Post your binds, tips & tricks and other helpful hints

[Raptor]

I realized today, while helping TPE with a teleport bind, that the "Post your binds..." thread that used to exist on these forums no longer exists since the forum crash.  That was a tremendously informative thread and I think it is a shame that there is a whole generation of members here that has had to go without that its helpful advice.  So I am restarting it here.  If you have any binds or macros that you think are helpful, feel free to post them here.  Also feel free to post any helpful tools (such as links to hero builders and the like) here.  Many of us have been around for more than 3 years, but remember, there are a lot that are just getting started here, so any and all info you can post will be appreciated.

[Raptor]

I'll get things started.

Here is a guide to using binds that is on the official CoH boards...
THE WHOLLY UNOFFICIAL AND FAIRLY INCOMPLETE GUIDE TO /BIND

And here is the teleport bind that Spud had to help me remember:

/bind lshift+lbutton powexec_name teleport
(this lets you activate the teleport power simply by holding down the left shift key and click the left mouse button)


Also, a good bind for Recall Friend:

/bind t "group $target, prepare to be teleported to my location.$$powexec_name Recall Friend"
(This sent a message across the group channel letting everyone know that a character was about to teleported to the hero using the power, and then activated the Recall Friend power.)

[The Phantom Eyebrow]

Very helpful, thanks Raptor. 

Mikey gave me a bind that allows the character to play an animation and speak some preset dialogue at the same time.  It worked a treat but I forgot to write it down.  Could I be so bold as to ask someone to post the bind here? 

[captainspud]

/bind p "powexec_name Fish Slap$$local EAT FISH!"

[captainspud]

And I'd just like to reinforce that that bind, as well as every other one you could ever need, is in the guide Raptor posted. Over 90% of the binds people asked for help with in the old thread are in that guide if people would bother to look. Seriously, binds are ridiculously useful, so do yourself a favour-- read that guide cover to cover. Even if you don't remember exactly how to do each one, you'll at least remember that it's possible and know where to look it up.

[Raptor]

While sitting bored at work at 3am, I was perusing the net for a CoH hero planner that wasn't blocked by my company's firewall and ran across this little gem.  The info here is up to date (the offline planner I had been using hasn't been updated since I6) and has a great layout. 

Suckerpunch's Online Hero Planner

[El Condor]

I second that, Raptor! I have used that planner and found it to be excellent.  Highly recommended. :thumbup:

EC

[Raptor]

Posted by BAD in another thread:

http://coh.nofuture.org.uk/data/

Red Tomax has updated his site to include a googleplex of data on IO's and such.

[77]

I found this here :
http://www.onlinegamecommands.com/cityofheroes/cityofheroeschatbubblecommands.htm


Chat / Speech Bubble Commands

By default City of heroes chat/speech bubbles are Black text with a black border on a white background. You can customize this to better suit your character or match your Super Group colors.

There is 5 main commands that make up the chat/speech bubble:

bgcolor= The bubble's back ground color.
color = The text/word color.
border = The color of the bubble's border.
duration = Length of time in seconds bubble is displayed.
scale = The size of the text in the bubble

The easiest way to automatically generate new colors for your chat/speech bubble is to update the bind command for the "enter" key, as the enter key is mainly used to start your text string, this is a good place to begin. Start by typing the following into the command line as it is displayed below:

/bind enter beginchat <color ****><bgcolor ****><border ****><duration *>

replace the **** with a color of your choice from the Hex color chart and replace * with a digit in seconds you wish it to be displayed for. You can use the name of the color or the code, but the code is preferable as you can use additional commands with the hex codes that wont work with the color name.



If i wanted to make my speech bubbles have a red border, white text on a blue background and be displayed for 10 seconds i would use the following: Note: there is no spaces between the >< commands.

