Classic Spell Effects

[Furinex]

Hello, I am creating this thread in an attempt to centralize all the information we have into one place. Also, so I can have the first post, and Update it with the most recent release of this on going project. (Requesting a Sticky as this may come in handy for many people searching for this...)

First of all, lets start off by what we have done in the past. You can find the original thread about it Here (Or at least where I started looking into this).

This led to my thread Here. This thread has very useful information, as a collaboration of people, including Azxten, Telin, myself and others, were trying to decipher these specific files. During this thread, we broke through to a stage where we were able to start editing, yet we needed information on old spells and what they looked like.

Thus, the creation of This thread in the server chat. This thread has the meat and potatoes of what we have been working on.

Thanks to the help of Azxten and the guidance of Telin and his helpful pictures and descriptions, and many other people helping us, we've made LARGE strides in a short amount of time. However, there is a ton of work to be done still. I am going to outline the procedure of how to edit EVERY aspect (We know of) in this thread for the future. Also, this will enable anyone to look through this and see if they can make the same improvements or help us further the work.


Without further delay, here is the method to my madness, and how I have been correcting the effects.

1. First lets take a look at the EQ directory:

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

This is where the Spelleffects folder, spellsnew.edd, and spellsnew.eff files are. As well as spells.eff, however we will get into that after.

Navigate to the SpellEffects Folder

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

Scroll down until you start seeing .tga files, there will be a few misc ones at the top and bottom, but most of them start with 'spelxx.tga'.

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

2. Find the spell in question. This takes a decent eye (One that I dont really have, but Telin has been helping me out a lot when it comes to this). You need to go through each one of the tga's to find the effect you are looking to recreate. Once you find that, remember/write down the file name.

3. Navigate back to the EQ directory and open the spellsnew.edd file. For this example, I will be using spela2.tga, which is the Healing effect.

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

Well here it is... scary. Anyways, (I recommend HxD hex editor as I have had good results with this) Run a search, CTRL+F for HxD, and search for a string value equal to the file name of the tga, in this case: spela2.tga

You can probably hit F3 (Search more) and find a bunch of entries however, they will probably be easy to identify. For example, this effect, when searching for the file, brings up 'VengeanceV2 S1-1'.

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


(Note: If you didnt know, hex is read left to right)

So, Here we have the value we searched for. You can see Ive boxed a couple of items in different colors (NOTE: THESE COLOR SCHEMES MAY CHANGE DEPENDING ON MY SHORT TERM MEMORY AND I WILL IDENTIFY THAT IF IT DOES). The Red Boxes indicate the name of the effect. In this case VengeanceV2 S1-1.

In Blue we have the TGA used for the effect. Thats what pulled our search up.

Now, the ONLY other thing I know how to do with this file, is to change the direction. This area is boxed in Green. Specifically, the C5 Value (Which is correct for this healing effect, it was C2). Changing this value indicated in the pictures below (Thanks Azxten), will rotate which direction the effect goes from the origin.

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

Now, we have noticed that C4 is the sweet spot on a lot of spells, however, some spells C5 is the same direction as C4 is in other spells. Hence testing is important. NONE of the values (That I have found so far, and no I have NOT tried them all), have followed the skeleton. This is a fixed direction.

Light Blue, I wanted to point this out, See S1-1, and S1-2, these are the different RANKS of the effects. ex: 1-23 is S1, 24-38 is S2, and 39-60 is S3. Notice the different TGA used. Anyways... Moving on.

I know NOTHING else about the rest of these values in between. If anyone can shed light on this, I will add it to this post!

4. Now that we have the name of the effect, VengeanceV2, we can go to the spellsnew.eff file. Navigate there and open that next.

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

Ahhh, Here it is, scary... again. Anyways, Do another search.

5. Search for 'veng' (Which is what we fond in the previous step, VengeanceV2). Now you're gonna find a bunch of effects listed with that search. The ones you want to look for have 'V2' in the name. I haven't found a spell yet that I was able to modify if the name didn't have V2 in there. Anyways, here's what it looks like broken down(Changing up the color scheme probably):

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

Red again is the name of the effect. Notice the V2.

Blue is my Starting Markers. This Starts a string of hex codes that have SOME sort of effect on what this spell does, what effect it produces and when. The top one (6C) is the start string for the "CASTING", the bottom one (6F) is for the "TARGET CASTED ON".

