issue 26 Patch Notes for October 6th, 2020 - Halloween!

[The Curator]

Halloween Event

• The Halloween event is here!
  • Trick or Treating has been enabled in all city zones (note: you need to be in a zone that matches your level in order to trick-or-treat), along with the Whispered Rumor tip mission
  • Dr. Kane’s House of Horror is available in the Holiday tab of the LFG window
  • Both the Zombie Apocalypse and the Deadly Apocalypse are upon us!
  • The Halloween vendors (Malkiel Ivesse in Atlas Park, Annah in Croatoa, Granny Beldam in Nerva Archipelago, Acantha in Imperial City) have stocked up with goodies to trade for your salvage
  • Atlas Park has received a seasonal makeover
• The event will be active for four weeks, and will end during maintenance on November 3rd

Changes for 2020

• Eternal Night: Now only active for the first (October 6th - 13th) and last (October 27th - November 3rd) weeks of the event
  • The normal day/night cycle will be restored for the interim period
• Dr Kane's House of Horror: Removed two options (Bats Aura and the Costume Change Emote) from the reward table as these items are unlocked automatically on character creation

 

Bug Fixes

• Trainers should no longer talk about certain free / prestige powers gaining enhancement slots when you level up
• Giant Monsters no longer grant reward merits in Architect Entertainment missions
  • This fix was omitted from the beta patch notes due to a related exploit
• The character list should no longer take a very long time to load for some Windows 7 users
• The list of monitors are now enumerated in a better way, and should always list the primary display as Monitor 1

 

Technical Stuff

Most of this will be irrelevant for the average user, but we're including it here for transparency.

 

Intel Graphics Compatibility

• Resolved a compatibility issue with Intel graphics chips on Windows 10 - the game no longer requires an external workaround involving dark rituals to function
  • If you're currently using the Intel OpenGL shim fix, you don't need to anymore
  • If you're currently using the Intel OpenGL shim fix and the game no longer functions for you, please post a dxdiag log in this thread
  • If you don't know what this is, you probably don't need to worry

Visited Maps

• Some changes have been made to the way information on visited maps is stored
  • Now stored in a per-account subdirectory of the installation folder rather than in /appdata/
  • Now stored in a single file per character, rather than per map per character
  • Legacy map data from /appdata/ will be automatically imported
• Reduced the performance impact of saving this data

Command Line Parameter Changes

The way the game interprets command line parameters has changed in order to accomodate for the upcoming launch of the new launcher - generally this is only relevant for those that launch the game with their own shell scripts or special shortcuts

• The command line arguments -patchdir and -patchversion no longer exist
• For use with existing installs, you should always include the -legacylayout command line argument, or the client won't be able to find certain files
  • This only applies if you aren't launching the game with Tequila or Island Rum
• The new command line argument -assetpath will point the client to the piggs folders, in load order
  • The default is -assetpath piggs -assetpath homecoming for live, and -assetpath piggs -assetpath hc-beta for beta
  • Files in the data folder (eg: a standard vidiotmaps install) will still be applied as before

Resume_info.txt

• This should've been included in the patch notes but we missed it - apologies
• Resume_info.txt can no longer be used to automatically log into the game
  • This functionality shouldn't have been accessible outside of development builds, and it's generally a bad idea to encourage storage of passwords in plaintext format
• The upcoming Homecoming Launcher will eventually be able to expedite the launch process in a similar (but far more secure way
  • Note that this will not be a launch feature, but something added after release

 

---

 

Updated: 20:35 GMT

 

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where the game would be unable to locate its data files if installed in the root directory of a disk.

 

[Troo]

Thank you!

 

This month long event is a favorite and potentially a welcome respite from that which currently plagues us.

 

Fun additions are always appreciated.

 

Thank you for the opportunity to play the game.

Thank you for the ongoing efforts to modernize this incarnation.

Thank you for continuing to add mOr3 FuN.

Thank you for.. wait maybe I should save some for next month.

 

 

Edited October 7, 2020 by Troo

[Tsuko]

ty ! page 6 for november 3rd ? 🙂

[Ironblade]

44 minutes ago, The Curator said:

• The character list should no longer take a very long time to load for some Windows 7 users

Oh sure, NOW you fix this.  I've been putting up with that delay since day 1 and I just moved CoH to my new computer 3 days ago.  😛

[freedan48]

Error parsing command line argument 'auth 51.161.76.201 http://patch2.homecomingservers.com/manifest.xml' this is the error i get now thanks to this update, and i dont use anything but basics from tequilla what happend?

 

[General Idiot]

44 minutes ago, The Curator said:

• The character list should no longer take a very long time to load for some Windows 7 users 

And the peasants rejoiced! Finally I'll be able to tell if the character list not loading is my internet dying or the game cause it wont be the game.

[MJB]

minor thing but my resume_info.txt no longer seems to be working 😞

[Tonio]

Just now, MJB said:

minor thing but my resume_info.txt no longer seems to be working 😞

Came here to post this.  Wondering if it has something to do with the command-line parameter changes.

[Telephone]

8 minutes ago, freedan48 said:

Error parsing command line argument 'auth 51.161.76.201 http://patch2.homecomingservers.com/manifest.xml' this is the error i get now thanks to this update, and i dont use anything but basics from tequilla what happend?

