EZ Server

Tweaking Everquest for Minimal Lag and Maximum Bots
Version: 1.1 (September 30th, 2012)
This guide is primarily intended to improve EQ's resource usage to allow for less lag and maximum bot potential. Most of the tips involve changing EQ settings in game, though I have included various suggestions on overall setups and other out of game changes. Feel free to share any of the information included, but please do not share the MQ2 plugins in any way without permission.

Please reply to this post or message me in game with any questions, bug reports, or suggestions for improvements to this guide.

Please download this file pack: EZ File Pack (http://www.thoughtmedium.com/mike/EZ%20File%20Pack.zip)
It contains all the files you may end up using/needing for this guide.

You should exit out of all Everquest clients and close WinEQ2, MQ2, eqbc, etc., for the first half of this guide. When it's time to start in game editing their will be a note in the guide on starting everything up.


Choosing A Client
If you are not playing Everquest with an Underfoot, SoD, SoF, or more recent client, upgrading to one of these clients is an incredible performance gain you need to consider.

The tweaks and settings in this guide are based and/or dependent on using one of the latest clients. Oftentimes there is a direct download available for a nice build of Underfoot through Hateborne's server. (Links on EZForums) There is a torrent in the file pack for another stable House of Thule client as well. To open and run torrent files, you need a program like uTorrent. A setup file is included in the file pack for uTorrent, or you can download the latest version direct http://www.utorrent.com/ (http://www.utorrent.com/).


Duplicate Everquest Folder / Hard Drive Usage
It is common to create a copy of your Everquest folder and apply the changes in this guide to one copy only. This allows you to play with nice graphics (http://www.thoughtmedium.com/mike/PerfThread/standardgraphics.jpg) on the screen you'll be watching the most, while gutting the quality of the rest (http://www.thoughtmedium.com/mike/PerfThread/OptimizedGraphics.jpg) to maximize performance and/or quantity of bots.

When I refer to your Everquest directory in this post, I am referring to the gutted copy you are optimizing.

[If you play on 1 or more typical hard drive disks HDD]
If you have multiple hard drives on your computer, you can take advantage of all drives by copying a gutted Everquest directory to each hard drive. Then run an equal number of clients from each directory. (I recommend tweaking one EQ directory completely first, and then copying it at the end to any other drives)

[If you play on an SSD]
nice!



WinEQ2
If you aren't using some sort of boxing software I highly suggest you do! Most will help your resource usage automatically and can also help simplify how you play and load the game with many bots.

I use WinEQ2 mostly because it is free and has all the features I need for my setup. If you decide to use WinEQ2, you will need to register an account at the Lavish website (http://www.lavishsoft.com/). You can download the installation file at that website, or use the copy provided in the file pack.

After you've installed the program - it is important that you open the preferences and switch the EQPlayNice feature settings /off/.
(http://thoughtmedium.com/mike/PerfThread/wineq2a.JPG)
Although this was once a nice feature, the latest Everquest clients in use prefer to handle the EQPlayNice tasks themselves. If you don't disable EQPlayNice the resulting conflict will waste resources.

My method for botting multiple chars is based on using multiple WinEQ2 profiles. I suggest setting one up individually for each character. This makes it much simpler to manage which accounts will load from which Everquest directory.
(http://thoughtmedium.com/mike/PerfThread/wineq2b.JPG)
You can also create shortcuts for each character, which you can use to quickly load any character without hassle.


Editing Global Load File
(Reduces memory usage by loading less files into memory automatically)

Removing entries from the GlobalLoad file causes Everquest to load less objects into memory for all zones / certain custom zones. I've included the edited version of the file I use in the file pack. *This change will keep various models from being shown in custom zones, remove epic weapons from graphically displaying, and other various graphical tweaks. Please be sure and save a copy of your old files in case anything goes wrong.*

In your Everquest directory there is a folder named Resources. Navigate there and open the file GlobalLoad.txt

Erase all the contents (in the /file/ GlobalLoad.txt) and replace with the following line:
3,1,TFFF,Global_chr,Loading Characters
(http://www.thoughtmedium.com/mike/PerfThread/gla.JPG)

NOTE: If you do not also edit certain zone files this change to GlobalLoad could cause those zones to fail to load. If you have all the correct server files and a specific zone/s is crashing, make sure that zones _chr.txt is edited as described in the next step. If you are still having crashes (after restarting the client of course), please let me know.


