes before, there was no reduction in damage. Because the base damage scales with +toHit, at the +toHit required to have used a fast snipe at all under the previous design, the new fast snipe damage is boosted up to the same level it had previously. Characters which can now achieve fast snipe but which never could previously now have that access at presumably lower base damage levels, with the specifics varying based on on their access to +toHit. This was likely very intentional - it proliferated the fast snipe capability but reduced the overall power creep across the population inherent in doing so. Slotting Experienced Marksman is only "gimping" yourself if you rely on slow snipe's increased damage. While I can see slow snipes being tactically useful (sniping down Sappers, for example), depending on your character type and playstyle, this may not be considered important. Fast snipe DPAs, even at their new, lower base damage, are still extremely useful to insert in a lot of attack chains if you can afford the endurance cost. If that's the primary use case, slotting this enhancement can make sense. Personally, I prefer to keep the slow version handy, but some people really dislike inconsistency.

New update. The site can now display data about powers which share "recharge groups" and "exclusion groups". A "recharge group" is one in which all powers share a linked recharge trigger. When any one of the powers starts recharging, they all do. An "exclusion group" is one in which only one power can be running at a time. Usually all such powers are toggles. When any one of the powers turns on, any other one running turns off. The group names are links to pages that show all the powers in that group, and each power entry in the list is a link to its power page. This update seems to touch bits of the site that really resist page refreshes picking up the new code. I had to clear my browser file cache to see the updates, both in my local dev environment and on the live site. Next up: Power lifetime settings (usually present on things like temp powers or other granted powers) Dark / light theme switching

Yeah, something like that could work for folks that leave the launcher running. Of course if you leave the game sitting at the login screen, the launcher might measure that as time "playing". It might be able to be a bit smarter than that, if there's an easy-ish way to monitor the client for active connections to a mapserver. (I think that stuff is all UDP, so the notion of "connection" may be tenuous.)

There was no such thing as the market on a given server. The market was (and is here too) cross-server. The only separation was the old hero/villain divide.

There are no game stats of any kind that aren't per character. The only way to do that would be to scan every character and sum their respective times. Any addition of stats to the launcher would be a significant expansion of what it does. It doesn't connect to the game's back-end at all. It simply auths to the forums and patches and starts the game client.

OK, the icons are now their "real" size. Instead of often being smaller icons in the top left corner of a consistently 64x64 image, they're now cropped to their useful size based on header data I didn't realize I should be parsing until @Number Six pointed it out. As is often the case after a change like this, you might have to clear your browser data cache to see the corrected site. The worst case scenario if you don't is just that the icons on boostset pages will look funny, with the color background and the boost icon being the wrong sizes and/or offset incorrectly. Other icons throughout the site mostly should not change. Most power icons already had a real and internal size that matched, so the code correction did nothing to them. The boost / boostset icons displayed on powers pages were (accidentally) already pre-rendered in a way that handled the raw images correctly, given that none of them had the visual artifacts that sent me down this road. The only other result of the updates is that power icons on power pages for powers that are boosts will appear larger now, since they are no longer scaled down due to including extraneous blank space.

Yep, that means I'm doing it wrong / the hard way. I'll inspect that header instead of just skipping it.

Updates! The PvP bonus bug #1 mentioned by @AboveTheChemist, above, is now fixed. It was a little more involved than I'd hoped, partly because I discovered quite by accident while testing the fix that not all PvP bonuses have "(PVP)" in their display names. So I had to add logic to test whether the bonus had a PvP "requires" expression, which involved changes further down the data manipulation stack than I expected to have to go to fix just the fact that I was displaying only one set bonus per incremental slot. The enhancement icon bug #3 above, is also fixed - I think. It turns out the funky image artifacts are not something my image manipulation code/library was introducing. Any image editor I loaded the raw DDS image data into showed those strange "extensions", so they seem to really be in the image data. Apparently, they don't appear in the game proper because it crops or masks them out. The icon files are 64x64 pixels in size, but the icons only ever use the first 44x44 or so. It was only icons which had image data all the way out to 44 pixels "edges" that showed the artifacts, which appeared to be a duplication of those edge pixels out to the full 64 pixel edge. I fixed the issue by masking out the unused pixels in "e_icon_*" images. Powerset pages now have a larger table showing not just the list of power names (as links) in the powerset, but now also shows the short help for each power next to its name/link. See the image below. Because the table is wider, it now has the row hover highlighting similar to that seen on powers pages. Thanks to @zenblack for the suggestion to display additional info next to each power. The short help for powers is pretty much the minimum I could display here, but it was simple to add the short help strings for each power directly to the powerset data. (The powerset page does not load the full data for each power - some powersets, like Temporary Powers, would have to load hundreds of powers.) Note that while the short help is a decent functional description for most player powers, it often sucks for critter powers and some "internal" stuff like internal implementation for Incarnate powers.

