New efforts!

[HEATSTROKE]

 BTW Senticon does not convert all costume files unfortunately.. I know at least using the Issue 24 version of Icon it could not convert many costumes.. especially some of the very early ones.. It did work on many. Just not all.. Im going to load up my old machine and try it with the Issue 23 client.

[TonyV]

I24 wasn't released because there were no devs to release it. That's it.

Actually, Matt "Positron" Miller said that he tried to get NCsoft let them push it out to live, but they wouldn't let him.  It wasn't a matter of a dev not being there, they wanted to do it before the shutdown.  The problem is that NCsoft was afraid that if they pushed it out right before letting all of the devs go and there was a problem, there wouldn't be anyone around to fix it.  I actually kinda don't blame them for this; keep in mind they'd already pretty much blown off the player base as it was.  Taking a chance on adding the "...oh, and the game you have through the shutdown is going to have some fatal bug in it" insult to injury was just too much.

Positron tried to argue that it had been in testing long enough to iron out all of the kinks and it was stable enough to go out, but he lost that fight, and thus I24 was relegated exclusively to beta through the shutdown.

[Fridgy Daiere]

That sounds like they only kept the equivalent of a compiled copy of the game not the code itself, and a compiled copy of the Test server at that.  A snapshot frozen in time, a snapshot taken at perhaps the best possible moment but still the limitation if not the outright prohibition of changing the code...  as if NCSoft isn't selling the vacation but photos of the trip.  Hope they can negotiate a damn good price over that.

1)  Is it legal to reverse-engineer a legally purchased copy of an executable if your company owns the intellectual property rights contained within said executable?
2)  Is it worth the time and effort if the long-term strategy is to build CoX2?

Edit:  I know that the custom tools for working on the engine have asploded *poof!*  hence question #2.

[TonyV]

I remember it being explicitly stated that at the time that it was extremely unlikely that the individual Sentinel xml exports would be usable with a commercial relaunch of the game. They would be far too risky for any for-profit venture to touch. That was never the purpose.

Part of our purpose was so that we might get around to developing some tools to work with Sentinel+ files.  We should do that at some point.  I might start looking into what we might be able to make available.

[blacksly]

I am just curious why everybody is talking about a COH 2 game? We don't know the details of what the negotiators want future wise. Everyone it's spewing out COH 2 when we haven't even gotten the game back yet. What makes you so sure we have coh 2 down the line? Perhaps the team's purpose was to simply get the game back and just be happy at that. Unless there are other developers here building such an entity. We don't even know what the team plan to do with the game.

Wizards will have magic, good or bad.

Coders will code, one way or another. I find the idea that a group will put together a studio capable of purchasing CoH from The Masters of Darkness, get it up and running, run it... and then just sit on the code and IP... well, anywhere from unlikely to ludicrous. They will do something with it, and since it appears that it won't be any easier to continue past I24 than to work on CoH2, it is quite logical and reasonable to assume that they will work on CoH2. Consider that there are several legacy/reverse-engineering projects in the works now, and being worked on without actual pay and contracts. Now, put a similar group of developers (probably larger, actually) together, give them funding (obviously, since they have investors backing them) so that they can work full-time, and something is going to be written for certain. Either I25, or CoH2.

[Ironwolf]

I am just curious why everybody is talking about a COH 2 game? We don't know the details of what the negotiators want future wise. Everyone it's spewing out COH 2 when we haven't even gotten the game back yet. What makes you so sure we have coh 2 down the line? Perhaps the team's purpose was to simply get the game back and just be happy at that. Unless there are other developers here building such an entity. We don't even know what the team plan to do with the game.

I did state many pages ago that they absolutely want to develop CoH2 and do so on another engine whether it is Unity or most likely UnReal4.

