3D Target Indicator Information
 

The target indicator is 4 concentric circles textured in such a way that a repeating texure is UV animated towards the center. Each con color can have completely different settings. It is not a particle effect, it is a specially generated procedural object that works independantly of other visual effects and can be toggled on/off in the options window. There is a command, /indicator [on|off] which performs the same function.

When the indicator is turned on, this ini file is reloaded and exiting the game should not be required in order to tweak settings or images to your satisfaction.


Section: TargetIndicator

This section defines properties common to all indicators. The entries have the following purposes:


* FadeStart : How far from the target does the ring begin to fade out.

* FadeEnd : The distance of the last visible point on the ring.

* OpaqueStart : The distance from the target that the ring begins to become visible.

* OpaqueEnd : The distance from the targe that the ring is fully visible

* InitialLength : This is an override on the FadeEnd value, and is intended to be used to make the ring quickly expand to full size using the GrowSpeed as the rate of expansion.

* GrowSpeed : How fast to expand the target ring to full size. A value of 1 will make it instantly appear.

* FloorOffset : How far off the ground to place the ring.

* Additive : Set this to 1 to enable additive rendering mode for the ring, 0 for alpha blend.

* PointCount : This is the number of points that the ring will use to define the circle. There are four circles that reprsent the ring, each has their fade level determined by the fade/opaque settings above.



Sections: Trivial, VeryEasy, Easy, FairMatch, Difficult, Deadly

These sections can be used to configure the target indicator differently for each consider type.

The entries have the following purpose:

* Texture : The prefix of the texture to use. ".tga" is appended before opening. If FrameCount is above zero, it will format the filenames as "Texture%d.tga" to allow you to load any number of frames of animation to use for the indicator. Please note that this is a fairly memory intensive way to animate a texture so limiting the number of frames is a good idea. Performance may vary dramatically for various cards.

* FrameCount : How many frames of texture to try to load.

* Duration : How many milliseconds to show each frame of the animated texture.

* TwistFactor : This is a control value that is intended to control how fast each circle of vertices in the target indicator rotates on the Z axis relative to each other. Changing this to any value besides 1.0 will probably not produce anything worth looking at, but it won't break anything either.

* TwistSpeed : This value was intended to rotate the entire indicator on the Z-axis but unfortunately it does not work as intended at this time. This will get corrected in the future but for now you probably want to just leave it at 0.0 unless you want the target indicator to "pulse".

* TextureScale : How much of the entire texture is visible at one time.

* TextureSpeed : How fast to move the texture towards the center in texels/msec.

* ScaleMin : Not used at this time. This and the other two scale values were intended to be used to expand the ring when targets are changed, but unfortunately this part was not completed.

* ScaleMax : Not used.

* ScaleSpeed : Not used.

* Alpha : The transparency, combined with any texture alpha values.

* Red, Green, Blue : Tinting (ie. Vertex color) for the ring.


I hope this answers some questions for you all.

I LOVE having my target indicator pulse. If this is going to be "fixed" can a way to make the target ring pulse on purpose be added? I set this value to 0.001 and it produces a very nice pulsing effect that I don't want to lose when this is "fixed."

Enok

Hear, hear!

hmm still cant make it under thee feet.. hmmm

FadeStart=0
...
OpaqueStart=0
...

...should do the trick, although the results probably are going to be very crude with that.

I believe from FadeStart towards the target is where the alpha scales (linear?) towards 100% transparency which is overlayed by a (again linear?) decreasing transparency from OpaqueStart towards OpaqueEnd.

Pure speculation, though....going to try that later, I'll let you know if it worked...

Thank you for the information Roger..I was wondering if there was a way to make the ring shrink or even disappear when the mob dies or when targeting a dead mob..There isn't a different section for dead mobs (Futile consideration) but however I noticed that the animation (pulse) of the ring stops when the mob is dead.

