_NOPE_

With the current deletion mechanism in place? Sure, why not.. +1. It'll save some people some time.

Yes, I don't think we need a new powerset for this, we just need additional animation options.

+1. Let's decouple graphics/animations from powers whenever possible and make them additional choices with a default setting.

+1

Good idea. I'll try joining the next time I'm in-game.

Value comes, at least for me, internally. If someone clicked an "I Win" button and got an instant 50. It doesn't diminish the 50 that I "earned" by playing for countless hours through solo door missions (a project which I'm working on right now by the way, up to level 29!). If your value comes from comparing to others.... there's bigger problems at hand, in my opinion. Now, as far as "test server menu", I can see against that because it'd wreck the game ECONOMY, but if it's something that's internal to the character and can't be traded/sold to others.... why not give the option and choice to instantly get all the stuff that you want? Nobody HAS to choose to take those things.

+1. Let's work towards decoupling ALL powers and animations and let users choose which animations to go with which powers, with just a "default" for those that don't want to choose.

+1

/JRanger to this, due to it potentially allowing "botting". Only one auto-power at a time please. I'm all for letting players play the way they want to, but I don't want to the game to play itself for people, might as well fire up ProgressQuest. That being said, I would NOT be opposed to having a "click power bucket tray" that can NOT be set to auto, where you drag and drop your click powers that provide self-buffs, and you can click a single button to activate them all at the same time. That, I'd be fine with.

Yes. In fact, people should be able to insta-50 any time they WANT to. Make this happen: We need MORE options, not less options. There's no corporate masters here to serve. Let's let everyone play the way they want to play, as long as that doesn't affect anyone else's playstyle. I don't see the problem with this. +1, as long as it's made OPTIONAL.

Welcome Home.

As an owner of one of those sites... +1

Aaaaaannnnnndddd... we're processing! Not sure how GOOD the data is yet though... I'm going to run it for a bit, and then dump it and inspect it... then adjust accordingly. But, it's a start.

Except they never said "shut up". Where do you see "shut up" in here?

Progress Update: I've got the WARC files parsed to grab the data that I need in HTML format. I'm currently writing code now to go through that HTML data and parse it further, ripping from it PostIDs, UserIDs, Post Content HTML data, and so on and so on. Here's my schema: DataHolder p = new DataHolder(); p.Pages = new DataTable(nameof(p.Pages)); p.Pages.Columns.AddRange(new DataColumn[] { new DataColumn("URL", typeof(string)), new DataColumn("DateSaved", typeof(DateTime)), new DataColumn("Content", typeof(string)) }); p.Threads = new DataTable(nameof(p.Threads)); p.Threads.Columns.AddRange(new DataColumn[] { new DataColumn("ThreadID", typeof(string)), new DataColumn("DateSaved", typeof(DateTime)), new DataColumn("Content", typeof(string)) }); p.Posts = new DataTable(nameof(p.Posts)); p.Posts.Columns.AddRange(new DataColumn[] { new DataColumn("ThreadID", typeof(int)), new DataColumn("PostID", typeof(int)), new DataColumn("UserID", typeof(int)), new DataColumn("DatePosted", typeof(DateTime)), new DataColumn("Content", typeof(string)) }); p.Users = new DataTable(nameof(p.Users)); p.Users.Columns.AddRange(new DataColumn[] { new DataColumn("UserID", typeof(int)), new DataColumn("UserName", typeof(string)), new DataColumn("UserPageContent", typeof(string)) }); DataSet ds = new DataSet("CoH Forum Data"); ds.Tables.AddRange(new DataTable[] { p.Pages, p.Threads, p.Posts, p.Users}); I've just created the AddPost method that'll add a new Post to the Posts table, and that works successfully (took a bit to parse all of the proper databits in a valid way, there were some... irregularities in what appeared onscreen because of how vBulletin did things). Now I need to work on: AddThread - a collection of posts that are linked by the same Thread ID, sorted Ascnendingly by Post DateTime AddUser - a method so that when I find a "user page" inside of the WARC file, parsing that and adding it as another unique entry in the Users table, so that it's searchable After that, I'll have a fully formed DataSet. Then, once I have the DataSet... Next Steps after that: Setup a SQL server. Shove the data from the DataTables into the SQL server Decide on a user interface - web based? Application based? I'm more familiar with application development, and can do WAY more cool stuff in that world, but I know everyone's moving to web based tools, and it'd be good to learn... Create the Interface Publish the program/website for all to enjoy Now, EACH one of those steps has multiple steps underneath it, I just thought you'd like to know the process thus far. Having access to the files on my hard drive right now is way nicer than just sitting there watching the spider scrape (which it's still doing, by the way, just to have an alternative format someday possibly).

