City of... Community Digest Post Tracker

Lighthouse: Re: Discussion: Create a Character Costume Contest

Lighthouse@coh.com — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 07:31:00 EDT

Quote:
I had two questions I was hoping for "official" answers to.

#1 Is there any problem with a Bio that ties into a known character or group in CoH? i.e. Chloe Macomber older sister of Mary Macomber leader of the witches cabal in Croatoa... would that be admissable or would it be disqualified?

#2 Does the winner (lets say... me for the sake of this question ) get to choose their design from Smooth Creations.com?
I am a fan of their paintings and would love to have something CoH themed (one of my heroes or SG's) for my winning case or is it predecided (an ATI/AMD design perhaps?) and if predecided can we see pics?

Could you confirm these LH?

#1 I'll just refer you to the rules.

#2 Sorry no, the custom PC is the same we gave away at Comic Con and PAX. It has custom City of Heroes art on the exterior of the case.

Lighthouse
Community Relations Manager

If you have a specific in game, account, tech or billing problem please contact our Customer Support team via The Knowledge Base "Ask A Question" page.

Ex Libris: Hero-Con '08 Live Mission Event.

Ex Libris@coh.com — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 05:03:00 EDT

Swoosh! Bang! Flash...

Join a heroic or villainous team at Hero-Con '08 and fly away with one of these fabulous prizes:

Killer M1 High-Performance Network Card
Designed for Online Gaming
Sponsored by Bigfoot Networks

ATI Radeon HD 4850 Graphics Card
Sponsored by AMD

8GB Xporter XT Boost
Sponsored by Patriot Memory

The Hero-Con live mission will run from 4:00 - 6:00 PM PST at the Hyatt Regency in Santa Clara on October 18th. Registrants must be Hero-Con '08 ticket holders and must be part of a team of 8-12 participants.

From 4:00 - 4:15 PM there will be a gathering in a designated location for PUGS to form if attendees have not arranged teams before showing up to the event. Teams must have their registration information into Ex Libris by the starting point of 4:20 PM PST.

Teams will then run, jump, fly, cut, paste, and answer their way to the winners circle. Teams that consist of a variety of experience, creativity, speed, and smarts will do best at eliminating all the puzzles, clues and fashion faux pas found in City of Heroes.

By 5:45 PM PST all teams must have their final submissions back to the judges. The judges will tally the winners and the winners are scheduled to be announced during the banquet dinner.

Start now to form your group or be ready to sidekick and lackey at the show. We are looking forward to this live mission to see who can get the glowie, combine the salvage, and wear the crown of the most fabulous at Hero-Con '08.

If you don't yet have tickets get them now!

Ex Libris
Community Relations Coordinator
Cicero: We were born to unite with our fellow men, and to join in community with the human race.

"Hey Donald, I'm your Charlie Bucket." The Real Ex Libris

If you have a specific in game, account, tech or billing problem please contact our Customer Support team via The Knowledge Base "Ask A Question" page.

---that button below this line?---that is where you notify moderators!

Ex Libris: Re: Fire & Ice Masquerade on Pinnacle

Ex Libris@coh.com — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 03:22:00 EDT

Quote:
Come one Come ALL to the ALL HALLOW'S EVE Party hosted by

Explicit Content Super Group

Parental Advisory Villian Group

The FIRE and ICE Masquerade Ball (MASKS REQUIRED)

To be held Oct. 30th in Pocket D on the main dance floor will feature trivia, Costume Contests, and random prize giveaways all night long. The Fun begins at 8pm EST time and will continue through the night. So put on your most exquisite outfit and grab your mask! let's burn up the dance floor and melt away the night!!!

Your main Host and Hostess will be
Underworld Overlord Representing Parental Advisory
and enn-vee Representing Explicit Content
you can contact them in game
@Barron, or @The Barroness for more information about this event.
feel free to post questions or comments here as well

event flyer

The below flier is posted on behalf of the player organization promoting the event.

For more information about having an event flier posted, please see the Event Posting Rules

Ex Libris
Community Relations Coordinator
Cicero: We were born to unite with our fellow men, and to join in community with the human race.

"Hey Donald, I'm your Charlie Bucket." The Real Ex Libris

If you have a specific in game, account, tech or billing problem please contact our Customer Support team via The Knowledge Base "Ask A Question" page.

---that button below this line?---that is where you notify moderators!

