How to get old spell effects (with the hand particles)

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jvsbarde
Posts: 2
Joined: 09 Oct 2018 15:41

How to get old spell effects (with the hand particles)

Post by jvsbarde »

Hey guys, I've spent a lot of time tweaking different things to get old spell particles to appear. The classic method most people have read/heard about is to delete the spellsnew.eff / edd files from the directory and that works ... sort of. You wont get particles coming out of your hand and lots of particles for certain spells and effects are also missing. For some reason those all go to the 0,0 location in whatever zone you're casting in. Bizarre and seemingly difficult for people on other emus to fix!

Out of lots of searched archived reddit threads and eqemu forum posts, the best method i've found to get oldschool spell effects with the hand particles is to use the modified files from p99. They have some really dedicated people who basically remade all the effects more-or-less from scratch. The downside to that method is you have to use their spells_us.txt file, which may or may not cause issues for you in certain zones and with certain particles not displaying for you here on Casual Dreams. I've tested my magician spells up to level 34 (i know, this isn't much) and am not missing any graphics, but YMMV! If you'd like to try this absolutely backup your files!

1. Download the p99 'getting started' files from here
2. Make copies of your spellsnew.edd, spellsnew.eff, and spells_us.txt from your EQ directory in case this isn't your cup of tea and you want to switch back.
3. Add the p99 spellsnew.edd, spellsnew.eff, and spells_us.txt files that you downloaded to your eq directory, let them override what's already there (as long as you did your backup!)
4. Also add the SpellEffects folder from the p99 files to your eq directory, you wont need to overwrite anything because this folder is likely not already in your directory. If you do have a spelleffects folder, first back. it. up! then when you paste in the p99 version just choose the merge option.
5. Ignore all the other 'getting started' files, we dont need those.
6. Enjoy the nostalgia and get to testing. reading though the casual dreams forums i get the impression that certain differences in spells_us.txt may cause some high level or npc spells to possibly not show a graphic if you're using this method. If that turns out to be the case just revert back to the backup files that you made of your spellsnew.edd/eff and spells_us.txt and you'll be good as new again.

Have fun and let me know what issues you bump into if any! Maybe smarter and more motivated people than I could figure out how to update the p99 spells_us.txt that incorporates all these older particles with the appropriate bits from casual dreams for better compatibility.

Known issues so far(will update as they surface)
- spell icons change, this may or may not be your cup of tea
- using rof2 client, lost the ability to right click empty spell slots to mem spells from the dropdown lists. could be a deal-breaker for some, though you can still save your spell sets for quick swapping
- spells_us.txt effects the level you can cast spells, the p99 version uses some different levels for some spells than casual dreams, so for example i have a level 34 casual dreams spell that it wont let me cast at level 34, because it is now listing as level 39 (with the p99 spells_us.txt)
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