je_saist

soo... what's stopping you from scheduling a Mothership raid in advance to make sure you have enough people to run one?

As you can see in the pictures above, I've got an A64 x2 6000+. It's the backing processor on my Triple SLI system. You might also notice from that system that it only has two gigs of memory. This is mostly because Microsoft's non-commercial Windows OS systems do not come with PAE enabled or implemented, and the fastest memory setup on Windows 32bit is Dual Channel 2gigs.

So, no, adding more Ram to the system you bought won't do any good unless you swap to a 64bit base OS.


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Now, to answer your question on upgrading your graphics card. As I've posted on other parts of this forum (and I'm too lazy to go find it), my opinion of Nvidia's 64bit drivers is somewhere along the lines of my opinion on XGI's Volari Drivers, and the ATi drivers pre-ArtX. *this opinion has been censored by the Vulgarity review board*

Short version is, I've tested across Geforce 6600 GT, 7900 GT KO (Factory Overclock), 9500 GT (+ 2x SLI), and GTS 250 (+ 2x SLI and 3x SLI), across NT6 versions Vista SP1, Vista SP2, Win7, and Linux kernels 2.6.25, 2.6.27, and 2.6.32. In all cases in native games running against OpenGL and DirectX on both platforms, the Nvidia drivers have consistently given texture corruptions, missing polygons, and other broken texture features. The problems have actually been in effect, well, for years.

On the more recent NT6 builds, Nvidia's 64bit drivers have consistently given me lock-ups on titles such as Half-Life 2, Ghostbusters, and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.

These problems, so far, haven't manifested in Nvidia's 32bit builds. Which is why I personally leave my Nvidia systems running on 32bit OS's for production and review purposes.

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This doesn't mean that upgrading your graphics card won't help, or be an improvement. If you stick to a 32bit base Operating System, Nvidia can deliver a stable and pleasurable experience. You'll just be stuck with the 2gb RAM limit of a 32bit OS.

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PowerSupply: Upgrading your power supply may, or may not help depending on what you are trying to do. If you are grabbing a hefty card like a GTX 260 or better from Nvidia, or a RadeonHD 4850 or better from ATi, yes, I'd look at a better power supply.

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edit: oh yeah. another Nvidia moment. Got told that I was using Outdated drivers in a crash... on the 32bit 195.62 drivers. Yeah. I don't think so.

if you're looking for an opinion, the Killer NIC is... pointless.

CoH can be played on a 56k modem, so if you've got lag, it's generally due to one of two reasons.

A: Slow connection between the network connection you are on, and the connection that the CoH server is on. This is the typical rubber-banding lag.

B: Server Processing Lag. This is the lag you get in Hamidon Raids, Ship Raids, or in the ITF's 3rd mission, where the server just can't process and return all of the data to all of the teammates in time.

One of the other problems is that your own personal network controller is already several times faster than an average cable or DSL connection.

Case in point can be found here : http://test.lvcm.com/

Cox Communications 4Mbps download speed is far short of 10baseT Ethernet's 10Mbps. Up from 10BaseT you have 100baseTX, then Gigabit, which is a 1000megabit speed. So, in all practical points, your Ethernet card is already several orders of magnitude faster than the average residential cable connection, and still faster than if you were leasing a T3 connection.

Stuff like the killer NIC then, doesn't really do a whole lot of good...

Hate to dash your hopes, but recipe storage isn't going to happen. I believe Castle already put the kibosh on that happening in order to make sure the auction-house economy continues to move.

There's a design reason why you can only store so much of the in-game items. At some point you are going to need to sell the item off or delete it. Increasing storage would simply cause yet another strangulation of supply in the Auction House and send influence prices skyrocketing.

Yes and No. The tech specs for the Imac does say this:

So on paper, yes, if you bought one of the 27" Imacs, it seems like you could use it as a monitor for another computer.

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edit: and on an incidental tangent, both 27" Imac's have the option of a RadeonHD 4850. It's a $150 add on for the lower $1700 unit.

This comes up about as often as the Mac Tablet rumor.

*Warning: Next content has absolutely nothing to do with the ongoing thread*

The basis for the rumor is that Apple wants a low power processor... that isn't an Atom. Now, as I understand it, Apple doesn't really... like... the Atom because it's actually a really weak processor in terms of instructions per clock cycle per watt. Now, my mom has one of the Atom netbooks with a 1.6ghz processor and a full gig of ram. I borrowed it to see how it compared to my laptops. My HPN5470 laptop from 2001 with a 1ghz Athlon4 (which for reference was the AthlonXp architecture) actually boots Windows Xp faster, and in the time I had to work with the Atom processor system, kept pace or turned in quicker benchmarks. So, Atom's weak. That's... not really a surprise. It's not meant to be a powerhouse processor. It's just supposed to last forever on a battery.

Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on your point of view, Intel's not exactly ready to push the I7 architecture down into the Atom's power zone. Yes, they can push the original Core 2 Duo Architecture, Banias, down there, since that's what Banias was built for... but that ceases to be a high-margin product.

That really leaves Apple with only one of two solutions for it's lower-end and energy efficient computers. ARM or AMD.

Now, from a practical point of view, Apple could indeed go with ARM since Apple has switched processor architectures before. The Darwin BSD that sits at the center of OSX has been supported on the ARM architecture for years. Theoretically Apple would just need to recompile, and poof, new solution. The Cortex A8 and A9 ARM processors also keep Intel's Atom team awake at nights with their, on paper, Instructions per clock cycle per watt performance advantage.

From a different practical point of view, Apple could go with AMD's Neo and Fusion platforms. Reason why is less work on Apple's part. No re-compiling, no worrying about binary compatibility. Just drop in and go.

The tertiary factor is that Apple is reported to be Intel's biggest customer, and Intel has bent over backwards for Apple in the past to secure contracts. Apple using any other processor vendor than Intel would be a huge smack in the face to the company. So, it is possible that Intel will continue to provide Core 2 Duo derived processors that can fit into the low-energy bracket, just to keep Apple happy.

*thread normality starts here*

The market has... consolidated a bit. The US market is largely split among large companies on Desktops, with Dell containing Alienware; HP containing Compaq and VoodooPC; Acer containing Gateway and Emachines; Lenovo which was IBM's old PC division; and Sony who doesn't actually make a proper desktop computer these days.

If I was spending money on a brand-name system for gaming, I'd shell out the extra cash for a VoodooPC or a Falcon Northwest. Both have excellent customer service, and use good quality components.

You're probably expecting to see me shout something to the effect of Get-A-Mac. The answer is a bit more complicated than that.

For starters, Apple computers tend to be a bit pricier than identically specced systems from Dell loaded with a Windows or Ubuntu.

However, that pricing is offset by a higher build quality and component quality. Most Apple computers are over-engineered to remove heat or withstand mobile use. Apple's customer service is also rated as one of the industry's best, so paying out that little bit extra money might pay itself back over time.

In addition, you can do a hardware install of a Windows OS by using Boot camp... so if you desperately need backwards / crosswords compatibility, you aren't totally left helpless. You also have the options of virtualization with both VirtualBox and VMWare offering OSX solutions.

The reverse... isn't actually true. You can't generally run OSX on a computer you built yourself, not without using something like an EFI loader and hacks the mods probably don't want to be talked about on this forum. In addition, the hardware / software needed to run a Hackintosh may actually make running OSX on a homebuilt system as expensive as having just bought a system directly from Apple .

In respect to City of Heroes, the question about Ultra Mode is a bit hard to answer. We know what the base hardware requirements are. RadeonHD 4850 or Geforce 9800 and up. We also know that the API in use is OpenGL, so the Ultra Mode graphics are not tied to Windows Specific commands... so they will work. Thus you can pretty much forget the MacBook and Macbook Air. You can also skip the MacBook Pro 13" and the MacBook Pro 15" 2.53GHz. You can also skip the base model Imac and the Mac Mini.

So, if you were buying a Mac, you choices for Going Rogue are limited, starting with the 2.66ghz MacBook Pro @ $2000, the 2.8ghz MacBook Pro @ $2,300, the $2500 17inch MacBook Pro, the 21" $1500 Imac, and the $1700 27" Dual Core. All of these models have a fatal flaw though. They all have Geforce 9600 GPU's, or RadeonHD 4670 GPU's. Yes, you'd be able to run Going Rogue's Ultra Mode, but I somewhat seriously doubt you'd be able to run the game on the native resolutions of their displays.

Thus, you are left with only 3 systems that have a chance of running Going Rogue on the native display. The $2000 Quad-Core Imac that does come with a RadeonHD 4850, and the Mac Pro's with the $200 RadeonHD 4870 upgrade... where the starting price is $2500... and they don't come with displays.