Lighthouse: Re: Discussion: Create a Character Costume Contest

Lighthouse@coh.com — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 02:50:00 EDT

Quote:

So I'm thinking that as long as the resolution is 800x600 or better, it doesn't matter the actual dimensions of the shot. Of course larger shots will show off the costumes better, but there ain't a thing I can do about the age of my ancient machine.

Can anyone tell me definitively if I'm right about the image dimensions?

Correct.

Make your shots look great as the image quality is, in part, an item the submission will be judged on.

Lighthouse
Community Relations Manager

If you have a specific in game, account, tech or billing problem please contact our Customer Support team via The Knowledge Base "Ask A Question" page.

Ex Libris: Re: [Question] Same Date?

Ex Libris@coh.com — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 02:15:00 EDT

I do hope this is an annual event here in the Bay area. At this point it is too soon to tell on dates and times projected for next year.

Also the over-whelming feedback from the community is they would like to see us get out to the East Coast.

So in short. We may do this in our back yard again but we do not at this time have any projected dates.

Is your company not able to help you out with non-specific time off requests?

Ex

Ex Libris
Community Relations Coordinator
Cicero: We were born to unite with our fellow men, and to join in community with the human race.

"Hey Donald, I'm your Charlie Bucket." The Real Ex Libris

If you have a specific in game, account, tech or billing problem please contact our Customer Support team via The Knowledge Base "Ask A Question" page.

---that button below this line?---that is where you notify moderators!

Lighthouse: Ask A Dev: Answers from Bruce Harlick!

Lighthouse@coh.com — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 01:49:00 EDT

In early September we introduced Bruce Harlick to you in an "Ask a Dev" article. Since then, we compiled questions from across the game's community and below you will find Bruce's answers!

Enjoy!

Bruce: I was asked a lot of questions about Mission Architect. They were a lot of good questions, but I dont think its really appropriate for me to answer them, since Hero 1 has been doing the design work on that feature. So Im going to concentrate on answering other things.

Question from Neuronia - When you script missions, is there a 'standard script' for various mission objectives that you can 'cut and paste' or does each mission require individual tweaking?

Bruce: We have standard mission objectives built into our mission template; we can select which of them (and how many of them) we want to use when designing a mission. We can also do quite a bit with custom spawn definitions and scripts to make interesting things happen. That takes more work than just using the stuff thats in the template, but lets us really fiddle with the mission setup and design.

Question from Lady_Sadako - With the Mission Architect coming in Issue 13, the bar of player expectation from the Devs is going to be raised, because we'll be able to see how the basic missions are done. We won't be able to go into some of the old missions any more without thinking 'Map type: Warehouse, Enemy Group: Council, Mission Type: Boss Defeat... hey, I could have written this myself!'

So what new tricks and features are the incoming missions going to have, which players CAN'T access? In other words, how are you going to keep Dev-made mission content special, other than just through the quality of the writing and the canonicity?

Bruce: Well, the mission designers have access to a much larger set of tools then are included with the Mission Architect. While youll be able to do plenty of fun stuff with Mission Architect, we at NCNorCal have access to programmers and artists who can tell us if our really neat idea is worthy of having some custom programming or art done for it. Of course, all of those people arent at our exclusive beck and call, and have to balance the reasonableness of our requests with the demands of their other work. Its all about tradeoffs. With that in mind, well push the envelop as far as we can here and use the resources we have, and the new resources we can get, to create kicking new Story Arcs and missions that go beyond what you can do in Mission Architect.

Question from the EU: What missions /storyarcs already in the game are you responsible for?

Bruce: I wrote the new Cimerora Story Arcs for Issue 13. That will be the first of my work in the game.

Question from the EU: What do you mean by "systems to help support missions"?

Bruce: I probably should have said systems to help support stories. Being a mission designer involves more than just writing missions; we work on the various game systems that go into making missions as well. One example of that would be something like the Mayhem missions. Those puppies are quite different than the normal mission, and required some new systems to support what they do, such as the side missions you get on them, the timing stuff, etc. A more extreme example is the Mission Architect. The way that system works was mainly designed by Hero 1 who worked with Pohsyb and others to get it implemented.

The systems design may include small enhancements to the way our mission encounters work to larger systems as mentioned above. I cant talk specifically about the large systems Im working on (as it hasnt been announced), but its a combination of new systems and mission content to bring you all some fun new stuff.

Meanwhile, Ill continue to find small stuff I want to do in missions, write up a design for it, and see if I cant get code to implement it for me. For me its the perfect balance of content and systems creation. Its all fun stuff and Im glad I get a chance to do both.

