IsuldorRevisiting EverQuest
Whenever I play this game, I invariable change most of the default settings. This document exists to remind of what to do when I will inevitably try to play this game again (and again, and again..). While keeping a copy of eqclient.ini has been sufficient at times, I've noticed the game client tramples much of the config after merging updates.
Maximized Fullscreen
The game client can be coerced to run in a borderless windowed mode. Window resizing should be disabled first, otherwise the mouse will be offset incorrectly. You can find this setting in game under:
Options > Display > Allow window resizing
Or in eqclient.ini:
AllowResize=0
An alternative way to do this is to leave window resizing enabled, and manually fix the mouse offset. Might be useful if you really want to resize the window to something less than full screen (maybe to run more than one eq client).
WindowedModeXOffset=2
WindowedModeYOffset=1
AllowResize=1
The window borders can be removed by a third party utility such as this autohotkey script. Just make sure to perform the resize after logging into the character. If the resize occurs on the character selection screen, the renderer won't realize and you'll need to reset the resolution to fix screen stretching.
^!h::
IfWinExist EverQuest
{
WinSet, Style, -0xC00000 ; hide title bar
WinSet, Style, -0x40000 ; hide thickframe/sizebox
WinMove, , , 0, 0, 1920, 1080
}
return
Graphics
At some point the eqclient got hardware vertex shader support, which radically improves framerate. Unfortunately it also causes a fair amount of graphical defects. For example, a robe wearing Iksar will periodically contort into odd shapes while sitting. Or textures will flicker like the on the back of Iksar robes. My workaround for this is to disable Luclin models, which helps quash any interesting geometry that causes flickering. The trade-off for disabling hardware shaders is that busy scenes (like a raid or a city zone like Cabilis) will result in very bad framerate drops. This can be mitigated by reducing the clip plane and reduce how far you can see. Neither choice is very good, so it seems reasonable to suffer the graphic artifacts with the shaders on. Your mileage may vary.
VertexShaders=1
Shadows look great, however they mis-render and double render all over the place. My workaround for that is to reduce the shadow range down to 5% or so, that way it renders my own shadows but almost nothing else. Ironically, while EverQuest is a classic Windows game, the original zones it runs like a poorly emulated Playstation game or even a bad console port. And I love it all the same.
I like to tweak the default FPS limits.
MaxFPS=60
MaxBGFPS=60
The windowed gamma feature should be off by default now, but just in case:
WindowedGamma=0
Controls
Mouselook sensitivity can be adjusted under mouse options. The camera mode can be toggled with F9. Roll the mousewheel while in the default first person camera mode to freely adjust it into a reasonably comfortable third-person mode.
Definitely enable "Click Through Self" in General Options. Otherwise you'll have a hard time clicking anything remotely near your character. The target selection isn't quite so advanced.
Hotkeys
Custom keyboard configuration is in eqclient.ini [KeyMaps] section. Note that on a fresh install, [KeyMaps] won't be there. I tend to unbind keys for infrequently used features that are accessible through the in-game menu.
Minimal User Interface
A good UI gets out of your way. My minimal UI is available in this repo in diffs. Maintaining my custom UI changes as a patch set makes integrating official updates easier. I like to set the fade transparency level for most windows to 0%. The exceptions are the hotbars, spellbars and chat windows. I've avoided changing UI panels that are not persistently on screen in order to minimize the long-term maintenance.
Assuming you're using bash on Windows 10 with bash installed, you could install the UI with the following commands:
git clone https://github.com/brianbaligad/eqclient-conf
cd eqclient-conf/ui
./install
Copy UI_Player_server.ini into the game directory and try loading the window layout from it under General settings.
Text colors
Chat colors are stored as separate RGB values in eqclient.ini [TextColors] section. The default color scheme is a relatively dark palette. I've implemented the ir_black theme and included it seperately so you can just copy and replace it in eqclient.ini. This is an ideal light text on dark background scheme, so it'll only make sense if you have dark chat windows like I do. I have experimented with gradient backgrounds for chat windows, but the result wasn't great because I could only get 10 levels of transparency from a tga texture ingame.
(Optionally) Reorganize game data
There's over 4.3 thousand files sitting in the root game directory. If that triggers your OCD (or you hate having to look for the same file over and over again), you can reorganize everquest using symlinks. This made a little more sense back when I used a slow spinning disk rather than striped ssd storage.
Extras
Useful information can be found at various third party websites:
- Gambosoft has a log parser (tip: for new characters, reduce the "discard if less than" damamge option)
- Brewall has detailed maps
- Lucy is a spell database
- Allakhazam records items and quests info
- Magelo has player profiles
- Beimeith is a guild leaderboard
Fixing Allakhazam
Ala is an ad-supported website with useful free content. I think they have a subscription membership that goes with Wowhead, which seems like a great idea if you use it frequently. Their advertisements even seem to get through uBlock Origin. Here are some UBO filters that you should totally never use. I'll aim to contribute to their wiki rather than be tormented by their advertisements.
everquest.allakhazam.com###logo
everquest.allakhazam.com###row-top
everquest.allakhazam.com###col-right
everquest.allakhazam.com##a.pw-button
everquest.allakhazam.com###gdpr-dashboard
everquest.allakhazam.com###gdpr-toggle
everquest.allakhazam.com###zul-bar
everquest.allakhazam.com###horizontal-bg
everquest.allakhazam.com##footer
everquest.allakhazam.com###wrapperDiv
Lore
There is plenty of lore in Norrath created by the developers. But the real story is about the players within the game, and the communities they created.