Costume parts.

[WhtRabbit]

Is it just me or are we missing some Costume parts? I'll freely admit it's been too long to say for sure but I could have sworn there was more then what we currently have.

 

With that asked, while I know it's not a priority at the moment, what are the chances we'll be able to add in new parts?

[GrapeKat]

All the parts are available, even unlockables. In fact, there are more in I25 than there ever were in Live.

 

The odds of adding anything new to this game are slim to none until a working version of the original I24 can get up and running.

[WanderingAries]

I beg to differ as I took screen shots of characters from both live and Test/Beta servers from the OG before Sunset and a handful of (I'll have to go figure out which) things are missing (or I simply haven't been able to find). Also, the Icon app feels like it's not quite the same ver of editor as our current Live distro.

[Wolf Bonne]

There are a few missing parts, those dang furry shoulder pieces aren't there, and I'm fairly certain they did get around to re-adding those after becoming more lenient on visual clipping issues.

 

Adding new stuff will likely be client side only for a good while, until communities establish more long term solutions with cleaned up code, I'm sure we'll start seeing stuff be added. People have been switching out textures in this game pretty much since day one, I use to mess around modifying costumes/textures, but eventually they made it more complicated to do, if I recall. Someone once came out with a little tool that made it easy to replace all the billboards with your own images.

[Jaguaratron]

All the parts are available, even unlockables. In fact, there are more in I25 than there ever were in Live.

 

The odds of adding anything new to this game are slim to none until a working version of the original I24 can get up and running.

 

Nonsense, adding assets is childs play, all they have to do is public the necessary file formats and the community can churn out assets.

[NinjaWeazel]

Nonsense, adding assets is childs play, all they have to do is public the necessary file formats and the community can churn out assets.

 

[GrapeKat]

There are a few missing parts, those dang furry shoulder pieces aren't there, and I'm fairly certain they did get around to re-adding those after becoming more lenient on visual clipping issues.

 

Do you mean the fur mantle? That was never made available to players. It was in CoV beta, removed, and never re-added. Same for the old bandage face-wrap costume part that is only used on NPCs. That, however, has a spiritual successor with the new Mummified set (which was planned to be Halloween content before the game got cancelled).

 

Nothing is missing from the costume creator. We even have NPC-only parts (Warp backpack, Freedom Corps pieces, Legacy Chain helmets, the new Circle of Thorns set, Banished Pantheon auras, etc.), everything being worked on for I24 and beyond (The Mummified set, Floating Head, Bodysuit sets, Tech Knight set, Post Apoc set, etc.), and previously unlockable-only parts (Ruluarru and Rikti weapons, all capes and auras, the Ascension set, everything that was once DLC).

 

If you have screenshots, please provide them and I can help you identify which costume parts you may be thinking of.

 

EDIT: I just checked Icon. It actually has fewer things than I25.

[Wolf Bonne]

There are a few missing parts, those dang furry shoulder pieces aren't there, and I'm fairly certain they did get around to re-adding those after becoming more lenient on visual clipping issues.

 

Do you mean the fur mantle? That was never made available to players. It was in CoV beta, removed, and never re-added. Same for the old bandage face-wrap costume part that is only used on NPCs. That, however, has a spiritual successor with the new Mummified set (which was planned to be Halloween content before the game got cancelled).

 

My bad, dunno why I feel like I have a vague memory having them. I'm guessing they were straight up removed from the game entirely if they aren't there in I25, which is a small shame. Appreciate the clarification, I had heard a couple people feel like there were a couple pieces missing on Reddit, so I assumed it was true.

[Poison]

Nonsense, adding assets is childs play, all they have to do is public the necessary file formats and the community can churn out assets.

Yeeeeah, that's not how it works.

[Piledriver]

Nonsense, adding assets is childs play, all they have to do is public the necessary file formats and the community can churn out assets.

Yeeeeah, that's not how it works.

 

To clarify: the file formats are not defined in the source code for either client or server. All that's there are routines to read them.

 

It's not something that nobody ever looked at in fifteen years, of course. All the way back in 2004 people were able to figure out that CoH's *.pigg files are just *.zip archives and *.texture is mostly just a straight *.dxt with additional header data. We even know that the *.geo format used for models is a variant of VRML98 (which is itself very obsolete). A lot of other files are just text, some of which make all the references to objects and textures to add them into the engine and its UI (the character creator menus, fi). However, these were mostly machine-generated, making them a morass of disordered entries rather than neatly-organized lists. This gets to be more complicated when you realize that putting all the elements of a component together may rely on entries from several different text files, and information in the file headers (which, again, haven't been entirely figured out)!

