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EQ Classic HD
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What is EQ Classic HD?
EQ Classic HD is an ongoing project by Cucumbers, Paulgiamatti, Sorn, and Zaela to graphically enhance, upscale, retexture, and reimagine classic EverQuest. We primarily deal with textures, but our package also corrects some minor transparency, particle, and model animation issues.
Release thread: http://www.project1999.com/forums/showthread.php?t=280545
Screenshot thread: http://www.project1999.com/forums/showthread.php?t=261858
Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/UdM9QbC
Who does what?
Cucumbers founded the project in 2016 after being inspired by Chebby (aka Psycher), Nysus, and Xevin's custom textures. He is the upscaling guru, and he has retextured a huge amount of stuff by hand, most notably shields, various Kunark bladed weapons, various classic weapons and held items, and some armor textures.
Paulgiamatti came on board originally as a tester, but ended up contributing tons of item retexturing as well as handling a number of ancillary tasks such as project management, community outreach, and install kit development.
Zaela makes texture life easier. As well as being the author of several indispensable utilities such as EQGExport and WLD Editor Suite, his coding skills and deep knowledge of client-related technicalities have allowed us to include transparency, particle, and model animation fixes.
Sorn is our retouching and branding artist. Her masterful reworks include all character faces and a few character body textures, and she also made our shiny logo at the top of the page.
What does it do?
- All player character textures (skin, clothes, armor, robes, held items, weapons, faces, etc.) have been upscaled, retouched, or completely redone. Textures redone in the past by Nysus, Xevin, and Joyelle are also included, though subject to replacement if/when we get around to redoing those specific textures.
- All player character textures have been converted to Direct Draw Surface (DDS) format to conserve space, memory, and allow for mipmapping.
- Various classic and Velious helmet visor corrections: female troll custom Velious helm, female erudite custom Velious helm, male gnome classic chain helm, male barbarian classic leather helm, female wood elf classic plate & custom Velious helm.
- Various epic particle fixes: necro, bard, druid, & cleric epics - these were previously radiating around the weapon in a circle, fixed to radiate in a sphere.
- Various animation fixes: wolf run speed animation, iksar archery & 2hs animations.
- All Transparency Patcher fixes pre-applied.
How do I get it?
Download
Project 1999 version:
The Al'Kabor Project version:
How do I install it?
Youtube Video
Here is a Youtube video showing how to install the EQClassicHD texture pack.
Windows installation
Extract the EQClassicHD folder to a location of your choice, then run install.bat (double-click, or right-click and select Open). To uninstall, run uninstall.bat. That's it!
About the Windows installer & uninstaller
It's recommended you close your EverQuest client before installing - both install and uninstall.bat will request administrative privileges, so if you have EverQuest running in windowed mode it will probably black out your EQ window (this will only occur for P99 players due to a bug in the Titanium client). Both install and uninstall.bat will prompt you for your EverQuest directory - install.bat will automatically create backups of your current textures. To make installing and uninstalling much easier it's recommended you use install and uninstall.bat, which can be run just like any executable - double-click it, or run it via command prompt. The installer and uninstaller will only work if some conditions are met:
- install.bat: before install.bat will run, it must be outside of your EverQuest folder and in a folder with the downloaded install files, and your client must be compatible with Project 1999 or The Al'Kabor Project.
- uninstall.bat: before uninstall.bat will run, you must have already run the installer which will create backups of your current textures and a configuration file called eqhd.ini.
Manual installation
You do not need to do this if you use the installer!
Backup the following files in your EverQuest folder (e.g. create a folder called "S3D Backups" and move the following files into that folder):
- gequip.s3d
- gequip2.s3d
- global_chr.s3d
- global4_chr.s3d
- global17_amr.s3d
- global18_amr.s3d
- global19_amr.s3d
- global20_amr.s3d
- global21_amr.s3d
- global22_amr.s3d
- global23_amr.s3d
- globalfroglok_chr.s3d
- growthplane_chr.s3d
Now extract or copy the .S3D files contained in the EQClassicHD folder to your EverQuest directory (overwrite if you left the old ones in). To uninstall, copy your backed up files back into your EverQuest directory and overwrite. Install and uninstall.bat can be deleted or ignored.
Here are links to the original EQ textures in case you need to uninstall EQ Classic HD and you forgot to backup your stuff beforehand (choose one or the other):
High-resolution zone textures: highres_s3d.zip (1.1 gb)
Low-resolution zone textures: lowres_s3d.zip (1.3 gb)
Do I need to do anything differently to install EQ Classic HD for The Al'Kabor Project?
When using the Windows installer
Other than downloading the correct version, no. Do note that The Al'Kabor Project version will automatically disable Texture Caching in eqclient.ini in order to allow TAKP's client to use the new textures. If you wish to use Texture Caching after you've installed EQ Classic HD for TAKP, you'll need to reenable it from the options menu accessed via the initial login screen, or by changing TextureCache=FALSE back to TextureCache=TRUE in eqclient.ini.
When not using the Windows installer
If you have Texture Caching enabled, you will need to disable it from the options menu accessed via the initial login screen or by changing TextureCache=TRUE to TextureCache=FALSE in eqclient.ini. Please note that you may need to restart your EverQuest client a couple times in order to clear out the cache of old textures and start using the new textures, fully logging in and then back out again each time. Once it successfully loads and displays the new textures (it will be pretty obvious), then you may reenable Texture Caching at your convenience.
Known Issues
Client crashing at character select
If your client crashes to desktop when you reach the character selection screen, move your EverQuest directory out of Program Files. The cause of this issue is still unknown, though it might have something to do with read/write permissions and texture caching and can be solved by moving your EQ directory to a more accessible location.