This... is the sticking point. $2000 on a Windows/Linux base would get you something with Crossfire or SLI, a quad-core processor with AMD Socket AM3 or Intel Socket I5 or I7, tons of ram, and plenty of hard-drive space. You wouldn't be using an "aging" Core2 Duo processor.

From a long term ownership position, sure, the Imac probably is worth that $2000 asking tag. However, we still don't have a launch date for Going Rogue, and there is the chance that Apple could do a product update with the RadeonHD 5x00 series early next year, as well as move to the I5 and I7 processors, or if some rumors are to be believed, smack Intel around (again) by introducing an AMD platform. We don't know.

Unless you desperately need a new computer between now and then, I'd save your cash and wait for the expansion to actually launch before going out and spending money.

(*cough* that's me on both forums... not two different people)

And yes, FSAA not working with DoF is part of the same problem.

Ai. I read that as Integrated Graphics from Intel... which are *censored*

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to the best of my knowledge the only non-Intel integrated graphics available for the P4 Socket 478, at the time the P4 was selling, topped on the Radeon 9100 IGP. I had one of those actually. And it was basically a cut Radeon 8500 bolted onto an ATi memory controller. Nvidia eventually made an integrated system for the Core 2, and I'm pretty sure some of the Nvidia boards would support a Pentium4 on Socket 775.

Yo Jorden.

Sounds like you got a Radeon Card.

Yes and no on it's supposed to happen.

These were bugs way back from when the game was first made. They have been fixed in the upcoming Going Rogue engine revision, but we do not know when the fixes will go to the Live Server.

and it doesn't work on Master Runs.

I stand by my statements. It's not that fast. It doesn't jump that high. It's not a replacement for a real travel power. It's a toy.

*cough* : see this post. CoH was already largely working on the Cedega engine years before the Cider commercial release. This wasn't so much a port as it was using already existing WINE-based technology.

I didn't say they weren't in the game. I said they weren't enabled for that segment of water in the Cimeroran map and the pool in Grandville. Just to make sure I wasn't out of my gourd on this, I grabbed my stalker and went to check using the Grandville pool.



Yep. I can hop under the water, but I follow the contours of the rocks. There is no Z-Axis movement in the water.

Two things:

A: you aren't actually swimming. You have the same animation as if you were on top of the water, like a lake or a pool.

B: You have no control over the z-axis. You can't go up or down in this state. You can move over the geometry of the floor, but that's about it.

Players have been using both the Cimeroran Map, and the pool along Grandville's outside walls as proof that yes, underwater content could work. However, it misses the point that at some point the developers have at least tested the concept... and that the concept does not work. Quite simply, Back Alley Brawler knows what's he's talking about when it comes to animations, and he also has a handle over just how much work would be involved in such a project... and I have to agree.

My case in point is actually found in another game. Go pick up a copy of Kingdom Hearts 1, for the PS2. Go to the Little Mermaid world. Tell me that Sora, Donald, and Goofy don't look like complete nutters fighting underwater. The fighting was so bad, that when Square Enix did the second game, they just took it out. Yeah, you still went to Atlantica, and you still swam around, but on the second take, you no longer had to fight.

Now, Kingdom Hearts was a game that had loads of money, some of the best artists in the world, and they only had 1 playable avatar to animate, well, 3 if you count the AI controlled animations of Donald and Goofy. They just had to worry about one platform, and one graphics setting. They just had to worry about one resolution and one detail level. For just one player controlled character, and the next time around, they didn't even bother because the concept just didn't work out.

BaB's team would have to first off all worry about not just one flat skeletal structure for fighting animations. They'd also have to worry about 3 different skeletal structures, and the scaling of those skeletal structures. They'd have to worry about animating capes, trenchcoats, wedding bustles, and so on... for each of those skeletal structures and the scaling. They'd have to animate a wide range of attacks to account for being underwater, across buff, ranged, and melee sets. They'd have to work on the Z-targeting access and implement a non-fly animation for a flight fighting system.

The list goes on and on and on and on.

Now, when Square Enix did the first Kingdom Hearts they had a budget probably an order of magnitude larger than Paragon Studio's budget. They had far less to worry about when creating the scenarios. And it still didn't work..

That alone should be enough clues that fighting underwater... is probably a bad idea all round.

Now, if Aion does decide to implement an underwater fighting system, all the more power to them. I think at some point they're going to come to the same conclusion. It just isn't worth the development time or money.

You are not.

Then again, the original poster and Toony directly also seem to miss the point of booster packs.

