City of Heroes: Ask a Dev

Vince D'Amelio is the Senior Programmer on City of Heroes and the subject of our next "City of Heroes Ask a Dev". We have a profile of him, then we want to hear your questions in the comment thread so that he can turn around and answer a selection.

Vince D'Amelio

So, who is Vince D'Amelio:

Vince D'Amelio is a long time gamer, starting out playing D&D, Diplomacy and other tabletop games. With the advent of PCs, he moved into playing computer games such as Ultima and Wizardry, eventually learning to program so he could create his own games. He went on to study Computer Science at Cornell University and after several years in the corporate world, entered the computer game industry in 1998. Working as a programmer, Vince contributed to numerous titles including Thrasher: Skate & Destroy, Dave Mirra BMX 1&2, and Aggressive Inline before following his passion for online games to join Cryptic Studios in 2004 right after the launch of City of Heroes to work on the continued development of that title and City of Villains.

Check out the profile after the jump.

In the latest community driven "Ask a Dev" Q&A with a member of the City of Heroes team we talk to Melissa "War Witch" Bianco, the CoH World Designer. She answers a slew of questions in amazing detail, all of them from the community.

Remember, for our next installment, you get to ask the questions of Senior Programmer Vince D'Amelio. Check out the intro here.

Master0: Also will you ever introduce weather to create a more realistic environment?

War Witch: Ah weather. Yes, that's been brought up a few times.

So the short answer is 'no'. At the end of the day, we try to implement a system that has a lot of impact in terms of content and playability. Weather, for all intents and purposes, is an aesthetic that doesn't (ultimately) give the player anything to 'do'. (Well, except maybe slip and slide and not see well when it's snowing or hailing. I'm not knocking slipping and sliding. I love our chalet!!)

So this is my personal opinion. Your mileage may vary.

Read more after the jump.

A few months ago we got going on a community driven Q&A series between you the fans and Cryptic where fans around the world, but primarily on WarCry, get to ask questions of specific game developers. Here is the latest Q&A and be sure to get your questions in for Melissa Bianco, the World Designer.

Community Qestion (Belga): Can we be given access to the NPC costume pieces? Many players would love to use the Carnival of Shadows pieces, for example, and I'd really like to have access to the Mu Mystics costumes.

Jay Doherty: When NPCs where first made there was no intention to give players those costume pieces, mostly because they would not work with other costume pieces (ex: clipping, overlapping) When the PPD exobot guys were first put into the game, players really wanted those pieces for themselves. Unfortunately all those pieces where made to work with each other not as separate pieces, and they look really silly if you don't have all the pieces on. So to address this we have come up with a few solutions. First, while not completely copying the carnival of shadows I have built a completely new costume set with the flavour of the carnival. Second, there will be a new NPC group that was built with the player in mind, all costume pieces from this NPC group will be something players will be able to wear. Now depending on how the players respond to this is how we'll handle more things in the future. Please don't think that every NPC costume group from this point on will be given to the players, but I will put forth the effort to do as many as possible.

Read more after the click.

It's been a while, but we're back on track with our City of Heroes Community Quiz series. This time, we're talking to Melissa Bianco, the World Designer for City of Heroes / Villains. If you have questions about this game's unique world, she's the one to ask.

Click below for a full profile then ask your questions in our comment thread.

Jay Doherty is a character artist with Cryptic Studios and the subject of our fourth CoH Community Quiz, coming soon. Today, we give you a profile of this wacky character and what he does so that you can get your questions in for the next Q&A.

Does He have a "Persona" in the game?
Yeah, but I'm not going say. I'm not any of the signature characters. I'm usually the dead guy in the corner; not moving, cause I'm dead. Sometimes I go into the game as a box, move when no one is around, and then wait for someone to notice. If you know me it's because of my tireless efforts on the costume forums or most likely because it was foretold that the sexiest man alive would be born, his name would be Jay, and Paris erected the Eiffel tower in the prophecy of my coming.

Read more at the link below.

Serdar Copur is a producer for City of Heroes/City of Villains at Cryptic Studios. He was the subject of our most recent CoH Community Quiz. After our last Q&A, we profiled Copur and asked you to give your questions. Chosen from among those and those posted on foreign language forums, we bring you the latest Q&A.

We also have a profile live for the next community Q&A! Jay Doherty's profile is available here.

arthurh3535: What is the hardest 'programming' thing that you want to eventually add to the game?

Serdar Copur: Blue-sky questions are so much fun. The most difficult thing to develop that I would like to add to our game is a completely new database architecture which allows every single player who plays CoH & CoV to be able to play on the same game server. This means no more server selection screens, no more re-rolling because your real life friends are not on the same server as you, and no more trouble finding a group at 3:00 AM because everyone else is sleeping. It's not an impossible endeavor but my programming team assures me that there is nothing more time consuming and complicated that we could develop for our game at this point. I guess we can always dream.

Read more at the link below.

Today, we're gearing up for the third installment of our series on City of Heroes. In the coming weeks, we will get answers from Producer Serdar Copur about his role in the game and more on the game itself.

To make that happen, we need your questions. We have a brief bio for you. Check that out below, then leave us your questions in the comment thread.

In our second CoH community quiz, we're talking to Jack Emmert, the CCO of Cryptic Studios about City of Heroes. Recently, we gathered a few questions from our community to pose and those joined questions from European servers gathered by NCSoft to form this interview.

dwightsteel: What has been ironed out so far in terms of the I9 Inventions system? We've heard the response of "you can create any reward", but are there any specifics you can offer? Maybe we can have a small taste in terms of what we can expect to see, or just something a little more specific than what we've been getting?

Jack Emmert: A player could potentially make any temporary power, Inspiration, Enhancement or costume piece...That's what the potential of the Invention system is. Right now, my favorite part is never worrying about expiring Enhancements. I'd hate to level up only to find out that all of my Enhancements needed upgrading. Sigh. Well, the Invention system now gives everyone pretty easy to make Enhancements that circumvent this.

You can read more below.

Roughly every month, we're working to gather together a 100% fan generated Q&A with a key member of the Cryptic Studios development team. Lead Designer Matt Miller kicked things off last month when he agreed to sit for questions from our community (see his intro here). Next month, Creative Director Jack Emmert will be our guest. Read on for the answers.

WarCry [LemonLass]: When will you add custom colors for powers? This is something alot of us have wanted since the game came out because I believe it is vital to a hero or villians uniqueness.

Matt Miller: As much as I would love to have a purple energy blast or green fire, I don't see it happening anytime soon. The problem stems from both the way the powers were made, and the sheer amount of powers we have, some of which are obviously un-colorable. We did some internal experimentation with power colorization back before City of Villains launched, and while pleased with the results, it in reality proved to us that undertaking the task of adding this to the game was going to be monumental. Time and money would simply be better spent making content for the game that actually meant something to the power of your character as opposed to something purely cosmetic.

You can read the Q&A by clicking below.

Jack Emmert is the Creative Director of Cryptic Studios and the second guest in our City of Heroes Community Quiz. This roughly monthly event gives the CoH community the chance to pose questions of key Cryptic staff. Find out a bit about Jack, then leave your questions in the comment thread.

So just who is Jack Emmert? Find out inside!

Today we kick off an exclusive new series of community-based interviews with developers on Cryptic Studios' City of Heroes/Villains. Every so often, the community will be given a chance to submit questions to a developer.

To kick things off, we bring you this profile of our first guest Lead Designer Matt "Positron" Miller. He answers a couple questions to get us started.

Details on how to submit your questions to be asked are at the end of the interview.