Question from Cosmic_Herald - Bruce, where will City Of.. be going direction wise from a story writer point of view such as yourself?

Bruce: Well, one thing I really want to do is further explore some of the back story of existing characters. Youre going to see some missions from me that deal with that. I hope to get a chance to move between characters and get more of their stories into the game.

Speaking of stories, Im a big sucker for classic superhero stories, of heroes facing overwhelming odds and being forced to make tough moral choices, and of villains being offered a chance to walk the path to redemption. I like to explore what makes good good, and what makes evil evil, and just how hard it is to walk the narrow line between the two. Youll certainly be seeing stories about that kind of thing from me in the future.

Question from Lady_Athyna - If you can answer, is there any possibility of branching stories, where a different mission depending on the outcome of the previous mission is offered next?

Bruce: Oh, Id love to see branching stories in the game, where the player choices dictated what came next in the story. Its a thorny problem though. For one thing, it greatly magnifies the number of missions needed for any story arc. Any time you have a branch, youre doubling (at the minimum) the amount of content you need to create and you end up creating content that only a fraction of the player base is going to see. There are also technical issues; for example, branching stories work well in single-player games, but can lead to trouble in a multi-player game. What happens if half the team goes down one branch and the other half down the other? Do you just let the team leader make the decision? What happens if the TL makes a decision that the rest of the team doesnt agree with?

I think there is a way to solve some of the technical issues. It would be fun to write an arc that branches in the middle depending on the success or failure on a mission. (Of course, players understandably hate to fail, but it would probably be acceptable if the failure lead to something different and cool) Its all fuel for future missions.

Question from Storm_Revenant - The use of cut scenes in a very sparse number of missions is a shame, will this feature be supported for the Architect system for I13?

Bruce: Theres a reason why cut scenes are sparse; they are extremely time intensive. They require the use of specific maps, access to the map editor to set up the cameras, and a lot of scripting work. So you wont be seeing cut scenes supported in the initial release of the Mission Architect.

Were looking to streamline the process and make it easier for us to create cut scenes, so we can use them more effectively to help tell fun stories in the future.

Question from Obsidius - As a formerly avid P&P fan, often characters and themes from my P&P sessions have inspired me in CoX, even though the genres between my P&P games and CoX are completely different.

As a creative thinker, does this happen to you? From what kind of P&P ideas have you drawn inspiration? Do you find yourself using elements from P&P sessions in your storylines, missions or writing? Do you find yourself taking some old P&P ideas and turning them on their edge to give them a new spin?

Bruce: Oh, definitely. One of the beautiful things about computer RPGs is that they are not pen and paper RPGs. That means you can take a great idea from a pen and paper game and figure out a way to use it again in a computer game. It might be a story, scenario, or character whatever. Its fun to run into characters you gamed with in a computer game. I remember playing the campaigns that spawned Positron, Synapse, Infernal, and some other characters now in CoH.

Of course, you likely wont be seeing some of my classic characters in CoH; they were created during my days working for Hero Games and I no longer have the rights to any of them. But I have plenty of characters and stories left to draw from, and I cant wait to begin to start infusing them into CoH.

Question from MentalMaden - What is your forum persona going to be?

Bruce: Well, I want to find a Red name thats personal to me. So Ill wait until I need to post on the forums to choose my Red name, and it will likely be some character Ive created.

Question from the EU Do you play any other pen & paper RPG like DD4?

Bruce: Im a big fan of pen and paper RPGs and still actively play them. These days, our games fall more into the once every two weeks to once a month schedule as opposed to the once a week (or more!) schedule we used to have. Im currently playing Dungeons & Dragons (both 3.5 and 4th), Amber Diceless Roleplaying, a World of Darkness game, and a few others. I also run a couple of D&D games, one a long-running 3.5 campaign and one a new 4th edition game for some of my co-workers here at NCNorCal.

Question from Hellsminion_CoH - The picture on your cube wall looks like you had a rockin' fu manchu/pornstache! What happened to it? Or is that not you?

Bruce: Yeah, about that... so when I was at LucasArts working on the upcoming Indiana Jones game, one of the other designers was challenged to grow a Sonny Bono mustache. This lead to a lot of speculation on what various people would look like with mustaches and other facial hair. This lead to a lot of Photoshop pranking. I foolishly mentioned that I had had a mustache when I was 18, which prompted Rob Clarke, our lead environment artist, to create that little art piece you see in my picture. Its a souvenir of my time with the Indy team.

Question from Star_Sentinel - Which summer super-hero movie was your favorite?

