Spells: Illusion Magic

[Rimitto]

so a while back when I was selling some stuff in EC Tunnels, I was messing around with illusion tree and minor illusion and got some wacky results. However, according to other people that were with me at the time we were all seeing different results and one of the players confirmed that this was NOT how the spell originally worked.
We eventually deduced that it was based on where the "current" player was looking at the time of the spell and not where the "illusionist" was looking at the time of the spell, although where the illusionist is looking will determine what he see's, it does not reflect what others will see, or not see.

a point to note is that if person A, person B and person C are all looking in different directions, person A and B might see different illusions while person C will not see any illusion. Additionally because of how this is set up, anyone zoning into a zone will not see an illusion. This is a pretty harsh oversight altogether for such a silly spell, but I would still like to see this fixed as it is one of my favorite spells.

This weird bug applies to illusion tree as well, as I advertised my location as "the giant tree left of EC Tunnel" and yet people responded with the notion that they could not see any tree.

[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.

[elwing]

There is also another bug related to illusion, or rather a missing classical bug. On live you can wear a nice looking armor, cast an illusion, equip an ugly armor, cancel the illusion and you and other people will see you with the nice looking armor, until you zone or change your armor. On p99 others and yourself see the armor you wear when you cancel illusion and not the armor you were wearing before casting the illusion...

[Rimitto]

@elwing I think that might have just been a bug on live [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]
It definitely sounds like one anyways.

@Vermicelli Well I've already cracked down on how it works exactly in game, I just don't know how it was "supposed" to be back in the early days... other than my own experiences with it.
I remember back in the kunark days (before velious) I used it once to avoid a PKer that was running through erudin killing everyone in sight. I turned into a lamp and he just ran right past me and killed someone down by the library. It'd be hard to say that it was because I looked like a lamp to him since I was just a newbie back then, I might not have been "worth it" to kill, but I do know that back then whenever I used it, people could not find/target me, which makes me think that it worked way differently than it does on p99 server.
mind you I only got to level 10 or so back then, but I definitely know that minor illusion did not work like this, and I can only hazard a guess about the various other illusion spells.

The height thing I've personally seen too... gnomes growing to like 7 feet tall is hilarious and entirely a unique glitch/bug to p99.

[elwing]

@rimitto yes it's definitely a bug on live, but it's not classic not to have it..

[Rimitto]

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

@rimitto yes it's definitely a bug on live, but it's not classic not to have it..

live isn't really classic though.
live is live... updated code base.

[elwing]

Yep it was definitely existing in luclin... Can't be sure before, and it was still there at DoN expansion for sure

[Rimitto]

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

Yep it was definitely existing in luclin... Can't be sure before, and it was still there at DoN expansion for sure

gonna be honest, I kinda don't care as much about the illusion magic that actually works correctly.
I'd rather this thread be about the illusion magic that is clearly broken and NOT FUNCTIONING instead. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Stuff like small dark elves and giant gnomes are partial functionality, and should probably be looked into, but trying to push an agenda to recreate a glitch with functional illusion spells just seems silly, especially considering that glitches would be patched out in the first place. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[Rimitto]

I guess I should've been more accurate in my first post about this... Sry bout that.
What I meant by "current player is looking" I meant "current player's camera".
It's not based on your character at all, but based on what your camera can see. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Either way seems incredibly broken.