Thanks, Petra. In 2005 I was really loving my brand new dSLR.

More from the Wedding of 2005

Some chitlins running about


A boy with his dirt throwing cup


A boy catching the football


I didn't know which of these I liked more. The first and third here have had there black level adjusted.

(After looking at this one as posted, some compression algorhitm seems to have wonked some pixels up there. I don't notice it on the original, or on the shrinked one I have on file.)

Moon on the left, original exposure.


Moon to the right, adjusted.


The groom's fambly, his best man brother in the orange.


We had one heck of a shooting gallery going in the middle of the festivities. A number of other picture takers were lined up around me. We had a system with each group looking at each camera person in turn.


One of the more cuterer pictures from the evening. She was refusing to smile until we got this face.


Groom's mum and I facing off.

As you progress through your life of heroism (or villainy, it's kinda the same really) you will be rewarded with enhancements; bits of bauble that will improve your powers in one form or another. Or, if you're really good and Santa loves you enough you will gain influence or infamy (the currency of Heroes or Villains, respectively) and you can buy your way to superiority.

In the beginning you will receive the lowest form of enhancement there is: Training, or in game parlance, TO. Consider these your practice enhancements. If you are using them beyond level 20 you should be … taken care of. They do make some difference but not a lot.


This is your generic looking enhancement screen. You get here by pressing the Manage button on your enhancement tray. If you are ever at a loss as to what enhancement goes where you can hover over the power in question and a tool tip will present itself. (With the exception of Disabling tool tips altogether this tool tip will appear immediately.)


You can also grab the enhancement with the mouse and any power it can go it will highlight itself.


Once you have determined where a given enhancement goes you slot it. ()

That's all well and good but enhancements have a nasty habit of becoming unuseful the more powerful you become. For instance: At level 3 you can purchase a level 5 enhancement that will naturally last you until level 8. At this point you can either replace it outright – or be frugal and combine it.


To combine enhancements, click on the power you wish to enhance. You will be presented with the above screen. First, select the enhancement in the power.


Then select the enhancement to combine it with the one from the tray.

The system calculates your odds of success and you can press Combine! A successful combination enhances the enhancement and you get a fancy little + next to the level of the enhancer enhancing your ability to enhance justice (or villainy!) on the unwitting or dimwitted.

An unsuccessful combination drops the lower value enhancement leaving you with the other.


As early as level 12 you can purchase Dual Origin (DO) enhancements that are twice as effective as Training enhancements.

As early as level 22 you can purchase Single Origin (SO) enhancements that are twice as effective as Dual Origin enhancements.

At any level you can purchase Invention Origin (IO) enhancements from allies or the Consignment Market (Wentworth's) or Black Market. The use of Wentworth's and the Black Market have their own introductory missions on Blue or Redside (respectively) that can instruct you on their use.

Thus ending the remedial lesson in making enhancements work for you.

Welcome back! Now that I've got you talking to other people in the game, let's see what we can do about making the general experience of the gui and what-not more to your liking, shall we?

In the upper right corner of your screen are your Health, Endurance and Experience bars. There are also those tricky things called words, which when clicked open up menus. Let's explore the Menu menu! Go on, click it! Now slide your mouse down to the Options and click. Whoa! What's all this?

You can make City of Heroes your little servent bitch! Not so fast, hero! You just might break something! Let me walk you through all of this crazy word, click, slider soup.

NOTE: These settings are GLOBAL, they affect every character not just the one you're logged in on at the time.