In fact at the start they were more interested in getting the IP - the nuts and bolts of CoH rather than the old game itself. It has however slightly changed as they found more was available to purchase at a reasonable price. If you walk into the store thinking to spend $200 on Xmas presents and find they have a 1/2 off sale do you just buy $100 worth of stuff or spend the whole $200? So the deal is to get as much as possible for the money and some of the difficulties I outlined in an earlier post actually helps to lower the price or get more thrown in. That is why I said it is an ongoing thing and some information that is true today may change tomorrow.

It would be the best of worlds to have the original game and port it to UnReal4 and then add CoH2 content. Now you have BOTH games on an updated engine - or they may find that with the original game running they can just roll directly into CoH2 as they then have funding to hire more folks and move faster! So many options open with the original running.

[Codewalker]

It may not be possible for the folks who bring back the game to do anything with the S+ XMLs.

It is possible. I wrote a tool that converts Sentinel+ xml to the character database format used by COH (several sample character dumps were given to me prior to the shutdown to use as a reference). The costume category fixing of Senticon was partially inspired by the heuristic algorithm developed as a part of that. The tool has been gathering dust for the last year or so, but in theory they could be imported into functioning characters.

However, the data is incomplete. There's a lot of information missing that wasn't available to the client and it would very likely cause issues if you had things like badges or incarnate powers, but the game doesn't think that you've actually completed the story arcs to get them. Or are wearing costume parts or weapons that you don't have the internal tokens that say you unlocked them. That kind of inconsistent data can cause all sorts of weird stuff to happen. VEATs are especially messy in how they're implemented.

Even if there weren't a ton of business red tape to clear (ownership of data, possible cheating, etc), I doubt you'd want to import a large number of subtly broken characters like that. They would probably work on the surface, and then result in a lot of support tickets down the line.

[batgirl]

I did state many pages ago that they absolutely want to develop CoH2 and do so on another engine whether it is Unity or most likely UnReal4.

In fact at the start they were more interested in getting the IP - the nuts and bolts of CoH rather than the old game itself. It has however slightly changed as they found more was available to purchase at a reasonable price. If you walk into the store thinking to spend $200 on Xmas presents and find they have a 1/2 off sale do you just buy $100 worth of stuff or spend the whole $200? So the deal is to get as much as possible for the money and some of the difficulties I outlined in an earlier post actually helps to lower the price or get more thrown in. That is why I said it is an ongoing thing and some information that is true today may change tomorrow.

It would be the best of worlds to have the original game and port it to UnReal4 and then add CoH2 content. Now you have BOTH games on an updated engine - or they may find that with the original game running they can just roll directly into CoH2 as they then have funding to hire more folks and move faster! So many options open with the original running.

I've said thanks to you twice, but never thought to quote your reply.  Those are like my only posts until now.

With that said, do you have the links to the new thread you started?  I wanted to post there about asking the new owners if they'd consider letting folks in early who'd help them with beta or even alpha testing if we are willing to pay a substantial premium?

Since the inevitability of this happening has had to have begun to sink in for the group purchasing CoH, I imagine they'd have to start thinking about, "How are we going to test all of this?" and so I know we'd have many people who'd want to test, but perhaps a way to vet them vs. a costly interview process would be via money. 

Thanks again.  I really hope (as I mentioned in my past posts) you get a statue in the New Paragon City (even if you don't care).

[Wyrm]

It works both ways on that.   Those who did save all their characters to Sentinel files and then were told they wasted their time would be punished.

So which group gets "punished"?

I'm not seeing how it's "punishment" to not be allowed to use data generated by a third-party tool that a limited number of people took advantage of. 

I'm just going to use myself as an example of why this would be a terrible idea.

I went through my S+ files last night.  I have over 30 inf-capped characters saved in S+ format, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.  On my main brute, I stacked his off-builds with as many purples and Hamis as I could pull out of my private base.  If these data were imported into a brand new live game, people like me would utterly control the market and break the economy wide open from the start.

