Let there be LIGHT!...Astoria

[inkblaster]

Unzip THIS (home.comcast.net/~fuzzyweis/scenes.zip) file to your \city of heroes\data\ folder, and let there be light, in Dark Astoria.

Remapped it to the KR shading, so it's still got it's grittiness, but now you can port around without slamming into skyscrapers facefirst.

If a mod sees this as exploitive please delete and I shall disavow all knowledge of said mod. ;)

[IamLink]

If a mod sees this as exploitive please delete and I shall disavow all knowledge of said mod. ;)


lol, I'l try it out. Could use it while looking for adamastor...That f'er still is hiding from me!

[IamLink]

holy god, i highly recommend this mod...it's amazing

[Akurei]

oddly no text overrides have worked for me since I4, including this one

[inkblaster]

Interesting, have you tried wiping your checksum file and doing a rescan?

[suburbanhell]

You Are The Man Inky!!!

[IamLink]

any chance that theres a way you can clean out all textures in DA? I want to find Adamastor so bad....Rocks keep getting in the way, lol.

[Akurei]

if I can get it working right again my old astoria mod removes all haze from zone, makes it bright as talos

[suburbanhell]

Yeah I'd love to see that, this "light fog" is waaaaaaaaay nice but I want something much clearer.

[inkblaster]

You won't be satisfied until every zone is as bright as Talos!!!!! :mad:

It's the same brightness as King's Row, which has good visibility.

[Akurei]

this was my old dark astoria mod, AT NIGHT !!!

Before
http://twilightaegis.com/dark_astoria.jpg
After mod

now if I can only get these blasted text ones working again, could show you all some crazy fun stuff


**It's rather bugging me, deleted checksum, have swapped through several vid drivers, none are letting text mods work like they used to.

[suburbanhell]

You won't be satisfied until every zone is as bright as Talos!!!!! :mad:

It's the same brightness as King's Row, which has good visibility.

Well DA is the only area I really get irritated about -- it's now as bright as KR -- which is a HUGE improvement I'll admit -- but you still really can't see crap...or maybe the mod didn't work right on my end?

[inkblaster]

You put both files in? I think the important one is the Sun one, but to be sure the scene one is needed.

[Akurei]

putting both in currently does nadda for me, still looking for a fix

[inkblaster]

That IS freaky, I just saw what you were talking about Burby

Ok, do this, while the game is running, rename the scene file to something, like cityscene_dark_astoria.txt.bak

and then rename it back to cityscene_dark_astoria.txt

for some reason it has to be dynamic? I dunno, but I had it loaded and walked into ol' Dark Astoria, renamed it and blammo, bright sunna Astoria.

A batch file could be made to do this as well, that you just click on a shortcut to change when you're in DA and want there to be light.

Here's a screenie (http://home.comcast.net/~fuzzyweis/DA_lit.jpg).

[Akurei]

ah good man, that does the trick, and you only need to do it to the sky file, as the scene file has nothing to do with the fog effect

(below I suggest a copy/paste rather than rename, rename. I found in testing renaming it directly, can lead to client crashes.)

heh you pretty much just remade my old mod, though you did find the trick to making it work again, rats off to ya :cool:

On a side note, I'm 100% positive you only need the "sun_dark_astoria" file.

How to make this work, for those lacking the gnome gene.

1. Install the mod of your choice into the appropriate folder.

2. Launch the game

3. Open you Data/scenes/skies folder

4. In this case copy "sun_dark_astoria.txt"

5. Paste the copy into the same folder, which will give you "Copy of sun_dark_astoria.txt"

6. Delete the original mod "sun_dark_astoria.txt"

7. Rename "Copy of sun_dark_astoria.txt" to "sun_dark_astoria.txt"

NOTES
-You will need to do this each time you restart the client for these types of mods to work.
-Zoning doesn't remove the mod, only logging out. In other words you only need to do this, once per login.


On a similar note, since the above method fixes my phase weapon modding trick, I'll make an app that will launch the updater, then 5 min later will auto-launch the mod copy process for you. That way you won't even need to minimize the game.

[Akurei]

then again, txt files can be patched hot, without rebooting, you could just skip the mod until after the client is loaded, and save the rename step, by just dragging the file into the folder later on

[inkblaster]

Or, just rename the data folder back and again. Although most other mods work on load, odd.

Edit, oh, and you're welcome, I wouldn't have stumbled on the solution if I didn't do my testing with the game on. Ocassional crashes are part of the risk. ;)

[IamLink]

hehe, now my council cave mishes are too bright, lmao...YOU SUCK INK! :lol:

[Akurei]

I've got a macro script already setup to launch CoH, and auto delete any old DA mod, and install a new one 5 mins post launch. Everyone got something that can execute mxe files? Or shall I make an exe file to simplify things?

macro script takes half the time to write for this kind of thing, hence why I made that first.