Bruce: I loved both Iron Man and Dark Knight this summer. Two excellent superhero movies. Were really in a place where they are making some great superhero movies. I think Dark Knight was probably the better movie, but I found Iron Man to be more fun. So, my nod goes to Iron Man.

Question from Ozmosis - If you could have a super power in real life, what would it be?

Bruce: I love to travel, so Id like to be able to teleport. I want that awesome long-distance teleport; the kind where you can just think yourself from San Francisco to Rome in a heartbeat. That would be awesome. If I could do that, Id be eating a lot of meals in Rome and Florence...

The other super power I want is super-wealth!

Question: Blue or Red?

Bruce: Blue. Im a hero at heart.

Question from Definitive - Who is your fav character in comics, ever, from the beginning of comic books?

Bruce: I have two, Spider-man and Batman. Im a huge fan of the Dark Knight and I love the soap opera of the Spider-man saga (at least, I did before that One More Day stuff.) Spider-man feels like the most real superhero to me; hes an everyman given great powers... and great responsibility. The concept of Batman, the highly trained guy looking for revenge on the faceless forces of crime that killed his parents is also very cool, and I really enjoy the well-written Batman stuff.

Question from Manbearpig - It seems that all past pictures of the team are taken from the knees up. Is this an attempt to hide the ball and chain or shackles?

Bruce: Feet are boring.

Question from EternalGreen - your desk is WAY too neat! Did you clean it up just for the photo?

Bruce: Nope. Thats just the way it is. It gets messier at times, and neater at times. Right now its covered with papers, comic books, a D&D book, and a cookbook.

Question from Arcanine - I wanted to ask what advice you have for those of us who want to spend our careers creating market quality stories and adventures such as those that appear as COH story arcs and task forces (or just make extremely good story threads using the coming COH mission creator). In short, how do you develop and enhance the skills necessary to create compelling and driven plots for the COH missions?

Bruce: Ill give you the same advice I give to everyone who asks me that question: just do it. Writers write and designers design. Its the only way to get practice. It doesnt matter if you dont do anything with your writing or your design. The more you do it, the better youll get. Your first stuff will likely be horrible; that doesnt matter. In the act of creating something, youll learn a lot. And youll get better and better.

In Closing:

Thanks to everyone for the excellent questions; I had a blast answering them. Its great to be working with such a great dev team and on a game with such a fantastic player community. Its a real privilege and pleasure to have this opportunity to work on City of Heroes/City of Villains; its wonderful to be back working with super hero (and super villain) games (my favorite type of game) and to be working on such an excellent project. I cant wait to hear what you all think of my missions.

Fight the good fight, and if you dont want to do that, make sure you dont cut those do-gooders an even break.

Click here to discuss this announcement

Lighthouse
Community Relations Manager

If you have a specific in game, account, tech or billing problem please contact our Customer Support team via The Knowledge Base "Ask A Question" page.

Lighthouse: Ask A Dev: Answers from Bruce Harlick!

Lighthouse@coh.com — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 01:48:00 EDT

In early September we introduced Bruce Harlick to you in an "Ask a Dev" article. Since then, we compiled questions from across the game's community and below you will find Bruce's answers!

Enjoy!

Bruce: I was asked a lot of questions about Mission Architect. They were a lot of good questions, but I dont think its really appropriate for me to answer them, since Hero 1 has been doing the design work on that feature. So Im going to concentrate on answering other things.

Question from Neuronia - When you script missions, is there a 'standard script' for various mission objectives that you can 'cut and paste' or does each mission require individual tweaking?

Bruce: We have standard mission objectives built into our mission template; we can select which of them (and how many of them) we want to use when designing a mission. We can also do quite a bit with custom spawn definitions and scripts to make interesting things happen. That takes more work than just using the stuff thats in the template, but lets us really fiddle with the mission setup and design.

Question from Lady_Sadako - With the Mission Architect coming in Issue 13, the bar of player expectation from the Devs is going to be raised, because we'll be able to see how the basic missions are done. We won't be able to go into some of the old missions any more without thinking 'Map type: Warehouse, Enemy Group: Council, Mission Type: Boss Defeat... hey, I could have written this myself!'

So what new tricks and features are the incoming missions going to have, which players CAN'T access? In other words, how are you going to keep Dev-made mission content special, other than just through the quality of the writing and the canonicity?