Editing EZ Custom Files
Open up each of the custom files downloaded from the EZ website and erase the contents (after backing up, of course). Replace with the following two lines:
1
dke,dke

(http://www.thoughtmedium.com/mike/PerfThread/zonefile.JPG)

You should be able to edit any zone file this way safely.

Other File Changes
In your Everquest folder there is a folder called Logs with the file 'dbg.txt' inside. Right click dbg.txt and click properties. There is a check box option called Read-only, I recommend checking this. This file is a debug file the Everquest client writes to in various situations, the effect of manymany clients writing to it can hinder performance. This is a stable modification, and can be reverted using the same process at any time.

This next change supposedly prevents Everquest from loading any sound files into memory, which Everquest normally will even when they're turned off. *Verified! Works awesome* :)W hat you need to do is open notepad and create a new file. Leave the document completely blank and save the file as NOSOUND.TXT - and place it in your Everquest directory.


OptionsEditor.exe
In your Everquest directory there is a file called OptionsEditor.exe which you should run now. This allows you to configure some basic client options before the game runs: sacrifice everything nice for memory savings.

Make sure none of the character models are selected and click next. Uncheck the sound, social animations, mip mapping, and dynamic lighting options.

Check the texture caching and texture compression options.

Switch the texture quality selection to low. Click finish.


eqclient.ini
Open the file eqclient.ini in your Everquest directory with notepad. You need to search for (ctrl+f) the following entries and add or edit any discrepancies. (Many of these will already be present in the file, added later, or more readily edited through in game commands. But let's make sure.)

*** : Only edit and save these changes when you have NO Everquest clients loaded from that Everquest installation. I'd also exit out of WinEQ2 and MQ2 as well to be safe. Everquest saves new settings to eqclient.ini every time you camp out, so be careful not to waste your time here.

ServerFilter=1
(Search for ServerFilter. If not found, write the entry 'ServerFilter=1' on a new line in the [Defaults] list of settings. If it is found but does not = 1, simply change it to match the entry. All entries listed below belong in the [Default] list.

ServerFilter=1
MultiPassLighting=FALSE
ShowGrass=FALSE
AllLuclinPcModelsOff=TRUE
LoadVeliousArmorsWithLuclin=FALSE
Sound=FALSE
Music=0
EnvSounds=0
CombatMusic=FALSE
WaterSwap=0


Stick Figures!
Feature only available for users with UF or SoF client. No SoD, sorry!
(http://www.thoughtmedium.com/mike/sf1.jpg)
Placing this line into your eqclient.ini:
StickFigures=1
will stop character models from loading and replace them with the stick figures you see in the image. As you can see, you may have a tough time actively playing the characters for which this is enabled. However, it certainly does lower memory usage and increase performance!



Misc. (Windows) Tweaks
Now this first one isn't for everybody, and if you're at all uncomfortable with the idea of adding exclusions to your anti-virus software: don't do it. But something that can help many systems save a ton of clock cycles is adding exceptions for Everquest/MQ2/WinEQ2/EQBCS.exe into any anti-virus "on-access" "resident-shield" "etc" programs running. My real-time protection features have the following programs/folders excluded:

MQ2 (Macroquest2.exe, Macroquest.ini, eqbcs.exe)
Entire Everquest directory
WinEQ2 (WinEQ2.exe)


Let's Talk About Windows Compatibility and Administration Rights
Depending on where your Everquest directories are located on your hard drive, you may need to run EQ and other programs 'as an administrator' and/or in a compatibility mode. These settings are finnicky and vary by operating system and who knows what else. The following is what I've found to work best, but may not work for you.

If the Everquest clients are in a directory protected by Microsoft software, these changes most likely need to be applied. If they are not, there are still a number of non critical bugs I've seen these changes patch up. (For example, Everquest icons constantly rearranging in the taskbar.) This is less a performance tweak and more a stability tweak. Anyway, if you are running Windows 7 or Windows 8 these are stable, easy changes to make.

First: Either/and the shortcut used to start Everquest clients or eqgame.exe directly
Right click the shortcut or .exe file and click properties, go to the Compatibility tab. Check the box 'Run As Administrator' and also check 'Run in computability mode' and set to 'Windows XP Service Pack 3'.

