AboveTheChemist

I made a minor update to the menu to adjust the name of the Time & Space Manipulation set and have uploaded a new version in my April 11 post above. If my count is correct, 17 folks (as of May 19th) have downloaded the menu (including previous iterations). I have not yet received any feedback on the menu. If anyone has any, please let me know. I'll probably hand it off to the devs in the next week or so, should they decide to include it.

You are correct, it is for the Brightest Sun badge. Here's the code you will need (and you'll need to supply your own tooltip and command): /macro_image "Badge_OGTH2" "Tooltip" "Command" Be warned, though, that power icons are 32px by 32px, whereas that badge icon is 48px by 48 px. As you can see in the top post, it will extend beyond the tray slot that you put it in and may cause issues with its neighboring icons.

Thanks for the kind words, and for catching that. I've updated the top post accordingly.

EDIT: I appear to have corrected my earlier problems with updating the map pack via CoH Modder. The latest version of VidiotMaps now in CoH Modder now contains the maps that I have recently updated.

The most recent updates are available at this link: Click here for updated maps Now that I think I have corrected the issues with my map production process, I updated the Perez Park map, which I noticed had some minor issues.

Here are the details and icon: Name: Complicated Category: Accomplishment Badge Text: Sometimes, the line between good and evil isn't as simple as it seems. Badge tag: Badge_Frostfire Settitle ID: 2459 Earned: Defeat Frostfire in the mission 'Take Out Frostfire' from Flux, part of the 'Flux the Outcast' story arc. And for the new anniversary badge that will be available in May: Name: Legendary Category: Event Badge Text: You have helped celebrate the 17th anniversary of City of Heroes. Badge tag: Anniversary17 Settitle ID: 2460 Earned: Log in during the month of May, 2021 (and presumably available from Luna in Ouroboros during May of subsequent years)

Now that Issue 27 Page 2 is live, this popmenu should work on the Live servers. Installation and use instructions are in the top post. If anyone notices any errors in thumbtack locations, please let me know.

I have updated the menu according to the following changelog: The major addition is the ability to place a thumbtack for any exploration badge or history plaque. Within the zone-specific lists for exploration badge, and within the alignment-specific lists of history plaques, I have added a section under the header 'Place Thumbtack' which allows placement of thumbtacks. Exploration badges are listed individually, and history badges contain sublists of plaques listed by zone. See the screenshots in the spoilered section below for examples. Thumbtacks were measured within a hundredth of a foot and should be highly accurate. Exploration badge thumbtacks reference off the top of the badge marker (including hidden badge markers), and history plaque thumbtacks reference off the center of the face of the plaque. I double-checked every badge location, but if anyone notices a badge or plaque location that is in error, please let me know. Thanks! Edit (June 18 2021): I thought I had mentioned this, but thumbtacks in Mercy Island and Port Oakes may not always work as intended. There is more information in this bug report, but in some areas of these two zones, the navigation waypoint will indicate an incorrect destination. The thumbtack on the mini-map, however, will always indicate the correct destination. I have added some bug warning notes in the appropriate sections that mention this fact.

You've got two different quote types in the menu. Look carefully at the double quotes in the 'Menu' line and in the first option line. They are 'slanted' quotes and aren't recognized as proper quotes by the game. The quotes in the second option line are 'vertical' quotes and are the proper type, so if you replace the 'slanted' quotes with the 'vertical' quotes it should work fine. EDIT: And if you scroll up the page to my August 26, 2020 post it shows another example of the two quote types. Also I don't think you need a blank line at the beginning as long as you have at least one commented line (using the double forward slash //) at the beginning, which in this case you do have.

I posted similar observations in the zone geometry bug thread, and mentioned it again on the beta tester discord when it popped up again while I was testing the new /thumbtack command. Faultline's response there was:

Map testing of 16 maps was a complete success, but I wouldn't mind having someone test a few maps on their machine before I consider the issue resolved. If you are willing to do so, please let me know. In the meantime, here's the short version of the problem. DDS files contain a header plus the actual map image. Within that DDS file header is a flag that specifies the mipmap count (i.e., the number of mipmaps). I compared the DDS headers for several 'good' maps with those of several 'bad' maps and noticed that the 'good' maps all had that flag set to 0 (no mipmaps), while the flag for the 'bad' maps indicated 1 mipmap. I changed that flag in the 'bad' map DDS header from 1 to 0 and that seemed to correct the issue. Here's a slightly more detailed version of how I arrived at that conclusion: For all the time that was spent by myself and others trying to identify and correct this problem, it seems somewhat funny that the solution could be as simple as a single line in a script, in which a single character in a text string is changed from 1 to 0.

