July 20th Patch Notes (Test Server)

Tuesday July 20th Update - Augments can now fit into multiple slot types. On an augment the text could read "This augment can fit in these slot types: 3, 4". - Zoning pets will now properly save their taunt toggle settings. - Spell damage messages done to yourself will no longer be displayed for others. Cannibalize and Mana Convert spells were examples of this. - Summoning a Sand Giant in Oasis with Monster Summoning will no longer cause your pet the next time you zone to be HUGE! Monster Summoned pets will no longer save their size - Pets will no longer poof when you get Call of Hero'd. - Weapon augmentations will again proc properly - The EverQuest process is now more friendly. There is also a slider bar to set your Max. FPS. in the Options window under display settings. This will free up more resources while running EQ. Also, when EQ loses focus it will use less resources. - New commands for consent: /consent group -- flags your current corpses so they can be dragged by all of your current group members /consent raid -- flags your current corpses so they can be dragged by anyone in your raid (including people who join the raid later) /consent guild -- flags your current corpses so they can be dragged by anyone in your guild /deny group -- removes the flag /deny raid -- removes the flag /deny guild -- removes the flag [Test fixes that are already live] - The Ferocity line of spells will now increase your chance of double attack for classes without innate double attack. - Soul abrasion damage is now being figured into critical hit damage. - AA Focus effects should now work. - Various fixes to Fading Memories - Warrior shielding should now last the correct duration - Fixed a bug where spells that require spell components would not cast if you had more that 1 component in your inventory. - Instant cast combat abilities can once again be used when you have a discipline up.

Comments

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frame rates....
# Jul 24 2004 at 10:27 PM Rating: Decent
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80 posts

There is a frame rate utility I found out about in a magazine artical. It's called "FRAPS". There is a free version of it, though the description of the pay one sounds really nice (I use the free one on 98SE and on XP Home).

A lot of games (Quake, Doom) 30 frames per second is concitered the lowest "playable", with 60fps + perfered.
As a side note my brother gets about 15 to 20 frames per second on the old ATI Radeon 7000 we use. That can slow down to 1 to 2fps near the main bank in PoK when thee is a lot of people there and someone is doing MGBs. Needless to say, we use the halfing bank....
FPS
# Jul 21 2004 at 1:00 PM Rating: Decent
So what do you think is an acceptable FPS value?
How can I measure the present FPS output?
RE: FPS
# Jul 21 2004 at 2:57 PM Rating: Excellent
You'll basically have to play with it a bit to find a setting that gives you the look and preformance you want.

Lower FPS should give you better "response time" as your system isn't having to do as much drawing, making room for figuring all the other things that are going on-- but you may trade some smoothness of movement for that increase if you turn the FPS too low.

By the same token, if your hardware is good enough you can try increasing the FPS to make things seem to move more smoothly, but you may give up some system speed for this, especially when there's a lot on-screen that needs to be drawn in. Also, if you push the FPS too high, you could end up overloading your system and cause your framerate to actually DECREASE, resulting in the jerky "move once per second" action we all came to curse in the Bazaar (before the "Hide Traders button, that is).

Once a good FPS setting has been found, you should be able to at least get an increase in your visual performance in the game.
RE: FPS
# Jul 28 2004 at 8:30 PM Rating: Decent
Something I found interesting, and may help a few folks. I recently upgraded from a Geforce 3 to a Radeon 9800 Pro. With this upgrade I figured I could run all high qual models and every setting maxed out. The result was the same as on the Geforce 3, jerky movement and 0fps in heavily populated areas. Curious, I decided to up my ram from 512 to 1gig...sure enough, everything completely smoothed out (on an overclocked 2.9ghz P4).

I'm no graphics programming guru by any means, but I think it stems back to the age of the graphics engine. Everthing is really inefficient and uses a lot more CPU power than GPU power to render. I believe even the actual game world uses massive amounts of CPU resources to render rather than GPU power. I hoped that most of this would be cleared up with the introduction of the DX9 upgrade...but it seems that we only got an easier to produce sky. I also think that it must store all the models in RAM, and they are quite large...thats why a greater amount of ram free's up the CPU a bit more.

-The Ways
RE: FPS
# Aug 04 2004 at 7:42 AM Rating: Decent
the big thing you're not considering here is memory swaping when you upgraded your video card that allowed you to put you're graphics higher with out causing your gpu to over heat and burn out, but the main program was still running on limited system ram so windows creates virtual ram by saving stuff on you HD but when things change as often as they do in a large game like EQ it causes windows to contueosly switch stuff from the virtual RAM to the system RAM, which causes a decrease in performance due to the CPU load for the swaping and the fact the HD's are slower at reading and writing then RAM. with the increase in your system RAM it lessened the need for virtual RAM, therefor equaling less CPU power needed for swaping equeling more CPU power for the actual game,
RE: FPS
# Jul 28 2004 at 12:19 AM Rating: Decent
usally 25 to 40 fps is best.
Updates
# Jul 21 2004 at 10:40 AM Rating: Decent
33 posts
Quote:
- Summoning a Sand Giant in Oasis with Monster Summoning will no longer cause your pet the next time you zone to be HUGE! Monster Summoned pets will no longer save their size


Haha it was hilarious seeing mages with huge earth elementals running around in pok.
Test Update
# Jul 21 2004 at 7:48 AM Rating: Decent
It has been patched into the test server now, should be live update within a week or so
Was released on TEST server
# Jul 21 2004 at 12:00 AM Rating: Excellent
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221 posts
Test server only right now.
Ditto
# Jul 20 2004 at 9:35 PM Rating: Decent
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684 posts
I was wondering the same....I saw this, about choked, then ran the updater (I use EQW and usually skip), only to find no update. Strange.
live or test?
# Jul 20 2004 at 9:05 PM Rating: Decent
Is this a live patch, or a test server patch?
#REDACTED, Posted: Jul 21 2004 at 6:47 PM, Rating: Sub-Default, (Expand Post) ummm if you notice it does say test server
RE: live or test?
# Jul 22 2004 at 9:02 AM Rating: Decent
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508 posts
But, it didnt say that when originally posted.
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