Second: Either/and the shortcut used to start WinEQ2 or WinEQ2.exe directly
(Same: Admin, XP Comp SP 3)

Note: Do not run MQ2 or EQBCS in compatibility mode.


ReadyBoost!
(For Windows Vista+) Is a great feature of Windows that allows you to use a flash drive to speed up your computer. While not as quick or efficient as actual RAM, ReadyBoost can still deliver considerable performance gains for /all/ users. (Excluding Steady State Drive (SSD) users)

Plug in your flash drive and open its properties by right clicking it in My Computer. Go to the Readyboost tab and configure it how you see fit. I'd recommend removing anything you have saved on the drive and devoting the flash drive completely to ReadyBoost.

In Windows 7 you can now use multiple USB drives simultaneously, up to 8 devices and 128 GB. I've personally tested various configurations up to 6 devices (72 GB) and was most happy using 3 (2x8GB,1x16GB). Always use your fastest USB drives. :)


Page File
The page file is 'virtual' memory used by Windows to help maintain stability and performance for your computer, especially during high memory usage scenarios. If the size of your page file is too small to match the demand for all your clients, the common result is crash errors. If you repeatedly crash every time you try to load just that Xth client, then increasing the size of the page file is a good diagnostic.

Players with multiple (internal) hard drives can also see a large boost in performance by enabling multiple page files. Each additional hard drive you store a page file on will make a significant increase in the speed of this 'virtual memory'.  If you have a *Steady State Drive (SSD), you have no need for multiple-drive page file configuration.*

Here is a Window's guide on changing the size and configuration of your page file. (http://windows.microsoft.com/is-IS/windows-vista/Change-the-size-of-virtual-memory) The total size you should set up your page file to be depends on a number of things, but here is a rough guideline based on an 8GB of RAM system:
1-6 clients: (2x your system RAM or 8GB)
7-12 clients: (12-16 GB)
13-18 clients: (16+ GB. Sound crazy? It is. So is loading this many copies of the same game, no matter how old. :))

Users with 16GB of RAM or more can safely configure their page file to be (16 GB, or 1x system RAM)

The important thing here is to ensure you aren't being limited by your page file's size, although in some situations the performance increase can be quite noticeable.


MQ2
If for no other reason you should use MQ2 for the performance gains it gives you. The following plugins are compiled with an Underfoot and SoD, make sure you use the correct version.

Now's the time to load up Everquest! I suggest loading only 1 client from each Everquest installation. This way, the changes you make can be saved (camp desktop when you're done), and will afterwards be applied to all clients. Remember to always start MQ2 first and then WinEQ2.

To start, open your MQ2 release directory (wherever Macroquest2.exe resides). You'll want to add the plugin files included in the files pack if you do not already have them. Look for MQ2Fps.dll and MQ2MFilter.dll. Most likely you'll already have MQ2FPS but will need to add MFilter and Test dll's.

After you're loaded up: First type /plugin list and you should see a list of plugins MQ2 is currently running. Look for MQ2FPS. If not listed, try typing /plugin mq2fps and check again to see if it loaded. If not, you'll need to download MQ2FPS.dll attached to this post and place it in your MQ2 release directory. Once this is done you should be able to /plugin MQ2FPS again and see that it is loaded. Do this for all the plugins you intend to use.

These plugins need to be ran on every client -- this is why you should only have one client open at the moment. After camping and restarting every client should automatically load the plugins with the proper settings. For you stubborn folks with multiple clients, issue these commands through /bcaa. (Ex: /bcaa //render fg 1)

MQ2FPS
Enter the following commands:
/fps mode calculate
/render fg 1
/render bg 150
/maxfps fg 30
/maxfps bg 15

MQ2Test
This next plugin I use is custom-made and not guaranteed to work perfectly. :) There is a command in game (/viewport) that changes the way Everquest draws to the screen. If you type /viewport 1 1 1 1 it tells Everquest to, essentially, not draw your screen at all. (/viewport reset will switch your screen back) What my plugin does is issue the /viewport 1 1 1 1 command to the Everquest client if it's /not/ in the foreground, and switches it back to normal if it is. So when you run this plugin all background characters will have their screen blacked out, while the screen you are looking at will always be displaying normally. Please report any oddities with this plugin and always remember, /viewport reset :)

