Necro epic particles
 

I happened to be reminded of this old quote today:

I'm not sure if the particles are indeed supposed to be that way and I don't have any evidence, but considering the source I'll go with it.

A few days ago I made a tool for editing particle effect data for old weapon models (I was bored).

One thing I noticed while playing around is that if a model uses the "sphere" mode for particle motion, but has a zero value in what I called the "sphere radius" field, the particles will radiate along a flat, circular plane, as the necro epic current does, and like so: https://youtu.be/KceGqURJYFw

But, if the "sphere radius" field is set to any non-zero value, they will radiate in a sphere as expected. I used a "sphere radius" of 0.1 here: https://youtu.be/ICoGwcmFZhk


If this were a desired change, getting it out to users might be a challenge. Probably wouldn't want to distribute the file that needs to be edited (gequip.s3d) for legal reasons. It would not be hard for me to develop a one-click tool to make the change, but then each player would need to go out of their way to use it. Too bad P99 doesn't have a patching program...

Nice job Zaela. For quick reference you can see the necromancer epic from the trilogy client in this video toward the end. It looks just like your fix.

https://youtu.be/80kN9wO3DsM?t=2m36s

In the meantime I was busy firing up an unmodified trilogy client to have a look myself... oh well! https://youtu.be/LnQtajrxtGQ

For reference, the gequip.s3d from the Trilogy installer dated 2001-08-15 has zero in the "sphere radius" field, just like Titanium's. So the client definitely changed how it interprets the particle data at some point.

Based on the data, the Bard, Druid and Cleric epics may be in the same situation. They all use the "sphere" mode with a "sphere radius" of zero.

In the unlikely event that there are people out there who would like to fix the Necro, Bard, Druid and Cleric epic particles for themselves, I made a "one-click" fixer tool: download link. Source is here.

Drop it into your EQ folder and run it.

It makes a backup of the file that gets edited before it does anything, in case you want to undo the changes (the backup is "gequip.zae", rename it to "gequip.s3d" (replacing the existing one) to revert).

edit: may need to download and run vcredist_x86.exe from Microsoft here if you get "missing DLL" errors.

Hey Zaela,
I found a possible bug within the patching. I did your exe on my laptop EQ files and when I zoom in to far my epic particles go away. But with one scroll tick outwards it shows up again.

http://i.imgur.com/rpfnGJt.jpg


http://i.imgur.com/DxBFk51.jpg

wizard epic did that in classic if you zoomed "too close to the sun" also

I can still see them while zoomed in as close as possible, same race, position and camera angle. I'm on linux though, so if it's an obscure DirectX thing that might make a difference...

I'll try to bring myself to boot up windows later and try some different values for the fix and see if that does anything.

I'm glad someone brought this up. It is definitely supposed to be a spherical pattern. Some patch changed it to a circle for unknown reasons. I remember on live when it happened. I even made note of it to the GMs and was told that they'd look into it. Of course they never did.

While we are on the subject of the necro epic and spell particles/graphics...

The right click spell graphic do not persist through the entire cast. They show up for approximately 6 seconds, then are gone until the spell finishes, at which time they show up again.