I can barely see the blue indicator, especially in places like Miragul's dungeons. I think the way it interacts with Ultravision it gets really washed out. Is there a way to make that darker and more intense? I tried fussing with the Alpha but it didn't seem to help.

reguarding hard to see lightblue
 

I haven't messed with this setting yet, but it should work:

I would just change the color of it to something more visible if you are having that problem, use the RGB portion of the ini that is mentioned in Rogers post.

i've been trying to make just a tight ring, without big wide fading area, so i made:

[TargetIndicator]
FadeStart=1
FadeEnd=1
OpaqueStart=.99
OpaqueEnd=1
FloorOffset=.5
Additive=1
PointCount=16

thinking that should do it, but i still get a big aura... any clue why?

Mebbe i am misunderstanding some of the information that roger posted, but here's what i am trying to do.

I want to setup the target indicators to be larger than the 20 units it looks to be.

So i change FadeStart to 40, and FadeEnd to 50, and then to a /indic on to reload. But the size of the rings remain identical.

Has anyone been successful in using the default Target Ring Object but made the width of the rings larger or smaller?

From about an hour's worth of playing, i would hazard a guess that the values for Fade and Opaque are hard coded

Also, the FloorOffset i was trying to use to display the ring round the waist of the mobs (probably about 10 units off the ground). Setting the Floor offset to 10 makes 0 difference as well.

It seems from fiddling with any of the follow

FadeStart=10
FadeEnd=20
OpaqueStart=1
OpaqueEnd=1.5
InitialLength=1
GrowSpeed=1
FloorOffset=0.5
Additive=1

doesnt make any real difference to the rings.

Anyone have any ideas/infirnation that i can use (short of making my own indicator) to use the default object, but make the rings larger?

Thanks

as far as i can see alot of things do squat...........just a few you can change like the color and movement...

All right, I posted some Info above, which was untested and promised to come back after testing. I DID testing...a LOT of testing....but I never saw any changes, no matter what settings I put in.

Now comes the clue: I accidentially stumbled across THIS THREAD!

There is the Problem: I'm using an ATI 9800 Pro...so none of my settings show up. Looking at the target ring as displayed on an NVidia card I assume that all my assumptions considering the settings of the variables are actually right, I just won't see any effect of it.

I just hope they get this fixed for all supported graphics accelerators soon....

I cant get the ring why ?
 

I heard that radion cards dont work with it, is there a way around it. ?? what do i need to put into my ini file ?? thanks:rolleyes:

Try incresing the PointCount from 16 -> 32 -> 64

Did you get it yet?

any way to see the actule picture you place for the targetring.tga file i have a nice pic i woudl like to see as it stands now it makes the target rings nice and bright but cant tell what the pic under it is

this is a difficult thing to do...the target indicator wraps a vertical section from point a to point b into a circle. Then with the texturespeed it animates the texture from the outside going inward unless you set it so it doesn't move. If you just take a 256x256 pic put it on the indicator and expect to see a pic just sitting under your feet without the center, thats not gonna happen. You can set the pic at one spot in the image and set your texture size very small but the image is still going to wrap and distort.

not your typical target ring question
 

Is there a way to make you target ring, not a ring? I have tried points 0 and 1, this makes it dissapear althogether. I was interested in tinkering around with multi framed indicators and thought it might made more sense if they wouldn't be forced into a circle when using multiple frames to animate the indicator.

This post is also posted under the help forum, sorry for being redundant, wasn't sure which was more appropriate.

Sony,

I'm really quite upset that you guys are going further in the use of this target ring (with the use of multiple target skill in Discord) when you haven't even made sure it's fixed for all users. I have sent my dxdiag info to Roger and he told me to send it to someone else, which I did.... and I haven't received any notification that they are doing anything to try to help.

Scaling
 

I'm trying to figure out a memory efficient way of animating. It turns out that the target ring will read AxB .tga files, rather than the standard AxA (e.g. I can use a 32x128 or what have you, rather than just using the first 1/4 of a 128x128). Among other things this means that my scaling value should be 1 to use the whole map. Except of course that if I set the scaling value to 1, I get nothing that looks like my texture.