Honesty time:  That's why I did it.  Because I liked being super-rich, since IRL I'm not.  And the idea that City might come back and I might be able to be all "Monopoly Tycoon" with it?  I spent too much time in the Rogue Isles for that not to appeal.

In the end, though, I was always more of an Atlas Park guy than a Mercy Island guy.  I would love to have my characters back, but getting them back shouldn't be contingent on a person having read the right forums and run the right program.  It should be everyone, or it should be no one.

Whether you're aware of it or not, you are actually doing a much better job arguing for a fresh start than most of the folks you're "arguing against."  You've actually kind of pushed me from, "Yeah, I want them back," to, "Maybe that's not such a good idea..."

[The Fifth Horseman]

Lastly, if editing Sentinel files is so "easy" as reported by some on these boards, then it also becomes a liability. What's to prevent someone from injecting their imported Sentinel file with code that screws up something in the game? it's happened before in many games, and it could happen again. You're telling me people would not be willing to "risk" having someone edit their game import-able file to max the amount of influence they have, but they'd be perfectly willing to risk having someone edit their game import-able file in order to preserve their costumes?

Sentinel files contain checksums. Unless the person editing them knows the formula used and can recalculate the checksum, it will not match.

Give me a break. If you're going to argue "Sentinel can be edited," then you have to assume EVERYTHING about a Sentinel file can be potentially compromised--and by extension, the game can be compromised. Any file that you allow a player to "import" into a game can be injected with something harmful.

Negative. The file is read as an XML - that's a fairly standard document format - and if any "harmful code" is read and actually gets to execution, it's not Sentinel at fault. SQL injection is a vunerability so well known and documented that it takes a special breed of incompetent fool to not take the one, tiny step needed to prevent it.

[Fridgy Daiere]

With that said, do you have the links to the new thread you started?

http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,10024.0.html

[Fridgy Daiere]

If you walk into the store thinking to spend $200 on Xmas presents and find they have a 1/2 off sale do you just buy $100 worth of stuff or spend the whole $200? So the deal is to get as much as possible for the money and some of the difficulties I outlined in an earlier post actually helps to lower the price or get more thrown in. That is why I said it is an ongoing thing and some information that is true today may change tomorrow

I love the way you use real-world analogies to explain things.

And if I haven't said it before, THANK YOU Ironwolf and folks at Mystery Studio for everything you've done!

Edit:  Perhaps Rogue Studio?  I propose a Name That Studio contest!   

[Azrael]

I did state many pages ago that they absolutely want to develop CoH2 and do so on another engine whether it is Unity or most likely UnReal4.

...

It would be the best of worlds to have the original game and port it to UnReal4 and then add CoH2 content. Now you have BOTH games on an updated engine...

I think this is absolutely the way to go.

1.  CoH: Legacy.

Brings in the money.  We get to play the game at it's finest.  Issue 24.  A fitting epitaph.  (It will effectively be in 'maintenance' mode and who cares?  I'd play that for another ten years.  No problem...)  Give players everything that is practical to give.  A real and fitting incentive to pay for the...

'Box' (virtual...), you pay 'half subs' (so anyone who wants it as their '2nd game' can afford it...) and yes, some 'store' items if it's even possible to run a store without developers tools that went AWOL(?)  At least they can sell the virtual box and subs.  And frankly, I'll pay it.  And so will anyone else who wants to play this game.  At 100k subscribers that's enough to pay for CoH's running costs x3 times over?  (I'll presume the new development team isn't a bloated 85-90 strong team?)

2.  CoH: Renaissance

Funds from CoH: Legacy plus a Kickstarter style crowd fund.  Roll the IP, gameplay, zones into a new client engine.  Unreal 4 Engine looks the business from a visual, player and developer standpoint.  That way we can still have the 'feel' of the original but add new content.

