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 how MUCH of an improvement it was.)

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 to add to that, we discovered the issue with the frost-rimmed chairs on Friday thanks to a player who helped us narrow it down to this item and we’ve already got a fixed checked in for it.

As SmokeJumper mentioned, we’re hoping to push out an update to address several Shader 3.0 issues in the next week or two.

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 wrong.

Imago-Quem needs your help now to finish the last mile of the race so he can move onto upgrading other things in EQ2. Don’t give up or just accept that items and armor you worked hard to get won’t look right with Shaders 3 enabled, bug it, or post screenshots on the EQ2 Forums.

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 about this, TimeTraveling responded:

Tis intended, and apologies for it getting missed on the release notes!

So it’s official! You can now put LORE items in your shared bank!

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 items for 1h swords, 2h swords, 1h crush, 2h crush, pike, spear, shields (bucklers and round), and daggers. He still has to do some bows, and I think he has done some staffs already.

No word on crossbows or nunchucks just yet.

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 the model I am working on now. But I have to say that the one I will be working on next month, if done right could top them all.

Do you have any special (or just super fun) projects you’re working on now for EQII?

The project I will be working on after I finish my current model is going to be awesome. Its going to give players something they have never had in our game yet, I can’t wait to get started. Also it’s going to need a lot of QA time to get this right. So I want to get it done as soon as possible so we will have over half a year to work out the bugs.

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 as paintings from City Merchants. Some of these paintings possessed a very high quality and added some much needed options to the previously limited choice of paintings in EQ2.

The First Prize winning “Destroyer of Ordanach” by Citadelli.

Not all of the paintings were classics. Because the contest wasn’t widely discussed outside of Non-Gameplay Discussion, and because I don’t think it was clear to players that their submissions could become in-game paintings, there weren’t a lot of entries. And in the end, the paintings sold in-game came with some very restrictive terms. They were unable to be placed in guild halls, and required both a guild level of 30 and a sizable stack of status each to buy. Still, I ran out and bought 2 of each (even that, unique Yha-lei mayhem image that came complete with targeting UI elements! 🙂 ).

This time around, I’m hopeful that all aspiring artists and fans of EQ2 will give it their best shot and submit really stunning original artwork or in-game screenshots representing in-game characters or foes of note.

I believe anything that improves the in-game selection of paintings is a good thing, and it’s really cool that players get a rare chance to put some content back into the game.

And I am cautiously optimistic that we’ll see less restrictions on guild hall vs. house, guild status, and guild level when purchasing these new paintings.

DAZ Studio?

It’s worth mentioning that quite a few players of EQ2 who like to bring that extra bit of realism to their characters appearances, biographies, and conquests have discovered a program called DAZ Studio. It is a 3D character poser-type of program which has a toolbox of thousands of armor choices, clothing, weapons, races, accessories, and appearances.

An aspiring artist could spend months experimenting with this program.

Some of the coolest-looking signatures on the EQ2 Forums are EQ2 characters which have been reimagined in DAZ Studio. And thus far, some of the best-looking entries to this contest were created in this program as well.

NOTE: I do not work for Daz 3D nor do I make any money from mentioning their products here.

Three Weeks to Go!

UPDATE: Deadline Extended to May 28th!

Notable Norrathians Contest @ EQ2 Forums

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 for EQII?

To keep things fresh we have incorporated ways to streamline and add to our character templates. Since we support over 50 male and female player characters, we need to be careful to change our templates. One way we have made things more interesting is our “snap-on” system that uses offset to add objects to existing templates.

The newest exciting technology we implemented was designed by Bill Yeatts, and coded by Brian Belfield. This cool system allows our backpacks to have items swivel and bounce around like real objects kind of do- without additional animator time. This allowed me to make a few popular backpack items such as the Frostfell backpacks of last year, and the latest Brewmeister barrel backpacks. Other backpacks are coming for other tradeskills as well. It’s a lot of fun to see the items bouncing along in our test viewer.

Do you have any special (or just super fun) projects you’re working on now for EQII?

