Feldon
If there’s one thing that SmokeJumper wants us to know about the EQ2 team right now, it’s that they are more motivated and focused than they have been for some time now. There are some truly ambitious plans (public and rumored) to bring us new raid and group content in the next two major Game Updates. If they launch in a solid condition it could go a long way to working on the sustainability of the playerbase who have traditionally moved on to other things a few months after each expansion, only to return when raids are added, for...
shaders
Here are some news items we missed in the flurry of Server Merge and Freeblood news. They include Shaders 3 and Halas buildings, the look of the Freeblood, and Loitering NPCs in Freeport and Qeynos.
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...
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...
EverQuest 2 does not natively support Anti-aliasing, however determined players have managed to enable it by adding “r_aa_blit” to their EQ2 INI file. Unfortunately, players will have to wait a bit longer if they want to experience Shaders 3.0 and Anti-aliasing at the same time. Players attempting to use both will see zones which are entirely blacked out. From Imago-Quem: I just submitted a fix for this. Hopefully it passes QA and can get out to you in a hotfix here soon and you can run AA with Shader 3. And as for the prospect of using CPU Shadows...
Upgrading a 9 year old game engine to support a feature it was never designed for is a daunting task. No-one knows that better than Ryan “Imago-Quem” who has been busting his butt since before Fan Faire 2009 to revamp the graphical pipeline of EverQuest 2 to support Shaders 3.0.
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...
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...
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.
It looks like SOE have renewed their partnership with nVidia for the launch of EverQuest II: Sentinel’s Fate. When firing up the EQ2 Test, I was presented with the NVidia: The Way It’s Meant to be Played logo.
I present the EverQuest II Expansion & Game Update News from Fan Faire in a rollup post. This is partly based on the Fan Faire 2009 Consolidated News by Kalyyn. I started with Kalyyn’s great writeup and have built upon it, adding dozens of new details and minor corrections based on everything I observed at the 2009 Fan Faire EQ2 event in Las Vegas. I’ve archived the individual news posts I submitted over the weekend. If you still want to read them, they’re [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] And now, without further ado,...