• General tab
  
  
  
  
  
  
  • Reticle section
    • Villain Name - Not exactly accurate anymore. It should probably read "Enemy Name." This corresponds to the name that appears over mobs in the City of environment.
    • Villain Health Bar - "Enemy Health Bar," corresponding to the red and blue bars above the enemies
    • Villain Reticle - You probably noticed that a orange/red square appears when you hover or click on bad guys.
    • Player Name - Not yours, but every player character in the game
    • Player Health Bars - This will include yours, but indicates the red and blue bars above names for friendly targets
    • Player Archetype/Origin - Tiny icons indicating, dur, archetype and origin
    • Player Super Group - Name of a player's super group, if they belong to one.
    • Player Reticle - The blue square that appears around friendly targets
    • Auto Assist Reticle - You can see what/if someone else has something else targeted.
    • Personal Player Name - This is you.
    • Player Rating - I will review this at the at the end of this guide.
  • Your options for the above items will be the following (and hopefully do not need much explanation):
    
    
    • Show when selected or on mouse over
    • Show when selected
    • Show on mouse over
    • Show Always
    • Hidden
  
  
  With the exception of Personal Player Name, which will only be Show Always or Hidden
  
  
  
• Window Section - Simple ENABLE or DISABLE choice for the following.
  • Reset Windows - In case you've made some kind of oops with moving your windows around you can send them to the default configuration. This is the true default and not the one set to load. (See Windows Setting File, below)
  • Dim Main Chat Window - On mouse over or ENTER, the main chat window becomes less translucent.
  • Dim Chat Window # - auxillary windows for user set tabs and monitors (to be reviews in another guide)
  • Dim Nav Window - The Compass/Mission locator window automatically dims when not under mouse focus.
  • Dime Extra Power Trays - auxillary power trays will dim when not under mouse focus
  • Dim All Windows - Yep.
  • Show Pet Window Option - Turn on or off the clicky for pet control windows (Mastermind pets)
  
  
  Your friendly neighborhood BrotherMan has all windows set to not dim. I find the now you see me now you don't action distracting. Your mileage may vary, my friends.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Chat section - More ENABLE or DISABLE options
  • Allow Profanity - Changes bad words from <bleep!> to FUCK YOU IN YOUR ASSHOLE YOU CUNTING FUCK BITCH, or what-have-you.
  • Chat Balloons - Allows one to either view the words above the heads of fellow gamers or just in the chat box.
  • Chat Font Size - Allows the user to scale the size of the chat fonts. (Just the chat window.)
  • Log Chat - Automatically creates a log of the chat(s) the player monitors.
  • Log Private Messages - More of the above. Alternately, one can create an on demand log of the chat by typing /copychat Windowname, where "Windowname" is the name of the tab one wants to save for posterity, or lolz.
  • Show Villain Private Chat - Allows one to recieve private messages from friends (hopefully) who happen to be playing cross faction.
  • Show Villain Broadcast Chat - In co-op or PVP zones, allows one to read Broadcast spam from a cross faction opponent.
  • Hide Villain Local Chat - Allows the player to read cross faction chat in the local channel.
  • Decline All Super Group Invites - Automatically declines any SG invite one may recieve. You will not be notified.
  • Decline All Trade Invites - Automatically declines any trade invites.
  • Pet Response Text - Disables both your pet and others' pet's chat spam in the chat window.
  • Individual Name Colors - Turns ON or OFF the individual colors each players' names produces.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Miscellaneous section
  
  
  • Tool Tips - enables hover help text
  • Tool Tip Delay - sets the length of time the mouse must be stationary before a tool tip appears.
  • Decline Non-Team Gifts - disallows strangers' gifts
  • Prompt Team Teleport - When someone uses teleport on you, presents the player with a dialog box [yes] or [no].
  • Hide ... from Web Page - currently does nothing
  • Lock Powers in Tray - Prevents accidental swapping of powers set in trays
  • Hide Other Pet Names - Turns off other Mastermind pets' names.
  • Collaborative Missions - Coordinates missions for teammates who are working on the same mission/arc (off by default)
  • Hide ... Prompt - turns off the annoying "Are you SURE?" prompts when moving/deleting things
  • Hide ... Full Warning - turns off spam message that one of your inventories are full
  • Hide Cooperative Zone dialog - turns off certain zone entry dialog messages
  • Hide In-Game Ads - Turns off certain external advertisements
  • Disable Loading Screen Tips - turns off "It's always a Nemesis plot." and other helpful load screen tips
  • Disable Earning XP - MADNESS! But useful if you don't want to out level a certain contact.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Status Window Buff Display section - displays under your Health, End, XP bar
  • Hide Auto Powers - Turns off the icon representing any always on power. Also prevents one from seeing certain other effects and any Day Job location a character might be in.
  • Disable Blinking - When a power is about to run out, it blinks (starting at t minus 10 seconds), this stops the blinking
  • Icon Stacking - When multiple effects of a power are affecting a character you can decide to have either multiple icons (semi stacked) or a numeric indication of how many of that effect is working on you.
  • Hide Buff Numbers - Unsure.
  • Stop Sending All Buffs - Unsure
  
