[What next?]

 

[What next?]

The beta server is getting its own manifest so that people who aren’t interested in it don’t have to download the files whenever there is an update, letting us do updates to it more frequently without having to take that into account.

 

Final verification is in progress and the link will be posted shortly.

[Tequila Client Dead as of 12/3/2019]

It's in the registry, under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Cryptic\CoH

[Tequila Client Dead as of 12/3/2019]

Without a dump I can't tell which one, only that the code path is login screen -> text block -> font rendering -> texture atlas. It would be one of the ones in the pigg files -- not a system font.

If you've already tried a fresh install, I'm not sure what could be causing that.

[Tequila Client Dead as of 12/3/2019]

Based on the stack trace, you've got a corrupt font file somewhere. Have you reverified files?

 

Also the crash handler isn't running, so there's probably antivirus or something interfering. That might also prevent all the files from downloading.

[Base Edit Mode Keybinds Broken]

Exit the client completely? Those aren't saved anywhere except memory.

[Game keeps crashing at random]

25 minutes ago, wjm67x said:

crash directory finally showed up. can anyone give me any ideas from this?

cityofheroes-01dv4k8h11a73d5camzz92g4mk.report 16.61 kB · 0 downloads

Yes, that stack trace tells me that it's a corrupt texture swap list in a scene file, which probably means a malformed scene file.

 

Do you have any overrides in the 'data' directory? Make sure there is not a data\scenes folder under your COH install.

 

You may want to try deleting homecoming\scenes.pigg, and if that doesn't work, piggs\misc.pigg and letting them get re-downloaded.

[Question about apparent inconsistency]

Check and see if you have the icon for a day job in your buff bar -- when you're in the day job volume for a university or police station you should get the zero countdown. It may be the case that the volume doesn't cover the entire interior.

[Game keeps crashing at random]

Check and see if you have a “Crash” directory under your CoH install.

 

That’s part of the new crash reporting feature - we haven’t turned on the upload feature yet until the lawyer-approved privacy policy is in place.  But the report files are still saved there and if you can manually get the contents of one it may help track down the cause of what you’re experiencing.

[msvcpl140.dll and vcruntime140.dll error]

1 hour ago, romanflask said:

i tried to go on the site and download it. but it wont let me get 2015 just 2019. will this work too?

 

Yes, you actually need the 2017 runtime, but 2015, 2017, and 2019 are all the same download.

 

Make sure to download the "x64" one.

["Safe Mode" Client May Be Going Away Soon]

12 hours ago, boggo2300 said:

To a degree,  but it's not just the shiny new features,  it's to the stage that patching together the mess the software is has become increasingly difficult using the out of date, and out of support developer tools,  it's at the to keep what we have stable and able to support the size of the Homecoming community the back end HAS to be modernised or it will completely collapse, It will definitely allow new and awesome stuff but it HAS to happen for the game to continue to run (homecoming do not have the personnel resources NC-Soft had to bandaid the game to keep it running, it's fix it or it collapses)

Even Paragon dropped support for older operating systems at some point -- I remember some yelling when they dropped Windows 2000 support and updated the minimum requirements to XP Service Pack 3.

 

We're not even doing that. We're attempting to maintain support for those older systems, and have jumped through a lot of hoops to do it. The 32-bit client is built with newer tools, but built in a way that it should be compatible even on XP and old versions of wine on Linux/MacOS. That's the compatibility path going forward, while the 64-bit client is intended for newer systems.

 

Unfortunately we don't have the resources to actually test on all of those old systems, so sometimes things break and I understand that's why some people are still running the legacy ("safe mode") client. What we need from those people is to stay engaged, make sure we know that they're having problems (some of you are already doing this, thanks for letting us know!), and help in tracking down the issues. Right now it's a manual process, though once the new crash handler is fully rolled out and activated there will be an easier way to gather data from those who choose to opt in.

["Safe Mode" Client May Be Going Away Soon]

4 hours ago, Logansan said:

Since the 64 bit version came in I have had little reason to use the Safe Mode version on my main PC but it is now the only one that works on my second PC.  However, that PC is still running Windows XP so I kind of will understand if does go away.

What happens when you run the 32-bit version on XP? It's not really officially supported, but we do build the 32-bit client with XP support and it was working a while back AFAIK.

[Question about Safe Mode client, out of curiosity...]

If you're still using the safe mode client and unable to get the 32-bit client to run, please post what OS version you're running, what version of Island Rum, etc. We need to try to get these resolved as soon as we can, as maintaining the legacy client is holding back some features.

[Multiple Auras]

Just now, Piledriver said:

I got some multi-aura combos working in Paragon Chat many years ago by swapping auras into other costume slots, but it was fidgety about what would or would not work and often even when it did render locally it wouldn't propagate over the network. It's cool you've removed the hard limit. Hopefully there won't be too many human roadblocks in the way of actually using that power here.

Removed the hard limit, and the soft limit. MAX_COSTUME_PARTS is gone, so unlimited lag costume parts here we come!