On a similar note, is there a scaling value that controls the vertical span? I ask because if I make a pattern that's 32x256 with 8 repeated elements I only see 4 elements, the same as if I make a pattern that's 32x128. It's as if it's somehow matching the dimensions and has a maximum aspect ratio.

Anyone tried playing around with nonstandard file sizes? (I'd really like a smoothly animated ring, but I doubt many folks can use one that's 15 frames or more at 230k per frame. The 32x128 file comes in at a modest fraction of that (depending on info content). Of course, if the indicator reads RLE targas it doesn't matter as much anyway as the extra blank space takes up 2 bytes or so, but I'm guessing it doesn't.

(256x256x24bpp=193k. 32x128x24bpp=12k. 32x128x24bpp=24k. 15framesx24k=360k. So I can get 15 frames of animation out of approximately 1.5 256x256 maps if I can figure out how to make this work.)

BTW, 128 point circles crashes the client. Tried to see if U texture space was related to why I only got 1/4 of my repeated elements.

Targeting Ring UI
 

Hello,

I am trying to create my own targeting ring, but i am having a problem with it loading. I am using Adobe Photoshop 6.0.1. I am saving the files as .tga. Is there a trick when saving the .tga files? I saved them all as 32bit. Can anyone explain the walkthrough in Adobe Photoshop please. I am using Microsoft Works Word Processor 8.0 to make my letters then using Snagit7 to capture that wording into a .bmp then opening that into Photoshop. Any help would be greatly appreciated. My goal is to make a targeting ring for my different toons and make them by request for my friends. Thank you in advance.

Target Ring Movements
 

Hey, new to these forums and I just made my first set of target rings, I'd like to upload them to share, but I notice they don't move like the default image used for everquest.

My question is, With my new image that is a Must See, can the target ring shift around when your character turns in a circle? or will it stay in the same set place.

Second question is, if I set the movement inward like the default model, will it completely deface the imagry I have spent hours working on?

Thanks for any help!!
-Tie


Oh and to the poster above me, I saved mine as 24-bit, also as a Vertical picture. saving it Horizontal will distort the image by stretching it around to complete the circle, where as the Vertical save will simply connect the ends and leave the image intact as it appears when turned horizontal in Adobe.
Go to:
Image > Rotate Canvas > 90* CCW (if it's horizontal) GL!

Love your target circle mate, using it now, having some prob as you with regards to it not moving but also having one other problem. The assist circle isnt showing up. working on why atm.

Gathering data.
 

I have been gathering data from several posts and trying to create a "guide" for 3D target rings. Here are my findings. I hope if anyone has any information, tips, tricks or places where I have mistakes, to please post them so I can edit this and post it later elsewhere. Here goes....

Here is a better explanation of the 3D Target ring and how it works, to my simple understanding, if someone can explain it further than I, please post and do so. At the end of the “TargetIndicator.ini” file located in the Default settings you can find a general explanation of what each setting does. See thread 1 or your own “.ini” for a copy. Obviously, this was never fully finished as you can notice by reading the note and noticing they there is no mention of “fairlyeasy” or other discrepancies.

A few programs that I use are MS “paint” irfanview and GIMP. These 3 are free for use and cost nothing and generally get the job done for me. I start with paint and make the orginal picture, use GIMP to make additional changes or crop specific part and irfanview to switch from one type of file to another. I usually use “.PNG” as it preserves the graphic exactly they way I want it and then change it the the final “.TGA” file that EQ uses.

When making multiply target rings, it may seem easier to give them a similar name but in practice, give them distinct names. I named the target circles for the guild jaggedpine defenders “jpdwhite” for white, “jpdblue” for blue, ect. This will help later if you decide to find that one target ring you wanted to use as a default.
Below I have put my own explanation in simpler terms along with some helpful hints.
Please note, I made this in the easiest possible way so if something seems obvious to you, remember, it’s not obvious to others.

If your target window shows only a “white circle” around your target, then something is not correct and needs to be fixed. The white circle is the default graphic used by EQ when it can not find a file or a file contains an error.

