battlewraith

The game engine is typically responsible for a variety of things--lighting, rendering, collision detection, simulating physics, etc. Game engines also generally have tool sets to help develop content for the game. So animation may be done in the engine, or produced in an animation package and brought over in a format that the game engine can use. Characters may be animated by canned animations that the game is cycling through (meaning the mesh is going through a series of deformations over time) or they may have skeletons in them that are actively deforming the mesh. I suspect the latter is the case with coh based on how enemies ragdoll when you knock them around--seems like collision physics being applied to a skeleton. Powers could involve some sort of modeling or they could be 2d animated sprites, or both.

The coh models are extremely simple. Making models of that quality should be fairly trivial for pretty much any current respectable polygonal modeling software. The industry standard generic 3d file is OBJ, which was around before coh launched. If the coh engine can use obj (or other proprietary formats) then introducing new models should be easy. If coh uses some esoteric file type, then you would need a translation app to convert the file type. I suspect the biggest hurdle would be pinning the new meshes to the existing skeletal animation system/patterns in a way that various moves still worked properly. Also adjusting costume pieces, weapons, etc. to the new shapes to avoid crazy clipping.

What exactly would you be reporting them for?

Oh it's far worse than radioactive moon leeches. Far far worse. Someone in a video game forum (which is not the public square) said that a WP tank was bad at taking an alpha. How could I possibly walk away from that ignominy?

I think you're allowed to spew your own garbage. I think they just want people to keep things civil. That's what they keep calling for. Did Diantane personally attack you by posting things you think are false or don't agree with? "Responding in kind" seems to mean "you keep saying things I think are stupid so I'm going to ridicule you for it." That's not your place. I don't think you understand trolling. It isn't a rigged game. You and the troll are not playing a game together. You are not going to win an argument with the troll or shame them away with ridicule. The troll is having fun by mocking you and/or the community at large. They are making you the butt of their joke. The first and most obvious thing is the inability of people to simply walk away from a troll post. The troll wants attention and it's even better when people argue with moderators about their right to give the troll the attention they're seeking.

LOL. He didn't threaten anybody. He said to be polite. Diantane's supremacy over this forum continues. He/she definitely scored troll points with that reaction.

Power leveling is probably keeping the game alive. The majority of the playerbase has played the game for years (or are maybe related somehow to such players--kids, etc.). They don't have the time or the interest in playing the traditional way. PLing allows people to fast forward to the content they enjoy, experiment with builds, get the resources they need in a reasonable amount of time, etc, Take away the farming and it would wither away. IMO challenge has never been a strong point for coh even before the development turned away from teamwork and started catering to soloists. That doesn't mean things weren't/aren't challenging to do. It's just that the difficult things all boil down to a formula that needs to be followed. Once the conditions are met that more or less static challenge becomes routine. The difficulty is getting the proper pieces in place from the get go. The strength of the game is in creativity and immersion. It allows you to really make you own character in a way that most games don't. It allows you to make stories and have an experience of the world that other games in my experience don't. The fact that it's a really easy game supports this.

What you're describing to me is a marketplace. It's Amazon--where can I find the cheap goods I want, whenever I want them, with reviews of the vendors. It's not a community. The artists there were active on the coh forums back in the day posted art, gave feedback, did tutorials, ran contests, etc. I for one did at least a dozen free pieces before even offering commissions. So it really came across as a big FU to that idea of community when people starting promoting outside artists and their sales. Still does. Would people have saved up for more expensive commissions if the cheap stuff wasn't available? Who knows. I think the more relevant question is: are people going to buy a single well rendered piece when they can buy multiple lower quality cheap ones. I'm pretty sure the answer to that is no. At that point it becomes a race to the bottom. That's when your $15 quickie headshot is competing with somebody's $7 fullbody sketch. I don't do commissions any more.

I know right? It's like... I got $50 in my wallet. I can't buy a tv with that. And without some sort of magic I can't budget or save up for something like that. So I guess I'll never own a tv!

It's not unfair to say that, it's the truth. I experienced it and tracked it myself. A lot of people want art, very few are willing to pay much for it. You flood a market with fast cheap work and that becomes the new normal. As an artist you can lower your prices, offer some shoddy low-price option, or just bow out. The majority will eventually bow out because hustling for peanuts eventually leads to health issues and is seldom financially viable. But in a global economy there's always going to be someone to replace them. An illustrator with years of experience and expensive equipment would do better financially to just go flip burgers than try to offer an "affordable" option to people who have grown used to paying close to nothing to begin with. But it's great for the consumer who doesn't want to feel guilty about paying much for something.

Well, this strikes me as mild karma. Many years ago on live, there was a small but active art community on the forums. It inspired me to start drawing again. There were several of us that did a lot of art for forum regulars, most of it free. This lead to brief period where people started to do more involved pieces, lots of people were getting commissions, etc. It was a really good scene. But then people started shopping around on other sites like DA. That's fine, of course, but they'd not only post the artwork on the forums--they'd advertise those artists and their sales and whatnot on the game forums. I wasn't the only one that was rather miffed that people who had no involvement in the game or the community and weren't paying a subscription fee were getting access to that space. It got worse when the artists from the Philippines started-- Taclobanon, Cric, John Becaro, etc. It pretty much destroyed the idea of getting any kind of reasonable rate for your work. That was the end of the golden age of commissions on the coh forums. It's probably the same guy. $12 quickie commissions are probably not enough to pay the bills any more and he's looking to monetize work he's already done.

