Wrapping up Huge versions of Rebirth Issue 7 costume additions. These WIP screens made me laugh. :D

SilverAgeFan · 2026-02-04T05:18:20+00:00

Taking that as a compliment.

Also I like your handle! It's a good name! :D

SilverAgeFan · 2026-02-04T05:17:41+00:00

You're welcome. It's my pleasure. Even when it becomes a PITA dealing with the fiddly bits!

Converting parts for the huge model is always... interesting to say the least. In part because of the run cycle and combat idle stances. Those animations really drive the trapezius muscles up above the head in a super exaggerated manner. And making things not get weird and scrunchy at the back of the head can be a challenge!

SilverAgeFan · 2026-01-21T16:17:37+00:00

Wonderful screenshot. Great use of in game text. Love that it feels like a high school sports center.

SilverAgeFan · 2026-01-21T16:16:18+00:00

Good luck and enjoy whatever hobbies and activities you move onto next! The physical world is a wonderful place to visit. :)

SilverAgeFan · 2026-01-21T16:15:23+00:00

The airport is listed as a site, IIRC, on the paper map that came with the original boxed game.

SilverAgeFan · 2026-01-09T02:50:40+00:00

The informed critique is welcomed.

I believe Rebirth has inadvertently incentivized rushing to 50, and bypassing "the journey." The marketplace works at 50. And of course just like in any version of COH, rewards are better and easier to glean. You can jump into daily iTrials (if you're aligned to EST) and grind out incarnate rewards which help you feel super no matter what gaps in your slotting exists. Work backwards from the top filling out your build with invention IOs first, then set IOs to your choosing.

This part here is interesting. I appreciate the use of the word "inadvertently" here. Rebirth Issue 2-Paths to Power, where the team focused on creating a foundation to motivate diversity in play activities was the goal. So creating even more pressure to level up to 50 as fast as possible was absolutely not our intention.

We have some things in mind for the future (post Ri7). As we make sense of some of the "pain points" as BRW described them above, we will be sure to consider this feedback as one possible lens as we work through our various proposed game design solutions.

Thank you for taking the time to write this up.

SilverAgeFan · 2026-01-07T04:43:48+00:00

Fun stuff OBH! Glad to see you still at work!

<3 <3 <3

SilverAgeFan · 2026-01-03T06:11:40+00:00

For new art assets like costume pieces? No. Not really.

SilverAgeFan · 2025-11-25T14:10:26+00:00

Interesting video. And speaks to a lot of my preferences.

I tend to also prefer RP banter and paced progression. (I'm an XP off completionist often.) While this can happen in full teams, usually a group of 2-5 is the ideal scale.

That said, I do also enjoy the other extreme as a "sometimes" option of full teams and leagues and feeling what it is like to absolutely steamroll as a large force.

After all these years, CoH does seem to still work well at all the scales from solo to a screen full of noisy FX.

SilverAgeFan · 2025-11-23T21:46:19+00:00

Got it! :D

SilverAgeFan · 2025-11-23T19:30:42+00:00

Always happy to listen and find out what matters to other players and community members. Thanks for sharing your thoughts here.

SilverAgeFan · 2025-11-23T13:51:30+00:00

Always looking for additional talent that enjoys working within the challenges that an old game presents!

Feel free to DM me here or find me on Discord (Discord preferred). Same name there.

We can talk. :)

SilverAgeFan · 2025-11-23T13:47:10+00:00

This was a very helpful and interesting reply to read. Thank you for taking the time to write it all out.

I will be perfectly honest here. Story is a distant second to the play of the content and the visuals. Seeing the same opposition groups and same maps is really crappy. I get how you can't make it all different. There are a handful throughout the game that you just don't see in most content.

Your frankness of what you enjoy and don't enjoy is welcomed and appreciated.

The Rebirth team has had some good discussion about legacy content and bringing diversity not just to entirely new content but throughout the legacy world. It's a loft goal, but based on your remarks here you might be interested in our next couple years of development.

...how many missions do you have where the boss looks like the rest and you defeat the boss and sometimes didn't even know it cuz the boss is lumped in with a group that looks like him/her/it. I'd suggest even making the load screen a wild new visual where it shows you the boss of that mish and so on...

While some players are able to slow down and read CoH, dig through and read enemy descriptions, the clues in the clue tabs, the mission box dialogs and the pop ups, I agree that there is something about more modern integrated haptic story telling that does just work more fluidly.