When loading a target ring, the more files you load, the longer it will take, the more memory you need and the more storage space you will have to have for the files. Also, when using the “/indi off” and the “/indi on” command to turn off/on a 3D target ring, you will crash at times. Ususally I can turn on and off the 3D target indicator about 7 or 8 times before I crash on my computer, I don’t know why it does this but it is annoying. The reason I mention this is because when testing new rings, you will probably turn this off and on several times

When making custom 3D target rings, only specific sizes can be used because of the way the ring is wrapped around a target. When making the horizontal picture the length must be a multiple of 256.
Example 1: 256x256
Example:2 256x260
Example:3 2048x385
Example 4: 1024x252
That way, when you rotate it 90% and flip it horizontally (or vertically, depending on how you rotated it) it will wrap in a circle properly. Once it gets changed it becomes:
Example 1: 256x256
Example 2: 260x256
Example 3: 385x2048
Example 4: 252x1024
The reason you want to work with it horizontally is if you want to put in letters and symbols. If you try to rotate and flip it first, you will have a hard time adding in these things.

When adding words to the target rings (or anything for that matter) once in EQ, it will show up as a mirror copy, this is why you “flip” it.

When making rings, the left side of the picture will be the center of the ring and the right side will be the outside of the ring when you convert it to a TGA file.

The target ring size is static, you can’t make it bigger or smaller than what the size is. Like having a canvas to paint on, it will stay the same size but you can choose how much of it you want to see. You accomplish this by painting anything “black” so that it does not show up in EQ. This will show up as a transparent part of the ring
Because of the way certain graphics interact with each other, it may not be transparent but actually show you something unexpected, such as the ground or a spell particle. For some targets, the ring will be larger but that is based on the targets original size. Giants get a giant ring, Halflings get a Halfling sized ring. Creating pictures with larger graphic sizes will not change the target ring size either, it will only compress more detail in the final picture.

Currently, there seems to be 2 actual rings, in inner ring and outer ring that is visible. The inner ring takes up about 33% and the outer ring the last 66%. Even tho you make the inner rings pixels the same as the outer ring, they end up being twice as thick, as the outer rings, you can see this in the pictures I posted here -->

http://i176.photobucket.com/albums/...ticalstrips.png

http://i176.photobucket.com/albums/...ntalstripes.png

There are currently (as of February 2007) 7 “colors” of target rings as well as 5 “non-color” rings. They are:
[Trivial]--------------Grey targets
[VeryEasy]----------Green targets
[Easy]---------------Light Blue targets
[FairlyEasy]---------Blue targets
[FairMatch]---------White targets
[Difficult]------------Yellow targets
[Deadly]-------------Red targets
[AssistMarker]------Assist ring
[Marker0]-----------Mark NPC 1
[Marker1]----------- Mark NPC 2
[Marker2]----------- Mark NPC 3
[Marker3]-----------Unknown

Spinning target rings require a file for each sequence. You can choose which way you want the ring to spin. Cutting off the top of the picture and pasting it on the bottom will “spin” the ring clockwise. Cutting off the bottom of the picture and pasting it on the top will “spin” the ring counter-clockwise. This will be come more apparent as you make rings. This is really interesting when you have 2 rings interact. Say the color rings you have spin clockwise while the assist/mark npc rings spin counter-clockwise in a pattern that does not overlap. An example of this is “Spike Spin Aura” target ring. You can also create an illusion of the “texture speed” effect by making the sequence of pictures a slightly different color and move that color inwards frame by frame. The Jaggedpine defenders target ring I am making will have this effect.

To make a blinking effect, you can create 2 target rings and have them slightly different shades of what color you choose and use 2 frames to switch back and forth.

