When doing iTrials, we often had someone leading that was using a number of fairly specific team messages like "Head to the other PNN building, defend the big TV!" etc. This was easier to set up if you had the game running in a window and could copy and paste from pre-made text files you had.
Will CoT allow this, or will it run in a window all the time? Or will it run in full-screen mode and have a feature that lets player make their own palette of text to copy and paste temporary messages to and from? Becasue that would be nice.
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R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Oh please let it be in a window.
If it's full screen all the time, I can't see the clock on my taskbar
which means I can't play before work in the morning.
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/browse/pub/3185/Crusader-Game-Books
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC48O9dPcNVdeyNM4efAvX6w/videos?view_as=subscriber
There's a good chance that players delivering messages like that were using macros to do it. That is, they would create a button that broadcasts the message when they click it. If the same is possible in City of Titans, then you could ideally put each message in its own macro then drop them onto your power tray when you need them.
I think copy-pasting from an external window during a group event would be distracting and risky (from an action/combat perspective). I mean no offense in saying so, but I think macros would be a cleaner and more accessible solution here.
Macros, yes, but you needed a full set of them for each Trial to the point where people would be like "I can lead the trial, but give me a few minutes to remake my keybinds for it" a lot too. I think running the game in a window, as an option, would be good. I also like the idea of having a text palette that you can hide/show which has a list of tells I made myself in my spare time that can be tabbed through, etc, shows the whole text of a message, and you just click once and it sends that message out to the channel(s) that the message is intended for.
So like for example, you'd have a little show/hide icon somewhere that would let you show this palette. In the palette you can make any number of messages, and for each one you have an object visible on the palette that is a bar of text a few inches wide and two or three lines of text high that shows the entire text of the message, along with which chat channels you have it set to print to when you click on it to "fire off the message". This way you're not constantly forgetting which macro or keybind does what. You could have the palette set up like the salvage palette in the sense that it has tabs which allows you to keep a set of messages for each trial/TF, and maybe some generic ones in a "miscellaneous" tab, etc. It should probably have a transparency that's controllable too.
Macros were okay, but A) they used power slots on the powers tray, which was awkward and inconvenient, and B) had a small circular button as their "object" which made it hard to remember which ones said what on which channels.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
In the old game you could create a key bind to load an entire bind file that loaded all your binds. You could even use the same macro key to cycle through bind files if you chose.
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- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
Yup. I had single keys for each trial/raid. I used only a few but i could have used 10 keys (preference) from numpad for raids/difficult trials
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Having a game able to use Windows mode would be helpful in other reason. I have two monitors in CoH I would have the Wiki open or a Video T Map up for added detail. Or even the Mids open so I could compare it to the In game build. There are other uses, Skype, Vent, Music program open, listening to internet based Radio like the Cape and I'm sure other ways having the ability to go from game to an open window/program that I can't think off the top of my head.
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Personal rules of good roleplay
1.) Nothing goes as planned.
2.) If it goes as planned it's not good RP
I've always thought of having the choice to play in Windowed or Fullscreen modes as bare bones essentials for any online game. If you don't have both available, you fail at programming (as a game studio).
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
I didn't know that. Mind blown. Why didn't they make that more obvious, user-friendly, and well-known? Or rather, "I think we should make this kind of stuff obvious, user-friendly, and well-known in CoT."
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
A couple of games I've played have in-game notepads to store a small to medium block of text locally, and recall it in an in-game window. I would really like something like this, it was incredibly useful for keeping notes without taking you out of the game, and would be especially useful if we do have copy and paste text functions in-game.
It was covered at somepoint of the game under their very "unhelpful" list of helpful commands window. But then again, the whole keybinds thing was generally very daunting to a new player.
Keybinding via a normal game window people can deal with, especially if its something basic. Dealing with multi action macros for ALL games seems to be bit of a "dark art" that players can find daunting. Hell, even the WoW macro system can be confusing, which is why you tend to find a lot of "copy and paste" macros, or addons that help you make macros.
If the game doesn't support a windowed mode (full screen borderless or traditional window) then I will be HIGHLY surprised. Being able to copy and paste into the chat box is another thing. I hope that you could at least be able to paste text into it, even if you might not necessarily be able to paste stuff OUT of the chat window.
The CoH Devs treated their keybind scripting system much the same way they treated their client modding system: They provided the capability but they effectively pretended it didn't exist. It was far easier to let the "highly motivated" players tinker with those potentially buggy and/or shoot-yourself-in-the-foot type things on their own than to worry about having to provide overt customer support to the 95% of the rest of the playerbase who got by well enough without even realizing those features existed.
I suspect if these kinds of things are supported in CoT they will also be more or less "hidden" from plain sight. The people who are motivated to figure out how it all works will be able to do the research on their own without needing the Devs spend any of their precious time directly helping players with it. The players themselves will come up with their own guides/wikis to help each other.
I would have forgiven the average game for not being able to handle these kinds of things say 5 or 10 years ago. But now as Redlynne implied I think support for these now standard features are pretty much expected of any new game.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
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And 'Windowed Fullscreen' mode, please.
An option to have a clock in the UI would be nice, too. And for real snazziness, the ability to set an alarm on the clock so it notifies you that you need to log off for work/dinner/sleep.
Keybind Files were essentially a [b]DARK ART™[/b] learned only by Masterminds and Kheldians. For Masterminds, you for all intents and purposes HAD TO create a whole plethora of Keybind Files simply in order to command and control your Pets in any meaningful way. I remember writing something like some 10+ or so different files and binding them all to the Numpad Keys just to be able to command my Pets during combat. I ran the whole thing off a "master" file that was the one I'd load from the chat window, which then engaged the rather byzantine rats' nest of files underneath it. That then let me command my Pets individually, Minions only, Lieutenants Only, Boss Only and All Together Now. Took me practically all day to edit it together and test it all out to make sure that everything worked properly and there weren't any typos.
Kheldians did much the same thing, except with only 3 Keybind Files ... one for Human, one for Nova and one for Dwarf. I had a Warshade and a Peacebringer, and they each needed to have their own sets of files because of certain unique peculiarities to each. I'd use the Human file as the baseline and load it from the chat window, which then enabled the other 2 to be accessed. I used the TYG keys as my form switching commands so as to be able to shift forms on the fly even while moving.
Some people took these things even further and developed Rotating Chat Balloons for various functions. A favorite was to give Tankers something to "/say" when they used Taunt. You'd just set up a round robin in each of the files such that when a Taunt was used it would execute the contents of the current file and then automatically load up the next file in the chain. You'd wind up with Tankers that could have some 20+ different Taunts to /say in the middle of combat. Needless to say, the RP possibilities were a lot of fun.
One of the things I did during City of Heroes and have used ever since was to develop a common baseline "keybind setup" which all of my characters adhere to and I'd save that as its own Keybind File. I'd then create "modifier" Keybind Files that were unique and specific to each character ... such as the difference between:
bind ` "targetenemynear$$follow"
bind ` "targetenemynear"
The former was for melee characters (ie. the Jackie Chan Bind), while the latter was for ranged. Since I had a central repository file for all my common baseline keybinds, if I wanted to switch anything around I could edit the one file and then just /bindloadfile that one file to every character I had to effect the update and apply the "reset" of keybinds. After that, it was just a case of loading the character specific Keybind Files to put everyone back onto their own unique set of variant keybinds.
Tedious to set up and test ... but absolutely invaluable once perfected.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
And then there's Ascendant.
Be Well!
Fireheart
Ascendant was an Archetype ... that Saul could never market correctly.
I miss him too ... ;_;
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]