Number Six
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Posts posted by Number Six
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52 minutes ago, Hardship said:
This didn't work on my Intel Q45/Q43 Express Chipset video card.
Please don't spend time getting this card to work on my account, as it is in a VERY old PC that I was just curious if it would work. I only mention it as a point of interest. At most, I might do a little light AH gaming on it while I played on my main rig.
The workaround in this release is only targeted at the driver used for the Intel HD 3000. If the Q45 driver doesn't load as a result of the same issue (i.e. it works when you shim it with the VersionLie compatibility database), I can add it to our workaround. I just need the name of the OpenGL driver dll you use for the shim and it would take 30 seconds to add to the list.
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How comfortable are you with things like copying files into the wine root that Island Rum originally set up, and editing the script that you've been running (or preferably a copy of it)?
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@DoctorBobThat was a new patch going out that should fix the issue for some of the people having problems with it installed in a root directory. You happened to get it in the window after the manifest had been updated but before all the download files had synchronized.
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1 minute ago, Voltor said:
No bugs yet but curious why Eternal night was adjusted for the event?
On the retail servers, Paragon typically ran the Halloween event for around 2 weeks.
Last year we ran it for an entire month so that people would have more of a chance to trick or treat or do banner events without feeling rushed to cram it all in.
There were a number of complaints that it being night all the time started to get really old after 3-4 weeks of it. So this year we're splitting the difference and breaking it up, keeping the extended event schedule but not running eternal night for longer than it was on retail.
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Those who are getting the 'unable to locate game data files', where do you have the game installed? So far everyone on Discord who has reported that error has had it directly in the root of a drive rather than in a subfolder, which is... not recommended.
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47 minutes ago, Captain Fabulous said:
I'm curious how you solved the Windows 7 and Intel issues. Any info you can share?
The windows 7 issue was that the default UDP receive buffer size on Windows 7 is too small. Initially we hadn't gone down that road because there were scattered reports of the same problem on 8/10, but all the ones we were able to verify turned out to be on 7 and were solved by adjusting the buffer.
The Intel issue is a lot more complicated/annoying and I'm planning on doing a dev blog or similar post about it. People may find it interesting since our fix involves doing something Microsoft engineers say never to do under any circumstances.
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5 minutes ago, nethod said:
Mine hangs on a black screen till says "coh is not responding"
Try adding -gfxreset to launch parameters. If it works, don't forget to take it out after.
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Access denied is probably overzealous antivirus not liking that it's a new file with no reputation yet.
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4 minutes ago, SeraphimKensai said:
There's still windows 7 users? Must be one old PC in a Museum of Archaic Technology and the Curator fires it up every once in a while to remember what it was like using AOL Instant Messenger, and HTML 4 while being limited to 8 GB of RAM on Windows 7 64 Home Basic Edition.
Heck, we still have a very small number of players running XP of all things.
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@OrionX Click the Options button in Tequila and check the Launch Parameters box. Make sure it's empty, it looks like you somehow got a '[' bracket in it.
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It's not exploitable, just horribly inefficient.
The current format saves one file per character per map - for example Player4872Map16.vm. There could be hundreds of files there, especially if you have a lot of alts. What happens is that the first time the game client needs to display the minimap, it loads the visitedmaps data into memory. ALL of it. Every map, for every character that's ever logged in on your computer, regardless of which account they belong to.
On top of that, any time the data changes, say by uncovering a map square, the game writes the map data to disk. To avoid extra code I suppose they used textparser for this -- a .vm file is just a .bin file -- so every time this happens the game opens a new file, writes all the data for the map to it, then closes the file (which flushes it to disk). It does this synchronously, in the main thread. You had better hope Windows has write cache available or it will stall everything. It repeats this every time you uncover another square.
The new implementation does things very differently. It creates one .vm2 file per character using a simple but effective binary format that can contain multiple maps and be expanded as needed. When map data is needed, only that single vm2 file is loaded. Instead of writing the changes synchronously, a background thread checks every 60 seconds if any maps have been updated, and if so flushes those maps to disk. The background thread keeps the file handle open and just seeks to the correct place.
Finally, the current files are stored using the dbid of the character, which changes when you transfer shards and causes you to lose the uncovered maps. It's also subject to potential collisions with the same ID across shards, but that's likely rare. The new files can use suid instead - a unique identifier that we added to the database back in 2019 which moves along with the character. The version in this patch I think still uses dbid because the client doesn't yet receive the character's suid, but all the framework to transition to suids is there. In the next patch that will be activated and after that date, transferring across shards will retain the map state.
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36 minutes ago, Mystic_Cross said:
Possibly just preparation for a new launcher... or some other reason entirely 🙂
This.
The new launcher was a good opportunity to clean up the file layout, and the setup looks quite a bit different. Some modifications to the client were needed to support it. As part of that effort, it was made fully portable so that you can just pick up the whole thing and move it. Dependence on the windows registry was removed, and any files being saved outside of the CoH directory structure were moved inside of it, including the shader cache and fog of war (VisitedMaps) data.
