houtex

Totally eat. I might have issues later, but man it will be tasty.

Spaghetti, then add can o' Wolf Chili no beans, little bit of water to thin it, and then melt in 3 slices (broken up) of Kraft American Cheese in it. Eat or pass?

THE MOST irritating thing about this is that the 'new posts' function becomes unusable with this bug.

FIX IT GUYS. PLEASE? *looks up at the forum mods with sad puppy dog eyes*

If his last few acts are any indication, you MUST go with Willpower. No question.

The others, SS or Mace, but I'd be inclined with SS.

/dude, having having had your skin/flesh/guts ripped out/off by your own hands trying to rid yourself of a robe what burned you due to it's being tained with Hydra blood? And then wander about AND WAIT IN AGONY while someone else builds you a pyre, then wait some more to find someone to light it, and then walk upon it and plonk yourself down on it? Hardcore Willpower, definitely.

As a guy, even if I'm playing the females, I'm not terribly happy clicking the pants area of the cops. Seems... unseemly.

I agree, this should be fixed... and while we're at it, make all the trains like they were in King's Row, before they 'fixed' it. The train stayed in the station, and it was always clickable, and it just took you, no waitin' for the train.

And the thing in my signature, while I'm at it.

/What the heck: Big Red Ball and Moon Zone too.
//Shoot for the moon, as they say...

I find this idea of... respecing... amusing.

I've never, ever, respeced. Ever. I make a character, and it's the way I want it. Every time. And not due to Mids. Due to my looking at the powers that the character can grow into, making a list, and then modifying it as I see gaps in the armor, so to speak, but NEVER going back and saying "oh, that power sucks" or "Oh, I wish I'd done THIS with the character..."

Guess that's just me, though. I find that insta-specing isn't something I would ever use... I horde the respecs simply because I never use them.

Why yes.. yes I suppose I *am* bragging or such. Anyways...

---

My thought is that insta-respecs aren't a good idea. But, if you were to, oh, I dunno, have to work for them via a solo trial, sort of like unlocking the stores in Founders, Bricks, and Perigrine, and how you can do a Terra Volta, then maybe they could set up a mission set you could get one a week, and if that's your bag, have at it.

Oh, I got it. Do Tip Missions and get to respec instead of change alignment. There. That's it, I fixed it.

I just have to say that I love the creepy upright hover stance. It's just so... well, creepy.

Well, I think I was right with the CGI thing, if this trailer is a real one, and the 'wing shown from 1:41 on is any indication.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1Q0TsGPFWU

It sure looks like it's a real trailer and not a fanboi/fangurl creation, what with the action and dialog and such.

So, assuming it's real, then at 1:40, you can get ready to hit the pause. If you catch the 'wing in it's first two or three frames, and then compare the cockpit section to what you see there...

Definitely CGI is gonna be happening, without question. But now, it's more like the F-22 in function, pending further footage of it 'operating.'

/oh, and I like the trailer. I hope the movie is terribly awesome, at least halfway between 1 and 2, if not more than halfway.

I ponder if a previous intel driver would not be stable?

Also, which operating system?

assuming XP Home, there's two drivers, the 14.42.11 and the 14.42.7. I wonder if there are more out there, but that's all I can find. It has been known in some cases that the newest isn't always the best, for Co*, for some reason.

Wow... just... wow. That's the combo nobody woulda thought of, eh?

Nice. That... just might be worth... something... I dunno what, though. *whistles innocently.*

"Ninja, not many people are...comfortable saying that word."
"What word?"
"'Swell'"
"Oh, really? I always thought it was kind of natural."

/came to my mind, thought I'd post it.

And people wonder why I never, ever, left.

This review by you, Rapthorne, is pretty much summing up why I still think Co* is the best game evar. And the cool thing is, it just keeps improving, IMO.

/Call me Rick Astley, Paragon.
//Never gonna give you up.

Don't think it's supposed to be. Think more V22 Osprey or AV8B Harrier, instead of pure jet.