It would be during this development that 2-3 key Paragon Studio developers eg.  Matt (?) and a couple of others for consultation (at least) on what would have been in Issue 25-

ie.  I'm guessing Battalion and then the Moon Base stuff would really kickstart CoH 2.  Which would give great continuity and the Unreal 4 Engine would really do the scope of those ideas justice.

Win.  Win.

Iron Wolf, the recent ten pages or so of revelation from your posts has been riveting.  You've given the CoH community a bite of reality sandwich but you've been as sensitive as you can be with the info' you have.

Ie.  CoH as we knew it is dead.  Time to face the facts.  But we could get Issue 24 to tide us over for a couple of years while CoH 2 is in development (in all proability, by porting 'Classic' over to the Unreal 4 engine and giving us Ultra Mode 2.0 and the possibility of unique 'Unreal 4 Engine' only developments that might not have been possible under the old engine anyhow...)

For the record, I'll still play CoH Legacy.  But I'd expect any port to a new engine to be pretty close and I'd give that a try too.

As for the likelihood of getting alts back.  Looking unlikely at this stage.  Any further development of powers?  Or even finishing the ones slated for issue 24/25?  Tricky.

Both are not impossible...and with current negotiations...these things may come in time.  Eg.  Player accounts for the game.  Eg.  The developer tools MUST be somewhere..?  (It sounds like the shutdown of Paragon Studios was like a raid...  Didn't the forensic team keep copies of all the evidence? )  *shakes head in bemusement.

Talented coders.  Will look at the compiled game and make mincemeat out of it in time.  'Time.'(!)

Eg.  Give someone like Codewalker then entire game/server side as well...and I'd put my money on him to win that fight...in 'TIME.'

And that's my other point.  The new development team can open CoH Legacy to the community in time.  Maybe turn a blind eye to the SCORE project...maybe get help from the community to see what 'can' be done with 'CoH Legacy'.  In time.  But it has to pay the bills and for itself as they look towards CoH 2.  But the modding community have done some interesting stuff with established games over the years.  Opened up to the community (eventually...) who knows what may be achieved. 

Still hoping for an 'offline' mode in time.

I'm very excited by all this.  Even if the deal falls through.  But it sounds quietly promising.

Keep up the sound work, Ironwolf.  The community awaits with baited breath...

Azrael.

[Peerless Girl]

You're lucky.   Getting what you want is easy no matter what happens.   If our characters are restored you can delete them easily.

Yeah, see, not so easy for some of us. I wouldn't be physically able to delete my main, someone else would have to do it for me. If She was restored to me, I'd be stuck with it, because I wouldn't be able to actually delete her.

[Peerless Girl]

Is that how you see the game as it was at shut-down?   A community of haves and have-nots?   If so, that situation was created by time/effort and money....and any "equal footing" will go away extremely quickly for the exact same reasons it went away the first time.   Some people play more, some people play faster.   An interesting bet would be how soon we would see the first lvl 50 toon.   I'm going to say it will happen within the first couple of days.

I just saw someone post on the facebook page that they wanted everyone to start over from square one to make everything "equal" again.    And another person thought that would make the market awesome.   Those people have a big surprise coming.   

I'm not a big market person, but I assume it worked on the principle of supply and demand.   Purple recipes were already rare....imagine how a seller could hold out for ridiculous money with a "fresh" market?    Those will instantly become "insanely rare".   That's not going to drive prices down, is it?   (and there will be people will money to spend in the market pretty quickly I predict)

I knew how to play the market too, my main had several LotGs, Numina's etc. That has nothing to do with this though. No, that's not how I saw the game at shutdown, because the game at shutdown was a thirving vibrant community that had been in that state for 8+ years, still though, there's no reason to exacerbate a divide, and potentially drive off new players, or returning players that hadn't played since, say before the market system even existed, or before the game went free to play. However, I'm aware there's no "winning" this argument. I'm also aware, however, I'm more likely to end up on the "winning" side than you are, since I fully expect everyone will start from scratch.