 

In all seriousness, the first application of this tech will probably be something boring like fixing the customizable weapon slots that conflict with customizable epic pool weapons. That was the primary motivation for removing all the hardcoded limits to begin with; extra auras are just a bonus.

 

Then maybe separate path auras out. I also have some ideas for how to do things like eye/hand auras in a sane way to allow them to be set independently without overloading the costume UI, but that's a bit further off because it involves reworking the costume creator a bit, and the way I'm thinking about doing it actually wouldn't have required expanding the part limit.

[Homecoming Server Update (October 1st): i26 Page 3 & Halloween Event Now Live, Halloween Costume Contests & More!]

Yeah, a whole month is too much I think. We have some ideas for next year to make the event more dynamic and less of a drag, while still providing a large window of opportunity for players who can't log in every day to participate.

[Patch Notes for October 29th, 2019]

Minor font rendering differences are probably a result of upgrading the FreeType library the game uses from some ancient version that was last updated right around never ago to the current version. But that wasn't in this patch, it's been out since at least the one prior to it.

 

IIRC FreeType changed at some point to autohint (snap to pixel boundaries) vertically but not horizontally, similar to ClearType and other technologies that take advantage of subpixel rendering.

[Multiple Auras]

2 hours ago, Rathulfr said:

 

While you're tinkering with the CC UI anyway, would you mind looking at changing the color palette, too?  I'd like to have more than 160 color choices.  Perhaps a 256 or 1024 color palette would be nice?  Thanks, @Number Six!

 

That’s something @Cipher was working on... he showed me a prototype of an HSL picker a couple months ago.

 

There’s a few niceties we would want in such a tool, such as remembering color swatches already used in the costume for easy matching. The UI code is a bit of a pain to work with so I think it got backburnered while we deal with some other things that need attention. But I’m sure it’ll come back to the forefront at some point.

[Multiple Auras]

Certainly doable. I was playing around the other night and did this as a silly proof of concept. Took a few hours because I had to rework the database schema to remove the hard limit on 30 costume pieces and fix the absolutely awful way they were stored in the database, but now we can add as many as we want so that opens up a lot of options.

 

As you can see taking things too far makes the UI a little... difficult to see... so some careful thought will have to be placed into the best way to have maximum flexibility and still have it be usable. Maybe splitting off path auras into a separate slot for starters. Ideas are welcome.

 

[dll not found when launching 64 bit client]

The link you posted is for the Visual Studio 2010 runtime, which is an older one that won't work.

 

We're using VS2017, so you need the first download on this page: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2977003/the-latest-supported-visual-c-downloads

 

Make sure to download the 64-bit (x64) version.

[Patch Notes for October 1st, 2019]

Also wanted to try to avoid confirmation bias in people reporting whether or not it helped with the crash issue, but okay, point taken.

 

Edit: There, done. 😉

[Patch Notes for October 1st, 2019]

3 hours ago, LiquidBandage said:

Are there any Patch notes for the update that happened on the 23rd? 

Antivirus isn't too happy, so I came here to see what changed and there are no change notes. 

It would quite literally be the “bug fixes and performance improvements” patch note that everybody hates on mobile apps.

 

The only change is a minor adjustment to particle physics to try to prevent the crash to desktop issues a number of people are experiencing. But since we don’t have any good method of reproducing the crash, it may not actually fix the issue.

 

So... no visible changes = no patch notes.

[Mid's Reborn: Hero Designer]

The pre-ED values are useful for knowing how much enhancement value is being wasted and can tell you if you've overslotted a particular attribute.

[MSR & 64-Bit]

If there is anyone who is consistently experiencing this crash, is comfortable enough with file management to drop in a test client, and is willing to help us out by submitting crash dumps, please shoot me a PM.

[MSR & 64-Bit]

On 10/16/2019 at 7:09 AM, ElPuerco said:

Is there a way to capture something that would be helpful with this?

Not currently, but we have something nearly ready for this that is just waiting on the updated privacy policy that covers crash dump data.

 

So... soon, and not the trademarked variety.

[Tequila and CreamSoda Security Issue? Launchers compromised? [Mod Edit: They aren't.]]

6 hours ago, thunderforce said:

I've already said the supposed security issue is complete nonsense. I'm just proposing to guard against human error when constructing the manifest, giving an example of how that sort of human error can happen and have catastrophic consequences. Of course if (as Number Six) says Island Rum does have some legitimate need to work outside its tree, then this can't be helped; but if Tequila doesn't, it might as well not be able to.

Tequila doesn't need to, and if someone wants to put together a band-aid for that particular issue and submit it as a PR on GitHub, it would likely be accepted. Tequila isn't something we developed, it's just something we happen to be using at the moment.

 

As for whether or not we should redirect any of Homecoming's resources to fixing that particular issue, that's an open question. It's certainly doable and may end up being a quick fix, but given the number of other issues with Tequila and the fact that we'd like to dump it in favor of something more robust anyway, it's a question whether dealing with the logistics of rolling out a new version is worth spending time on.