Particle Overload

[Zaela]

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

Its a grey color on P99, right?

It's greenish-yellow. I believe the particle is the same one used for some old spells (the lifetap and shrink bubbles).

I was a little wrong about the particle before: it seems like you can do some stuff with it, but it's hardcoded to only appear if the camera is really close up to the weapon. It also seems like everything about it scaled way down (presumably to make the originally-decent-sized particle look tiny). Example here.

Unrelated: some of the PoP-era stuff use a negative velocity value to make particles appear to be drawn in toward the weapon. Neat.

[Cecily]

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

Aye, it was a green poison that dripped every so often. I remember you couldn't even notice it unless you went into first-person and looked at it up close. Poor Rogues got hosed on that one.

Why does everything think that particles magically make weapons look cool? Rogues got exactly what they asked for, a nice looking weapon that isn't flashy. The Burning Rapier used to have a big light source effect, I think, which made quite a few rogues angry and they complained about it to get it changed. Ragebringer obviously was designed w/ that subtle RP rogue sensibility in mind and it's my favorite weapon design.

[Zaela]

SK epic with the little skulls reinterpreted as a flame-like spray.

Blowier leafblower.

There's a mostly-lame mode that lays the particles out along a plane; the orientation of the plane depends on the rotation of the emission point (all old weapons with particles necessarily have skeletons, the particles emitters must be attached to a bone). For most things, the flat of the plane runs up the length of the weapon and out the sides. Perpendicular to the length of the weapon would seem neater, could make sort-of encircling halo effects. But in any case here's an example of how it is. Seems to be a bit unstable; the partcles there were set to have no direction or velocity.

Annnnd that's about the point where I lose interest and wonder why I blew a morning working on the tool to edit these.

[Nirgon]

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

Aye, it was a green poison that dripped every so often. I remember you couldn't even notice it unless you went into first-person and looked at it up close. Poor Rogues got hosed on that one.

yeah that easy as shit to get ridiculously strong weapon, poor bastids

[Sage Truthbearer]

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

yeah that easy as shit to get ridiculously strong weapon, poor bastids

It's almost like I was only talking about the particle effects, the topic of this entire thread.

[Qtip]

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

SK epic with the little skulls reinterpreted as a flame-like spray.

Blowier leafblower.

There's a mostly-lame mode that lays the particles out along a plane; the orientation of the plane depends on the rotation of the emission point (all old weapons with particles necessarily have skeletons, the particles emitters must be attached to a bone). For most things, the flat of the plane runs up the length of the weapon and out the sides. Perpendicular to the length of the weapon would seem neater, could make sort-of encircling halo effects. But in any case here's an example of how it is. Seems to be a bit unstable; the partcles there were set to have no direction or velocity.

Annnnd that's about the point where I lose interest and wonder why I blew a morning working on the tool to edit these.

They should replace the sk epic with the one you did.

[Zukan]

Hey Zaela I saw some of the stuff you posted on the Shards of Dalaya forum. All great things.

Does this particle editor allow you to play with spell effects as well? =)

[Zaela]

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

Does this particle editor allow you to play with spell effects as well? =)

No, spell particles use a different format, at least since whichever client brought the Great Spell Particle Changes (PoP..?).

I did make an editor for the newer format a couple years back, though: download link. Can't vouch for the quality of the code, but it seems like it still works.

Spell particle data is in spellsnew.edd, as far as I'm aware. Weapon model particles also use this format starting from Omens of War (I think); those are in ActorEmittersNew.edd.

The newer format is a lot more complex -- there are 80 different fields, around half of which were unclear to me when I was poking at them way back when. Telin probably knows a lot more about it. The format makes it easy to change the images that are used for the particles, at least: they are loaded from folders inside the EQ folder, and there's a field to specify the filename. (You could do this for the classic weapon particles as well by overwriting the images in gequip.s3d; I'm not sure where the filename associations are made for those, though.)

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edit: obligatory super-non-classic master sword brimming with hearts
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[thewrush]

omg that SK epic effect, WANT!

[Zaela]

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

omg that SK epic effect, WANT!

If you really wanted it, you could enable it yourself using the tool... It's all local file stuff.

1) File > Open > [navigate to your EQ folder] > gequip.s3d

2) Model: IT145_HS_DEF

3) Particle: SKULL_PCD

4) Settings:

Mode -> 3 ("Stream Dispersal")
Simultaneous Particles -> 3000
Lifetime -> 1250
Emission Delay -> 10

Cone Angle -> 15.000000
Dispersal Velocity -> 10.000000
Vector Z -> 1.000000

5) File > Save changes

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If you don't want it any more: Backup > Restore original file