Feldon
Imago-Quem continues to work nose-to-the-grindstone on Shaders 3.0, improving not only the look, but the performance. A month’s worth of tweaks to Shaders 3.0 since Game Update 56 are now on Test. These improvements fix tons of issues with objects being too dark, too shiny, or just the wrong color. From SmokeJumper: Shader 3.0 optimizations! Shader 3.0 is now way faster than it used to be. In most cases, it will outstrip Shader 1.0 by 10 fps or more. Very cool. (Okay, we snuck this one out already, but I’m talking about it now because we never really said...
Art, Appearance, Housing
From EQ2Players: Aaron “Gnobrin” Bisnett is the Community Team’s gnomish graphics guru by day and the EQII team’s art apprentice by night! When he isn’t dropping in and taking a few thousand screenshots that we absolutely must have tomorrow!! he’s turning his hand to drawing some really beautiful things that are being added to the stunning items already found in Norrath. Hammers and Cleavers Stained Glass (left) and Tinkerfest (right) Cloaks You can read the full interview and look at more images of Gnobrin‘s artwork at EQ2Players.
Shaders 3 Hotfix on the Horizon Imago-Quem has been collecting feedback, bug reports, crash reports, and screen shots people have been posting regarding Shaders 3.0. We’re now expecting a hotfix in a couple of weeks. EQ2 Senior Producer SmokeJumper had this update: Some good news for you folks: 1) The darkness issues are fixed in-house already. We’ll be pushing those fixes out to you soon. 2) We’re looking into the crash that occurs in guild houses with tons of items in them. We hope to have a solution soon. 3) Frame rate has been improved. followed by Imago-Quem: Just...
Believe it or not, the hard work of bolting Shaders 3 onto the antiquated EQ2 engine is done. What remains is polish and cleanup. With all the combinations of armor, weapons, and with as many zones as there are in EQ2, this final bug sweep must take place with the help of the player. Players have been diligently posting screen shots and even videos demonstrating the numerous areas of the game including guild halls, armor sets, etc. where Shaders 3 stumbles — it’s too dark, it’s washed out, there are halos on objects, or the colors are just plain...
Dethdlr
So you’ve got a tradeable Lore item that you’d like to pass from one of your characters to another on the same account. How do you do it? You could hand it to a friend, change characters, and have them hand it back to you. If you’re in a guild, you could put it in the guild bank, change characters, and hope its still there for you to pull it back out. Wouldn’t it be much easier if you could just put the item in your own shared bank? Well now you can! In response to a player query...
After the jump, we’ve got the complete Game Update 56 Notes for May 25, 2010:
In a recent post on the EQ2 Forums, Dave “Covic” Brown brought us news that he’s been able to bring on an apprentice to help with character design. Covic has now elaborated on what that will mean for the Destiny of Velious expansion: I have an apprentice working on wieldables right now. His stuff is awesome. We are really trying to have every drop you get from the next expansion be new geo (geometry). There will be re-textures of the new geo, but little to no use of old geo if we can help it. He has already made...
EQ2Players has a new Artist Highlight up for Dave “Covic” Brown. Covic is the artist behind Varsoon, Anshti Sul, Ice Mares, Rhoen Theer, and the new mounts on the marketplace. He also pops on to the official message boards from time to time. Excerpts from the article: What’s your favourite thing that you’ve done for EQII? This is always changing form each new character I do. First it was Varsoon, then Anshti Sul, then Kraytok, and definitely Rhoen Theer. It seems every model I do becomes my next favorite, and I am starting to feel the same way about...
After Game Update #56, you may wonder why your mount is disappearing during combat. As reported earlier, there’s a new setting coming to the game. In Options -> Display -> Animation, there will be a new setting called “Render Mounts”. This has three options: Show mounts always Hide mounts during combat Never show mounts Hide mounts during combat is the default which may lead to some confusion on launch day. If you want it to work the way it used to, just set it to Show mounts always.
Even as EQ2Wire is trying to find an artist or artists to help us tell humorous, interesting stories about EQ2, the development of MMOs in general, and the sometimes tumultuous relations between game developers and the players, we could not help but notice the “Notable Norrathians” contest currently running on the EQ2 Forums and posted by Kiara. UPDATE: Deadline Extended to May 28th! The New Artists My favorite part of EverQuest II’s fleeting 5th Anniversary “Heroes Festival” (during last year’s American Thanksgiving week) was the 10 Player-Designed In-Game Paintings. Initially, an art conteste, the top 10 winners became available...
EQ2Players is highlighting another team member, this time Jeff Jonas, player artist for EverQuest II. My role on the EQII team is to create objects that our player characters use, wear, or ride. I am known as a “wearables” guy. A project like this needs thousands of items to make it fun and exciting. Wearables run the gamut from Barbarian helmets, to collector’s capes, and full vampire armor sets, to wieldables such as swords and staffs, to rideables like the hover discs I have created. Other wearables can be backpacks, or armbands. What’s your favourite thing that you’ve done...