MQ2MFilter (v1.1 edit: Not a necessary plugin)
You can avoid using this plugin if you follow the excellent guide for /filter posted by Paldail:
http://ezserver.online/forums/index.php?topic=2973.0

For users who wish to apply filters in custom configurations however (various chars, installs, etc), you may still wish to use MQ2MFilter. Instructions for MQ2MFilter (http://www.thoughtmedium.com/mike/mfilter.txt)



In-game Options
If you've made it this far, hooray! After loading up your Everquest client, open up the in-game options menu (alt+o by default) and apply the following settings:

General Tab
Sound realism, music volume, sound volume = 0
Environment sounds and combat music not selected

Display Tab
(http://www.thoughtmedium.com/mike/PerfThread/OptionsDisplay.JPG)
Show 3d Target Ring  not selected
Level of detail selected
Show My Helm not selected
Load Screen: loading art
Sky Type: off
Gamma: Lower settings should save memory, set to a playable value.
Far Clip Plane: 0%
Particles: For all 3 tabs switch density to off and Opacity to 0%
LoD Bias: Very low

Advanced Display Options Menu
(http://www.thoughtmedium.com/mike/PerfThread/OptionsAdvanced.JPG)
Use new water in old zones: not checked
Dynamic Sky Reflection Size: Tiny (32)
Sky Reflection Update Interval: Once per minute
Terrain Texture Quality: Minimum
Memory Mode: Least memory usage
Allow hw Vertex Shaders: checked
Allow 1.1/1.4/2.0 Pixel Shaders: checked
Use Advanced Lighting, Shadows, Radial Flora: not checked
Stream Item Textures: not checked
Disables Tattoos: checked
Shadow Clip Plane: lowest possible
Actor Clip Plane: lowest playable setting, I keep mine at about 20%
Max Frames Per Second: 30
Max Background FPS: lowest possible, should read Min. CPU

Filters Tab
(http://www.thoughtmedium.com/mike/PerfThread/OptionsFilters.JPG)
Everything below out of character set to hide

Voice Tab
Disable Voice Chat selected


Congrats! All done! Make sure you /camp desktop and let Everquest close completely on it's own. Close MQ2 and WinEQ2 manually as well. Also wouldn't hurt to restart your computer at this time. Once you're ready to go again, I recommend loading just one client at first. Go through your options and /plugin list and quickly double check everything saved properly and started up again. If not, now is the time to redo the changes properly and /camp desktop, restart again.

You should now be completely optimized for maximum botting and minimum lag. Enjoy! :)

Version 1.1b (Dec 15th, 2012)
No additions or major changes, but hopefully much easier to go through.
Version 1.1 (Sep 30th, 2012)
Version 1.0 (July 2nd, 2012)
I'm sure there will be quite a few bugs and problems with this initial release. Send me a message in game (Blarr) for fastest response.

I will help players setup/debug new client installation, but only in game. Please do not reply to this thread with client problems or questions.

+100 Blurring

I must say this post is amazing i havent tried ur custom script yet but i intend too ... i went from about 500 down to about 350 i did use win eq for awhile back in the day but now it seems to actually drain more resources then anything else and i personally run 25/15 on fps u wont notice a difference in quality but it does help make the video card a little cooler =) ... so all in all ty for this excelent post

edit

i forgot to mention that the jump was on my first client after my 2nd client i actually start getting 350 on just normal. server went down havent had the ability to test further will let u know on memory usage dif

ok so im up and running again i really wish this would have been up a few days ago before i went and installed 4 gigs of more memory haha =( anyways so after i installed the 4 gigs more it put me at 7 ... at which time i loaded up 12 toons and chased shadow for min ... well once for 19 steps =( ... anyways i was pushing 45% cpu usage with 91% memory usage 60/95 peak right now im running 8 at 20-25% cpu usage and 47-53% mem usage ... also i have noticed that my first 2 instances of eq run 100k more then other other ones so im pushing 350ish on the first 2 and 230-250 on the rest... still havent tried ur macro no real reason to yet =P

Awesome post Blarr!!!!  Very helpful even for the old timers :D

Still configuring wineq2 to my liking and figuring it all out, but loving the test plug.
Awesome work Blarr

thanks blarr still have some visual lag but htink thats more to do with my window's then anything...