Green, this is the effect. So, F9 00, for this the blue sprinkler effect coming out of the hands. Notice how its in there twice. This is because there is 1 for each hand, left and right, I will go into this in a sec. Anyways, you can also see FB 00, which is the ring of blue sparkles around the caster, rising. D2 01 (Is actually the creeping crud dome) is a blue sparkly dome.

Light blue is the levels which the (green) effects are triggered. Notice 00, 18 and 27. 00 is for 1-23, 18 (which converts to 24 in dec) is for 24-38 and 27 (which converts to 39 in dec) is 39-60. Easy enough right? F9 00 being the sprinkler effect shows up at 1-23. At 24, FB 00 is the rising ring of blue sparkles, so that shows up when casting. And at 39, you get the blue sparkly dome, D2 01.

Orange is the Origin that the emitter emits the effects. Here are all the values that are known (Thanks Azxten):

00 = Stays at original casting spot, doesn't follow caster, (ground?)
01 = Waist
02 = Chest
03 = Head
04 = Left Hand
05 = Right Hand
06 = Left Foot
07 = Right Foot
08 = Stays at original casting spot, doesn't follow caster, (waist?)

I think there are others. This should be investigated further.

Now if we keep going down, the next Blue starter string shows up, this whole section is for when the spell hits. The format is the same.

Purple is where the spell will hit. ie, which target it will hit. So far I've see 2 values for this, 01 and 03. 01 is the caster, and 03 is the target. For example, last night Telin was casting the level 1 healing spell on me, but the effect would show up on him after the cast time was extinguished. Strange notion! Changing this value to 01 fixed this effect. More work to be done here as I think we can do some really cool stuff with this.

Now what I have done is looked at other spell effects, and tried their values, and it does indeed work. I could heal you with my shielding or fire spell if I swapped the values. More identification needs to be made on which values pull what information. I will be trying to compile a list of all the known values and place them in this thread.

Now that this is all done, you should be able to move onto number 6.

6. Test and Profit. This is the hardest part really, Or longest at least. Loading the game a bunch of times in and out is a lengthy process but necessary to see if it all works correctly.

Questions that still need answering:

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

-Whats all this in the black boxes?
-Why is 4 effects the max? if so why are some of them already filled in, with the same structure and why dont they work? I cant seem to get more than 4 effects to work. In this files case, the 2 hand effects for the sprinkler, 1 for the circle around the caster, and the last is the globe, however I cant get more than that to show.
-Can I add more than one origin emitter to an effect? If so, this would fix our shielding issue.
-Can I tie in effects used in the spells.eff file (Old spells file).

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

-Also, this is the old spells.eff file... how can we decipher this? can I pull the functions in this, from the other files? Can we use the GEN10 SPRITE or whatever its talking about in here? Can we use these old sprites? If so, can we use them with the new files? If so, we can probably... reproduce all the spells 100% classic.

----------------------------

Attached is the latest spellsnewVx.xxxzip file containing both the spellsnew.edd and spellsnew.eff. To install this mod, simply download and unzip this attachment below, into your EQ (p99) main directory and overwrite the files if asked to.

----------------------------

Change Log:

v0.48
-Healing Spell revisited again. Modified the Leg position on the casting and casted portions.
-Particle Level effects ensured on Aegolism line.


v0.47:

-Healing spell revisited, corrected a problem with it hitting the target and still giving the caster the ring.
-Fixed Clarity line of spells.

v0.045:

-Illusions fixed
-Direct Fire Damage spells fixed.


EDIT:
--------------------------------
Last Updated 5/22/2013 at 7:02PM EST, file revision v0.048:
- Fixed Healing effect at 39 for the Caster. Healing spells will never have the single Star in the center of the body unless the effect offset is found - And I dont think it exists anymore in the newspells. Either way, this is why I am doing the healing spell like this.
- Also modified the shielding spell to ensure levels are being hit correctly with spell effect changes.
--------------------------------
Last Updated 5/22/2013 at 7:46AM EST, file revision v0.047:
- Added Azxten's explanation of the spells.eff file to the 2nd post of this thread (Below), due to the number of pictures I can place in one post.
--------------------------------
Last Updated 5/9/2013 at 1:19PM EST, file revision v0.047:
- Fixed the explanation to follow the same spell all the way through to make it less confusing. Sorry for the first run through.
--------------------------------
Update 5/9/2013 at 7:47 EST, file revision v0.047.
- Added Information about Caster/Target hex, allowing particles to show on either with the right offset.

