Hello everyone, I have been watching a lot of EQ videos lately and noticed that the HD textures on a certain server look very crisp. Maybe its just me ..... but it looked even better than live? Or maybe I am tripping and the luclin HD textures are the same thing? Does anyone know anything about improving the textures in game? Even if its something that needs to be modded every patch, I wouldnt mind really, not like there are many patches. TLDR: Anyone know anything about HD upscale or texture packs that work with live?
I don't know about anything for Live servers. But this is a real possibility once the move to a 64-bit client is complete.
It might just be Anisotropic Filtering, if you have nvidia card right click on your desktop choose nvidia control panel, manage 3d settings, and under global force Anisotropic Filtering to 16x. Might have to restart the game for it to take effect.
Well, expecting 64b to bring nice and shiny graphics is very optimistic. 64b will just bring the ability to use more memory. This is especially interesting server side i guess. As for the content, policy those last years was to recycle old content from the first expansions. But group content amount shrank to a handful of quest, and missions per expansions. It looks most of the former eq staff left or was laid off. Current staff seems to struggle with very plain problems. So probably no any meaningful change any time soon!
You must have been watching videos of E m u lators that have updated texture packs. Those are not official. There are no texture packs beyond what you see in-game for official EQ servers.
No it isn't, sadly. In order to update any player character textures (not the Hero's Forge system but the base appearances) the current dev team would have to actually recreate every single player character model in the game (with the exception of Frogloks & Drakkin). They lost the data used to create those models at some point so they can't just change stuff like textures, face selections, hair & facial hair selections etc. or upgrade them without completely recreating the model data & animation files the existing ones used.
Skuz, you sometimes speak with authority out of your depth. You are not right here. Remaking the textures for the current models IS possible, and has already been done. IF it were true they couldn't edit the models, they can still change the textures, they couldn't change the UV mapping. BUT those models CAN be opened and edited, they don't need 'source files', the model file has all the geometry, uv mappings, and additional anchors and attachment points. The Armature is a separate file, these days the 'skeleton/armature' would be part of the file. I can open and edit those files myself, and have. There are HD texture packs for old character models on E m u lators, you're aware of this right?
I'm sorry but I'm not going to watch the video. You obviously misunderstood what was said, or what was said is incorrect. Doesn't matter who said it, facts are facts. You keep trying to avoid this statement. There are texture packs available right now on E m u lators. How did THEY do it, if DB can't? I've opened and edited models from EQ, EQ2,PS2,FreeRealms and Landmark. Nothing stops them from being opened and edited. So why on earth would the company who owns the assets be unable to edit them?
Honestly, I don't follow any of those projects at all, I was aware that P99 had a texture upgrade option done client side but how that was done I simply don't know.
The texture is a separate file. The model has a reference to a texture file name. You edit the texture file without changing the name. If you keep the texture dimensions in the same ratio you can double, quadruple (power of 2 on up) the size, and the UV mapping stays the same. When you "simply don't know" what you're talking about, it might be wise to not post. *edit* You and I have gone through this before, with you basing statements off something an employee said. You might have misunderstood, and/or the employee could have been wrong. I wouldn't take statements they make as anything more than someone working on a 23 year old game, who probably wasn't even out of high school when the game was created. The 'files were lost' story is much retold, I'd sure like to get to the bottom of the truth of it.
I would guess that updating the textures for the zones would be more or less just a file-replacement for the texture-file. Most games uses normalized texture coordinates nowadays, so texture alignment is not a concern. Furthermore upscaling textures can be done by an AI, with moderate success. I would even guess the 64bit client will eventually support HD textures, according to this statement: That said, it is not on their newly released roadmap. So unless they want to surprise us, I would guess: Not this year... I would guess that IF they wanted to update the 3d-engine, then that would be the best time to do a texture update too. Maybe that is why they haven't planned to update textures this year...
That's your position/stance, I didn't agree with it then, I don't now. I would love a dev to explain what the actual situation is but they likely have far better things to do with their time so you & I will just have to continue to disagree on some stuff, I'm cool with that, guess you aren't or you would not essentially be telling me to shut up.
Just some corrections here. -"64bit client will eventually support HD textures" - the 32bit client can 'support' 'hd' textures. 'HD texture' is not a specific spec, it just means 'bigger/more pixels'. You could stuff larger textures into the 32 bit client and it will work, just takes longer to load the bigger texture. -"update the 3d-engine, then that would be the best time to do a texture update too" - Actually if they intend to update textures the best time to do it would be the soonest possible, that's a massive undertaking for the Art Team, who produce art. The Devs who would code a graphics update are different people than the art team.
My understanding is that it would result in more "out of memory"-related crashes on the 32bit client. Do the E-M-U servers with updated textures, have access to the more memory intensive zones from the newer expansions?
That is a great question, I don't know the answer to. While I keep up on what they do vis-a-vis textures and models, I've never played an E m u , nor have any idea what goes on behind the scenes. I DO know, with Player Studio textures we were asked to shoot for 256x256 or 512x512 textures, but allowed to use 1024x1024 also. So I have every reason to believe there is some 'wiggle room', if you will. It's not just about a single texture, it's about all the textures that have to be loaded at once. I'm pretty sure the 32bit client handles bigger textures if you throw them at it. And I'm willing to guess that's what the E m us did, no coding or settings changes required.
Directx9 supports textures up to 4096x4096 afaik, but if all the textures where scaled up to max size, rather than just a few for "wiggle room". Then I would guess it would push the limit for memory allocation on the 32bit client. I also think that directx9 have some internal constraints for video memory allocation for the texture cache. EQ probably "accepts" textures up to the dx9 texture-size-cap, but only if there is enough memory for it.
Indeed. On the client side. If your computer/graphics card has enough memory to show the textures, the 32bit game has no problem displaying them. Which is why they have required specs, that were upped when they went DX9, and upped for 64bit. *edit* Of course an E m u can just say, "Can't load the textures? Get a better card!"
Just to add a little detail, on two points. -Jumbur asks about E m u having 'modern' (more memory intensive) content.: As I said, I don't know for sure. But my understanding is 99, at least, if not all of them, use code that was 'reverse engineered' from the files on the Titanium CD box issue. Which is up to Velious? -'Texture Packs' on E m u: The one I'm thinking of is either a x2 or x4 on the size of the Classic Base Player Skins only. Only 26 in Velious I would think. *EDIT* Silly me, that didn't account for the face options. So add in each race's number of options. But the point stands, just the classic skins is much less of an undertaking and memory chunk than any other 'texture updates' would be. */edit* Guessing those skins were originally 256x256, just bumping up to 512 is a huge improvement and not that much size at all. Anything more is really a massive undertaking. -Armors? maybe -Weapons -Mobs -Environments And the Sky is a whole other thing. *EDIT 2* And some interesting reading here: https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq/index.php?threads/got-alternate-textures-working.266015/
