Fixing Pines Hero Designer to be accurate for Homecoming/i25.

[srmalloy]

The only issue I have with Pine's running at the same time as CoH is that I have a display issue with the respec helper window, and have to drag it a bit to get it to display the window content, rather than just a black expanse. Minor enough and easy to deal with.

[Papaschtroumpf]

Long thread most of which I don't follow but I have on concern and one question:

 

I tried to make a small change to th database from the Warshade section of the forum and kept getting errors and couldn't load other builds. Had to wipe my installation of Pine clean to get back to a workable system. The first post says this will break existing builds? So if I import a build from the forums it will show wrong powers (or worse error oouy it crash?) And if I export my builds to yhrr forums, others won't see the right build?

That's a big issue for me as I love to import builds for review it export then for discussion. Any way to make them compatible rather than add to the fragmentation?

 

In i25 during respect you can add slots in any order. That allows slotting early power slots into later slots or for example let's you 6-slot your level 50 choice. Is there a way to enable this behavior in Pine's? I wanted to post one of my builds for review and it has the lvl 50 power 6-slotted.

[Maslow]

Long thread most of which I don't follow but I have on concern and one question:

 

I tried to make a small change to th database from the Warshade section of the forum and kept getting errors and couldn't load other builds. Had to wipe my installation of Pine clean to get back to a workable system. The first post says this will break existing builds? So if I import a build from the forums it will show wrong powers (or worse error oouy it crash?) And if I export my builds to yhrr forums, others won't see the right build?

That's a big issue for me as I love to import builds for review it export then for discussion. Any way to make them compatible rather than add to the fragmentation?

 

In i25 during respect you can add slots in any order. That allows slotting early power slots into later slots or for example let's you 6-slot your level 50 choice. Is there a way to enable this behavior in Pine's? I wanted to post one of my builds for review and it has the lvl 50 power 6-slotted.

 

Depends on the change, most changes (ideally all) would not break import/exporting. However the import export system sits on a bed of static index numbers, and if any of them get changed in your db, they now import/export differently and would not work with anyone else's. I'm working very hard to get us to a place where this is far less of an issue. The release I was going to do yesterday would go a long way towards that being easier to spot and prevent. Today I'm still holding off a release since there's a major feature coming if the PR gets cleaned up in time.

 

Can you tell me more about the change you tried to make? it is possible the next release will already have it.

[WanderingAries]

In i25 during respect you can add slots in any order. That allows slotting early power slots into later slots or for example let's you 6-slot your level 50 choice. Is there a way to enable this behavior in Pine's? I wanted to post one of my builds for review and it has the lvl 50 power 6-slotted.

 

So you're saying the game now allows 6-slotting your L50? From the way I understood it, while you do free-slot, it's still registering the order in which you slot, but then again, they recently brought up an old post stating that when SK'ing instead of slots being disabled, the powers were nerfed some percentage.

[Pine]

Yes you can 6 slot your level 49 power now... but in that case, just move one of your 1-2 slot powers to the 49 slot so you can do your enhancements.

[Papaschtroumpf]

That's what I did but for sharing a build now you have to explain that things need to be reordered or it could affect performance in the 40s.

 

I can't remember what the Kheldian issue was and I couldn't locate that thread. Something about mutual exclusivity of enhancements or powers between forms.

[Ognar]

If you are trying to run PINEs while CoH is open I hav enoticed it does this... if that's the case - simply close CoH. Only time I have PINEs open when CoH is going is when respecing or leveling up.

 

I run Pines on my laptop and it runs like sludge. Anything I can do to speed it up?

I expect its coded in Java or something equally horrible.

Really getting into speccing out builds now but it can sometimes take 2-3 seconds between each action, doesn't sound like a lot but try pausing every time you slot an enhancement.

 

Actually, I run both with no issue. Hell, I have lots of things open at the same time. What you're Probably dealing with is the game running at full FPS in the background with the app in the foreground. To help deal with that go into the Tequila launcher and add "-maxinactivefps 5" to the launch parameters without the quotes. This will drop the game to 5 fps while in the background and seriously help reduce the GFX memory load you may experience.

 

I think that did it, it was running pretty crappy before, and others I talked to were having no problems, this fixed my problem immensely, thank you.

[Papaschtroumpf]

Maybe you fixed it already but I know when I was trying to plan my warshade, I couldn't enter the knocback to knockdown IO (the KD set one, I think the Universal Damage was available but is unique and was being used in another power)

[Papaschtroumpf]

It was bugging me so I searched better and found the instructions I followed that didn't seem to work for me:

FYI, you can fix the Kheldian forms not working with incarnate and auto powers in Mids/Pine's planner by doing:

 

Options -> Advanced -> Database Editor

Click Main Database Editor.

Click Warshade_Defensive on the left.