Someone, maybe Xiggie mentioned to me in game to modify these down to smaller numbers, these are unmodified from my ini and I don't remember what to do or if it even needs to be done. Maybe someone can shed some light on this if it will also help. I have all effects off in game.

to bad don't have StickFigures=0 option on emu. at least with sod don't, i don't have UF yet so not sure on it. that use to help with resources on live though.

None of the client options are emu specific.  You're just using a specific version of the live client, that's all.  If that specific version of the live client supported an option then the client you're using does also.

Is there really a stickfigures option in some version of the eq client?

Yes, but this was the first I had heard of it.

Looks like it started as an April Fools joke: http://www.fohguild.org/forums/screenshots/27840-everquest-1-april-fools-joke.html

It still works on the current live client.  I didn't test with any other clients, but based on the date of the April Fools joke it might work in anything SoF+.

I added StickFigures=1 to both the [Defaults] and [Options] sections of my eqclient.ini and one of them worked.

Screenshot from a few minutes ago: http://i.imgur.com/eLk8p.jpg
I didn't want to embed it, it's too big.

Edit: Works in Underfoot as well.  Looks like the buff bot needs to hand out some sammiches or something!  http://i.imgur.com/5xbWF.jpg

Hmm lol I like it..

This has been very helpful, the only one that Im curious about is this:

One change made my weapons disappear....call me nostalgic but id love to keep my weapons around just for the look....which comand would that have been?

That's part of the globalload file.

I see someone plays on test with all those Tribe around :P

Does StickFigures=1 save on game resources?  Might be a good thing for boxes.

wow tribe is still around?!?! haven't been on test in a cool minute (like 2 years or so) how is that working out for everyone after the ability to transfer off test? i assumed it would have killed that server with TSF bottoming out and not being able to kill fippy in UF

As Griz said the weapons are a part of the globalload change, I'll look around later tonight and see if I can find a way to add just those back in.

I had no idea StickFigures worked on UF or SoD, had tried it before with no luck. Probably wrong capitalization or something, hehe. Will look into that more closely tonight as well and see about adding it in.

StickFigures=1 works when I put it under [Default] in .ini file.  Testing it out on with it on all box accounts.  With my system 6 accounts runs fine, but 7 works for awhile then results in 7 LD's after an hour or so.  If 7 doesn't LD me, I'll up it to testing 8 don't think it would make enough difference to allow 9+.  Although would be awesome if I'm wrong.

nice getting it working i had it in wrong spot when i tried it so assumed it didn't work

Oh ya we still have a big base thou we lost alot of good players thou im wiating and hoping to see some old school players come back like clearsight and Catmar and her crew lol and a few others but i know some wont be back i hear a few of the classic players from my old guild (Stormbringers legacy) *For The Storm!* hehe anyway ya test is still strong but alot smaller then it used to be.....

Boredorm Yawnsalot of Test Server :P

StickFigures=1 has actually allowed me to run an extra character on one computer.  It does indeed seem to help improve performance.

A+ Bookmarked!

I used this post to go from 3 to 8 toons on an ancient pent 3 laptop 6800 go nvidia card and 2 gigs of ram.  I haven't tested out the stickfigure setting but i think my comp would blow if i added anymore. 


Worthington

Bump

CHANGE LOG (v1.0 -> v1.1) 9-30-12
Non-trivial changes/additions:

Page File
The page file is 'virtual' memory used by Windows to help maintain stability and performance for your computer, especially during high memory usage scenarios. Does it seem like you can't open as many clients as others, even though you have a similar amount of memory? Do you often see crash errors related to memory? Then there's a good chance you need to increase the size of your page file.