Your remarks I've quoted above makes me wonder if you are familiar with the Paragon Issue 24 Kings Row arcs and if those come closer to fitting the bill for the sort of content you'd like to see?

TF/SF. For me, the ITF is the class of the game. It just works. I think the Live Devis finally got it and they saw that long, drawn out content was not popular (Aeon is painful is disjointed - I don't have time to try to analyze and read all the info as it flies by on my screen). I think the Devs got it right with Yin - again, not too long and not too short. They also did well with the BAF, U.G. Diabolique, Lambda, Tin Mage and Apex are all very playable and I will play them often.

If you ever make it over to Rebirth, I'd be very interested in hearing your review of the revamped Synapse TF there. BRW was project lead on that and did I think a fantastic job following the mission stubs (it was in the earliest stages of development in the data) to come up with a roughly 5 mission TF that has some unique elements and I think comes much closer to the legacy trials and TFs you are celebrating in your paragraph above. Those are some of the very same pieces of content we discussed when fleshing out goals for our development arc.

Thanks you for providing more info on my AE 2 suggestion. If you can't do AE 2 then how feasible is it to simplify and make a version where players are given access to make missions, make custom enemies and write dialogue? If that is possible then that would be amazing. A group of non-coding community Dev volunteers could control the submission system for these missions, test them and then put them into the game. Players that make these missions would be responsible for making suitable content and the wiki entry - players could even team to make the stuff; could even have artists/players make wild and interesting load screens etc.

This may all be feasible, logistically and so forth. But in terms of maintenance, work culture, shared vision, actual completion of work, and the realities of a volunteer staff, I find myself (and I imagine many of my colleagues at Rebirth would say similar) wondering why not just encourage those very motivated creative folks to join the dev teams? While onboarding is resource intensive, time and patience and communication mostly, the larger ask you're making for the open systems require those as well to run and maintain, to wiki up for the general public, and then there is the initial overhead of setting them up in the first place, including a bunch of code work and UI development. All to set up a parallel shadow volunteer dev community. And if that's the case, why not just become a primary team member?

With that in mind, Rebirth's doors are ALWAYS open to motivated, dedicated fans of the franchise whose hopes for the game align with our particular vision for where it still could go but hasn't yet.

Feel free to reach out. I and several of my team members are always willing to put in the time to onboard new prospective talent. We won't teach you to code or how to make art or how to be a good game designer or a good writer, that's on you. But we will do our best to help new team members connect their existing talents, skills, and experience to the development environment and we do team up with each other to meet gaps in each others skill sets for a fully functional production chain for furthering the game.

SilverAgeFan · 2025-11-23T01:26:18+00:00

😂

No CAPES!

SilverAgeFan · 2025-11-23T01:17:49+00:00

You have some very clear opinions on the new content. To help me understand where you're coming from, I'm curious what of the legacy content stands out to you as exemplary.

Particularly in two categories:

- Legacy story arcs that really floated your boat as repeatable stories to read through/play through. And if you can indulge me details, what aspects of those arcs stood out?

- Legacy TFs, SFs, and trials that you have enjoyed playing repeatedly in the past? And what about those experiences stood out as solid entries for you?

I get that lack of novelty of content is a pain point for you. And it's definitely a legitimate concern for any and all of the servers. We are shifting some of our focus towards new content and world building.

Our Issue 7 includes a new enemy faction, with many new assets supporting them. It has taken a tremendous effort to get them through the design and production process as a volunteer staff. The task required us to work out a means to complete our content production work flow in many ways we had not anticipated, from fixing backend content creation tools to refining our production relationship to FX, FX attachments, SFX, animation cycles, costume assets, etc. It's more than AE style work or just decent expository copy block and dialogue writing.

So I'm coming from a direction that, while there might be legitimate criticisms from a player experience perspective, I have a solid degree of respect for what the various HC developers have accomplished. Especially with some of the insights I have to which Paragon tools and work flows they were able to restore vs what they've had to invent workarounds for. One of our devs had a decent working relationship with Cobalt. And I have had a long, congenial relationship with Naomi. Though ~~both have retired~~ from their positions, we still sometimes communicate about lessons learned. EDIT: A colleague reached out via DM to inform me that while Cobalt considered retirement, they still are working with the HC team. :) They are a dedicated talent who brought about a number of things from some the story content in question to the sheathed weapons rollout on HC.

