Racial Illusion Character Model Size Bug
 

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! =)

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.

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

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/sh...light=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/sh...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.

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/sho...light=illusion

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..

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

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

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