One trick I find that makes locating Sally easier is to set the reticle option for 'Show Villain Name' to 'Show Always'. Reticle options are typically set in Options > Window > Reticle section, but setting 'Show Villain Name' to 'Show Always' can't be done via the menu. It has to be done using the following chat command (see Shenanigunner's excellent CoX Tech Guide, starting at p31, for more details) : /option_set ShowVillainName 1 This will let you spot Sally from about 625 yards away. It's not uncommon for me to pop out of the train station or base portal and see her from there. I think the higher the villian 'rank', the farther their name will appear, so it makes spotting GM's and the like a bit easier.

Not a silly question at all. The download link in the original post is still the main one to use, although a few of those maps are slightly out of date. The original poster hasn't been around in 6 months or so, so a few other people and I have attempted to update the out-of-date maps as best we could. There was a slight flaw in these maps, and the last few pages have been a flurry of activity trying to identify and fix the flaw. A fix was found, and if you'd like the updated maps, they are available at this link. In related news, I am 90% certain I have found the root cause of the flaw and have a fix that avoids having to use Photoshop. I still need to test a batch of maps and then I'll make a post with more details assuming the testing goes well (knock on wood!). If anyone would like to volunteer to test a couple of the maps on their machine (I don't have a second gaming setup), I would be forever grateful. I need sleep first, though, so it'll have to wait until tomorrow.

Per Faultline's request, I modified the 'Set Level' menu to 'Train / Set Level' and added a 'Train' option to it, which issues the /train 0 command to open a training interface as if one were speaking to a trainer. Edit: Tested it and it worked great, updated the screenshots to reflect the addition of the Train option.

It is, you can see details about the updated maps in this updated post. I have updated that post with the corrected maps that PsiBug posted. EDIT: I have since generated corrected maps of my own and made them available in the linked post above.

I got the NVIDIA standalone texture tool loaded and I tinkered with some exports but I have not been able to get anything to work yet that isn't garbled at the lower world texture quality settings. I plan to do a little more testing but my hopes are not high. Speaking of PAINT.net, I found a different thread that mentioned it would handle the A8R8G8B8 format so it was next on my list of things to try. Since it is free I probably will give it a go just to exhaust all options before turning to PhotoShop. That thread you linked seems to be active and the OP seems quite knowledgeable so if I don't have any luck on my own I might see if anyone in that thread can give me any pointers in getting a non-Photoshop option to work.

Thanks for looking into the Photoshop options, PsiBug! And my sincere thanks in general for all your help in working the bugs out of the map creation process. I will purchase a copy of Photoshop (or maybe not, see edit below) and use that going forward with my map projects. With your permission, and with appropriate credit attribution, I would like to replace the problematic files I originally included in this post with the updated files you posted above. EDIT: I have since generated corrected maps of my own and made them available in the linked post above. Thanks again, I owe you a beverage of your choice should we ever meet in person! Edit: I wonder if the NVIDIA Texture Tools Exporter standalone would work? Current Photoshop seems to only be available via subscription only, and both it and older standalone Photoshop software (via eBay) have somewhat prohibitive pricetags.

I would also like to remind everyone of the excellent tool for easily importing Mid's builds onto the Beta servers, as detailed in this post by America's Angel. I was asked to look into incorporating that tool into the freebies menu. After considering how that tool works, and given that the tool utilizes data that is dynamically generated by the player, I didn't see a good way of incorporating the tool beyond the aspects of that tool (namely auto-leveling to 50 and granting patron pool access and accolade powers) that already exist as options in the freebies menu. EDIT: I've now added features which provide export directions and a command to open the Mids' Reborn beta build menu. These features should essentially provide the same functionality as the tool linked above. See the post below for more details.