Nope, no sarcasm there. Take a look at the "offending" post again: They offered their "best advice". Nowhere in that statement did they say that you shouldn't have posted, or that you do that "instead of suggesting it on a suggestion forum". You added that part yourself, in your own mind. It's okay, we all do this kind of thing, we're all our own worst enemies. Just try not to assume that everyone ELSE is ALSO your own worst enemy. Relevant:

+1 Inf. We shouldn't take things personally unless it's been made EXPLICITLY clear. To do otherwise creates unnecessary drama and stress for only yourself. I have been my own worst enemy because of this in the past, and still sometimes fail at this.

NO U! :o Eh... it's a start. Thanks for throwing a bone. +1 Inf.

Sure you can save them, it's called notepad. Type them up in notepad, save them, then copy and paste them into CoH to make them appear.

Frankly, I don't know how some things get pinned and some don't. Seems arbitrary. People ask me, mostly. Do all of you think there'd be a use for a dedicated utilities forum? Other than this, Pine's, and Vidiotmaps, what's come out? *cough* *cough* I had some threads on those things, but I think they got lost in the wind...

I came here for talk about personal attacks (like forum drama). I was disappointed.

Dont know your specs, am willing to offer some over night time on mine. I have an x4 nvme with about 700gb free for fast IO. I am guessing the processing is mostly single core work though. Not this machines best point. Yeah, if I had the knowledge to setup "distributed computing", sure I'd bite on that. But I'm not that knowledgeable about that subject, sorry, and I don't think this project is worth learning about it to set that up. Once I get the parsing into the data buckets that I have setup, it'll be largely an automated process, and won't really require any intervention at all. It'll be basically a one-time process. After that, the data's in a format that can be queried, so we'll all be good. Right now, I'm in the process of creating the parsing of the WARC files. I've already figured out how I'm going to process the header elements, what I'll keep and what I'll toss, now I have to figure out how to process the actual page content itself into a form that's searchable. So it's a LOT of.... stare at a forum page and look for a data bit that I want, go to the source of the page, and find that data bit in code... then figure out how I'll grab that data bit via the HTML Agility pack in a way that's UNIQUE to that data bit that won't give me false positives for other elements... That's where I'm at right now. But, hey, it's on the move. I'll let you know when I think I have the actual processing started once I think I'm getting good data in my temp tables. Then, once I have good data in my temp tables, it's a matter of pushing that data to actual real SQL tables, and then setting up a website/front end for y'all to query with. So I guess the next question for y'all is - how do you want to be able to query? I'm assuming: Threads/Posts by UserName/ID Search by Partial Subject Line Threads/Posts by Date Words inside of posts (might be REALLY slow to do this! Just a warning!) Seach by URL - would be SUPER easy, but what would that get you that you can't by using the actual Wayback Machine? Maybe this isn't necessary Anything else?

You misunderstand. These are not images stored on the server within people's posts. Those were always externally hosted. These were images stored on the server for official CoH website images. I don't think it's worth the time to figure out how to make those work properly, when they aren't largely relevant to the forums, except in the cases of things like "online/offline" bubbles and stuff like that, which I see as largely superfluous anyway. Basically, post content was either stored as formatted text in the HTML, or it was referenced via hyperlink to offsite resources. Those resources may or may not still exist. If they still exist, they will show. If they don't, they won't. I mean, I COULD try to take the URL for the resources and try to plug THOSE URLs back into the WayBack Machine and try to resolve to good data, but is it worth it? It'll really slow down the entire process, all around.