Ultimo

I've seen videos of guys doing that kind of work... it's really cool to watch, actually. Unfortunately, that kind of service costs THOUSANDS of dollars, and I can't afford that, especially since I've been off work with a back injury for three weeks now. No income, you know. My best shot seems to be what my brother suggested. He works for Stantec, and their tech guys are some of the best anywhere, and might have tools available to them that neither I nor the shop guy I took the PC to has access to. But, that means paying for a new drive. I have warranty, but that means sending the old drive to the manufacturer, which means NO chance of recovering anything. There's stuff on there I hate to lose, but I know I can get back, either because it's not terribly important (eg. the AE stuff... I can recreate most of it without TOO much trouble). It's the artwork I've done, the writing I've done. Website addresses I won't be able to remember, and will likely never find again. Screenshots over a decade old. Music files. Photographs (including my now-deceased aunt and uncle's last trip to Canada), and video files. My THESIS work will have to be redone, AGAIN (this is the THIRD time... the first time happened when my old PC AND the backup drive AND the USB backup all crashed at the same time). I did have a copy on my laptop, but I hadn't updated that in over a year... and the laptop often refuses to start, too. I can't even remember what all is on there that will need to be replaced. I'm also worried about private stuff, like passwords and banking info. It's beyond frustrating. Oh, and it's injury added to injury. Late last year, my parents had a fire in their house, and a cleaning company had to be called to clean up everything from the smoke damage. They cleaned EVERYTHING, including all my old toys and games and models that I made as a kid. Irreplaceable stuff, most of it, brought in from Britain... old 1st edition Star Trek models and toys, Space 1999, Star Wars... all kinds of stuff. Hundreds of pewter Warhammer miniatures. They smashed EVERYTHING. Even stuff that was stored in boxes packed in foam was taken out and broken. I can repair most of it, but the ONE custom piece I made myself was broken off and lost. I'll never be able to replace it, it was unique... and it's the principle of the thing. My mother even told them to be extra careful. A lot of good that did. All my childhood memories smashed and destroyed. My phone died. Laptop died. Now the PC has died and taken YEARS of stuff with it. All while I'm out of work with a bad back. SHIT HAPPENS IN PILES. (Sorry, needed to vent a bit there.)

Well, holy old crap. My SSD crashed... AGAIN... and my tech guy tells me he can't recover ANYTHING from it. All my photos, videos, writings, favourites, game data, including ALL my AE information, character costumes and such, EVERYTHING is lost. SO ticked off. Anyone know a good way to salvage stuff from a crashed SSD?

Ah, that's too bad. I actually have 3 collections, one for one sort of evidence, one for another, and one that is not relevant to anything. They all LOOK the same, and all have the text, "Search the area." for navigation. The result is that it says "21 Search the area." at the top. It's adequate. They could find all the actual evidence before doing all 21 anyway.

So I put text in the relevant boxes, and it still says something like "9 Search for clues," presumably because there are several items to interact with. The issue is that I don't want the NUMBER there... and I'm not sure how to be rid of it. Also, in the second mission, I have an encounter I'm having some difficulty with. I'll describe what I want, perhaps someone can suggest how best to make it happen. The players are to search an area for an alien who has crashed on Earth and is somewhere in a residential area. When they find him, he's supposed to be in the middle of a fight, or about to fight, a group of other aliens (the ones who made him crash). The player should defeat his attackers, but then HE will turn on them. While he is fighting the player, a third party, members of the villain group the Doomsayers, appear on the scene (as an ambush), telling him to flee while they delay the player. The idea is that the alien is SUPPOSED to escape. Initially, I made him a Boss objective, but then he fights alongside the aliens who are supposed to be his enemies. So, I tried making him an ally, to be rescued, only for him to betray the players and attack them. The problem with this is he cannot be set to FLEE at any point, so he won't run away and just stays until he's defeated... which doesn't serve the story. So I'm kind of stuck... Any thoughts? Oh, and another issue I'm having... when I include him as a Boss, I set him to run away at 50% health, but he won't GO. He gets to that point, says his line about retreating, but then stands there and stops fighting. I've no idea why.

I'm fine with it remaining a pbradius, but I do think it should do damage. Alternatively, if they made knockback do damage, they wouldn't need to change the power at all, as the knockback it causes would do some damage.