[AlienOne]

Negative. The file is read as an XML - that's a fairly standard document format - and if any "harmful code" is read and actually gets to execution, it's not Sentinel at fault. SQL injection is a vunerability so well known and documented that it takes a special breed of incompetent fool to not take the one, tiny step needed to prevent it.

Such as the thousands of people who didn't catch the Heartbleed bug?

You're a special kind of person if you think that vulnerabilities in ANY kind of code don't exist because you personally don't know about them.

Point being, if you say people can edit files, they can edit files.

Who's to say someone can't write code that not only imports a costume but also imports a billion influence? The devs self-admitted the game was built on a ton of spaghetti code. There were multiple vulnerabilities that were fixed during the course of the game. Were they stupid because they didn't fix those vulnerabilities right from the start? No, there are just too many variables to consider. If there is a possibility for a file to be editable by a user easily, then an edited file has to be taken into consideration by the new team as a possibility for vulnerability exploitation. There is HUGE precedent for hundreds of games over the past 20 years for exploitation of bugs/code openings--including in City of Heroes. Also, according to Ironwolf, it appears that the new team may be less concerned with "fixing" the old game and more concerned with creating a new game...which means if/when we get CoH back, it's back "as is." If there is a loophole that someone finds somewhere because the game allows for us to import an xml/Sentinel file...should the new team take away time from developing the new game to fix an old game they weren't going after in the beginning of the negotiations anyway?

That's all I'm saying.

[Ironwolf]

Let's also be honest - whether those developmental tools to edit the game could be "found" or not - it still is a very nice point to ask for more or get a lower price. You have to understand the nature of getting the best deal.

You don't go in and say - oh those tools? We don't need 'em we can write more or get 'em from a old dev. You say to NCSoft where are the developmental tools? What! You don't have them? Well it may costs us $100k to make or buy those in man hours or software costs. You do this for every single thing they don't have or is incomplete - including character data and such.

Then you try really hard to make each side unhappy with the deal. If NCSoft has to give some and so does your side - everyone wins. The problem is if NCSoft is willing to acknowledge the time needed to repair the damages done and that character data is definitely affecting the final products value.

I can see why they would not want to give a 3rd party the emails and credit card information to those who may be active players on another of their games. I can understand that.

[Peerless Girl]

And the thing is, "lose" is not an accurate description, this is stuff I've already *lost*, I'm afraid too many people will shift the blame from the game's closure to the game's relaunch.  NCSoft killed my stable of alts when they closed the game 18 months ago.  If/when the game relaunches we should not lay those losses at the feet of the team trying to bring back as much of the game as possible.  The sins of the father are not the sins of the son.  Whatever we get back is pure bonus, not a single thing in "CoH Reloaded" should be considered a loss, any and every functionality restored would be a check on the Plus side of things.  It won't be "I lost my LotGs", those vanished on Nov 30th 2012, it'll be "I *gained* the game".

That's pretty much the best assessment I've heard yet, put the most concisely in this thread. Anything we get is a bonus. My stuff was taken from me and lost when NCSoft closed my game. I will not, under any circumstances blame the new team for anything I don't have.

[Scendera]

I very well could be wrong, but my understanding is transferring CC data would be flat out illegal.

Now, emails? I believe at least permitted by law, and speaking for myself I'd be completely unhesitating in saying "YES!" if asked for permission to do so, in the interests of getting my accounts back. Others might see it far differently, of course.

[Fridgy Daiere]

The problem is if NCSoft is willing to acknowledge the time needed to repair the damages done and that character data is definitely affecting the final products value.

So then speaking logically, we should all complain loudly in this thread that we won't play CoX if we can't have all of our stuffz?  (Whether or not we mean it is irrelevant here.)  Then Rogue Mystery Studio negotiators can say, "We have done extensive market research and...[blah]...crippled the potential value...[blah]...that's not good enough...[blah]...lower...[blah]...you have a deal!"

 

Edited for punctuation.