Money isn't an issue. This arguably superior version had a much lower budget:

Well it's 2021. There are a ton more options for getting 3d models to print. That's part of why I was asking.

There was a guy that was making ball joint dolls based on the game files. You can see examples in Wild Claw's thread. The majority of the information in a coh character design is in the textures. Printing out the meshes will give you, for example, a faceted approximation of the volume of the head. All of the specific detail of that character would need to be painted on those flat planes.

I understand the desire to have physical copies of your character. But the actual 3d models used in the game are very low rez, triangulated meshes. Would you actually want that printed, vs a more realistic treatment of the characters?

But are we talking real world or superhero comic fantasy? If it's the latter, you're only limited by your imagination. You could take over the world by offering a better world. You could subjugate people through some way that doesn't involve violent force. A super sexy race of aliens come to Earth. They are so damn sexy that people just do what they want. etc. Not saying any of these possibilities necessarily make for good storytelling btw.

Fascism I think is best understood as a kind of hyper-nationalism centered around a mythological, idealized, and/or nostalgic view of a certain group. Typically an ethnic group although I think that in certain cases a religious grouping would work as well (eg. the religious right in the USA exhibits fascist tendencies). The outward traits--antidemocratic sentiment, forceful suppression of the opposition, etc.) extend out from that ideological center. It kind of breaks down when you start talking about aliens. If the council are footsoldiers for the Nictus, then I wouldn't label them fascists.

After watching your video, I went back and tried again. This time shooting enemies point blank in the face with the insta-snipe. And it was nothing like the weird results you're getting. I can see the projectile come out, it hits the target and then they get damaged. Consistently. Yeah I agree that that there is a bug present in your footage. I don't know why it is so apparent on your character and not present on mine. Does it happen on all your characters with moonbeam? I'm sorry I browbeat you about the power activation issue. What I pictured in my head based on your description was a lot less severe than what you actually showed in that footage. My bad.

It's a scrapper. Look at the ATOs in the beginning of the video. I think you must be looking at the shinobi-iri toggle.

Well you certainly love to assume things. I did another test with a scrapper, moonbeam slotted like Bill's. I'm still not seeing this issue. If anything, the insta-snipe looks a tiny bit delayed at times:

Reread the thread from the beginning. I didn't come in here talking crap or trying to gaslight people or whatever morons are accusing me of in this thread. I asked him what the problem was, to which he replied that it was dumb and ugly. Sorry, that's a nonjustification to me and I explained why. Now if people are actually having with their animations in ways that impacts performance then yes, obviously that needs to be addressed.

I think those assumptions were pretty reasonable since you came into the thread accusing me of abusing exploits and "shading the truth". I honestly don't care what your motivations are. I gave you a list of powers that don't fit with how you assume things should work in this game. Get somebody official to weigh in on it. If the current devs feel that using these powers in an attack chain is an exploit, that's one thing. If you they don't, or you won't bother to ask, then you're just blowing smoke. Put up or shut up.

I'm sorry random passerby, but I think it speaks more to a lack of shared common experience. When I read about this bug, I was initially surprised because I never noticed it myself. I was actually intrigued because, if this is true it would be a very small plus in moonbeam's favor. Bill is more or less correct about the state of pvp. The majority of builds do not work. A lot of ATs see very little if any use. If it isn't well suited to pvp, you don't use it. Now picture if PVE were like that. You needed the most optimal of builds in order to even participate. Now picture some sort of tier of build that maybe can function at a sort of ok level. But then some player wants something changed to the detriment of a power because THEY think it's dumb or ugly. That superficial of a reason is going to affect your gameplay. I did test this power on an unenhanced character. I did not see any issue with it. If Bill coughs up his preferred slotting, I will slot mine and test it again. I don't think it's an issue with the power itself. My purpose here is not to discourage a bug report. I'm making the case that instant cast damage might have value that outweighs someone's aggravation for how the in-combat version of the power looks.

Except these are not exploits or bugs. This is simply how these powers work and have worked for years, both in pvp and pve. And you are stumbling on to the subject now. Here is a breakdown that is from the stickied pvp resources section that lists some commonly used powers (moonbeam isn't even on the list): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18cNntfcyoaC9DUVS9B-4XYS6ogDRtT44H2o4GGTf4mM/edit#gid=0 Cast time, projectile speed, root time all factor in to why a power is preferable in a pvp context. Fractions of a second in timing matter when chasing someone down who is moving fast, about to phase, etc. The use of these powers still entails animation time before another power can be cast, rooting, etc. But by all means, ride your high horse to the nearest dev and ask them if the use of these powers is an exploit. That would at least involve some effort to actually become informed rather than slandering someone else's motives purely out of your own ignorance and bias.

OR...you could simply stop using moonbeam if you think it's dumb and ugly. The only one whining here is you. You want the utility of a power affected because you don't like how it looks and you've got zero empathy for other players may be affected. That aside, are we done now? No. You're filing a bug report but you're ignoring the fact that this bug doesn't occur on my unenhanced character. What does that tell you? To me it suggests that the power is not bugged in general. It may be a general effect of certain enhancements or how certain enhancements interact with that particular snipe. "The bug is repeatable and constant in builds people actually use." Which involves what slotting of moonbeam?