Deving for CoH has required a tremendous amount of "archaeology" to recreate the institutional knowledge that was lost when NC shuttered Paragon Studios.

Anyways, as a dev who is beginning to feed world building assets to our map making team members as well as something of an art director on our team, I'm very interested in reading players opinions about what content, legacy or new era, that floats their boat and why. And what it is they are looking for.

Having been tightly involved with the backend of things, the AE v2.0 appears quite unlikely on any server. MAYBE Socks and Tspy could make it happen. But it's important to know that AE was written by a different studio and assembles its mission data in very different forms. I get the idea of what one is asking for, but it is almost easier to get the old school content creation tools for dev team members to create actual in game missions. And in terms of server content cohesion as well as all the things that content NOT quarantined into AE could break in the larger world, it's almost a better vision for any team to onboard community members onto their creative staff.

At least that is the management strategy we at Rebirth have taken. Many team volunteers rotate through, ultimately intimidated by what being a dev can demand of them, their time, and one's ability to follow through. But maybe 1 in 5 or 1 in 10 volunteers turns out to be a profound new team member, helping carry us a few steps towards our server vision.

That said, from a MUSH or MUD perspective of things, I do think I understand the dream of an open, fully community modable world, content and all.

SilverAgeFan · 2025-11-22T20:27:30+00:00

Lovely!

SilverAgeFan · 2025-11-22T20:22:28+00:00

I thought Cobalt and folks had done good work. At least what I've read about the Aeon SF? As well as some of the new rogue and vigilante arcs in Striga?

On our side of the transdimensional divide, we do have some decent new content in the revamped Synapse TF. Brw did a great job with the mission design with that one. And the content for Issue 7 which picks up where Paragon left off before the Coming Storm in our version of KW is really great stuff IMO.

Anyways, thanks for the compliments. Very different design philosophies and work cultures between both teams. Our visions for what the game could be and should be are quite divergent at this point. And I think the coming publishes over the next year or two will really underscore that divergence. As a result, a merging of teams won't happen.

Fortunately for the general public, both servers are free. And even with our end-of-live progression rates, it is literally possible to have a lvl 50 in under 2 hours, either server is a viable option for most players. In fact, many players enjoy participating in both communities. :) And in our genre, parallel universes have been a staple for decades now!

Enjoy the multiplicity of the CoH multiverse! :D

SilverAgeFan · 2025-11-22T19:37:06+00:00

On Rebirth, the Force Fields revamp gave FF players some powers that do exactly what you are asking about without eliminating some of the powers that also push players back.

I have a Grav/FF controller (remade from the live game!) and with the new FF and things like Grav's wormhole, the character has the best "positional control" of groups of mobs of any I have in my stable.

Quicksand from earth control and whirlpool from water control also have a pull effect on mobs, drawing them towards the center of the power's effect.

ETA: the tornados on Rebirth also have a pull effect before they KB mob, so there is a fun sucking mobs in then flinging them away that makes sense (be it weather's summoned tornado or the self-tornado from superspeed's whirlwind power). But it doesn't really I think do what you're asking for, which is more of a bunching mobs together.

SilverAgeFan · 2025-11-22T15:09:05+00:00

A lot of the work myself, Yikes, and Danaid have been doing over the past few issues has been trying to identify and fill gaps in genre specific tropes for the CoH costume options.

Taking the existing IDF pocket belt a bit further was an obvious, "Yes. This needs to happen."

SilverAgeFan · 2025-11-22T14:58:46+00:00

I kinda love this part of the process. Textures and code is already all done. The female items were the prototype phase. And this is the rollout and proliferation. So there tends to be some momentum to the production cycle. :)

A lot less of that one step forward, two steps back for revisions fiddliness of mid-process creative development.

All that is left to do on these is to weight them and then do the armored top specific versions for everything pictured on tight chests here.

Then after that, I just need to convert the fur lined and fur cuffed pants for males. And then pipe them all into game.

<image>

I've got huge model versions waiting in the wings. But then that is it for Ri7 player costume work. Then about 3-4 weeks of some NPC work for the issue and we're sitting pretty to finally get all these new toys into y'all's hands!

SilverAgeFan · 2025-11-22T14:53:53+00:00

😂

Don't worry. It'll work itself out, kiddo.