Yeah, I totally hate doing that. I want it set JUST SO, like my dark red mind powers for the Sisters, and my mouselook toggle key being the middle mouse button. I don't wanna have to bind the emote, or type it, I just want it auto-done when I go flyin'.

You can, after all, have two 'emotes' for firing off Mesmerise, after all, why not a flypose?

Wait, so I get to fire off hail of bullets? And you, personally, change into a faceless purple toon.

I haz a superpowah!!! Nifty.

---

No, seriously, I know what you're sayin'. Sounds like a video card is overtaxed a little, on the face of it. Oh, wait, didn't mean to do that, ignore the unintended pun there, k?

Maybe blow the dust out of the video card and see what happens. Could be overheating. Another problem could be a slightly outdated driver, bad installation of the game, a few odds and ends lurking in the OS/running in the background, and finally, either the video card memory and/or GPU could be getting flaky, or the main memory might be an issue, with a nod to possible hard drive corruption.

Uh... yeah. Among a few others that I'll not bother with, these are good for now. Anyone else have an idea?

Oh, and you might wanna post a link to this in the technical forum, this isn't a bug, methinks, but a problem with your machine.

RE: The webpage for the link.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/br229516

I think they didn't put it on MSDNAA because they want literally anyone and everyone to try it out, but they sorta make you fall into using the Windows Live! thing to track stuff... you can't NOT select 'send us info', for example, in the setup.

Anyway, get it, enjoy.

/edit: Man, I got to work, where we got Fiber, and it is sill fun to watch a 3GB download happen in 6 minutes.

[Edit: Sorry. It's long. But I wanted to be as complete as possible for yas who wants to knows. ]

Well, ok, not the official Windows 8, but the Windows Developer Preview. Still. I figured I could snag it, and try it out, so I did. I need to kinda know, being the job I have as an IT guy...

So... I downloaded the 64 bit ISO, burned it to a DVD. Yay and stuff.

I had a spare drive, so I turned off my computer, stuck that spare in as the primary drive, and installed Windows "8".

Pleasant enough experience. Works. Fast install. Goofy install look, but, hey, that's ok.

Got all done, the creepy thing was it wanted my Windows Live ID, and I have one, so I gave it the info... and of course, it knew my real name. Bastid interconnected web we have. But hey, whatevs....

It's on. It's working. It...

... looks like a smartphone? o.0

Uh, ok... poke about... ah. Desktop. Yay. That's better... wait, it took me back to the phone thing... go back... aw... oh. Ok.... ok... ah. Now I get it.

It's weird, at first, but you kinda 'grok' it pretty quick. I actually kind of like the phone idea, but haven't had enough time with it.

After figuring out that the desktop isn't what it wants to do primarily, but you can get there, first thing to be annoyed with: The start orb. First, it's not an orb any more, it's just a flag. Fine. But it mostly keeps bringing me back to the phone.

At least I figured out a few things, so I can get to control panel, and the Explorer, and the C: drive and such like that. Good, good... getting around is a little odd, and some of us older cronies may get exasperated, but if the phone thing can be made to plonk tiles of whatever I want on it, then that may be ok...

But I gotta say this: I have read, and now feel I know what they mean: This is NOT a 'professional' OS with that interface. It is *definitely* meant for Average Joe consumer who likes his Windows Mobile 7 phone, or an iPad or such. That Win8 keeps 'defaulting' back to the Phone screen is... odd. And the control I have with that alone... I can't let people have that.

It's early yet. I have a few things to try on that issue. If I can make it 'businesslike'...

Oh, yeah, one *really really* weird thing: The Phone IE9 (I guess it's IE9?) is *completely different* than the Desktop IE9. As in, logging in and doing things in one, DOES NOT correlate to the other. If you log into this forum here, the other DOES NOT KNOW you did that. Favs aren't sent across. Nothing is, near as I can tell. It's as if you have Deskop IE9, and some other browser like Opera or such on the Phone, and neither the twain shall agreen on a dang thing unless you feed them consecutively the same info.