So, as I'm making another AE mission, I once again find myself frustrated that I cannot select a specific character for an ambush. For example, I have an enemy that the player is fighting. As he gets to 50% health, it triggers an Ambush. Ideally, it would consist of ONE character from a group of supervillains, either at random or by specific selection. However, that is not currently possible. Instead, I can only select the GROUP the Ambush is supposed to be drawn from, and the general difficulty of the Ambush, Easy, Medium or Hard. In the mission I am creating, I've set it to select from my Doomsayers villain group (all Elite Boss supervillains... they'll usually spawn as Bosses), on Easy. The result is THREE of the group members appear. This is WAY more difficult than most characters will be able to handle, and often results in copies of the SAME character appearing (each one should be unique... it's like having 2 or more Magnetos appearing). So, my suggestion is to allow Ambushes to be more specific. Give us the option of having a SINGLE character appear as a difficulty option, and give us the option to choose which specific character should appear, or a random character.

My first question is, does anyone know of a map I might use to represent the site of a crashed spacecraft? A meteorite or some other such thing would work too... Second, is there a way to copy elements? For example, I have a collection already set up, with text and everything. Rather than making the next collection, which should use the same text and variables all manually, is there a way I can just duplicate the first one? I seem to remember reading somewhere that it's possible. Third, when in the mission, the two collections appear on the Nav bar as "Find 4 debris, find 5 technology." Is there a way to set it up so that text doesn't appear? I don't want it telling the players how much they have found or are supposed to find. Finally, not really AE related, is there an alternative to Mids? I'm using my old PC while my regular one is in the shop, and I find that the current version of Mids won't run on Windows 7. Thanks in advance for any help!

So, as a matter of curiosity, I wondered how a group of NPC villains would fare against a Giant Monster. I've spoken before about how I think the damage output of villians in general is over the top, and I wondered how a Giant Monster would stand up. So, I made an AE mission and put all the members of my Super Villain group into the mission as allies to rescue, then sent them up against Jack in Irons. It was eye opening. These supervillains, who can obliterate even my toughest characters in 1 or 2 attacks, couldn't do ANY damage to Jack, and he wiped them out in 3 or 4 hits. The whole thing took around 10-20 seconds. So... I've seen players fighting Giant Monsters, and I've seen them win. I'm curious why this is possible, when even AV level enemies couldn't make a dent. No criticism intended here, just curiosity.

Ugh, I was going to check the numbers in Mids, but my old PC uses Windows 7 (my regular one, the SSD crashed, and it's in the shop), and Mids won't install on Windows 7, alas.

DDR? RAM? SDRAM? What are we referring to here...? More seriously... 11.25 isn't bad... perhaps adding in the Maneuvers and Combat Jumping WOULD be worthwhile...?

A question... Defensive Sweep adds Defense. I wonder if it really DOES anything worthwhile? I mean, the amount of Defense provided has to be very small, and Defense is pretty much worthless in small doses. Would it be worthwhile to throw in some Defense powers, like Combat Jumping, Weave and Maneuvers?

This is true, and would definitely be satisfactory. However, it might be nice to be able to make a proper Giant Monster, too. I have a group of characters based on the Fantastic Four, and with the movie coming up, I thought it might be cool to make a homage villain based on Galactus... but there's not really any way to make a character that big or that powerful.

Perhaps a couple of variants of Giant Monsters... After some testing in the AE, I find Giant Monsters are pretty ridiculously overpowered, so their use in arcs would be severely limited. Perhaps an AV version of Giant Monsters could be created... basically, just a larger body type, but the enemy is still AV level. This doesn't mean creating AV versions of existing Giant Monsters, I wouldn't want to trivialize those. It would just be something for custom characters.

I don't know if it's been suggested before, but I was making a mission based on the Norse myth of Ragnarok for the AE the other day, and thought to myself how a certain character would be better represented as a Giant Monster (both Surt and Ymir). Being Man-Sized (ie. up to 7 or 8 feet tall) just doesn't work if you're making a character who is supposed to be a GIANT. Therefore, my suggestion is, let us make custom Giant Monsters!

Hm, then it's been around a while. As I say, this is the first character I've played that uses the set, so it's news to me.