  
• Group Window Buff Display - the tiny arrow on your team window opens up to display the effects your teammates are under.
  • Same options as Status Window Buff Display
  
  
• Pet Window Buff Display
  • Same options as Group Window Buff Display
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Finally, a game company gets something right. I've spent countless hours moving and shaping windows and chat settings to my liking for every character I've ever created and if not for my retentiveness, I would be dog tired from it too.
  
  Once you get all of your windows, chat tabs and game options set, you can save them to a default file in the City of directory and then load them on different characters as you wish.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Control Tab
  
  • Control Sensativity section
    
    • Mouse Look - Speed of looking when under mouse look control
    • Turning - Speed of turning with Q, E and arrows
  • Joystick
    • That's what she said!
    
    
  • Mouse
    • Mouse Movement - Normal or Inverted (it's the opposite of other games' settings)
    • Click to Move - on/off for key chorded click moving
    • Look Up and Down
    • Reverse Mouse Buttons - Damn south paws!
    • Disable Mouse Scroll -
    • Mouse scroll speed - controls speed of scroll when hovered over a scrollable window
    • Free Camera Movement
    • Disable Camera Shake - Super Jump, Super Strength and a few other powers cause not only your camera to shake, but others as well. If it makes you dizzy or vomit, you can turn it off here.

[list][*] Graphics

• UI
  
  
  • Window Scale -sets the size of the windows
  • Border Color - sets the color of the windows
  • Window Opacity - sets the default visibility of the window

• Audio
  
  • Sound FX Volume - LOUDNESS OF SMASH
  • Music Volume - Loudness of the grooves
  • Sound Playback Mode - Performance or something else.
  • 3D Sound - Whoa.

• Chat Bubble Color - Currently not functioning
  • Text Color - RGB
  • Background Color - RGB

That particular affectation will be covered in a future guide: Options, Options, Options: The Other Way to get to Carnegie Hall.

I burned myself out on various types of drama a few years back. I'm not a psychoanalyst but I think I'm avoiding the opportunity to emote. So, for now at least, I'm taking the easy way out. Those are the ones that struck my fancy on the first run through of a list I found at wiki.

The list can expand (or contract, even) if I see a trailer or hear buzz about something else with a more serious bent.

I should stop using that phrase.

I agree. They were fun in a year of unserious movies. Looking up, I think Spider-Man deserves another cheer. I think I got a little zealous taking out some emoties because I can only have 50 per post. Neither were bad but I could hope for more.

That's the joy of subjectivity. I got more entertainment out of it even knowing everything was blown outlandishly out of proportion.

I should have been all over this movie. First, Brad Bird. He's directed two of my favorite animated movies. The Iron Giant and The Incredibles. Plus, Pixar. Maybe I was still gun shy because of Cars? (A movie I thought was good but not Toy Story good.)

I don't know how I missed Hot Fuzz in my search, but I did. I hadn't seen Shaun of the Dead before but I knew of it from the in-geek-crowd. It's a definite I'd stick it between 300 and Grindhouse.

And I didn't see any of the others you mentioned.