Free Item Players logging into EQ2 in the days immediately following the launch of Game Update 56: Halas Reborn (specifically May 25 ~ 28) will receive a free item, a Frostpaw Kitten.
image courtesy Jethal Silverwing Come to the Faire: Freeport @ Kithicor.org The first week of every month sees the arrival of a traveling City Festival. This month, the City Festival wraps its first tour of the five known cities of Norrath by visiting Freeport. Next month, the City Festival will no doubt make its first appearance in the newly-found New Halas. While some players have shared their exasperation with the obviousness of the ‘content delivery system’ feel to these events (repeat a runaround errand-type quest dozens of times, or craft dozens of items, to earn enough tokens to buy...
On Tuesday, 27 April 2010, this tidbit made it into the update notes for test: Mounts will now be temporarily suspended while in combat. Basically, in outside zones, mounts would disapear as soon as you enter combat and re-appear a few seconds after combat ended. This had a general negative response on the official EQ2 Forums and led to speculation on how this would effect buffs. Gninja responded with some clarification on the matter: You would not lose any stats or anything you would have normally had your character will just no longer be visually mounted during combat the...
EQ2Players.com French Community Rep, Soffrina had a chance to interview Domino and ask a few questions. Here are a few excerpts from the article: How do you come up with a decision to add a new thing to the game? Do you listen to the community’s needs, is it a development decision depending on its importance or is it a combination of both? In other words, how do you initiate a project? It is certainly a combination of things. When I play, I’m always watching for things that might be needed or that would improve tradeskills (or indeed the game...
Game Update 56 is looking to be a huge update, with many tweaks and adjustments throughout Norrath. In brief… a substantial Travel Revamp more quests in Stonebrunt Highlands to hopefully fill that level 87-90 solo questing gap a new Storyline feature a new Icy Keep x4 Raid Shaders 3.0 Graphical Revamp Research Assistants can help all your characters Blue PvP Adornments Yellow Adornments on T9 Mastercrafted gear Level 90 Character Traits PvP Warfields new Training Dummy options in your guild hall (solo, group, raid, and AE group) and of course New Halas Also of note, is that a vendor...
EQ2Players has a new video showcasing Halas Reborn. Check it out below. And in case you missed it, here are Screenshots of Halas Reborn Housing.
EQ2Players has a preview up about the housing in New Halas. Andres Rodriguez is the artist responsible for designing the new houses and he took the time to answer some questions and share some pictures. The houses will be available in two, four and six room layouts and there will also be access to T1 guildhalls. They will include some built in bookshelves and even a fireplace. And all the houses in New Halas will include windows with a view to the sea. New Halas Housing @ EQ2Players
EQ2Players checked in with Amanda McNair this week with another Artist Highlight. Amanda worked on the artwork for the Shard of Love and the Battlefield of Ganak, the capture the flag Battlefields zone. Here are some excerpts from the article: What do you draw from for inspiration for your art in EQII? I tend to draw my inspiration from everyday life and what is going on around me. When I visit museums, watch movies, or even flip through catalogues, I’m always checking out architectural elements and trying to decide how it was built, or taking pictures so I can...
We continue to follow progress on the Shaders 3.0 update. Imago-Quem (Ryan) has continued to work tirelessly on this project and we have an update of sorts. Originally intended as a graphical bump to improve the appearance of the game in existing and new zones, Shaders 3.0 was expanded and re-prioritized into a sweeping optimization of the EQ2 graphical pipeline engine first, and a graphical improvement second. Part of this process was Imago-Quem providing tools to the EQ2 zone and character art developers so that all new content they create for this and future expansions is fully compatible with...
We missed this EQ2Players post from Friday but considering the excitement leading up to New Halas, we thought we’d post it. Nathan “Kaitheel” McCall has posted some of the Lore about what we can expect from New Halas and the twists and turns of the storyline. Meanwhile, Stacey Norman, Zone Artist, posted about her experiences in designing the city of New Halas. New Halas Lore @ EQ2Players By the way, this EQ2Players writeup has a thumbnail image of some of the concept art for New Halas. We wrangled up a link to a large version of this image.
The feature set for the Sentinel’s Fate expansion has always included a bullet point indicating that Sentinel’s Fate would contain “more new armor appearances than currently exist in the game“. Yet players have been surprised that a lot of the brand new armor, weapons, shields, etc. dropping in Sentinel’s Fate look exactly like existing items. Kander has shed some light on this issue: Yes, many of these items got missed on the appearance pass. I am unsure why or how. We will start changing them for newer appearances ASAP. Please PM me if you have any other specific instances...
Imago-Quem, who has long been working on the Shaders 3.0 project, has posted a new Shaders 3.0 FAQ thread summing up all the key details. Originally hatched as a graphical engine bump, and then expanded into an optimization of graphical performance, Shaders 3.0 are now slated for release with Game Update 56 in May.
Here are your update notes for March 30, 2010, after the jump:
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...