Yes, basically Traps had a similar problem, but it was actually much stronger, because it was a much larger area and it was also pre-PPM. It would have a (probably significantly) lower chance to proc if it was using PPM. I remember people using it to clear out all the minions on the rooftops of the two forward towers on the last map of the ITF. At its best, today's Burn couldn't approach that simply because it's just not that big of an AoE. Plus the proc chance probably isn't as good because of how it works in most pseudopets - it's based on a flat 10s cycle time, reduced by area factor..

Burn's patch does anemic damage. Burn's PBAoE effect, emitted directly from the user, is anything but anemic. I use it without a damage proc in it other than Assault Radial's Doublehit, and even when Assault is down, I have no complaints about Burn's ability to burn down even massed L54 bosses. Completely separate from the proc thing, the fact that it spawns a bunch of patches will probably be fixed at some point, and if it is, I agree that the base patch probably should be tuned upwards in damage a bit. Not to the level it achieves with current target saturation, but more than just one patch currently. But the fact that it summons multiple pets and can proc off of every one of them is way, way not intended. Like, no one (publicly at least) knew it was like that for years after it changed to its current design.

Oh, it's much worse than that. It summons a pseudopet for every foe in range, and each can proc. So it's proc madness. Fixing Burn should be super easy - Burn has a PBAoE damage effect plus burn patch summons, so the pet can simply be flagged not to proc at all. That way just the PBAoE will proc, and will do so based on its own cycle time, instead of the 10s activation time base Auto powers use.

Definitely a bug. I'll look into that. It should be easy to fix. 🤞 That's intended. The table gives a list of high-level function for each piece, derived from the actual configuration of the boost, not its display name. For example, the boosts shown for each enhancement are figured out by really inspecting what the power does and aren't just from the boost's name - which can be wrong! I can tell that an enhancement has a proc in it programmatically, but naming the proc based on what it does is hard (damage is easy, debuffs not so much), so I didn't try. It's intended that you follow the link to figure out what it does. Check something like an LotG:+Rech and you'll see something similar for "Global". I've noticed that too. I'm guessing its corruption happening when I extract them and convert them to PNG. At some point I need to dig into what's up there, but since it only happens to some of them, it's not been a high priority - especially since I'm using a 3rd party library for the conversion, so debugging it could be a challenge.

I realized I never responded to this post. Both powers are Auto powers, so they both come on immediately when the secondary critter is summoned by the triggering of the trap. The "initial" effect will only ever activate once - it has a 1000s activation interval and the "triggered trap" critter only lasts 30s (as defined by its "Self Destruct" power, which goes off after a 30s delay). The debuff effects in the other power eacg last 10s but reactivates every 1s, with new debuffs replacing old ones - they don't add together. There's nothing in there about the vomit because that's likely part of the hit FX applied to entities hit by one of the effects - I'm guessing it's the holds. CoD doesn't really do anything with animation data, so that's why you don't see anything there.

Couple of small updates. Entities (critters) now show their group name. Previously, this was simply an integer value I wasn't sure how to use, but I figured out it was an index into a list of villain group definitions. I've added the ability for the Rust code to read these and use it to populate the critter's group name. As long as none of the groups are too huge, I plan to use this to build a page showing villain groups by name, with each name a link leading to pages for all the critters in the group. (Even if the groups are too big, I can still likely provide some pagination within each group.) Powersets containing powers that contain more than one power with the same display name now show the internal names of the powers in parenthesis next to to the power name - something that is already done with duplicate display names in a few other places on the site. This duplicate name situation never arises in normal player powersets, but it's sort of common in some critter powersets and it's basically standard in some of the Incarnate powersets.

Yeah. The phased areas aren't really "instanced" in the way that's used in other places in CoH. While phased areas' contents vary based on the status of a team's leader (including a team of one player), different teams whose leaders are in the same state all see the same things in the phased area and can effectively "share" it. Everyone doesn't get their own team copy.

This seems like a simple fix. The status interfaces are missing their tags. The main powers both grant you the proc and set the chance it goes off using a global chance mod - in this case affecting tag "InterfaceStatus". But the only power bearing that tag, is (weirdly) the Preemptive Interface end drain proc's effect. Fixing this should be as simple as adding the "InterfaceStatus" tag to these powers: incarnate.interface_silent.immobilize incarnate.interface_silent.confuse For consistency, Preemptive should really get its own tag (something like "InterfaceEndurance"), though to be honest I don't know why all the other debuff effects need distinct tags. Since you can only ever have one Interface active, they could all share a tag.