[Furinex]

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

Here is the old spells.eff change I made that you asked about. This is the shielding spell and changing that 00 to 02 causes the origin to be the caster instead of 0,0. You can change it to several other values as well which change the way the effect looks but 02 was the best I found.

If you only make that change and nothing else the effect is a circular green particle and some strange falling orange particles at the caster. During my testing I was able to make these particles behave as expected as well, using the "jet" effect or whatever.

What I couldn't figure out was:

1. How do you get effects to follow the caster/target if they move?
2. How do you get the effects to come from the hands instead of the center of body?

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

As for my methodology of how I figured this out, I just noticed that all the effects in the file say GENXYY_SPRITE where X is a letter A-Z and YY is a number (10, 20, 30). I did a replace all on GENA with GENB, see if that was the shielding effect, then replace all on GENB with GENC, see if that was the spell effect, repeat until the shielding effect particles change in some way to know you've found one of the sprites involved.

Then I reset the file to normal and changed the particle I found, GENC I think it was, one effect that used it as a time. That allowed me to identify the spell block for the shielding effect.

Next I noticed that the frost nuke effect actually had the origin at the caster instead of 0,0. I repeated the above process to find that effect. Then I copied that whole spell block over the shielding block. Then I went back and changed 1 line at a time back to the original shielding lines until I identified which line was responsible for changing the origin.

Unfortunately there seems to be no spell effect in the game which will stay with the caster/target if they move or that originates from the hands as expected. This is why I gave up. Without a working example to use as a template its extremely hard to just change random characters and then check and see what happens. If you look through various spell blocks you'll see that they all seem to have "random" areas changed to "random" values. I can't identify any kind of pattern to work with.

As Aeolwind said, I think the involvement of the character model hands and staying with the model may be outside of this file. I just fixed the origin location.

As for the gravity effects of particles, this can be adjusted in spellsnew.edd. I accomplished this during my original testing but didn't take any notes on how I did it. It was an unintended consequence when I was trying to get the particle direction to change. I was able to create particles that flowed out and then began falling down in an arc like pattern. I also identified a change that increased velocity and various other things. This is why I said I was confident these changes could be made. I've made all the necessary adjustments at one time or another, just forgot to write them down.

[Furinex]

<Post Reservation>

[Telin]

Educating myself on particle systems. This is just a quick read:
http://apacudn.epicgames.com/Three/P...Reference.html

[Swish]

Kudos again on this project guys, I've tried reading through it to understand better but...

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

[Vellaen]

You switched from spellsnew.edd to spellsnew.eff when you went from the shielding spell to healing... which do you edit to actually produce changes, or do you have to edit them both?

[Furinex]

Follow the effect you are looking for. If you want a spela1.tga effect, search for that in the spellsnew.edd file, once you find it there, Take the name of that spell, (ie Aegolism, or Aego) and search for a portion of it in the spellsnew.eff file, then (Make sure you find the one with V2 in the name) edit away. Also, the .edd file, as I explained, has spots for the direction, but Im not sure what else we can do with this file. The .eff file is the one with most of the juicy stuff in it. Sorry I switched from shielding to healing, Not sure what I was thinking, Had kids in the background tugging on my arm, lots of distractions, I have ADD and a short term memory, plus... I smoke copious amounts of weed, so im sure that doesnt help... or maybe it does. When I get home tonight, I will re-edit the post with the same spell in each area to make it less confusing.

[Furinex]

Alrighty, my explanation is now fixed, and should flow better for its readers.

[Telin]

Furinex, after breaking down some of the processes I can now say there are at least 9 "spellpoints" where the particles can originate. They are:
1) Right Hand
2) Left Hand
3) Chest
4) Default
5) Right Foot
6) Left Foot
7) Left Eye
8) Right Eye
9) Mouth
10) "spell_point_dag" appears twice

[Furinex]

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

Furinex, after breaking down some of the processes I can now say there are at least 9 "spellpoints" where the particles can originate. They are:
1) Right Hand
2) Left Hand
3) Chest
4) Default
5) Right Foot
6) Left Foot
7) Left Eye
8) Right Eye
9) Mouth
10) "spell_point_dag" appears twice

Default? Where does that come from? And do you know the offsets for these? We can fill in a few gaps.