A Little Advice for Testing Commands in COH

[BlackSpectre]

Many commands are depreciated or obsolete, and others can be used in a way that taxes or even breaks the game. All of this can cause trouble. Having been testing commands for over year now, I have 3 bits of advice for any would-be tester...

 

1. Create a new account and use it only for testing.

2. Check the Windows registry after every use of a command.

3. Use the Beta server.

 

A new, separate account is a good idea because some commands appear to impact files residing on the Homecoming server (or alter character files that we have no access to). Specifically, email commands. I didn't realize this might happen when I did some testing and ended up breaking the ability for one of my characters to send global emails. I tested things using a level 50 character, with incarnates and all... and now I need to delete him, and I'm not sure even that will fix the problem, but it's the only thing I have left to do. Don't bother petitioning the GMs or devs, they can't do anything regarding very technical and odd problems. The general gist is "Once you start messing around with things under the hood, you're doing so at your own risk."  If I had created an account just for testing, I could have just deleted that account when problems arose. No harm, no foul. But using one of your actual characters in your real account is a recipe for disaster! None of this is a complaint, merely a warning to future testers.

 

COH is now a portable application. This means it no longer uses the Windows registry to save settings or configure the game. The vast majority of commands were created when the game still used the Windows registry, and many of these old commands work by changing registry entries. That also means they no longer work for the current, modern game. Worse, adding registry entries for a game that doesn't use them might cause conflicts and a lot of trouble. Typically, in these cases the game just crashes, but some changes can be less obvious. An alteration to the Windows registry is something that happens behind the scenes. In fact, since the Windows registry is the central nervous system of Windows, it's generally advised that the average user avoid messing with it. The bottom line is, any Windows registry entries that a command might make need to be deleted.

 

So far, it appears that commands that alter the registry do so under a specific key and name... Cryptic.  So it's just a simple matter of searching the registry after using each command and deleting the Cryptic entry. This is kind of a pain.  I researched and wrote up a quick batch file script to help with this. 

 

Using Notepad, copy and paste the following text and then save the text file as a .bat file.

 

 

:: This checks the Windows registry for "cryptic" 
@echo off
setlocal EnableExtensions EnableDelayedExpansion
reg query "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Cryptic"
if not errorlevel 1 (
Msg * "CRYPTIC exists in the registry"
) else (
Msg * "Registry is clean"
)
endlocal

 

 

When you double-click the batch file it will check the Windows Registry for the Cryptic entry. So this will tell you if the command changed anything in the registry. I'm a little skittish about deleting stuff in the registry, so I didn't write that capability into the batch script.  You'll have to delete any Cryptic entries manually by using the Regedit command.

 

Using the Beta server is not absolutely necessary, but it can make testing a specific command a little easier. In the Beta server you can instantly set the level of the character, add or remove badges, accolades, salvage, and pretty much everything else. No need to play a character to level them up or acquire a specific item. Faster and easier. 

 

And that's it. Hope this helps someone...

Edited July 17, 2023 by BlackSpectre
typo