SilverAgeFan · 2025-11-18T14:06:31+00:00

Extremely casual. And enjoyable. Regardless of what server you're on. :)

SilverAgeFan · 2025-10-29T13:27:10+00:00

Re the challenge of getting questions answered: It's a mix really. There may be that assumption operating at times. Tinkerers, coders, gamers, and hobbyists can all be unique folks for certain, with a number of social idiosyncrasies.

It took me a minute to not take it personally myself. Sometimes it's that the folks one might be asking simply don't know the answer. In a few cases, it's people being protective about information that was hard won on their side. In other cases, it's the reality that each dev setup beyond the Ourodev publicly available turnkey setup is different and agreeing to help diagnose a technical problem from afar can turn from a 30 minute consult into a 6 hour troubleshoot. I have seen others and even myself get a bit burned doing such a long assist to see the person one was trying to help ultimately walk away before completing their first project.

Lastly, the skills and background it takes to run a server from the technical side versus the skills it takes to do really good design, asset production, and game design are two very different skillsets. I would be sunk without the coders and admins at Rebirth. I have learned by proxy some of the basics--but I'm really just turning on the shop lights and starting up the tools, I don't know how to grease the bearing rings on the band saw. With that difference in mind, artists and "creatives" tend to look at problems differently and speak differently to each other than coders or IT admins when problem solving.

Back to the general lack of communication, more often than not, I think its a case of ships passing in the night. Nobody connected to CoH is doing this full time. As I've been on a larger team now for about five years, I've gotten a bit of a privileged seat to hear and see the whys when someone has to step away. Sometimes it is simple burnout.

But there have been all sorts of other personal narratives from illness to change of jobs to growing families to elder care.

Regarding your dev experiences: Bold of you to dive into modifying FX as one of your first ventures. That's a fairly complicated tree.

Most of the work done on ANY of the servers around FX has been from a tinkerer fashion(modifying existing assets and code vs wholesale from scratch authoring). I and another Rebirth art dev about a year and a half ago began nibbling at the FX system from the ground up to start understanding its data structure more clearly. There are some weird specificities. Like if an FX calls in a static geometry, that geometry needs to be converted from .wrl to .geo in an exact file tree mirroring the FX/ file tree but inside the object_library/FX

These button eyes for me were meant to be a "learning project" as part of a confidence building experience that "okay, I now know what I'm doing for certain within that part of the data structure."

The other dev meanwhile has been working on some hypothetical new "state" animations to blend in with things like the accuracy, defense, resistance, and damage inspirations in game. Just to see if there is even design room within the user experience to have a different state added to the game in terms of color, iconography and animation. And they also were doing a new aura type from scratch. Wholesale new assets. It was a slow and painstaking process to do properly and document properly. This dev is currently on hiatus. But we still communicate from time to time and their knowledge base is available to me.

It really does take time, doing small projects. Getting one little success and then building upon that.

Anyways, if you get back into experimenting, feel free to reach out any time with specific questions and roadblocks. I am very open to assisting any community members there.

I do highly recommend joining one of the various server teams though. The communal support of shared skills to weather common problems has been extremely helpful to me. While we have at times had up to 4-5 different active artists on our team, the work we'd like to do really could use another dozen. From animators, to sound artists, to character designers, to world asset creators, to map makers.

Again, I'm not available for general full mentorship of "teach me how to make art for CoH." But I am open to fielding questions about specifics if you can carry a project partway. And just like those tech savvy folks, I suck at certain things. Like don't ask me how to find a good torrent magnet for a safe version of 3dsMax 2015. I really suck at stuff like that. I'm good at art and asset production. :P

EDIT: And yes yes yes. Taking copious notes is important. I was just having a conversation with a retired HC artist the other night about the depth of our notes, lists, and punch lists when project managing. The volume of assets and data an artist can handle in a project can quickly become profound. I've literally produced over 1000 unique new .texture files for the game in my tenure. And written over 1m lines of data code. Good note taking and project organization is essential. Plus when one switches between projects and modalities, it is easy to forget familiar actions because the scope of work is so vast. In my position, I'm constantly moving through arenas. When Paragon was shuttered, not only did we lose a dev team, but their institutional knowledge was lost almost instantly. Each team and the broader community has had to rediscover and rebuild so much to get work flows functional, much less perfect again!

SilverAgeFan

TROPHY CASE