/bind enter beginchat <color #FFFFFF><bgcolor #0000FF><border #FF0000><duration 10>



If i wanted to make the bubble slightly transparent i can add in an additional value in as a percentage, 0% being totally transparent and 100% not transparent at all. This will allow you to see the scenery behind the speech bubble. Lets make the background 50% transparent by using the following command:

/bind enter beginchat <color #FFFFFF><bgcolor #0000FF50><border #FF0000><duration 10>

notice the extra 50 i placed after the color command, this tells city of heroes interface to make the blue background 50% transparent. Very cool effect :)



You can also change the size of the text in the bubble, great for those of you running CoH is super high resolutions. The scale command is employed here with values of 0 to 4, 1 being default. Go larger fonts with a value of 4 or smaller with a value of 0.5. You can insert the scale command onto the end of the command line we have so far, like this:

/bind enter beginchat <color #FFFFFF><bgcolor #0000FF50><border #FF0000><duration 10><scale 2>



Now you have bound the new chat/speech bubble commands successfully every time you hit ENTER to say something the command we have bound to the enter key will pop up, now type your text that you want to say and press enter again to say it. If all goes well your bubble will have a new color scheme.

If you wish to have multiple color scheme's you can set up more bind commands for different color sets, just replace the word ENTER with a key that is not in use, like this:

/bind q beginchat <color #FFFFFF><bgcolor #0000FF50><border #FF0000><duration 10><scale 2>



And color codes here
http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_colornames.asp

[Kommando]

Been playing around with these.  Something I made to make my Ninja band.  My ninja are named Takara, Bandai and Jounin-Tendo.

/bind home "local Ninja Party!!$$emote BBYellow$$petsayall Hai!$$petsay_name Takara <em drum>$$petsay_name Bandai <em drumlow>$$petsay_name Jounin-Tendo <em dance>"

You only need to use parts of pet names, such as petsay_name Tak instead of petsay_name Takara.  When I get more pets I will be experimenting with the petcom_ commands.

[Uncle Yuan]

I found this here :
http://www.onlinegamecommands.com/cityofheroes/cityofheroeschatbubblecommands.htm


Chat / Speech Bubble Commands

By default City of heroes chat/speech bubbles are Black text with a black border on a white background. You can customize this to better suit your character or match your Super Group colors.

There is 5 main commands that make up the chat/speech bubble:

bgcolor= The bubble's back ground color.
color = The text/word color.
border = The color of the bubble's border.
duration = Length of time in seconds bubble is displayed.
scale = The size of the text in the bubble

The easiest way to automatically generate new colors for your chat/speech bubble is to update the bind command for the "enter" key, as the enter key is mainly used to start your text string, this is a good place to begin. Start by typing the following into the command line as it is displayed below:

/bind enter beginchat <color ****><bgcolor ****><border ****><duration *>

replace the **** with a color of your choice from the Hex color chart and replace * with a digit in seconds you wish it to be displayed for. You can use the name of the color or the code, but the code is preferable as you can use additional commands with the hex codes that wont work with the color name.



If i wanted to make my speech bubbles have a red border, white text on a blue background and be displayed for 10 seconds i would use the following: Note: there is no spaces between the >< commands.

/bind enter beginchat <color #FFFFFF><bgcolor #0000FF><border #FF0000><duration 10>



If i wanted to make the bubble slightly transparent i can add in an additional value in as a percentage, 0% being totally transparent and 100% not transparent at all. This will allow you to see the scenery behind the speech bubble. Lets make the background 50% transparent by using the following command:

/bind enter beginchat <color #FFFFFF><bgcolor #0000FF50><border #FF0000><duration 10>

notice the extra 50 i placed after the color command, this tells city of heroes interface to make the blue background 50% transparent. Very cool effect :)



You can also change the size of the text in the bubble, great for those of you running CoH is super high resolutions. The scale command is employed here with values of 0 to 4, 1 being default. Go larger fonts with a value of 4 or smaller with a value of 0.5. You can insert the scale command onto the end of the command line we have so far, like this:

/bind enter beginchat <color #FFFFFF><bgcolor #0000FF50><border #FF0000><duration 10><scale 2>



Now you have bound the new chat/speech bubble commands successfully every time you hit ENTER to say something the command we have bound to the enter key will pop up, now type your text that you want to say and press enter again to say it. If all goes well your bubble will have a new color scheme.