Player's with multiple (internal) hard drives can also see a large boost in performance by enabling multiple page files. Each additional page file will greatly increase your computers performance in low memory situations. If you have a Steady State Drive (SSD), you have no need for multiple-drive page file configuration. Users with 16GB of RAM or more can safely configure their page file to be (16 GB, or 1x system RAM)

Here is a Window's guide on changing the size and configuration of your page file. (http://windows.microsoft.com/is-IS/windows-vista/Change-the-size-of-virtual-memory) The total size you should set up your page file to be depends on a number of things, but here is a rough guideline based on an 8GB of RAM system:
1-6 clients: (2x your system RAM or 8GB)
7-12 clients: (12-16 GB)
13-18 clients: (16+ GB. Sound crazy? It is. So is loading this many copies of the same game, no matter how old. :))


MQ2MFilter (v1.1 edit: Don't use MQ2MFilter, in-game filtering command sufficient)
You can avoid using this plugin if you follow the excellent guide for /filter posted by Paldail:
http://ezserver.online/forums/index.php?topic=2973.0

Instructions on MQ2MFilter still linked in main post. If you are already using MQ2MFilter there is no need to stop using this plugin; change meant primarily for new players. MQ2MFilter offers advanced filtering options that the majority of players don't care for.


Stick Figures!
(Image added to main post)
Placing this line into your eqclient.ini:
StickFigures=1
will stop character models from loading and replace them with the stick figures you see in the image. As you can see, you will have a tough time actively playing the characters for which this is enabled. However, it certainly does lower memory usage and increase performance!

Forgot to mention that I have only tested StickFigures with the Underfoot client. If I read Lerxst's post correctly it sounds like StickFigures will work with the SoF client as well. So far I have one report from SoD saying StickFigures does not work, could anybody else confirm one way or the other or post instructions on how you got it to work in SoD? I will try and test it myself later tonight as well.

it only works in sof or later, was an april fools deal when sof client was going, and they kept it in due to positive response

Hi,

I got changed one of my clients following your manual (just only have to do the MQ2Filter-issue) and it dropped from 757.000 to 550.000.  The only thing I didn't do is the stickyFigures.  You think it will make considerably more memory free ?

I'm using UF and have 6 clients/chars in 6 different EQ-folders.  I use MQ2 and QBCD and have 4 RAM available (Intel i5).  I thought to use my leader-char without changes in the EQ-folder and change the 5 other folders to minimum as you explained in this topic.   Is this a good way of thinking ?   Please, tell me if I'm wrong  ;D

Otherwise, I have one remark changing the EQCLIENT.INI-file.  Following lines are not available :

Sound=FALSE
MultiPassLighting=FALSE
AllLuclinPcModelsOff=TRUE
LoadVeliousArmorsWithLuclin=FALSE
EnvSounds=0
UseD3DTextureCompression=TRUE

SHOULD I WORRY ABOUT IT ?


Kind regards,
ALRAZOR

This is the most common arrangement I know of, solid thinking. :)

There's nothing to worry about regarding those lines absence from your eqclient.ini file. While it wouldn't hurt to add them, they should already be in effect if you followed the guide accurately.

Sound and environment sounds are options you can adjust through in-game options. The models, texture compression, and lighting settings are adjustable through the OptionsEditor.exe settings.

StickyFigures will make a large difference concerning your memory usage. I would try it out and see how you like it. :)

Hi Blurring,

StickyFigures : will surely try this out  ;)

Thanks for the info and letting me know that I'm on the right track.

Kind regards,
Alrazor

Unless you feel the need to customize the ini per character, using 6 installs for 6 clients is only using up HD space. No idea why people still mistakenly believe it does something for them but if your happy with it keep at it.

Aye sorry Alrazor I misread that.

As Balx2 said there is no need for 6 different EQ installations. 1 for graphics, 1 for bots. One case where you might want multiple installations is when you have multiple hard drives to use.

For unique eqclient.ini's, I would still reccomend using WinEQ2 free settings to do this, over creating multiple installations.

Hi Blurring,

Let's recap.: For launching the game I do the following :
1/ launch EQBC.exe
2/ launch MQ2.exe
3/ launch EQ graphic-char from 1 basic-installation without tweaking (full graphics)
4/ launch other bots-char from one and the same installation

Now you're are talking about WINEQ2 which I never used.  I'm willing to if it could give a better gameplay, but I have no experience with this.   On the internet, I found WinEQ2 2.14, but also a a LITE-version.  Which one should I choose?   Other question is, does WINEQ2 replace a program such as MQ2 or EQBC ?