Bruce: Well, the mission designers have access to a much larger set of tools then are included with the Mission Architect. While youll be able to do plenty of fun stuff with Mission Architect, we at NCNorCal have access to programmers and artists who can tell us if our really neat idea is worthy of having some custom programming or art done for it. Of course, all of those people arent at our exclusive beck and call, and have to balance the reasonableness of our requests with the demands of their other work. Its all about tradeoffs. With that in mind, well push the envelop as far as we can here and use the resources we have, and the new resources we can get, to create kicking new Story Arcs and missions that go beyond what you can do in Mission Architect.

Question from the EU: What missions /storyarcs already in the game are you responsible for?

Bruce: I wrote the new Cimerora Story Arcs for Issue 13. That will be the first of my work in the game.

Question from the EU: What do you mean by "systems to help support missions"?

Bruce: I probably should have said systems to help support stories. Being a mission designer involves more than just writing missions; we work on the various game systems that go into making missions as well. One example of that would be something like the Mayhem missions. Those puppies are quite different than the normal mission, and required some new systems to support what they do, such as the side missions you get on them, the timing stuff, etc. A more extreme example is the Mission Architect. The way that system works was mainly designed by Hero 1 who worked with Pohsyb and others to get it implemented.

The systems design may include small enhancements to the way our mission encounters work to larger systems as mentioned above. I cant talk specifically about the large systems Im working on (as it hasnt been announced), but its a combination of new systems and mission content to bring you all some fun new stuff.

Meanwhile, Ill continue to find small stuff I want to do in missions, write up a design for it, and see if I cant get code to implement it for me. For me its the perfect balance of content and systems creation. Its all fun stuff and Im glad I get a chance to do both.

Question from Cosmic_Herald - Bruce, where will City Of.. be going direction wise from a story writer point of view such as yourself?

Bruce: Well, one thing I really want to do is further explore some of the back story of existing characters. Youre going to see some missions from me that deal with that. I hope to get a chance to move between characters and get more of their stories into the game.

Speaking of stories, Im a big sucker for classic superhero stories, of heroes facing overwhelming odds and being forced to make tough moral choices, and of villains being offered a chance to walk the path to redemption. I like to explore what makes good good, and what makes evil evil, and just how hard it is to walk the narrow line between the two. Youll certainly be seeing stories about that kind of thing from me in the future.

Question from Lady_Athyna - If you can answer, is there any possibility of branching stories, where a different mission depending on the outcome of the previous mission is offered next?

Bruce: Oh, Id love to see branching stories in the game, where the player choices dictated what came next in the story. Its a thorny problem though. For one thing, it greatly magnifies the number of missions needed for any story arc. Any time you have a branch, youre doubling (at the minimum) the amount of content you need to create and you end up creating content that only a fraction of the player base is going to see. There are also technical issues; for example, branching stories work well in single-player games, but can lead to trouble in a multi-player game. What happens if half the team goes down one branch and the other half down the other? Do you just let the team leader make the decision? What happens if the TL makes a decision that the rest of the team doesnt agree with?

I think there is a way to solve some of the technical issues. It would be fun to write an arc that branches in the middle depending on the success or failure on a mission. (Of course, players understandably hate to fail, but it would probably be acceptable if the failure lead to something different and cool) Its all fuel for future missions.

Question from Storm_Revenant - The use of cut scenes in a very sparse number of missions is a shame, will this feature be supported for the Architect system for I13?

Bruce: Theres a reason why cut scenes are sparse; they are extremely time intensive. They require the use of specific maps, access to the map editor to set up the cameras, and a lot of scripting work. So you wont be seeing cut scenes supported in the initial release of the Mission Architect.

Were looking to streamline the process and make it easier for us to create cut scenes, so we can use them more effectively to help tell fun stories in the future.

Question from Obsidius - As a formerly avid P&P fan, often characters and themes from my P&P sessions have inspired me in CoX, even though the genres between my P&P games and CoX are completely different.

As a creative thinker, does this happen to you? From what kind of P&P ideas have you drawn inspiration? Do you find yourself using elements from P&P sessions in your storylines, missions or writing? Do you find yourself taking some old P&P ideas and turning them on their edge to give them a new spin?

Bruce: Oh, definitely. One of the beautiful things about computer RPGs is that they are not pen and paper RPGs. That means you can take a great idea from a pen and paper game and figure out a way to use it again in a computer game. It might be a story, scenario, or character whatever. Its fun to run into characters you gamed with in a computer game. I remember playing the campaigns that spawned Positron, Synapse, Infernal, and some other characters now in CoH.

