Racial Illusion Character Model Size Bug

[Vermicelli]

It all started with other players bugging me for a Shrink spell. But I am an enchanter; what are they talking about? It seems that when I am under the effects of an illusion, though I appear human-sized or elf-sized or barbarian-sized to myself, many other people see me as bite-sized! (I am the squirt on the far left.)

http://i.imgur.com/G5ehbMs.jpg

This seems to happen only when another player comes into a zone that I am in, when I am already affected by an illusion. I also appear to not be wearing any armor except for a weirdly tinted shirt that is the same color as my robe. Any players that are in a zone at the time I cast my illusion will see me at the proper racial size in my proper equipment. My natural form is that of a gnome, and since I shrinky-dink so much during this bug, I feel my gnomish heritage may have something to do with it? Personally, I have never seen this occur for another chanter. If I recast the illusion, I will appear normally to any players that see me as tiny.

Thanks so much to Sagea for helping me capture this on film! =)

[Cfullard]

This is actually working correctly. Believe it or not, illusion race spells have a chance to fail, as it was on live. Sometimes you can appear as big as your normal self, sometimes it works correctly. This gives you the appearance of human sized gnomes and gnome sized humans. This was sometimes I saw a lot on the PvP servers.

[Vermicelli]

Believe it or not,

I do not believe it! I have replicated this bug again with another player's help.

Bitesize barbarian, achieved with the process of me zoning, casting illusion, then asking my assistant to zone and screenshot me.

http://i.imgur.com/SFnoX6n.jpg

Actual-size barbarian after I recast my illusion. Both screenshots were taken by Dingel and emailed to me.

http://i.imgur.com/0HmDoxJ.jpg

I then asked Dingel to zone, illusion up, and tell me when to zone after he had done this. This is the resulting screenshot!

http://i.imgur.com/qfBjG2U.jpg

I have confirmed this other times by asking people what my character model appeared to them to be (I only asked people who I knew had zoned in after I cast illusion) and they all answered that I was a tiny version of whatever race I chose. I absolutely believe this to be a bug, and cannot imagine it being implemented as a planned feature. Why in the world would a level 35 chanter have trouble conjuring the illusion of being human, which is a level 4 spell? =P

[Nocte]

This happens when people zone in after you've cast the illusion spell. Cancelling/Refreshing the spell should fix your size on their display.

[Vermicelli]

This happens when people zone in after you've cast the illusion spell. Cancelling/Refreshing the spell should fix your size on their display.

Thanks .. this is exactly what I hope my efforts clearly show =)

While searching these forums for related material, I discovered this thread from October 9th of last year (last post is the relevant one):

http://www.project1999.org/forums/showthread.php?t=19106&highlight=illusion

So this has been an issue for a while. Surely there is something that can be done! Recently, threads have been posted that are trying to demystify the cause of dark bone skeletons displaying the LDoN skelly model. Take for example the Original Post in the following thread, which discusses how the EQ game program applies racial models and model textures to NPC's:

http://www.project1999.org/forums/showthread.php?t=32994&highlight=race

Now, I'm no computer programmer, but I feel like there could be some kind of connection between the issue with the skeletons and the issue with Enchanter racial illusions. I am supposing that the order in which the game applies model and skin attributes to player characters under race illusion is somehow out of sorts.

[Vermicelli]

I began to wonder if, when this graphic bug occurs, it always appears to shrink the affected character. I thought it strange that every instance of the bug I have screencapped changed the person to gnome-size. Why gnome-size? Was it because the natural forms of Dingel and myself are gnomish? Yes, I think so! I began to wonder how it would affect enchanters of other races. Last night, I enlisted the help of another chanter, one I made sure wasn't a gnome. I met Perlin in Neriak, and we began the tests. I asked Perlin to step across the zoneline and transform into a human, then tell me when to cross over and examine him.

http://i.imgur.com/d9nK5V2.jpg

Perlin began life as a dark elf, and, upon being affected by this bug, became not a gnome-size human but rather a dark elf-sized human! Oh my! Comparing my illusionary height to his in the preceding foto, you can see that he is just a little shorter than you should expect a human to be. You will also notice the weird color of his shirt. He was actually equipped with the lurid purple robes that dark elves start with.

I continue to believe that something is mixed up in the way the EQ program applies skin and model information to character graphics when this bug occurs. It seems to apply the correct model and skin to the player character, but it misplaces the data about the height of the illusion. Also missing is the graphic for the robe the player is wearing. Since the only time the bug is displayed is when another player sees the enchanter after zoning, might there be a hiccup in the way the game stores data so as to be able to draw the correct illusion on the enchanter, from the other person's view?

For what it is worth, I found this thread that discusses the way the game applies character attributes to some illusions on EQemu. I apologize if this data is not applicable to P99 or to this problem!

http://www.eqemulator.org/forums/showthread.php?t=33395&highlight=illusion

[Pudge]

good research. illusions appearing incorrectly to ppl who zone over has been an issue on other emus as well. would be cool to get this fixed. and especially for a pvp server it matters sometimes..

[Ektar]

there was a lot I didn't read it all. sry.

but this bug has also existed since the beginning of time.

