Been awhile! Downloaded and copied Patch 53.

[Ravenflight]

Now all the characters (and monsters) are all blank.
On the character select - I can see the names of my characters - but they all look like Enchanter pets - as in no bodies, just holding weapons.
When I log in, I can see text that says "a black snake" and it's moving, but there's no texture of the black snake.
I redownloaed and unzipped and recopied - same situation.

[xaix1999]

one of two things, the file doesn't exist or eq doesn't have access to it

save your character files and ui along with your eqclient.ini
delete the folder and reinstall

[Ravenflight]

one of two things, the file doesn't exist or eq doesn't have access to it

save your character files and ui along with your eqclient.ini
delete the folder and reinstall

Which file? The entire EQ folder? Pretty much reinstall?
If so, I am not too concerned about the eqclient.ini settings - I didn't customize toolbars too much, other than hotkeying directions to like direction sense and stuff. :)

[Videri]

Did you copy and replace the subfolders? One must instead copy the contents of each subfolder into their respective subfolders.

[xaix1999]

yes like i said save your moonbaby_files and moonbaby_ui files (most of your window options and macros)
eqclient.ini is your video, audio and hotkey settings to go with a bunch of other settings

[Ravenflight]

Did you copy and replace the subfolders? One must instead copy the contents of each subfolder into their respective subfolders.

I unzipped it - and took the files/folders (inside the Patch53 folder) into the EQ directory - and told it to overwrite the existing files/folders, since it appears to keep the correct windows directory trees.

[Videri]

But if you overwrite a folder, it'll delete all the stuff that used to be in that folder (like character models or whatev). The v53 files don't have everything we need...there's stuff already in the Titanium subfolders that needs to remain there. I bet if you start again, but copy the contents of each subfolder into the respective subfolder, that fixes it. It's going to be five or six copy-pastes instead of one.

[Ravenflight]

But if you overwrite a folder, it'll delete all the stuff that used to be in that folder (like character models or whatev). The v53 files don't have everything we need...there's stuff already in the Titanium subfolders that needs to remain there. I bet if you start again, but copy the contents of each subfolder into the respective subfolder, that fixes it. It's going to be five or six copy-pastes instead of one.

I'll give it a try!

[Ravenflight]

Well, first I thought I'd try the easy route.
Titanium and then repair. Copy each file into the folders from Patch53. Same result.
Ok. Take out the character files. Remove everything else.
Reinstall. Copy files from Patch 53. Copy character files back in.
Same result.
Yank out, reinstall, copy patch 53 files, log in.
Same result.
I am baffled.

[Ravenflight]

Sigh. Thought I figured it out.
Realized just using the EQ Uninstall left a ton of folders and files still in there.
Well, not a ton, but quite a bit.
So I deleted EVERYTHING in the directory.
Did a 100% clean install.
Copied the Patch 53 files in.
Launched.
Still no bodies. Just floating weapons. :(

[xaix1999]

change the permission in the whole folder to everyone

[xaix1999]

or just authenticated users ✓ full control

[Ravenflight]

Tried that just now. No luck. I knew of the issue with Program Files, so it's installed in C:\EQ99

[Ravenflight]

It's as if all the character models are missing.
I even went as far as going into a NEW character - going down the list of all the available races - and all it shows is the background.
Even went back, tried my Dark Elf... and it's just weapons still. :(
I did notice when I went to options, it's only using the Microsoft Default Video card, rather than the NVIDIA this Alienware laptop supposedly has in it. But I am not sure if that would make a difference, as I hadn't changed those options back in 2018 when I last played (so I imagine it was using the Microsoft Default Video Card before too).

[xaix1999]

enter the game and hit ALT+O and select the Display tab then click the Advanced button
you should see something like this

[Ravenflight]

Did some digging and found this... Not sure how to reset the 3D Rendering that's mentioned as a potential fix...
https://www.project1999.com/forums/showthread.php?t=281643

Someone on a Mac reported a similar issue - but doesn't apply since I am on a PC -
https://www.project1999.com/forums/showthread.php?t=155199

[Ravenflight]

enter the game and hit ALT+O and select the Display tab then click the Advanced button
you should see something like this

Here's what I see:

[xaix1999]

Hi this is widely reported at the moment!

The Fix: your Display Driver will need rolling back . . . Windows Update has lately been installing incorrect display drivers . . .

Open Device Manager (accessible by right clicking your Start Button)
Expand the Display Adapters Section
Right click your graphics card, choose properties
On the Driver Tab, click 'Roll back Driver'

Close Device Manager and restart your system


If there is no roll back available or that does not work, go to the Support page of the manufacturer of your PC/Laptop

Download the Device Driver they recommend for your Display Adapter/GPU and install that version, until Microsoft come out with a fix . . .

[Ravenflight]

I noticed it's also very laggy. Granted I am playing about 50' from my router with two walls between me and my router. I wonder if getting closer may fix the lag - or if that's tied to this weird issue of invisible characters.

[xaix1999]

/netstat on will tell you your ping which is latency
your "lag" is probably your fps being low from the wrong drivers

in options your toggle netstat hotkey will give you a green bar in the top right with your real latency

[Ravenflight]

Driver Issue

This was it!

Found a driver dating back to 2015.
https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/drivers/driversdetails?driverid=4vd2p&oscode=wb64a&productcode=alienware-15

Installed it. Now the characters are there!

[mcoy]

For your discrete video card not being detected - you want to use:

http://dege.freeweb.hu/dgVoodoo2/dgVoodoo2.html

Ignore the warning about the site - if you research it you'll see it gets whitelisted by the various vendors eventually. Don't forget to edit the ini to remove the watermark it imposes.

As far as your models not loading - that's almost always caused what Videri said and the patch not being applied correctly. Reinstall, and make sure you only replace the files within the various directories and not the directories themselves. Depending on what zip extraction utility you're using it has different options. I use 7-zip and the default "replace" option only replaces files and not the entire directories.

-Mcoy

[Ravenflight]

For your discrete video card not being detected - you want to use:

http://dege.freeweb.hu/dgVoodoo2/dgVoodoo2.html

Ignore the warning about the site - if you research it you'll see it gets whitelisted by the various vendors eventually. Don't forget to edit the ini to remove the watermark it imposes.

As far as your models not loading - that's almost always caused what Videri said and the patch not being applied correctly. Reinstall, and make sure you only replace the files within the various directories and not the directories themselves. Depending on what zip extraction utility you're using it has different options. I use 7-zip and the default "replace" option only replaces files and not the entire directories.

-Mcoy

Turned out to be a video driver issue. Loaded an older video driver (5 years old, back when I knew it worked with P99) and sure enough - everything's fine now!

And here I am 3:20am and have to be up for work at 8am!

Best part - this was all because of D&D.

I had made a typo of "Drown Assassin" rather than "Drow Assassin" in my synopsis.

One of my players remarked that a Drowned Assassin would be useless.

Which made me bring up "Drowned Citizens"

So then I wanted to capture a video of Drowned Citizens in Freeport. :D

[Tunabros]

A shadow men!