Explainations of terms:
Additive – 1 for on, 0 for off (returns to alpha blend) but this is greek to me.
Point count – This defines the original shape of the target “ring” Each point added brings it closer to a true circle by adding a point. 1 and 2 points will not do anything useful. Once you set it 3 and above, you can see the differences. 3 will make a triangle, 4 a square, 5 an pentagon and so on. With this you can define what shape your “ring” will be. Setting at 16, 32, and 64 are recommended counts for circles. A setting of 128 has been known to crash some systems. This point count affects all 4 types of circles.
Texture – This is where the name of the file will be stored that EQ will look for and load. Default is “TargetIndicator” and if left at this EQ will use this as its source for a graphic.
Example: Setting this to “Texture=JPDwhite” will have EQ looking for the file named “JPDwhite.tga” (note: changing it to upper or lowercase will have no effect, it only looks for the letters)
Twist Factor – Suppose to rotate the target circle, can’t find a value to create any action (default is 1.0)
Twist Speed – Suppose to rotate the target circle, can’t find a value to create any action. Also said to create a “pulse” effect but I can’t seem to get that to work either (default is 0.0)
Frame count – This number set here will tell how many files needed to be loaded for the target ring. 0 will force EQ to look for a file with no numbers in it, anything 1 and above will cause EQ to search for files with the name located in the “texture” section with a number after it, starting with 0. This is also where you can make your target ring rotate. It accomplishes this by showing each frame for a time and then switching to the next.
Example: “FrameCount=0” will make EQ load “JPDwhite.tga”
Example: “FrameCount=4” will make EQ load “jpdwhite0.tga, jpdwhite1.tga, jpdwhite2.tga, jpdwhite3.tga” and show one right after another over and over again.
If there is a file missing, EQ will use the default texture as it’s graphic until you correct this.
Example: Example: “FrameCount=4” will make EQ load “jpdwhite0.tga, jpdwhite1.tga, jpdwhite2.tga” but since it can not find “jpdwhite3.tga” it will load the default target ring in place of that missing file.
Duration – This only affect the target ring if you have a frame count of 1 or more. This will limit how long, in milliseconds, to show each frame named by the “texture” and “frame count” settings.
Example: “Duration=125” will have EQ show “jpdwhite0.tga” for 125 milliseconds, then switch to “jpdwhite1.tga” and each one for that amount of time. Setting this to a smaller number will make your ring “spin” faster and vice versa.
Texture Scale – This affects how each of the target circles will be stretched. 0.1 will stretch it so that only the first 10% of the inner circle will be shown. 0.99 will stretch it so that 99% of the picture is shown. Above that, the target circle will start to “overlap” and create strange effects.
Texture Speed – This affects how the graphic will be “pulled” toward the center. On the default graphic you can see this effect. (default is 0.001)
Scale Min – According to notes, currently not used.
Scale Max – According to notes, currently not used.
Scale Speed – According to notes, currently not used.
Alpha – This will affect the transparency of the ring. 0 will be totally transparent while 255 will be totally opaque. This does not work totally as expected due to some other settings that can not be changed and sometimes you will see this cut off another target circle. (default is 240)
Red, Green, Blue – These will affect the overall tinting on your graphic. Setting them to 255 or deleting them will show your graphic as it is in another program. Setting them to 0 will make your graphic not show up at all.
Fade Start – only a noticeable difference is if this is set below the “fade end” value. (default is 10) To display the ring without any fadeing, set this at 100
Fade End – noticeable difference below 0.1. This is dependent on where you start the fade start. (default is 20) To display the ring without any fadeing, set this at 100
Opaque Start – The higher the number on this, the lighter the target ring will get. 1 is the lowest setting. (default is 1.0) Set this to 0 and the “opaque end” to 0 for no fadeing.
Opaque End – The higher the number on this, the lighter the target ring will get. 1 is the lowest setting. (default is 1.5) Set this to 0 and the “opaque end” to 0 for no fadeing.
Initial Length – This doesn’t seem operational. (default is 1)
Grow Speed – This doesn’t seem operational.(default is 1)
Floor Offset – This doesn’t seem operational (this is suppose to set how far off the ground the target ring will be) (color rings default is 0.5, assist is 1.0, mark 1to 4 are 0.9 to 0.6)

Soe
 

SOE would have to add support for it. We can't even properly do anything with a standard second monitor, much less an obscure new piece of hardware.