If you enter a zone, all characters in an illusion will revert to his base race's size. That is, an ogre under a DE illusion will become a very tall DE. Furthermore, if the character is illusioned, his armor will disappear and be replaced by a tinted chest of whatever color chestpiece is being worn. Note that this is only to you who entered the zone; anyone else that was already in the zone, including the person himself, will see the correct image. Any recast, as mentioned above, will fix the image for anyone else in the zone currently.

This is how it was way back in the day at least. I was under the impression this was fixed? maybe I made that up. but what you describe is precisely this

[Vermicelli]

there was a lot I didn't read it all. sry.

but this bug has also existed since the beginning of time.

If you didn't read anything in this thread, what good are you in this discussion? Even though it was with information that was posted earlier in the thread, thanks for giving me a bump I guess =)

Those of you claiming that this bug has always been a part of EQ, could you show a little research that proves it? Every internet search I can think of to do on the topic returns nothing to show that this bug was ever experienced by anyone except for people using EQemu, and there is nothing to show that it was ever an issue on live PvP. Pics or it didn't happen.

If we are going by memories, I never remember this display bug happening when I played from 2000 to 2002. Never. never

[Aadill]

this bug has also existed since the beginning of this EQEmu server

Wait till you see a necro ignite bones. You'll flip your shit.

[quellren]

Wait till you see a necro ignite bones. You'll flip your shit.

I particularly like to Ignite Bones Ice Giants. Who knew once you melted the Ice there was a Human sized cyclops inside?

[Ektar]

If you didn't read anything in this thread, what good are you in this discussion? Even though it was with information that was posted earlier in the thread, thanks for giving me a bump I guess =)

yeah listen your post was extremely long and I knew the answer. so I skipped it because there was so much speculation that I could just solve quickly. was just trying to help out, no need to be snooty :P

[Vermicelli]

I knew the answer

If you had read the thread, you would have known someone else posted the same information you did, before you did. Nothing about this bug is solved yet, as the bug is still occurring. Even if there is some proof that the bug occurred during the classic period on live EQ, which I still doubt, that doesn't mean we have to put up with the bug on P99.

From more illusion testing, I have discovered that if I am affected by the skeleton illusion, it will shrink me to gnome-size just as with player-race illusions. However, if I am under the illusion of an elemental (I have tried all four: earth, fire, wind, and water), the model size bug does not effect me. I appear as a normal-sized elemental to other players. Is it possible the elemental illusions manage to store all of the data so as to display the elemental illusion to observers completely correctly, even though the other race illusions do not store their data correctly? I have also been working on documenting Minor Illusion issues, and I feel it may help to examine how the Minor Illusion spell saves the data required to draw the right model for observers.

I will be the first to say it: Minor Illusion is a wacky, wacky spell. In P99, it unexpectedly grants infravision and changes your racial faction modifier to that of a human. Even if, to myself, I appear to be a totally awesome bunkbed, other people might tell me I appear to be a table to them.

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

What I wish is that I could see the bare bones of what information is stored when you cast Minor Illusion so the game client knows what object model to draw for observing players. The following quote from an EQemu developer from the following link has increased my belief that the game simply isn't correctly storing the data necessary to properly display Minor Illusion and player-race illusions under the circumstances my thread covers.

http://www.eqemulator.org/forums/showthread.php?t=25541

Perhaps there is a something missing in one of the packets sent to the players when they zone in that should be passing this info to them, but isn't. Maybe we don't have the correct opcode to do that, or maybe there is just something in the source that needs to be added for it to make that extra check.

Unfortunately, that seems to be the last post documenting his investigation of the issue. I will not tire as easily!

[Dentalplan]

Yeah minor illusion is also substantially broken here, but it's such an unimportant spell that I don't think anyone cares. I once used minor illusion on my chanter and was immediately transformed into nothing (lol?) but was rooted anyways, and the city guards of my hometown immediately aggro'd and killed me.

[Vermicelli]

Seems that wolf form illusion is also affected by the display bug, shrinking me to the size of a chihuahua.

http://i.imgur.com/9OdGaTY.jpg

A druid /friend has also informed me of a time that he transformed his group into a pack of wolves, and upon the druid returning from linkdeath, the wolf-ogre in his group became a HUGE wolf. The Dry Bones skeleton illusion is also affected by the bug. The only illusion I have not been able to test so far is the werewolf (at level 44), which I feel will respond like the elemental illusions and not be affected by the bug.

TL;DR Wolf form is also bugged, dry bones is also bugged. Could someone with the ability please look into the way the game saves the illusions' model/skin/height information to display? Or maybe write it down for later?

[Vermicelli]

http://i.imgur.com/CCaaS8n.jpg

So it seems that Illusion: Werewolf is also affected by the re-size bug! Among all of the illusion spells, the elementals are the only ones that do not experience tiny-fication in my tests. Because of this, I had suspected that monster-model illusions, among which I counted elementals and werewolves, would not be affected, though it seems that ele's are still the only ones getting it right.

[nilbog]

Bump etc.

I as well recall the large dark elves. i.e.: Dabiggun was an ogre warrior.

http://i42.tinypic.com/qy90eh.jpg

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.

[Vermicelli]

Some new player character model-size shenanigans have developed!

http://www.project1999.org/forums/showthread.php?t=81549

It seems halflings and halfelves are experiencing model size differential bugs now. I feel that their problems may be somehow linked to the enchanter illusion resize bug.