Click Black Dwarf on the right and click Edit.

Go to the Mutual Exclusivity tab.

Check the "Skip Mutual Exclusivity for this power" and uncheck "Auto-Detoggle other powers."

Save and close the Database Editor, remove the Dwarf Form from the build and put it back in.

[srmalloy]

So you're saying the game now allows 6-slotting your L50? From the way I understood it, while you do free-slot, it's still registering the order in which you slot, but then again, they recently brought up an old post stating that when SK'ing instead of slots being disabled, the powers were nerfed some percentage.

 

Slotted enhancements were always scaled when you ex'ed down for low-level missions, but as I understand it, the game only recorded the level at which you picked powers; the slots were the same no matter what level you'd exemp'ed down to. I believe one of the reasons for this was to make it consistent no matter how you'd slotted your enhancements -- consider a six-slotted power where three of the slots got inactivated due to exemping, and the difference in effectiveness for someone who'd put an Acc/End, an Acc/End/Rech, and an Acc/Rng in the first three slots vs. someone who'd put a Dam/Acc, a Dam/End, and a Dam/Acc/End in those slots. It would make exemping down a crapshoot before the introduction of unslotters, because the randomness with which people acquired set IOs could mean that powers were slotted in essentially random order unless you burned a respec for nothing more than ordering your enhancements.

[justicebeliever]

So you're saying the game now allows 6-slotting your L50? From the way I understood it, while you do free-slot, it's still registering the order in which you slot, but then again, they recently brought up an old post stating that when SK'ing instead of slots being disabled, the powers were nerfed some percentage.

 

Slotted enhancements were always scaled when you ex'ed down for low-level missions, but as I understand it, the game only recorded the level at which you picked powers; the slots were the same no matter what level you'd exemp'ed down to. I believe one of the reasons for this was to make it consistent no matter how you'd slotted your enhancements -- consider a six-slotted power where three of the slots got inactivated due to exemping, and the difference in effectiveness for someone who'd put an Acc/End, an Acc/End/Rech, and an Acc/Rng in the first three slots vs. someone who'd put a Dam/Acc, a Dam/End, and a Dam/Acc/End in those slots. It would make exemping down a crapshoot before the introduction of unslotters, because the randomness with which people acquired set IOs could mean that powers were slotted in essentially random order unless you burned a respec for nothing more than ordering your enhancements.

 

That's right srmalloy...The game is only tracking your powers by level, not the slots...When ex'ed down, the game reduces your enhancements by a certain % relative to how low you EX'ed.  I'm sure they went this way to make the code simpler instead of ridiculously complicated tracking of what slots went where and when...How would unslotters work then?  There would need to be giant warning flags on the respec screen, etc...I'm sure they could of done it, but this approach also avoids countless questions on why is my X Power not getting Y Enhancement...

 

Now if you are ex'ed low enough to lose a power, then obviously you lose all the enhancements on the power

 

Obviously there are special enhancements that allow you to break these rules, but this is the general idea.

[jmj211]

So glad this is being updated.

I've got a few issues though.

I can't load any old pines build that are masterminds.

When I make a new mastermind in the new tool and save and close when I re-load the mastermind loses the pet parts of the build.

 

Also I'd love it to just install like old pines/mids did.  I can't install anything on my work computer but I could load mids/pines on a memory stick and run it without a problem.

I can't do that with this current version.

 

Other than that it's great!  Glad to see it being worked on!

[Papaschtroumpf]

I have the same work problem and earlier in this thread someone made an installer that installs anywhere but I don't know if it's updated every time the main one is. I really would like an automatic web update to pick up the latest.

[Redlynne]

I'm still holding out for replacing the application with a web page solution.

[Maslow]

So glad this is being updated.

I've got a few issues though.

I can't load any old pines build that are masterminds.

When I make a new mastermind in the new tool and save and close when I re-load the mastermind loses the pet parts of the build.

 

Also I'd love it to just install like old pines/mids did.  I can't install anything on my work computer but I could load mids/pines on a memory stick and run it without a problem.

I can't do that with this current version.

 

Other than that it's great!  Glad to see it being worked on!

 

What version does it say at the top? This should be fixed in 2.6

[Rikmach]

I just noticed- It's missing the new Lore summon, Demons.

[PeterDutcher]

Two complaints:

 

1) The Power Pool. Currently, it lists a lot of choices...choices we do not get in game. It would be nice if fitness was not there, (we all get that automatically) in the dropdown, and it would be nice if it only displayed hero powers vs villain powers...or at least gave us a way to tell what is available (maybe blue highlight for hero powers, red for villain?).

 

2) I play on a laptop, and the hero designer is so very tiny when it comes to viewing the powers and such. It would be nice if we could have the OPTION of switching to two column with scroll capability. That way the powers can be displayed bigger.