Of course, you likely wont be seeing some of my classic characters in CoH; they were created during my days working for Hero Games and I no longer have the rights to any of them. But I have plenty of characters and stories left to draw from, and I cant wait to begin to start infusing them into CoH.

Question from MentalMaden - What is your forum persona going to be?

Bruce: Well, I want to find a Red name thats personal to me. So Ill wait until I need to post on the forums to choose my Red name, and it will likely be some character Ive created.

Question from the EU Do you play any other pen & paper RPG like DD4?

Bruce: Im a big fan of pen and paper RPGs and still actively play them. These days, our games fall more into the once every two weeks to once a month schedule as opposed to the once a week (or more!) schedule we used to have. Im currently playing Dungeons & Dragons (both 3.5 and 4th), Amber Diceless Roleplaying, a World of Darkness game, and a few others. I also run a couple of D&D games, one a long-running 3.5 campaign and one a new 4th edition game for some of my co-workers here at NCNorCal.

Question from Hellsminion_CoH - The picture on your cube wall looks like you had a rockin' fu manchu/pornstache! What happened to it? Or is that not you?

Bruce: Yeah, about that... so when I was at LucasArts working on the upcoming Indiana Jones game, one of the other designers was challenged to grow a Sonny Bono mustache. This lead to a lot of speculation on what various people would look like with mustaches and other facial hair. This lead to a lot of Photoshop pranking. I foolishly mentioned that I had had a mustache when I was 18, which prompted Rob Clarke, our lead environment artist, to create that little art piece you see in my picture. Its a souvenir of my time with the Indy team.

Question from Star_Sentinel - Which summer super-hero movie was your favorite?

Bruce: I loved both Iron Man and Dark Knight this summer. Two excellent superhero movies. Were really in a place where they are making some great superhero movies. I think Dark Knight was probably the better movie, but I found Iron Man to be more fun. So, my nod goes to Iron Man.

Question from Ozmosis - If you could have a super power in real life, what would it be?

Bruce: I love to travel, so Id like to be able to teleport. I want that awesome long-distance teleport; the kind where you can just think yourself from San Francisco to Rome in a heartbeat. That would be awesome. If I could do that, Id be eating a lot of meals in Rome and Florence...

The other super power I want is super-wealth!

Question: Blue or Red?

Bruce: Blue. Im a hero at heart.

Question from Definitive - Who is your fav character in comics, ever, from the beginning of comic books?

Bruce: I have two, Spider-man and Batman. Im a huge fan of the Dark Knight and I love the soap opera of the Spider-man saga (at least, I did before that One More Day stuff.) Spider-man feels like the most real superhero to me; hes an everyman given great powers... and great responsibility. The concept of Batman, the highly trained guy looking for revenge on the faceless forces of crime that killed his parents is also very cool, and I really enjoy the well-written Batman stuff.

Question from Manbearpig - It seems that all past pictures of the team are taken from the knees up. Is this an attempt to hide the ball and chain or shackles?

Bruce: Feet are boring.

Question from EternalGreen - your desk is WAY too neat! Did you clean it up just for the photo?

Bruce: Nope. Thats just the way it is. It gets messier at times, and neater at times. Right now its covered with papers, comic books, a D&D book, and a cookbook.

Question from Arcanine - I wanted to ask what advice you have for those of us who want to spend our careers creating market quality stories and adventures such as those that appear as COH story arcs and task forces (or just make extremely good story threads using the coming COH mission creator). In short, how do you develop and enhance the skills necessary to create compelling and driven plots for the COH missions?

Bruce: Ill give you the same advice I give to everyone who asks me that question: just do it. Writers write and designers design. Its the only way to get practice. It doesnt matter if you dont do anything with your writing or your design. The more you do it, the better youll get. Your first stuff will likely be horrible; that doesnt matter. In the act of creating something, youll learn a lot. And youll get better and better.

In Closing:

Thanks to everyone for the excellent questions; I had a blast answering them. Its great to be working with such a great dev team and on a game with such a fantastic player community. Its a real privilege and pleasure to have this opportunity to work on City of Heroes/City of Villains; its wonderful to be back working with super hero (and super villain) games (my favorite type of game) and to be working on such an excellent project. I cant wait to hear what you all think of my missions.

Fight the good fight, and if you dont want to do that, make sure you dont cut those do-gooders an even break.

Lighthouse
Community Relations Manager

If you have a specific in game, account, tech or billing problem please contact our Customer Support team via The Knowledge Base "Ask A Question" page.

