Any way to get the old sky back?

[TheRusty]

Just as the title asks, is there any setting / file / alteration that can get the old skies from classic-luclin back?

Ir for that matter, the weather / lighting effects? I remember when playing a human or barbarian required a light source, and the lighting had this crisp quality to it.

It seems everything is currently using wither the hideous sprite-looking sky, or a rather nasty fog all over everything that makes it look like you're downqind of a forest fire.

[Haladarf]

Bumping a dead topic. How is there not more people asking about this? Its kind of a big deal.

[izadun]

Shards of Dalaya has the old sky, cant be too hard to figure out...

[izadun]

It at least looks like you can change the sky in the weather.ini file if you change the default skies to a different file in the resources\sky directory. Only way I can see is if you somehow took textures from the sky.s3d file and put them into dds files, then linked the new DDS files in the weather.ini file. I don't think that would solve any of the fog/lighting issues though.

[scruffy00]

A brief history of the EQ Graphics Engine:

Back in 1999, EverQuest was released with a hybrid DX6/GLIDE graphics engine. This graphic engine was mainly built off the True3D engine and used sky resources found in sky.s3d.

On November 11th, 2000, the engine was revamped to use DirectX 7. The Velious only new armor textures and full screen user interface were also added at this time. (http://www.tski.co.jp/baldio/patch/20001115.html)

On December 4th, 2001, Luclin was released. An upgraded DX8 based graphics engine named "Umbra" was included in the release. This new DX8 engine still used the old sky.s3d file and introduced new features such as back culling (via dpvs.dll), higher resolution textures, and ground foliage. Sky.s3d was updated to add the new skies for the Luclin zones. It took Verant nearly a month of daily patching to sort out the bugs and stabilize the game. Somewhere down the line, the graphics DLL was split out from EQGame.exe into it's own file, EQGfx_DX8.DLL. (http://www.tski.co.jp/baldio/patch/20011204.html)

On July 24th, 2002, the XML/TGA based SUITE user interface system was released that enabled the bazaar zone and user interface customization. The SUITE user interface also killed/abandoned the old in-game bulletin board system. The SUITE user interface eventually became mandatory on January 9th, 2003. A couple of new skies were added to sky.s3d for the Planes of Power release. Around the time of Lost Dungeon's release, the ability to specify NPC model loads using zone "_chr.txt" files was added. (http://www.tski.co.jp/baldio/patch/20020724.html and http://www.tski.co.jp/baldio/patch/20030109.html)

On March 23rd, 2004, Sony Online released the 3rd generation EverQuest engine that required DX9, called "EQGraphics". This engine was contained in a new graphics DLL file, "EQGraphicsDX9.dll". Unlike the first and second generation engines, the EQGraphics engine revamped most of the major data structures behind EverQuest. Sky support no longer used sky.s3d and instead drew all its data from the newly formed "Resources" directory. The default engine graphics format changed from "BMP" to "DDS". A new zone resources format called "EQG"/"ZON" was created for newer zones. "S3D" compatibility was maintained for legacy purposes. The entire collision system was revamped at this time, causing months of collision related issues. Collision related patches went on for months. Boats were the most severely impacted item. The boat system was non functional for several years after the March 23rd patch. To this day, there are still boat collision problems that originated from the original March 23rd patch. (http://www.tski.co.jp/baldio/patch/20040323.html)

Where Titanium and Project 1999 Fit In:

Project 1999 is based off the EverQuest Titanium box set. This box set is the earliest box set supported by the EQEmulator base project. The Titanium box set was released on January 11th, 2006 and contains an EQGame.exe dated November 8th, 2005. This release was made during the modern "3rd generation" era and therefore uses the new "resources directory" sky format mentioned above. There is no way to load the old sky.s3d into the 3rd generation graphics engine without manually upgrading the resources from the old file. (http://www.tski.co.jp/baldio/patch/20051027.html)

That is the long answer to why the old sky system will not be coming back.

[Yinaltin]

wow . great response !

[nilbog]

How does your sky currently appear? I have been using this for a while now and do not remember the looks of the default Titanium sky.

Doacleric made these long ago.

Here are some of the highlights:

# Improved sky colors
# Replaced ugly white fog with the original gray clipping plane
# Far improved sunset
# Sun sets at 8pm instead of 5pm
# Sky transitions are now slower and more natural

If anyone wants, I can upload.

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[Dac321]

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This is the one I currently have. Nilbog, could you forward to link on how to remove that ugly gray fog, maybe?

[Ropethunder]

Old sky with old boat:

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Old sky in the evening:

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[Rairun]

Hi Nilbog, could you upload the sky fix you're using, please?