There is compatibility with the old way of doing things (activated by -legacylayout) since some people will no doubt prefer to keep using their existing Tequila/IR installs. The one exception is VisitedMaps. Examination of the way it was being handled revealed it was... not good. Rather than maintain that format for compatibility mode, a new format was created that is used for both modes. Data is automatically migrated to the new format so the transition should be seamless.
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41 minutes ago, Vanden said:
Some powers are buffed, but some powers are nerfed.
Some powers are nerfed AND buffed.
TW is a great example of that. The overall damage output has some of the "you paid real money for this set" damage bonus removed (I can't help but imagine a weapon enhancement that is someone taping dollar bills to a big sword). However, there's also a mechanics change to Momentum that is a fairly big deal QoL-wise and hopefully will make the set less frustrating to play.
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Sure, you can run a shard for 50-100 people or so on a $150/mo dedicated server. However, the game wasn't designed for that and running everything on one box is a bit of a house of cards -- I promise you from experience it will crumble once you put any kind of serious load on it. Our smaller shards have several times that number online on a slow night.
As Jimmy said, we don't run one shard per server. Not only is that a bad idea for reliability but it's also an inefficient use of hardware and it would cost more, assuming we could even find a single server large enough to host something like Excelsior without crashing and burning. We run a clustered multi-shard setup with shared global services that's much closer to the way the game was run when it was in retail. That takes a higher class of hardware.
There are multiple people on the team with enterprise-level operations experience, and I'm confident that our costs (on a per-player basis) are quite a bit lower than a professionally hosted MMO would be, despite being close to that level in terms of server reliability.
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18 minutes ago, Jimmy said:whilst working on their project.
whilst
And now you know who usually writes the patch notes.
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@WanderingAries Thanks, if you do end up installing it and find that it doesn't work on Windows 10 with an 'OpenGL not found' error, shoot me a PM and I'll send you the details.
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Is there anyone who has successfully used the shim method to get the game running on an Intel HD 3000 or similar chip, and is willing to help me test a different method that may be easier for new players to use?
@Adurias or @LightningSmurfperhaps?
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2 minutes ago, siolfir said:
It wasn't a year ago (which matters if you were looking for it), but otherwise matches what @Number Six said earlier in the thread.
Wow, it sure feels like it. The 2020 time dilation field is in full effect.
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5 hours ago, Solarverse said:
Just for Tanks though? What the Homecoming Devs told me in another thread that I had started a while back, that there is no way to raise the aggro cap for Tanks without raising the cap for all classes.
Not sure who you talked to but like a year ago when this came up I said that it's easy to do (if you want to do hardcoded hacks anyway), but that we didn't think it was a good idea for game balance and weren't planning to do it.
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1 hour ago, Shred Monkey said:
Tall models feel sooooooooooo sloooooooow.
Probably because the game actually slows down movement animations for taller characters, to compensate for the fact that they are moving at the same speed as shorter ones and not covering as much ground as they should for their leg length.
Conversely, using the minimum size can make your character a bit hyperactive.
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Character height doesn't change any combat calculations, nor does it affect the character's collision volume. All players are cylinders 3' across, and 6' tall regardless of costume appearance.
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15 hours ago, Hew said:
Devs hate red side.
Quite ironic considering the nature of what @Piecemeal is hinting at.
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1 hour ago, ArchVileTerror said:
Interesting method, @Number Six. Will that remain the way it operates in the future, or will you be providing a more user-friendly alternative before the Release version?
I mean, I do wish for more people to learn how to navigate their computers' file folder architecture, but having been a troubleshooter for many players trying to install Mods for the game . . . I can see this being a big barrier for a lot of them.
The installer lets you pick a location like any standard installer.
That message is there to let you know that it's portable, for if you want to move it after it's installed. The "normal" way of doing that for Windows software is... uh... don't. Or uninstall and reinstall the whole thing somewhere else.
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1 minute ago, WindDemon21 said:
Big question i haven't seen asked yet, will we still be able to run two instances at a time with this new launcher?
Yes indeed.
4 minutes ago, WindDemon21 said:And can we still use the old launcher if we want to?
For a while. We'll certainly be encouraging people to move to the new one as it's much, much more secure against potential man-in-the-middle or other hijacking attacks than any of the others out there, but we'll keep updating the old manifests to give people plenty of time to try it out.
We may eventually drop support for the old updaters down the road, but not soon. There's also nothing preventing someone from continuing to produce manifests on an unofficial basis, but it would be up to anyone using those to trust whoever is putting them together and accept the risk.
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Patch Notes for October 8th, 2020
in Patch Notes Discussion
Posted
I found your crash report. It looks like you have a corrupt powers.bin file.
Make sure you are using the official manifest (http://patch.savecoh.com/manifest.xml) and reverify files. If that doesn't work, check your data folder and temporarily move anything out of the way to make sure it's not conflicting.