[Akurei]

To make this process as stupid easy as possible. Here's an exe file that will do everything for you.

Download (http://www.twilightaegis.com/Light_CoH_1.0.zip)(430kb)

What the program does:
1. Launches CoH
2. Waits for 2 1/2 minutes giving you time to login and start the real client
3. After 2 1/2 minutes it deletes any old "sun_dark_astoria" mod
4. It then copies a fresh "sun_dark_astoria" into the correct folder for you(from the resource folder included)
5. The script vanishes without a trace, leaving you to play CoH to your hearts content, with no need to ever minimize.


*Notes
1. The file tree for the mod must already be in place for this to work. IE you must already have a Data/scenes/skies folders
2. The game client must have loaded BEFORE the 2 1/2 minute timer is up. IE your character must be in game(not at character select or login screen). Otherwise the mod will fail to load correctly.(If you all feel 2 1/2 min is too short I can increase the time to something you feel is more appropriate)
3. The program is designed to use the DEFAULT CoH install path. "C:\Program Files\City of Heroes\" If your CoH is not located at this location, please tell me. I will make special versions to work for your situation.

Enjoy :cool:



**Thanks for the project Ink, killed a good 5 hours working this one through from start to finish. Could of been 15 on my alt in MxO by now hehe. But oh well this was a great breakthrough against the I4 evilness. I'll post in the next couple days explaining how to use my old phase mods, via the new method. And of course I'll make more programs for you all, so installing is painless.

[Akurei]

Yea sorry this borks a couple other mission instances, there is a cave one, and another offhand. All 3 zones scene files, call on the skies "sun_dark_astoria" file. Which determines all the real lighting settings. Scene files in general apply what textures go where in a given zone, while skies tweak lighting and zone-wide particle fx.

It's a trade off, either dim cave & foggy astoria. Or bright cave & no fog astoria.

Of course you could always modify those other 2 scene files. Create a dummy copy of the original dark astoria sky. Then have the cave scene files, point to the dummy instead of the mod. But still that would be a lot more modding, and because it's text based. It would have to be done post launch for a 100% success. If the super bright caves are really bothering people, I can fix this.

[IamLink]

**Thanks for the project Link, killed a good 5 hours working this one through from start to finish. Could of been 15 on my alt in MxO by now hehe. But oh well this was a great breakthrough against the I4 evilness. I'll post in the next couple days explaining how to use my old phase mods, via the new method. And of course I'll make more programs for you all, so installing is painless.


Is that the no texture mod...er...program...er...macro...er...wtf? o.0

[Akurei]

Was supposed to say "Thanks Ink" been awake a while, and staring at code for far too long.

Yea after he made the post it took about 5 hours to go from.

It not working at all on my system->to figuring out how to make it work for everyone irregardless of system setup->to making a script for easier installing->to converting that script into an application for even easier user installing.


^^^ All while making sure none of this could cause a crash. If I can't keep a mod at 100% of the stability of the original product, it's not up to snuff in my books. Hence why this took 5 hours, not 30 min.

The full history of this mod is stupid old/kinda funny.

-Year ago I talk to rile about tweaking entity files for messing with warwolves.
-This leads to my first dark astoria mod, and the people rejoiced.
-I3 and I4 are released
-Standard text based file overrides cease working.
-Ice or Intel (can't remember) find a way to make it work via bin file modding
-The method is too complicated and fails to catch on
-Someone dropped by my forum asked about alpha textures and why my astoria & phase mods weren't working
-Got me back into modding in general
-Ran across this post today
-Spent the evening making it work for everyone via the new method

[inkblaster]

Is that the no texture mod...er...program...er...macro...er...wtf? o.0


Gad man! Are ye daft! Yer gonna blow a microconverter!

In the wake of Akurei gettin' all Scotty on us with hypermodules and what not, thought I'd make something a little middle of the road.

Unzip this (http://home.comcast.net/~fuzzyweis/sky.zip) file to the \program files\city of heroes\data\scenes\skies\ folder where the dark astoria sky file is.

Right click the sky.bat file in that folder, and choose copy, go to your desktop and choose paste shortcut.

Now, when you don't want the mod, do nothing, when you walk into DA and want some light, click the desktop shortcut and poof, all better. ;)

The servers are down this morning so I haven't had a chance to really test it. If it doesn't work I'll modify it.

edited for miseplilng.

edit, tested, works, DA is still grey and cruddy, but at least you can see more than 5 feet in front of you.

[Akurei]

Gad man! Are ye daft! Yer gonna blow a microconverter!

In the wake of Azurei gettin' all Scotty on us with hypermodules and what not, thought I'd make something a little middle of the road.


Now that's the kinda laugh I need when I wake up lol.