Decorum

You can pull out any of the standard enemies and put them in their own custom group. Then it will spawn only those if you use it for "surrounding enemies". I'm not sure if this affects the "custom cap" but I don't believe it does (don't quote me on that, though).

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I think what the OP is doing is providing feedback and asking a question. That IS what this forum is for, isn't it? They aren't asking for everything opened up, just the healing badge which is EASILY the hardest badge to get.

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So that means I can't throw in my two cents?

My point stands. She's not asking for anything but the one. But if they do that, others will want the "one" that they're concerned with excepted, too, and that just snowballs. Pretty tough for the devs to justify to populace "OK, that ONE, but none of the others".

I think it's pretty obvious he's talking to the OP.

Doesn't $target give the name of the target YOU'RE looking at? I believe it's $name.

To change text color (if possible) highlight the text you want to change with the mouse, and then right click the mouse to pull up a menu with various commands. If the menu doesn't appear, you can't format that text (dialogue, etc).

I don't think it was ever intended to discourage farming. They simply put things in to keep it from being "farmer's paradise", but that was a sidebar issue, not the point.

Quit and restart. It's working on the same pattern TFs and Ouroborous missions are.

Heh, you know I'm restraining myself to not use that as a horribly misogynistic straight line, don't you?

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Oky editing text file, how do you do this?

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I don't know if there's a guide, but I'll try and give you a quick and dirty run through.

First you put in the event you want to copy from (gotta start with something to copy). I think you said you wanted hostages. So make a hostage event, create or load the character, do the dialogue and the emotes, etc. etc.

Once you've got the first one, save it and open up Notepad (or Word, or some other text editor. I like Notepad because there's zero chance of it formatting something weird...the text I see is all there is). Have it open your mission arc. This should be located in the folder C:\Program Files\City of Heroes\Missions . A lot of it seems fairly intuitive to me, but it depends on how much familiarity you have with this kind of thing.

Glance through it looking for "Detail" (that's what the events are called). You should be able to recognize if it's the one you want. They kind of look like this:

<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre> Detail
{
Name Joy-Buzzer
DetailType Rescue
EntityGroup Joy-Buzzer
EntityType Custom
EnemyGroupType Custom
VillainGroup "Cutting Crew"
Placement Back
Quantity 1
Difficulty Hard
InactiveSpeech "Stoopid girl!"
ActiveSpeech "Get 'em!"
CompassDescription a
CompassDescriptionSingular "Free the sidekick"
Trigger Bingo
PersonInactiveSpeech "Oh, you guys are gonna be in so much TROUBLE!"
PersonRescuedSpeech "Don't you worry, Mistah C! I'm comin' ta save ya!"
PersonRescuedAnimation BigWave
CustomCritterIdx 9
CustomVillainGroupIdx 1
}
</pre><hr />

Don't worry so much what that means, as much as recognizing that that's the event you want to copy. Copy it, then paste it in as many times as you want it right after the first one. Save the file (use the same filename) and go back to the MA screen and open it again. You should have that event duplicated however many times you did it, and then you can do whatever tweaking you want!

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Im also have trouble with some mob/item placements. I heard that you can set this in the text file too. is this true?

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No real idea, but in this case, you're kind of shafted. The outdoor maps just don't recognize "front, middle, back". It's going to be random placement, no matter what you do. At least that's how it was last time I heard. I don't know if it's just that way with outdoor maps or they're bugged, but it ain't workin' as far as I know.

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BTW this MA creator is soo much fun!!.. already much have 10 hours on my arc and first 2 missions arent even close to done yet. Still making sure dialoge and clues flow right, and yikes fixing typo's and tweaking the spawns and such. Im havnig a blast though..

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Preach it, brother! I'm feeling the same way.


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One last thing, where are the Hero NPCs stored? people like fusionette, the mystic in the early hellion arc, the gypsy you save to get the badge magic 10-14 (cant remember the badge name for the life of me)

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Spelunker.

All standard NPCs are under the "Standard" tab (as opposed to "Custom"). Some just aren't there and some you don't get until you buy them with tickets (which you get for playing other people's missions). I'm pretty sure Fusionette is in there somewhere, and I'm not sure about the Fortune Teller that spends most of her days being kidnapped over and over.

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Ohh oky another one.. What about saving someone to escort, but you have to bring them someplace to interact with an item. Like save the doctor, Bring him to the lab storage box, or save the hacker, find the computer.. soo far on escorts or ally i only see basically follow, stay or lead to exit.

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Can't be done at present. On a lot of people's wishlists for the next upgrade (mine included).

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I rec'd a lot of compliments on the advertising concept...