I have completed a beta version of the freebies menu that includes all the updates detailed in the top post. I also added a 'Custom Level' granting option that utilizes the /beginchat command to allow the player to grant a single enhancement or set of enhancements (where applicable) at a level of the player's choosing. Here's how it works: Edit: Per Faultline's request, I added a /train 0 command which opens the training interface as if one were speaking to a trainer. I changed the 'Set Level' menu option to 'Train / Set Level' and added the new command as the 'Train' option at the top. Second Edit: Added the ability to open the Mids' Reborn beta export menu as detailed in the post below. Final Edit: This menu is now live as the default freebies menu on the Beta servers, so I have removed the download. Other than the chat button at the end of the chat bar, the menu can now be accessed in the following ways: from chat: /popmenu freebiesmenu via keybind: /bind <your_key> "popmenu freebiesmenu" via macro: /macro <macro_name> "popmenu freebiesmenu" Here are some screenshots of sections of the updated menu, spoilered to avoid a wall of images: I conducted two rounds of spot tests of all of the commands for each enhancement type, so I am reasonably confident that all the commands should work as intended. If anyone finds commands that don't work as intended, please let me know. Unless otherwise noted in the top post, I tried to retain all options from the previous version, even if they seemed redundant. For instance, I retained the ability to grant attuned versions of Very Rare and PvP enhancements, even though the un-attuned versions of both those enhancement types function as if they were attuned. I can remove these (and any other) redundancies if there is sufficient feedback to support doing so. Otherwise, feel free to provide positive or negative feedback. If there is enough support for these changes, then I will submit it for inclusion as the next built-in freebies menu, either in current form or modified to accommodate constructive feedback.

Regarding the numbers in the XML file, the ImageFileLength value seems to be the file size of the corresponding DDS file, in bytes (see screenshot). At least, for the handful of DDS/XML file pairs I have checked, which has included both VidiotMap and stock game maps, these numbers have always matched. I noticed that for the handful of my modified maps that I exported with mipmaps (except Warburg), the file size is 1 byte off from what I would expect. For example, both the stock and VidiotMap map for King's Row (the stock version is shown in the screenshot) have a file size (and ImageFileLength value) of 2097280 bytes. My exported DDS for King's Row has a file size of 2097281 bytes. I tried setting the ImageFileLength value in the XML for my modified file to both values, but the results were the same. The numbers for the various versions of the Warburg maps were all over the place, but the Warburg map is a bit of an odd duck so I am not going to worry too much about it at the moment. I also tried altering the UnknownInt value independently, but that did not seem to have any effect. HeaderLength varies by map as well, and it seems to be tied the length of the FileRelativePathAndName value, but I don't fully know how the HeaderLength is determined. I generally left that number alone. My process to date has included conversion from texture to DDS to BMP, then the BMP was modified and reconverted to DDS and texture. I have used several pieces of software to do this, including Paint3D for most of the image editing. I did a trial run using just the detexturizer to convert to DDS, and then editing/re-exporting the DDS using GIMP alone, but that seemed to make no difference at all in the file size or quality of the final product. So I feel reasonably comfortable that my overall process is sound, although I won't rule out that there may be some small tweak in the DDS export process (like using a different mipmap setting) that will solve the issue. I did tinker with the RGBA export and while I initially didn't have much luck, after testing some other stuff, and especially after it seemed apparent that mipmaps are probably not the answer, I think exporting some maps in RGBA may be the correct format. (this part was edited) I tested some other odds and ends but I think that covers the most relevant bits.