 

Child's play it ain't. However, from what is known, and what could be reversed from the engine code's reading instructions, this could all be figured out and new tools made. Finding programmers capable of this, and willing to do so....?

 

 

 

Perhaps it's something we can throw money at? We could create a fund and see what it's worth to the community. Even if we raised funds to pay someone, though, we can't know if they're capable until they prove it. It would need to be set up as a bounty. Basically, X amount of money is in an account waiting to pay out to whomever can provide a tool capable of A, B, and C.

 

 

 

 

Do you mean the fur mantle? That was never made available to players. It was in CoV beta, removed, and never re-added. Same for the old bandage face-wrap costume part that is only used on NPCs. That, however, has a spiritual successor with the new Mummified set (which was planned to be Halloween content before the game got cancelled).

 

That Icon NPC mode seems to be using an established developer flag associated with a bunch of parts, so it's still well incomplete. Lots of other old files are still in the piggs but not referenced there -- the mantle and Unknown Soldier face I think are still in there -- but never referenced by the game. People have pulled them out using costume hacks for Paragon Chat, though. Someone made a collection of *.costume files showing a bunch of the available NPC parts that are not in Icon and posted it on the Titan forum; I don't have the link to that handy at the moment but will look for it and come back to edit this post later. Meantime, you can go over there and poke around if interested. I think this was it.

 

Some of these other new costume elements are unique to i25/SCORE and reside in the piggs in its special subdirectory. Among other things...

 

[GrapeKat]

There are a few missing parts, those dang furry shoulder pieces aren't there, and I'm fairly certain they did get around to re-adding those after becoming more lenient on visual clipping issues.

 

Do you mean the fur mantle? That was never made available to players. It was in CoV beta, removed, and never re-added. Same for the old bandage face-wrap costume part that is only used on NPCs. That, however, has a spiritual successor with the new Mummified set (which was planned to be Halloween content before the game got cancelled).

 

My bad, dunno why I feel like I have a vague memory having them. I'm guessing they were straight up removed from the game entirely if they aren't there in I25, which is a small shame. Appreciate the clarification, I had heard a couple people feel like there were a couple pieces missing on Reddit, so I assumed it was true.

 

It's fine! Sorry if I came off as too blunt. The costume creator is, like, the major reason I play this game so I know it too well. Also that fur mantle looked really cool and a lot of people were sad it never made it in.

[Poison]

This gets to be more complicated when you realize that putting all the elements of a component together may rely on entries from several different text files, and information in the file headers (which, again, haven't been entirely figured out)!

 

Child's play it ain't. However, from what is known, and what could be reversed from the engine code's reading instructions, this could all be figured out and new tools made. Finding programmers capable of this, and willing to do so....?

You're spot on, and this part I quoted is exactly what I was talking about. We're still missing the dev tools that were used to create the 3D elements and manage all the art assets. I have been creating texture replacements for CoH for years and know my way around that. But I also know that even if I created, say, one new pair of Tights, it currently takes a ridiculous amount of work to get that item to show up in the CC because someone has to access those costume text files manually and enter that new item into every category.

 

I'm basically just waiting for all coders to work out the kinks of the game and servers, so we can start working on the fun bits.

I can't speak for the upper echelons, but I assume the "no money exchange" rule goes for this as well.

[Piledriver]

As far as I know, there's nothing illegal about hiring a programmer or putting a bounty out for a piece of desired software, no matter what the desired software does. I mean, even if it's something nefarious like the Stuxnet virus, the only illegalities involved would be in development and deployment, and we're not talking about anything like that. At the very very most there's an implication that the developer would need to look at the leaked CoX source code, but even that isn't necessarily so, given the amount of work already done by reverse engineers on the Titan forums.

 

I'd have personally employed someone to make convertors or plugins for the formats myself if ol' Piledriver Pete wasn't just a barefoot hillbilly. If someone out there has money available for CoX-related projects but doesn't want to get mixed up in any of the illegal things with it, this would be a good option.

[Obduran]

I beg to differ as I took screen shots of characters from both live and Test/Beta servers from the OG before Sunset and a handful of (I'll have to go figure out which) things are missing (or I simply haven't been able to find). Also, the Icon app feels like it's not quite the same ver of editor as our current Live distro.

 

You may well have had item unlocks on your live character for content you have not yet completed. As I understand it all vip/booster pack/none gameplay unlocks are available from the get go. But costume bits and bobs that unlock from gameplay still have to be unlocked that way.