That alone is a 'business' deal breaker, you cannot have that, IMO, and call it ready for 'business'. I'm sure I'll learn more about that, but I found that completely, totally unacceptable.

---

Well, anyway, enough about the interface, the thing I wanted to know... does it play Co*?

Short answer (after all that? yeesh...) is YES. It does! From scratch. But it isn't *poof*, done, you have to do two big things first.

As I have an nVidia GeForce 9600GT, I had to install the latest Win7 64 bit drivers for that. Co* told me so when it first tried to run, as Microsoft ships a gimped driver for this card "out of the box". So do that first. It's an easy install. I'm assuming that other video cards will likely have this same issue.

But even before the video card driver, I had attempted to go to this website and get the client to install:
http://na.cityofheroes.com/en/my_acc..._of_heroes.php
Specifically, the PC client.

Now, I have to say, this is Co* Installer, but I figured that it was the 'right' thing to do, so I tried to run it.

Could NOT install the game with it. It kept saying the server was unavailable and such. Hm.

So I figure that the problem is that THAT site is WRONG. Seeing how we've 'moved on' to the NCsoft Launcher, and ferreted my way about and found this location for it:
http://us.ncsoft.com/en/launcher/ncsoft-launcher.html

Downloaded that. Ran it. It updated itself. Told it I wanna play Co*. It downloaded a mere 680MBish set of files, and started right up.

Which is stupid.

Why? Because the game starts up, but you *can't do anything*, except play around with the character creator. It's in a 'staged download' setting. The entire game didn't download (which I knew due to the <3GB download) and for it start up but prevent use until "Stage 3" or "Stage 4" completes downloading... Why did that happen?

Further, damn the music is loud, and it's in full screen... Oh, yeah, I can't deal with any of that until I get in a zone, but I CAN'T GET IN A ZONE... Gaah....

So... fine. That's dumb, but I can deal with that.

The other stupid is implied by my ignorance, perhaps I need to try it on an XP or Win7 or such... I'm wondering if they will let the CoH Launcher in the first link run to completion, or is the web page making people irritated by not having the correct launcher link in there? I don't actually know myself... not the point, but hey, an answer to that would be good I think.

---

So I tell the NCSoft Launcher to update the Co* files. Which implies a forced download, which is sketchy I've heard. No matter, my system/internet is up to the task. I leave it for a while and visit my brother.

Come back, and it's done. Verify the new files and such... and voila! In there!

Played about, made a character, got in the zone, dealt with my interface issues... I wonder when they made it possible to make Windowed mode work perfectly without exiting the game. I am very pleased with that new feature.

Once I get the interface done, I do a little playing with the new character (which will get re-rolled, I made him a scrapper and he was s'posed to be a brute... meh.) I am happy to report that, apparently, when Win8 comes out, Co* can be made to run on it rather easily.

In case anyone was wondering. I know I was.

---

Ok, one last thing: Windows 8 seems to be *FAST*. I mean stupid fast. Perhaps it's the empty drive, and definitely partly the clean install, but just like Windows 7 vs WinXP vs Win2000 on the same machine, just swap the hard drives (which are identical) and Win7 whups the other two... Win8 on my machine seem to be in that category on Win7.

Although I admit, I'm stuck(*) with Windows Vista Ultimate on this machine (I'm going back and forth with Win8) and we all know Vista sucks.

And I'm running Win8 64 instead of Win8 32, so there may be something there as well. Too many variables, so maybe you guys/gals just don't put much stock into my speed impression just yet. The real test will be the 32 bit Win8 on a work machine I have later in the week.

/(*) - just can't drag myself to spend money on Win7 for this one. I'm a cheap bastidge, yessir.
//My next one will get it... unless Win8 shows up, then it'll likely be that, if this testing goes well.
///Can't get into my NFL.com fantasy on Win8 IE9... it just refuses to log on... Odd.