Feldon From EQ2Players:
EQ2 Artist Gary Daugherty does the effects for everything you see in-game. Everything from spell effects to the nifty mists and sparkles on epic weapons. Gary was kind enough to sit down and answer some questions!
And the news that many players have been waiting for, regarding Spell Animations…
Do you have any special (or just super fun) projects you’re working on now for EQII?
I’m currently updating, optimizing and standardizing every class spell visual in the game. My hope is that players won’t have to turn the FX off when they group or raid and will still be able to tell what is going on. It is also my goal to help better visually identify what class a player is by what spells they cast. In addition I’m setting spell visual tiers so an apprentice spell will have less bells and whistles than an adept or master spell visual. This update has not been officially announced and no release date has been chosen.
Most folks who raid must disable spell animation particle effects as they otherwise dramatically slow down the client. This is primarily due to them being tied directly to the character models and thus rendered on the CPU. Hopefully they are being decoupled and moved to the GPU, which should allow players to use spell effects even during raids.
I usually turn my particles off, but still some show up like the spirit of the wolf ghost wolf running effect, or the druid healing wreathe circlet thingies. If I kept the particle count turned up i would see what i refer to as the andy caps battle cloud effect. If you ever heard of that comic you know that when they get into a bar fight you can’t see anything but a cloud with arms and fists coming out of it.
Would like for someone to talk to this guy about,getting away from the slow drift towards those gay looking WOW style graphics and go more into what looks good like Aion syle gear, Cloth doen’t have to look like a freakin Bath Robe,look at the cloth gear on Aions Site, I also think they need to go more into “realism” (LiniageII style) with it instead of Bazaar Looking Cartoons. Everyone i know all say the same thing, “I wish they had some better looking Characters, and Mobs” Everyone likes eq2 because of the Content, But only about 20% probably satisfied with the direction of the characters and Mob Modules, When halas came out everyone in general said the same thing….Oh Look more of the same mobs.Changing the names doesn’t impove the game.