 

This is the backup patch server that was deprecated some time ago. You should be able to click the dropdown to go back to the standard Homecoming manifest in Tequila, which will fix this.

[Dreamboat]

Seeing "Access is denied" when trying to launch the game, no further error. Tried with http://patch.savecoh.com/manifest.xml and https://manifest.cohhc.gg/testing.xml but no luck. Any ideas? I was able to launch fine earlier this morning.

EDIT: Think the problem is with my AV, so ignore this for now!
EDIT EDIT: Yup, post-maintenance my AV is now saying no to the COH exe. Had to fiddle with some settings!

Edited October 6, 2020 by Dreamboat

[Lucy Fair]

Hi, seems the patch messed up something for me. I'm getting a fatal error right after clicking "play", was fine before maintenance :

 

File: bin/clientmessages-en.bin

Unable to locate bin/clientmessages-en.bin

[Zed]

Quote

The character list should no longer take a very long time to load for some Windows 7 users

I was one of these 🙂
My 9 years old -now retired- laptop thank you !

[Night]

Customized  Twilight Grasp is still broken and busted as per

 

[Ironblade]

1 hour ago, The Curator said:

Visited Maps

 

• Some changes have been made to the way information on visited maps is stored
  • Now stored in a per-account subdirectory of the installation folder rather than in /appdata/
  • Now stored in a single file per character, rather than per map per character
  • Legacy map data from /appdata/ will be automatically imported

I just logged in and out, while watching the directory structure, to test this.

It looks like the data for all maps for that character is written to the new directory when you log out of the character.

 

I'm showing file sizes as follows:

61K for Ironblade, who has every exploration badge

28K for a fully incarnate tank that has done a good chunk of content

2K for a mid level blaster who has mostly done TF content

0K for a new character that has not moved from the start point in Atlas Park

I did not observe any delays in loading or exiting each character.

 

As I currently back up the visited map files nightly, it looks like I need to log in and out of every character to update them to the new file system so I can change my back-up.  Overall, looks like a good change and it seems to be working smoothy.

[Sanderson2209]

26 minutes ago, Telephone said:

This is the backup patch server that was deprecated some time ago. You should be able to click the dropdown to go back to the standard Homecoming manifest in Tequila, which will fix this.

I did this, revalidated, restarted my comp, and still get this: 

 

Error parsing command line argument 'auth 51.161.76.201 http://patch.savecoh.com/manifest.xml'

 

 

Any further ideas?

[Blacksmith]

Same here, when i click in play a small screen apears and says "Access denied". Any help?

 

[Conviction]

14 minutes ago, Sanderson2209 said:

I did this, revalidated, restarted my comp, and still get this: 

 

Error parsing command line argument 'auth 51.161.76.201 http://patch.savecoh.com/manifest.xml'

 

 

Any further ideas?

Go into Options and clear anything that is in Launch Parameters. I'm betting you will see http://patch.savecoh.com/manifest.xml in that line. Since that is not a valid launch parameter, it is giving that message.

[Sanderson2209]

3 minutes ago, GM Conviction said:

Go into Options and clear anything that is in Launch Parameters. I'm betting you will see http://patch.savecoh.com/manifest.xml in that line. Since that is not a valid launch parameter, it is giving that message.

 

This worked. You're wonderful. I take back everything I ever said about your mom!

[Blacksmith]

Access denied message persist, i have revalidated 10k times, delete manifest, my launch parameter is clear and still cannot log in the game 😞

[Number Six]

Access denied is probably overzealous antivirus not liking that it's a new file with no reputation yet.

[Glacier Peak]

I always love the excitement that comes with new patch notes! Thank you Homecoming volunteers! You are awesome!!

[Conviction]

1 hour ago, freedan48 said:

Error parsing command line argument 'auth 51.161.76.201 http://patch2.homecomingservers.com/manifest.xml' this is the error i get now thanks to this update, and i dont use anything but basics from tequilla what happend?

 

Go into Options and clear the Launch Parameters field. This will that error right up. @freedan48

Edited October 6, 2020 by GM Conviction

[nihilii]

2 hours ago, The Curator said:

The character list should no longer take a very long time to load for some Windows 7 users

Consistently awed and humbled by the dedication this dev team has to fix issues most pro studios would simply stuff in an "unsupported" folder and never bother to look at.

 

You guys are truly the best.

[Lucy Fair]

Still getting the same Fatal Error, re-validate manifest too, nothing changed. I'm not using any antivirus (bad girl here, I know XD) and my launch parameter is empty. Found out that game was installed in the Document folder (was working fine here until now), so I'm trying to reinstalling it in a better folder, my internet is very bad so it'll take a LOOOOOOONG time to know if that worked 😓

[Conviction]

2 minutes ago, Lucy Fair said:

Still getting the same Fatal Error, re-validate manifest too, nothing changed. I'm not using any antivirus (bad girl here, I know XD) and my launch parameter is empty. Found out that game was installed in the Document folder (was working fine here until now), so I'm trying to reinstalling it in a better folder, my internet is very bad so it'll take a LOOOOOOONG time to know if that worked 😓

It is most likely the Documents folder. That is one of Window's special folders and that can cause issues. You would not be the first to have it work for awhile and then have it break unexpectedly. We do recommend installing into C:\Games\COH. You may need to create those two folders (Games\COH) but that will eliminate the possibility of running afoul of Windows.