Booster packs are how the developers leverage additional finances to... dun dun dun... actually fund the game development. Some of the specific issues listed by the original poster are actual engine issues. At some point somebody has to pay a developer to sit down in a chair and fix the underlying code.

As I see it, the developers came up with a cool idea. They put that idea into code as quickly as they could, and they got that idea into the hands of the players as quickly as they could. Promptly after that idea landed players started asking for improvements and enhancements outside the original developmental scope. Okay, fine, the run on rifles was broken, but from a thematic point of view, I don't think I ever saw anybody from DragonBall or Naruto carrying a rifle while they were in their super-powered run / fly state.

It seems to me that the original Poster, and perhaps Toony by extension, choose to focus on the things the booster pack didn't work with, rather than the list of costumes, weapons, and other items the booster pack did work with.

Now, there is a simple way to voice your displeasure with something the game does. Don't hand out any money. Speaking for myself I refuse to buy the Valkyrie pack. I'm a little torqued off that NCSoft / Paragon Studios handed access to the game's source code to Transgaming, then promptly dusted Cedega under a rug, even though Cedega is often credited as to why Transgaming got the contract to make a Mac Port. As the story goes when CoH issued an update that broke Cedega's Win2k compatibility, a significant number of players suddenly dropped to Windows 98 mode... a far higher amount than could possibly actually be using Win98 mode to play on a regular basis. This story is technically possible since the game does record some program and driver data, but NCSoft reps generally clam up when asked if it's actually true. The read-between the lines is that is true since most reps generally give a firm yes or no for such a question, rather than a we can't talk about that line.

Anyways, to get back to my point, I'm, personally, not going to buy the Valkyrie pack until NCSoft / Paragon Studios antes up and either admits the deal was to keep the Linux gamers happy, or they decide to put Runs on Cedega on the front page, or they do something else to make up for stepping on their fans toes.

The catch is, you do have to sort of do this before hand. So I'm not sure if the original poster can actually get a refund. I wouldn't... try a charge back. That tends to grate on NCSoft's accountants, and they might not be willing to... deal. I'd approach from the aspect of a refund first, although I'm doubtful if the Booster Packs come with a money back if your not satisfied disclaimer. I don't see a money back statement, nor a statement that are sales are final on the booster pack's order page or the Store Site itself.

I am, however, stepping around the, well, elephant in the thread. Going back to the point of Booster Pack's again. I have little doubt that the funds derived from the Natural booster pack paid for a developer to sit in a chair and fix the problems specifically with the Natural Pack. I also have little doubt that some of the fixes will propagate back into other costumes or parts of the game, and that the developers will have gained a bit more experience and be more capable to do other tasks on their own.

Given when goes on behind the scenes, in being able to pay for development, and being able to afford to train developers, I'm really hard-pressed to say that the Natural Pack didn't deliver $10 worth of future entertainment.

FSAA is disabled with Depth of Field Effects and Water Effects.

ShadowNate commented that these problems have been fixed on one of the development branches in post #14 of this thread : http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...3&postcount=14

When these changes will be pushed, nobody knows.

Last I checked TriDef and Iz3D were working on ATi cards.

And no, the GTX 285 is a single chip board. It's also bloody loud.

I missed that part. Thanks for confirming this.

Yes and no.

Yes, the bug has been fixed in the Ultra Mode graphics engine. The Going Rogue demo was ran atop the 4870 GPU architecture.

No, the bug has not yet been addressed in the current engine mode. There still are some visual oddities when splashing through water on Radeon Cards.

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and... Maybe: At one point during the Going Rogue video the Ultra Mode enhancements were turned off: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SItM3...eature=channel

In the same location that the video took place, the developer was splashing his blaster through some water. What I didn't catch was whether or not the water was still in shot when the Ultra Mode graphics were turned off.

Then there's also the slides that were shown. http://picasaweb.google.com/stephen....ogueSGallery02

One of the slides shows the difference between Ultra Mode water and current engine water : http://picasaweb.google.com/stephen....65964494501090

What we don't know is if these screenshots were taken on an Nvidia system or an ATi system. If they were taken on an ATi system, then the water should be fixed with an upcoming engine revision.

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Edit: yes. Around the 18:50 mark the Ultra Mode optimizations are turned off and the developer does a 360 pan. His shot over the water is brief, and there is actually some question on what we saw as the person recording the demonstration has zoomed in on the character and we only have a brief shot of the water pool.