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And now you're getting one more. Very clever, and good job on the "having good manners" part. **/e clap**

Correct, you can't do it...yet (hopefully we can twist a few devs arms...). And that work around you have already is about as good as it gets at the moment.

Only the one?

D'oh! The auto-sk/exemp. Forgot all about that. Sorry, been spending too much time creating and not much actually playing (well, that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it, anyway).

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OKy.. well seeing you get where im going with this ill get specific..

I want to make a group of 8 hellions that are being held by CoT. All captives i want to use a different escape dialog. I know i can just create 8 seperate guys, go through and hit all the options and make them the same, and then just add different escape dialoge. very dooable, but a total pain in the rear to set all that stuff 8 times. What i wanna do is make 8 copies of the "Hostage" then go back and tweak the one line i wanna change. In other builders i would just hit clone, or copy paste the dude, rename him and save it. Like Hostage1, copy paste, swap the dialoge, rename hostage 2. Basically skipping all that other time setting everything back up like the first.

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Not do-able in game. Very do-able in the text file stored on your computer.

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The other thing im trying to do is make some CoT and hellion bosses that look EXACTLY like the normal dudes, but have different powersets and names. One i wanna do is an Illusionist Primary mage. a few others are Hellion and skull based custom bosses. I dont wanna go with different looks, and i dont wanna deviate far from the normal guys, just tweak them a bit to add to the story.

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You can't alter the existing mobs in any way shape or form. The only thing you could do is try to make custom characters as close as you can (difficult, sometimes, as many of the existing mobs use costume parts we simply don't have access to). If you don't mind them being customs and possibly not matching exactly, then yes, you can do that.

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Is there anyway to get this into one long dailoge clue?

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No, not that I'm aware of.

Are we getting any closer?

Wait, looking back, do you want to use the same character, or have everything you've written be there, too? In the case of the latter, you can go into the mission file on your computer and cut and paste in a text editor. Then go to the interface and make your tweaks.

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Soo if your making a custom critter, its better.. aka less space if you take an existing critter, like say a madness mage, then custom his powers vrs his outfit?

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Other than simply trying to make a custom duplicate, you can't do that. You can't change any of the existing characters. They take up less space because they are already..."hard-coded" (not what it's called, but you get what I mean?) into the game.


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Im not sure i was clear on the other Q though. Basically, I have a bunch of kidnapped people i want to make. Basically all the same except for minor changes in either animation, or dialog. It would be much easier to just copy the same main file, then just switch the minor detail.

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Since animations and dialogue are handled separately, you can already do that.

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Like say muliple bosses, but one says You wont take down my bother, the other says,, ahh you got my brother but you wont get me!

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Entirely doable already.

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thats not exactly what i wanna do but you get the idea.

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I think so, but you'd have to confirm that I do.

I'm wildly guessing, but I think the dev response would be "There are other places to do that already. Go do them there."

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To me it is more important that I can bring a lvl 1, 10, 35, 18, 22, 44, 50, and 40 into a mish and have fun together without the need for a lacky.

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Not that I give a fart in a whirlwind one way or the other about farming, but how exactly do you do THAT?

What? You don't speak "Gibberish"?

D'oh! No wonder they weren't working for me. I'm an idiot and was leaving off the key "$". **blushes furiously**

Not greedy. Just in the vein of "make an exception for my concern" when that's exactly what they didn't want to do. If they open the door for one, that will just lead to everyone else wanting it. Better to just leave it as is.

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Faultline oh that lovely forgotten zone... Its such a fun zone that I do the story arcs there on every character. Never could figure out why so many people on my server don't even know it exists lol.

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I don't either. It's got some great arcs, especially made for that pre-20 crowd. I know it's a bit more laggy for some with that weird lighting change (I tried to do the MA, there, and then realized the characters in the costume creator became blank grey for me when it got to be "night"), but it's very worth it. Best "make-over" in the game so far (I think I went to the old Faultline once and thought "meh").

Oh, agreed. Although the hammer and horned helmet usually spells it out pretty well.

Yes, but only as long as it doesn't make you fail the mission. It would have to be altered so that the lack of defeat doesn't cause a failure on your part. Presently, having it happen at 0% would merely need a change in choice of animation.

It wasn't long-winded, redundant or all that angry, to my eyes. If this were anyplace else, most people wouldn't consider that a "rant" at all.

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I give it three more days before the Devs put a complete moratorium on open Publishing rights, possibly coupled with a complete wipe of all mission currently published. With the devs then having to pre-approve what gets published. Otherwise, the MA system will be populated solely by farmers as farm mission become the only thing people can readily find.

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I'm pretty sure that would be an extreme overreaction, myself.