Ex Libris: Re: Masquerade Ball Oct 25th

Ex Libris@coh.com — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 01:40:00 EDT

Quote:
The Dolls will be hosting a Masquerade Ball on Saturday October 25th.
Meet in Pocket D on Triumph at 8pm EST, 7pm CST, 6 pm PST. Both Heroes and Villains are welcome.
There will be a costume contest with more than 50million in prizes up for grabs. Only characters wearing masks are eligible.

Contacts for this event are @Fanci, @Tiny H

The below flier is posted on behalf of the player organization promoting the event.

For more information about having an event flier posted, please see the Event Posting Rules

This looks like a great event for Triumph!

Regards,

Ex Libris

Ex Libris
Community Relations Coordinator
Cicero: We were born to unite with our fellow men, and to join in community with the human race.

"Hey Donald, I'm your Charlie Bucket." The Real Ex Libris

If you have a specific in game, account, tech or billing problem please contact our Customer Support team via The Knowledge Base "Ask A Question" page.

---that button below this line?---that is where you notify moderators!

Lighthouse: Ask a Dev: Introducing Chris Bruce!

Lighthouse@coh.com — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 01:39:00 EDT

Ask a Dev
For those of you who may not be familiar with the "Ask a Dev" article series, here is how it works: periodically, we'll introduce a member of the City of Heroes Development Team and open a reply forum thread where fans can pose their questions for that developer. Then a few weeks later we'll close the question thread and go through and pick out the best and most appropriate questions and the developer will provide the answers!

As part of our ongoing "Ask a Dev" article series, we are proud to introduce to you our next developer: Senior Animator/VFX Artist Chris "Back Alley Brawler" Bruce!

City of Heroes "Ask a Dev" with Senior Animator/VFX Artist Chris "Back Alley Brawler" Bruce

Introduction:

Hello. My name is Christopher Bruce, but most players know me as Back Alley Brawler from the forums (where I spend entirely too much of my free time). Ive been given the opportunity to be the next victim of the Ask a Dev series and directly answer some questions from the community, but before we get to that, let me take a minute to tell you a bit about myself and what I do on City of Heroes/City of Villains.

Ive been working in The Game Industry for a little over 9 years now for many different studios on many different types of games. Ive done just about everything that there is to do on a game including modeling, texturing, lighting, animation, visual effects, etcwhich makes me a Jack of all trades, master of none (though often better than a master of one).

My favorite thing to do though is animation and visual effects, which actually have a lot in common. Ive played City of Heroes/City of Villains since launch, so when the opportunity came for me to be a part of the team working on my favorite game doing the two things I really enjoyed doing, I pounced with the ferocity ofsomethingthats very ferociouswhen it pounces on things.

Animations and Things:

I started working at Cryptic on City of Heroes/City of Villains shortly after Issue 7 went live. The very first task I was given was the teabag emote, which also lead to my introduction to the infamous Positron. He was extremely confused when some person hed never met before meekly poked their head into his office to ask, What exactly do you mean by a teabag emote? Now, Im apart of the same team on the same project working for NCSoft and excited to be a part of the huge plans for this game and franchise.

What Chris does on the City of Heroes Team:

Today, I am the Senior Animator/VFX Artist on City of Heroes/City of Villains as part of the Art Department. My main responsibilities are working with the Power Designers to create new NPC or player powers for the game. They will define new powers and then I will then set up the visuals for that power including the animations that play on certain events, such as Activation or Hit. Ill also make any visual effects (FX) that are associated with those events and create all of the scripts that ties those three things (powers, animation, and VFX) together.

Im also responsible for FX related player costume pieces, which include things like Auras, Custom Weapons, and soon Shieldsso I also work very closely with Jay Doherty (who you may know as SexyJay). Other than that, anything in game that is animated or related to visual FX generally passes through my hands.

So now that you know who I am and exactly what I doon to the questions!

Click here to go to the thread where you can pose your question to Chris!

Questions will be collected on October 21st from both the North American and European forums and not long after that, we'll post Chris' answers and introduce our next dev and ask for your questions for them.

Lighthouse
Community Relations Manager

If you have a specific in game, account, tech or billing problem please contact our Customer Support team via The Knowledge Base "Ask A Question" page.

Lighthouse: Ask a Dev: Introducing Chris Bruce!

Lighthouse@coh.com — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 01:38:00 EDT

Ask a Dev
For those of you who may not be familiar with the "Ask a Dev" article series, here is how it works: periodically, we'll introduce a member of the City of Heroes Development Team and open a reply forum thread where fans can pose their questions for that developer. Then a few weeks later we'll close the question thread and go through and pick out the best and most appropriate questions and the developer will provide the answers!

