Classic Spell Effects

[Nirgon]

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

If he can get it back with the old files; direction/gravity should be there as well. If it works right at 0,0 it will work right everywhere. You just have to undo what isn't.

I have an old EQ disk. Lemme know what you need.

I haven't fuxed around with a hex editor like this before, but I'm willing to try my hand.

I'll take a crack based on your original post.

Some of the effects like the 39+ targeted aoe magic are massive compared to what is here now lol.

[Telin]

Yes I've seen the particles fall from the sky Near the east commonlands inn closest to Freeport. Its probably in the exe file and/or the directx 9 dll. It could be as simple as offsets being out of range after changes were made. or worse if titanium had overwritten important parts of it. That would take someone who knew about graphical programming wouldn't it?

[Furinex]

I dunno, But Somehow, I fail to see what the issue would be with modifying this somehow to support the DX8 file that actually comes with Titanium as it is the same file and date as the one in trilogy, which I know works. If it used to work, why cant it now with some editing? I dont know jack and squat about this but Im sure someone does and that would be our best bet.

[Telin]

You can probably recode the dx8.dll file to work with dx9 and use the dx9 file name unless it does a checksum. Ive read where people have done this for other games, but it would have to be specifically done for this file and version of eq. Dx level 81 is probably the most the client needs since we aren't using anything too complex. All this work sounds expensive

[Bardalicious]

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

You can probably recode the dx8.dll file to work with dx9 and use the dx9 file name unless it does a checksum. Ive read where people have done this for other games, but it would have to be specifically done for this file and version of eq. Dx level 81 is probably the most the client needs since we aren't using anything too complex. All this work sounds expensive

very easy to spoof crc's on files if it is indeed being checked. but of course that may be against the rules here to alter the file regardless.

[Bardalicious]

Does anyone have an *ORIGINAL* EQ and Kunark disc floating around? Wouldn't mind having the files to do some comparisons. Of course you'd need to upload them for me tho, I have them but they are in storage somewhere =)

[Dangermouse]

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

Does anyone have an *ORIGINAL* EQ and Kunark disc floating around? Wouldn't mind having the files to do some comparisons. Of course you'd need to upload them for me tho, I have them but they are in storage somewhere =)

I've got an Kunark CD "English version" (in its original box no less!). If you want me to rip it and upload the files somewhere, let me know.

Alternatively if you just want a few files, I could install this disc and then send you a selection of files from the install dir. The disc itself just contains a load of CABs.

[Telin]

Interesting discussion on another game's particle system that wasnt loading. They figured it out lol. http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/foru...hp?f=1&t=42084

[Furinex]

And that's exactly what I thought. I sent him a pm but his RL is hectic during the week so I haven't heard back from him. When I can duplicate this, I will mess with it until its right or I'm dead... Whichever comes first.

[azxten]

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?

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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.