Spells: Illusion Magic

[Vermicelli]

I am thrilled to see someone new bring up malfunctioning illusion spells backed by some relevant observations =D

Please continue to post anything you observe in game or read outside of P99 regarding Minor Illusion, Treeform, player race illusions, or monster form illusion spells. There is a history of players tracking the bugs related to illusion character model display which I would like to invite you to read. These are some historical threads to which I am subscribed. I will quote developer input from some of the threads; dev input is what we are looking for in order to move ahead!

(If you encounter broken links in these threads, check to see if they reference project1999.org. If so, just change ".org" to ".com" in your address bar and the link should get you to the right page)

(2009) https://www.project1999.com/forums/showthread.php?t=92 - Treeform functions early on the P99 server.

Originally Posted by Uthgaard [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

The model is chosen and rendered by the client. Everyone who walks by you is likely to see something different. Not something we can fix serverside.

That said, I have never seen this statement or a similar one made by any developers since this post.

(2011) https://www.project1999.com/forums/s...ad.php?t=32994 - An explanation of how one P99 developer addressed modeling/texturing with darkbone skeletons, relevant to model/texture coding and display.

(2011) https://www.project1999.com/forums/s...ad.php?t=39465 - Player race and Monster form illusion testing that I have done. I provided screenshot examples of abnormalities in player character model size and graphics textures from other players' perspectives when I was affected by illusion magic.

Originally Posted by nilbog [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I as well recall the large dark elves. i.e.: Dabiggun was an ogre warrior.

[You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

If someone with a guise of the deceiver used Illusion: Dark elf, they would appear normal dark elf size to everyone in the zone. Subsequent players zoning in would see them as their true size. In this example, a size ogre (9) dark elf. Dark elves are naturally size 6.

I played a paladin and a magician. We need some enchanter feedback/memories.

(2011) https://www.project1999.com/forums/s...ad.php?t=41636 - Minor Illusion faction modifier testing that I have done. I tested Minor Illusion's effect on faction adjustments on the EQMac server (EQMac was on Planes of Power timeline at the time of testing) and direct messaged a spreadsheet of my observations to dev Sundawg.

(2011) https://www.project1999.com/forums/s...ad.php?t=50118 - PvP applications of Minor Illusion, hypothesizing about illusioned player model display bugs being related to data communication packets between server and client.

(2015) https://www.project1999.com/forums/s...d.php?t=201984 - The bug in which Minor Illusion character model changes display differently to individual observers was also reported in 2015.

(2018) https://www.project1999.com/forums/s...d.php?t=288018 - Fear effect spells overwrite 'change form' effects. This is interesting to me because Minor Illusion's and Treeform's 0% runspeed effect has been observed in the past to interact with other runspeed-changing effects such as Root.

I certainly would like to think that something useful can come of continued awareness that illusion magic functions ain't quite what they're supposed to be on P99. The last time I was really working on uncovering a way forward in 2013, EQ Emulator servers other than Project 1999 were typically plagued with similar illusion effects bugs. Sad to say, I will not be able to devote time to sleuthing new ideas at present, but it may be worth the effort to peek in on other EQ Emus' development to see if there has been any improvement made in the coding of illusion magic in the broader EQ Emu community.