These are instructions for installing and setting up the freely available City Of Hero Character Creator from NCSoft.

The first thing you will have to do is download the City Of Hero Character Creator. This is freely and legally available from the Korean City Of Heroes site and from file-sharing networks such as Shareaza (search for “coh_sengsung” or “CCC_Setup”: the file is roughly 200 MB).

Once you download it, you have to install it. This is a little tricky, because the default language for this software is Korean. To change it so that it displays in English, you must first install it and run it once.

Installation

1. Install the software. The buttons will be in Korean, but they probably say pretty much what you think they say.
2. Right-click the “COH Character Creator” icon and select the “Shortcut” tab.
3. In the “Target” text box, add the parameter ” -windowed” to the end of the command line. So if the “Target” originally said
   • “C:\Games\COH Character Creator\CharacterCreator.exe”

   it would now say

   • “C:\Games\COH Character Creator\CharacterCreator.exe” -windowed
4. Under “Compatibility mode”, check the “Run this program in compatibility mode for” checkbox, and select “Windows 98 / Windows ME”.
5. Run the program once.
6. Exit the program.
7. Run regedt32 (or your preferred registry editor).
8. Go to registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Cryptic\KRCOH
9. Change the “locale” value to 1.
10. Right-click the KRCOH key.
11. Select “permissions”.
12. Click “Advanced”.
13. Un-check the box labeled “Inherit from parent…”.
14. Click “Add”.
15. Type “Everyone” in the “Enter the object name” box.
16. Click “Okay”.
17. Double-click the “Everyone” entry.
18. Check only “Allow Read Control”.
19. Click “Okay”, “Okay”, “Okay”.
20. Close the registry editor.

The program should now display in English.

Troubleshooting

If the “locale” registry keeps getting set back to the Korean value, then you did not follow the instructions. If the registry key has only “Everyone: Allow Read Control”, and no other permissions, Windows XP will not permit anyone or anything to change the registry setting. Do not email me asking for help: follow the instructions.

If the program immediately crashes when you run it, or displays a black screen, try these solutions:

1. Update your video drivers to use the most recent version OpenGL. Most video card drivers (such as ATI and NVidia) include the most recent OpenGL drivers in their driver packages.
2. If that still not does work, right-click the “COH Character Creator” icon and select the “Compatibility” tab.
3. Under “Compatibility mode”, check the “Run this program in compatibility mode for” checkbox, and select “Windows 98 / Windows ME”.

CC Project

Element at the COH Guru site has created a project to incorporate all sorts of new costume pieces into the stand-alone Character Creator. There are numerous problems with it, but it works for the most part. If you have problems with it, do not email ECORE Central for help: post your questions at COH Guru.

• CCProject.zip [ECORE Mirror]
  
• CCProject.zip [RPG Library Mirror]

Below is the readme included in the .zip file linked here.

Installation
1). Unzip the data folder to your stand-alone Character Creator directory.
2). Copy over the following files from your City of Heroes’ piggs folder to your Character Creator’s piggs folder:

texPlayersUI.pigg
texVEnemies.pigg
texEnemies.pigg
texEnemies2.pigg
texEnemies3.pigg
texEnemies4.pigg
texEnemies5.pigg

If you do not copy over these texture archives, you will get alot of blank white costume pieces though it will still load.

Also, do not copy over any of CoH’s geometry archives (geom.pigg and the sort) to CC. It will crash.

Features
-Access to numerous NPC-only costume pieces
-Access to DVD Edition / PreOrder costume pieces — chest details, capes, and helmets.
-Access to older “removed” costume pieces

Known Issues
-Huge doesn’t have any of the NPC-only pieces unlocked, and Female shows some of the NPC-only costume pieces meant for Huge.
-Huge also doesn’t have access to DVD/PreOrder chest details and helmets, but strangely has access to the capes.
-There are alot of costume pieces that did not carry over from the original CoH modification.
-Due to geometry version differences, some of the face textures end up skewed (a la Citadel).
-All costume pieces are “decategorized”. This makes the Gloves and Boots lists very long.

Notes
-Alot of the headgear ends up in Hats.
-Most of the new pieces end up at the bottom of the list they’re in.
-Do not attempt to load City of Heroes with the modified list.

Version History
1.0
-Initial release

No Responses to “City of Heroes Character Creator”

No comments yet

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.