If you wish to have multiple color scheme's you can set up more bind commands for different color sets, just replace the word ENTER with a key that is not in use, like this:

/bind q beginchat <color #FFFFFF><bgcolor #0000FF50><border #FF0000><duration 10><scale 2>



And color codes here
http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_colornames.asp

Can't most of these be set with sliders on the option page?  I know you can do background color and text color.

[MJB]

I don't think you can customize the border color with the slider.

-MJB

[Stopman]

1. Vidiotmaps/BadgeWhore is your best friend. They also have some good download utilities as well.
2. ParagonWiki is your second best friend.
3. An off-line hero planner with IO support
4. How to enable Unicode support in Chat for different character sets, like Kanji, for example.
5. Demo Launcher, plus an issue update history.
6. Red/Dread Tomax's Site has been posted above, but Artophobia's has some still-useful CoH storyline info, and Trekain's CoV Contact Guide goes through contacts/arcs/badges/unlockables by zone and contact tree.
7. TweakCOH will let you set your game-client options even before you login, plus it offers a slew of other useful utilities and diagnostics.

[77]

With the cheapness of wings, almost every toon could have them. Then I had an idea, wings popping out just for flight.
you have to macro it :(

first costume slot will need to be the one with wings (can use any you want)
second costume should be exact to the first minus the wings (can use any you want)

you may want to change the "flyon, flyoff" to something a bit shorter for the macro, ie: F0 F1

/macro flyon "powexec_name Fly$$cc 0"    ((this toggles fly on and changes to the first costume slot))
/macro flyoff "powexec_name Fly$$cc 1"   ((this toggles fly off and changes to the second costume slot))

first costume slot 0
second 1
third 2
fourth 3
fifth 4

[captainspud]

You can do the wing toggle on a single key without cluttering your tray with macros.

For this example, I'll use F, my default travel key. I'll assume your wingless costume is in slot 0 and winged is in slot 1.

1. Make two files: fly1.txt and fly2.txt. Save them in a directory whose path contains no spaces. "C:\CoHBinds" works. "C:\CoH Binds" does not.
2. Put a single line in each:

f "powexec_name Fly$$cc 0$$bind_load_file c:\CoHBinds\fly2.txt"

f "powexec_name Fly$$cc 1$$bind_load_file c:\CoHBinds\fly1.txt"

3. Highlight the following line of bind code and paste it into your CoH chat box:

/bind f "powexec_name Fly$$cc 1$$bind_load_file c:\CoHBinds\fly1.txt"

4. Hit Enter to "submit" the bind.
5. Hit F to enter the rebinding cycle. Cycle it a couple times to make sure it flips you on and off. Remember that your costume will switch only once per 30 seconds, so you won't get that visual cue every time.

That's all typed from memory, so there could be a mistake somewhere, but it SHOULD work.

There are a couple interesting things you can do with file loads... two of my favourites are a three-way cycle between No Flight, Flight, and Hover (used on my PB to fly toward bad guys and suddenly switch to Hover when I'm in melee for the KB protection) and spamming a single key to fire your entire attack cycle (used on my Rad corruptor, who I get really bored fighting with).

[Valandar]

I just tried that, Spud... and the end result I get is a totally random costume change when I fly.

[captainspud]

It shouldn't be random. Hell, I don't even know how to make a random number in bind syntax. I don't think you can.

[Valandar]

*shrug* Well, I have it set to switch to Costume Slot 3 (my fourth slot, the one with wings), and then switch back to slot 0... but when I tried it, sometimes I'd be winged, sometimes I'd be Silver Age (slot 1), and sometimes I'd be in civvies (slot 2). I ended up simply binding a fly toggle and slot 3 to "F", and fly toggle and slot 0 to "G".

[captainspud]

Are you sure you're not just on crack?

Are you absolutely sure?