I reckon the new backpacks I alluded to above are the most exciting things upcoming in my work path. Right now I’m focusing on warm garments for certain icy areas, and tinkering with some other items. EQII always has something interesting lined up for me down the trail.

You can read the complete interview as well as see additional screen shots of character artwork that Jeff has created at EQ2Players.

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 a few house items), others look forward to the addition of new items each time the City Festival sets down in a new city.

We have been assured that each month, the cache of recurring rewards (available no matter which city hosts the event) will continue to grow even as new items are added specific to each new city.

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 buff remains. Think of it like when you enter water on a mount.

This led to a few pages of responses, mostly negative, about this change.  Many people were asking for a new /hidemount command. EQ2 Senior Producer  SmokeJumper decided to chime in with some additional info:

Well, I guess it’s time to stick my head in the dragon’s mouth. Here goes nuthin’.

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 in general) and I have a list of things I want to do when time permits.  The community is also very proactive about suggesting things that they would like, and often these agree with the things I already want to do, or are appropriate to add to the list.  And sometimes there are changes “behind the scenes” that make it appropriate to include tradeskill content of a particular type.  For an example of the latter, when the Lavastorm zone was revised, it made sense to take advantage of the changes and put in a tradeskill quest line in Lavastorm at the same time.  Once I know what I want to do next, I just figure out about how long it will take and run it past the team leads to ensure they agree, then off to work I go.  It’s not a very formal process.

Will there be musical instruments coming soon to EQ2 for players housing?

There are already a reasonable number of carpenter-made musical instruments that can be placed in houses.  There aren’t any current plans to add more.

Will it be possible one day to have outdoor areas in houses so fans of decoration will finally be able to create a real garden?

It’s something that would be decided by our art team, in particular Haohmaru.  We know it’s something that many people would like, but I don’t know if there are any specific plans currently.

Are there any plans of creating brand new quests, like the epic crafting quest?

I am always hoping to add more tradeskill quests.  There are no current plans for another epic quest, but I’m sure there will be more quests of other types.

Check out EQ2Players.com for the full interview.

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 has been added to Moonfield Hamlet selling some of the rare Heroic drops from Sentinel’s Fate zones. It will be interesting to see if this is like the vendor added late in the release of The Shadow Odyssey, where only the lesser Fabled items were available, and for a whopping 150 shards/marks each.

With the Test Server being updated nearly a month before we are estimating Game Update 56 will hit live servers, hopefully there will be plenty of time to test out all the changes.

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 use it for reference for my environments. For instance, the new movie Alice in Wonderland has some awesome visuals and is currently inspiring me with what I am working on for the next expansion.

What’s your favourite thing that you’ve done for EQII?

I recently completed the art for one of the Battleground maps—Iksar Ruins (capture the flag). It was really fun to work on because while I was in game testing everything out, I imagined that I was running around with a flag on my back, trying to avoid being killed by the other players. I also created the zone, Shard of Love. I was given a lot of creative freedom on this zone as far as creating the look and feel and I’m really happy with how it turned out.

Do you have any special (or just super fun) projects you’re working on now for EQII?

I am working on a new dungeon – top secret as of now 😉 – that will be really unique and interesting. It’s really pushing me creatively to think outside the box.

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 and takes advantage of Shaders 3.0. These tools are now in the hands of developers.

Shaders 3.0 is currently enabled on the Test server, and in response to player feedback and testing results, Ryan has been been submitting numerous fixes, optimizations, and updated textures. We had hoped these changes would all make it onto Test today, as then we’d be able to better assess how the finished Shaders 3.0 are going to work out when they are pushed live (possibly as soon as May’s Game Update 56).

However we have learned that Shaders 3.0 will not be updated on Test until the 4th week of April, possibly April 23rd. We intend, once this next wave of fixes are implemented on Test, to do some before-and-after comparison videos.

As always, we will keep you informed on these and other developments.

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 of gear that looks like noobie gear dropping from Sentinel’s Fate raids or even group zones, we will see what can be done.

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 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.