Any way to fix pre-Luclin model animations?

[Grinkles]

These have been broken since around Halloween '09, if I recall correctly. (I always had my suspicions that it had something to do with the developers getting worn illusions to work on all those masks....) Anyway, is there a way to fix old model animations? At least client-side? I thought maybe pulling the appropriate file(s) from either a vanilla Titanium install or my P99 directory might work, but I don't have a clue which files even handle animations, let alone if this method would prove fruitful.

The following animations are broken for the original twelve races using pre-Luclin models (FRG IKS VAH are unaffected):

-/dance, /duck, /shiver, and nearly all other animated emotes show no animation whatsoever.

-Unaffected are /cry, /frown, /mourn, /bye, /wave, /cheer, /roar, /bird, /finger, /flipoff, /rude and possibly a few others.​

-Idling animations. When a character is idle for a certain amount of time, s/he is meant to look around and then drop his/her arms, but after looking around, a character in SoD still keeps his/her arms up.

-Females using the Human animation set (HUM BAR ERU ELF HIE DEF HEF) never did drop their arms, even on Live, for whatever reason.​

-Sitting animations. Characters no longer sway/fidget when sitting. Once the character gets into the sitting position, the model simply locks up and holds perfectly still until the player leaves the sitting position. This is especially odd-looking for female Gnomes, Dwarves, and Halflings, who now no longer let down their arms or held items upon sitting, so their swords, wands, etc. stand straight up.​

Am I missing anything?

 

[Zaela]

but I don't have a clue which files even handle animations

Guesses: .s3d files, or maybe .wld.txc files. Probably ones starting with "global" such as "global3_chr.s3d". Some are replaced by our patcher while others are not; some have last-modified dates in 2012 while others still list 2000/2001/2003 and so can be ruled out.

 

[Grinkles]

Thank you for the reply. I'll try tinkering with those files later, though I already have tried to use S3DSpy to extract, edit, and overwrite some global model files with no luck. (I was trying to figure out how Marza palette swapped owlbears for Overgrowth!)

I find it interesting that the broken emotes seem to work for NPCs, such as Santa Troll's little dance. I wonder what gives.

 

[Tarutao]

*goes digging for his bucket of Fame Points*

Please oh please let whatever you're doing be some magical solution.

 

[Grinkles]

**Solution found 12/29/2012!**

While perusing the s3d files in both my Shards of Dalaya and vanilla Titanium directories, I noticed nearly all the files matched up in size. However, one thing stuck out:

-----

Shards of Dalaya Directory
global3_chr.s3d
Type: S3D
File Date Modified: 2/25/2010 1:43 PM
Size: 304 KB*

Vanilla Titanium Directory
global3_chr.s3d
Type: S3D
File Date Modified: 10/17/2005 11:30 AM
Size: 317 KB*

*These may or may not read as 305 KB and 318 KB, respectively.​

-----

After backing up the SOD version of the file, I simply dumped the vanilla Titanium version into my SOD directory and overwrote it. I logged into the server and, lo and behold, I was greeted with this glorious pose:

Do you see what I see?! Grinkles's arms are at rest! This is a privilege the poor Gnome hasn't enjoyed since (apparently) February of 2010 -- nearly three years ago!

Anxious, I logged in to see if the other animations had been fixed. Here's a snap of myself inside the Warrior guild in Southern Newport -- turns out the place is a bit drafty this time of year, and Grinkles couldn't help but shiver:

Long story short, overwriting this specific .s3d file with the vanilla version that Live and EQEmu use should restore all broken animations for those who use old models, including idling, sitting, and all animated emotes. /dance to your heart's content, fellow Dalayans!

 

[Vitali]

I love my fellow Gnomes

 

[donfolstar3]

The obvious, and only proper, fame reward here is a race change. Congrats!

 

[Zapple]

Only thing that seems off is the required time until standing idle animation where the character looks around. I remember this being random but maybe around 6-24secs at most.

 

[Vitali]

Sage Grinkles the Hero of Underhill
Just my suggestion here. Gnome for life!

 

[Grinkles]

*Update*

It seems there is a catch to this fix. The s3d file it overwrites also happens to house a number of .dss files that correspond to several in-game items (mostly from Ikisith). Why item models are being stored in a global chr s3d instead of a gequip s3d is unclear. Here's a list of the files found in the SOD version of global3_chr.s3d:

The result is that, while the pre-Luclin animations are working, several items such as Poisoned Shuriken (which uses it10725_shuriken4.dds) and Render of the False (which I believe uses it10722_talosian_dagger.dds) no longer have visible item models when held by a player in the game. I've tried a few things to try to get both the animations and item models working at the same time. First, I extracted all dds item model files and dumped them in a new file titled gequip7.s3d (which is allegedly where these files were meant to belong in the first place). This yielded nothing. Then, I tried to extract only the vanilla global3_char.wld file (which handles the animations) and drop it into the SOD version of the s3d file from 2010 so that the SOD item models and the fixed animations would all be in one spot. Again, no luck.

Thankfully, I hear that there may already be a hotfix in the works from the staff, so let's keep our ears to the ground!

 

[cian2]

awesome, I remember trying to figure this out before. +++

 

[Vitali]

*Update*

It seems there is a catch to this fix. The s3d file it overwrites also happens to house a number of .dss files that correspond to several in-game items (mostly from Ikisith). Why item models are being stored in a global chr s3d instead of a gequip s3d is unclear. Here's a list of the files found in the SOD version of global3_chr.s3d:

The result is that, while the pre-Luclin animations are working, several items such as Poisoned Shuriken (which uses it10725_shuriken4.dds) and Render of the False (which I believe uses it10722_talosian_dagger.dds) no longer have visible item models when held by a player in the game. I've tried a few things to try to get both the animations and item models working at the same time. First, I extracted all dds item model files and dumped them in a new file titled gequip7.s3d (which is allegedly where these files were meant to belong in the first place). This yielded nothing. Then, I tried to extract only the vanilla global3_char.wld file (which handles the animations) and drop it into the SOD version of the s3d file from 2010 so that the SOD item models and the fixed animations would all be in one spot. Again, no luck.

Thankfully, I hear that there may already be a hotfix in the works from the staff, so let's keep our ears to the ground!

I took the global3_chr.s3d file from a fresh Underfoot install and overwrote the SoD version. I get both Render of the False model in game + the animations you mentioned.

 

[Grinkles]

Aha! I've logged in this morning to find that globaldrk_chr.s3d had been patched to include all the missing item models. As far as I can tell, the animations are intact along with the weapon models that were broken last night. This is the file for Drakkin toons, right? Let's just hope someone remembers this down the line if/when 3.0 is picked back up!

I heard rumors last night of the new(ish) wolves and the old brown skeleton models making a comeback. Any truth to this?

I know, I know. Give us an inch and we try to take a mile!