As part of our ongoing "Ask a Dev" article series, we are proud to introduce to you our next developer: Senior Animator/VFX Artist Chris "Back Alley Brawler" Bruce!

City of Heroes "Ask a Dev" with Senior Animator/VFX Artist Chris "Back Alley Brawler" Bruce

Introduction:

Hello. My name is Christopher Bruce, but most players know me as Back Alley Brawler from the forums (where I spend entirely too much of my free time). Ive been given the opportunity to be the next victim of the Ask a Dev series and directly answer some questions from the community, but before we get to that, let me take a minute to tell you a bit about myself and what I do on City of Heroes/City of Villains.

Ive been working in The Game Industry for a little over 9 years now for many different studios on many different types of games. Ive done just about everything that there is to do on a game including modeling, texturing, lighting, animation, visual effects, etcwhich makes me a Jack of all trades, master of none (though often better than a master of one).

My favorite thing to do though is animation and visual effects, which actually have a lot in common. Ive played City of Heroes/City of Villains since launch, so when the opportunity came for me to be a part of the team working on my favorite game doing the two things I really enjoyed doing, I pounced with the ferocity ofsomethingthats very ferociouswhen it pounces on things.

Animations and Things:

I started working at Cryptic on City of Heroes/City of Villains shortly after Issue 7 went live. The very first task I was given was the teabag emote, which also lead to my introduction to the infamous Positron. He was extremely confused when some person hed never met before meekly poked their head into his office to ask, What exactly do you mean by a teabag emote? Now, Im apart of the same team on the same project working for NCSoft and excited to be a part of the huge plans for this game and franchise.

What Chris does on the City of Heroes Team:

Today, I am the Senior Animator/VFX Artist on City of Heroes/City of Villains as part of the Art Department. My main responsibilities are working with the Power Designers to create new NPC or player powers for the game. They will define new powers and then I will then set up the visuals for that power including the animations that play on certain events, such as Activation or Hit. Ill also make any visual effects (FX) that are associated with those events and create all of the scripts that ties those three things (powers, animation, and VFX) together.

Im also responsible for FX related player costume pieces, which include things like Auras, Custom Weapons, and soon Shieldsso I also work very closely with Jay Doherty (who you may know as SexyJay). Other than that, anything in game that is animated or related to visual FX generally passes through my hands.

So now that you know who I am and exactly what I doon to the questions!

Please use this thread to post your questions for Chris!

Questions will be collected on October 21st from both the North American and European forums and not long after that, we'll post Chris' answers and introduce our next dev and ask for your questions for them.

Lighthouse
Community Relations Manager

If you have a specific in game, account, tech or billing problem please contact our Customer Support team via The Knowledge Base "Ask A Question" page.

Ex Libris: The City Scoop! ~ Announcement ~ Oct. 3, 2008

Ex Libris@coh.com — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 07:52:00 EDT

Vol. 2, Issue 17
October 3, 2008

The City Scoop a publication for Supers by Supers! With this issue we have many of our regular features back and moar!

Read the latest publication and then join in on the community discussion!

If you have concerns regarding the content of the Scoop please direct your comments via PM to Lighthouse or Ex Libris.

If you would like to do a feature article, have an event covered, or join "The City Scoop" team please PM Snow_Globe

If you need some Advice contact Lady_Athyna or would like to Ask The X contact LiquidX

Finally if you have a Classified Ad or Recipe you would like included please contact: LadyK or MistressNoire

Ex Libris
Community Relations Coordinator
Cicero: We were born to unite with our fellow men, and to join in community with the human race.

"Hey Donald, I'm your Charlie Bucket." The Real Ex Libris

If you have a specific in game, account, tech or billing problem please contact our Customer Support team via The Knowledge Base "Ask A Question" page.

---that button below this line?---that is where you notify moderators!

Ex Libris: The City Scoop! ~ Discussion ~ October 3, 2008

Ex Libris@coh.com — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 07:52:00 EDT

Ex Libris: The City Scoop! ~ Toons! ~ Oct. 3, 2008

Ex Libris@coh.com — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 07:49:00 EDT

Ex Libris: The City Scoop! ~ Classifieds ~ Oct. 3, 2008

Ex Libris@coh.com — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 07:49:00 EDT

Ex Libris: The City Scoop! ~ PvP Highlights ~ Oct. 3, 2008

Ex Libris@coh.com — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 07:48:00 EDT