I agree. I feel better now that at least we are on the same page, even if the problem isn't fully solved. I'll probably take a few minutes to collate my notes/thoughts and post a brief summary of my observations shortly, if that would be of help. Edit: My first inclination is to try mipmap settings other than 'Default' but I'm still compiling my thoughts, then I'll start testing different mipmap settings. Further edit (1:30 PM eastern): I tried all the different mipmap filters (using Default wrap mode), as well as all the different wrap mode (using Default filter), with no luck. I tinkered with some other stuff, as well as reading up a little on what mipmaps are and do, and I started to think that maybe mipmaps was the wrong road to follow. Having just read your edit above it seems like you have also come to that conclusion, so I am going to keep tinkering with stuff other than mipmaps. Last edit for a bit (4:15 eastern): I tried exporting using all the formats (aside from RGB and RGBA) that seemed logical with no luck. I definitely think mipmaps are not the way to go, and I am beginning to think that maybe it's something with GIMP. I compared the header info between the stock game maps and VidiotMaps for 9 different maps (and I plan to check some more). Of the 9 I checked, 7 were identical. The two that were not were Siren's Call (which has been edited by the HC staff, the UnknownInt value was 0 instead of 65730) and Warburg (which makes sense because the VidiotMap for Warburg is 640x640 whereas the stock Warburg is 512x512). I think the image dimensions and file size matter more than I realized, and I think they are clues to the format used to export each image. I think that some maps need to be exported as RGBA, and others as RGB, and not just all RGB as I previously thought. For instance, the file size for Warburg (769k) corresponds to a 512x512 image with 3 channels (RGB), and the file size for King's Row (2049k) corresponds to a 512x1024 image with 4 channels (RGBA). That doesn't solve the issue of the problematic maps at lower world texture qualities, but I think it is an important part of the process. I think I have exhausted all the reasonable export options available in GIMP, and I am not sure what else to try at this point. I don't have immediate access to any other software (like Photoshop) that is capable of editing DDS files, but I'd be willing to make that investment if I knew another software product would work. I may see if I can track down the dev that worked on the Siren's Call update, to see if I can get any insight from them.

I wouldn't describe it as happy, but it was thorough. Unfortunately, despite all the iterations I tried, my best result wasn't quite a full success. I did a couple of control tests, one with the stock in-game map (i.e., no modified map in my data folder) and one with the original VidiotMap, and confirmed that both those maps display 100% clearly at all world texture quality options. I tested both Warburg and King's Row with the same result. The best results I was able to achieve with my modified Warburg and King's Row maps was after I followed your instructions as laid out above. This method produced maps that were visible (i.e., not blank or 'scrambled') at all world texture quality options, but the maps were low-resolution at lower world texture quality settings and would appear at increasing resolution as the world texture quality was increased. The maps were 100% clear at the highest world texture quality settings. I did learn that my re-texturizing script was not causing any of the issues, but it did not permit me to edit the header information so I ended up using the detexturizer for that purpose. I also gained some insight as to what some of the numbers in the header mean, not that that helped me achieve the goal of a 100% working map. PsiBug, if you are willing, I propose an exchange of our 'best' maps, to see if my maps appear any differently on a different system, and to see if I can gain any further insight from your map. If you are agreeable to that, I can PM you, or you can feel free to PM me as well. Thanks!

Thanks for all the investigative work, PsiBug! I had a couple of observations and a question. I checked on my system and as you can probably guess, my maps were blank and/or scrambled at any world texture setting other than 'High' or 'Very High'. You asked previously about my GIMP export settings, and they are identical to what you showed EXCEPT the mipmaps settings (I didn't use mipmaps on mine). My questions is: Did any of the '100% working' XML files you examined come from the original VidiotMap files that Blondeshell posted? I used the original VidiotMap textures as my 'donor' textures for the header data and I wonder if I would be better off using the original map textures that come with the game data. Or, if the VidiotMap header data is fine, it's possible my re-texturizing script (I wrote a simple one in Python) is somehow garbling the data, and I should switch to using PK's detexturizer. I'll run some test maps later on my end to see what I can get working. I may also try using the RGBA format. I had some issues with it previously (although I don't remember which maps gave me trouble) but those issues might have been more due to the lack of mipmaps and/or the faulty header values, rather than the RGBA format. Thanks again!

Thanks for the kind words, Pouncy. It's been a big learning process but these projects would not have come to fruition if I didn't at least try! Interesting. The header data that I use in my modified maps has been transplanted right from the original VidiotMap textures, so it should be good. Unless those two numerical values you found are actually in the dds part of the data and not the header data. If so, perhaps those values are tied to the mipmaps? Or, perhaps I should use header data from the original in-game maps?

My world texture quality is set to very high, but I have not tested any of my maps at any lower settings. I have not been including mipmaps during the export process (because they didn't previously seem necessary), but I am happy to export a test map using them to see if that is part of the issue.