Would be nice to help me on this. ;)

Kind regards,
ALRAZOR

Hi again,

In the meantime I tried to use WINEQ2, which is working, but aparently it's blocking my MQ2.  With the result that all my macro's aren't working anymore  :-\

Any ideas  ::)

Alrazor

go into options and turn off eqplaynice you no longer need it..and wineq2 should never block mq2....instead of loading like you have load like this
(after turning off eqplaynice via wineq2)
1/wineq2
2/mq2
3/eqbc
4/load in main char (full graphics/unedited)
5/ start loading in other toons with altered install (your 2nd eqfolder that is edited)

This is how i've always done it and how it has worked for me for ages

Hi Kovou,

OK, this is a very clear answer.  I apreciate  ;)
Wil try this out as soon as I'm getting home (18h00 Belgian Time  ;D)

Bye,
Alrazor

Hi guys,

Seems to be working  :D :D :D
Blurring & Kouvou, thanks again for the support  ;)

Have now to figure out how WINEQ2 exactly works an what the benifits are, besides lowering memory use.

Kind regards,
Alrazor

What I use it for is to position my windows in the same place everytime, and for the hotkeys to switch between them easily.

Thanks for post and comments, very big boxing improvement.

toons now eat 300Mo (800x600), and main 450 (1024x768)
(without stick figures and mq2test, and far clip plane for toons at 10 instead of 0)

loaded 2 mains and 5 toons so far, just using 3Go and it's very smooth
(dualcore e6600, p5k, 4Go, 8800gts640Mo, mains on main HD, toons on second HD, 3*8Go page files on 3 different HD, win7x64, UF client)

more tests to do but it's already nice, thanks again

i recently starting using the 1 line global load file posted here and has been an amazing improvement but notice that i crash in a few zones, namely Abyss & poair. Any way to fix this?


edit: nevermind....a little more searching and i found this and works flawlessly, thanks xiggie :)

Welcome

I have down loaded the WinEQ file from your EZ pac file, and that requires you buy their  product to run it... is there any half descent boxing software for free?
 

WinEQ 2 Lite is free.  You do need to register on their site though so it can log in.  http://www.lavishsoft.com/

Have a new version of my MQ2Test plugin ready for testing if anybody is interested. This is for Underfoot clients only at the moment but can be expanded if there's interest.

What it does:
-Issues the /viewport 1 1 1 1 command on background clients and issues /viewport reset on foreground client as necessary. This saves a lot of GPU work if you're running multiple clients and shouldn't effect your gameplay at all.

-Closes the raid, inventory, and map window on background clients if they are open, and reopens them if they return to the foreground client. This cuts down on CPU load tremendously if these windows are left open in the background (especially map).


I've made a number of changes to eliminate any viewport bugs. In many months of use I have never found a clients screen to stay blacked out, as has been reported in previous releases. I've also made some changes to make the plugin run more efficiently.

Please message me in game or via pm if you find any problems, if there are no problems I will add this version to the file pack. Source code also available for the wary if you message me in game :)

http://houseofstrix.com/mike/MQ2Test.dll

Noticeable improvement on 12 boxes for me

When i run options editor i get ERROR STRING NOT FOUND for all the selections..

Can we get a screenshot?


-Hate

Sounds like your EQSTR_US.txt file is corrupted or missing some lines.

Or maybe its a different file.. I am not 100% sure on this one :)

:/

So I've adopted all of the things this guide says to do, but I can't seem to get more than 7 boxes working smoothly.  Once I start the 8th box, my CPU usage spikes to about 90 percent and then takes 10 +minutes to load a character.

I have 8 gigs of ram, and both of the files I'm running (the nice graphic game, and the edited less harsh version) are on an SSD hard drive.  I have an additional HDD that has 8-16 gigs allowed for paging.

I'm running wineq, mq2, and eqbcs while playing and nothing else outside of very general things on my computer.  I also boxed 12+ on PEQ and never had a problem like this.

Any ideas as to why my cpu usage goes through the roof on loading?  Also, if I do wait the almost half hour it takes to load 8+ boxes, the whole process starts over again if I zone.

What's your RAM usage at? It should be pretty low running the clients like you say, but 8 gigs could easily be capped with 8 clients running, combined with windows processes and an internet browser / random background crap.

BUT, it should be easy to run at least 10 clients or more on 8 gigs with a barebone client.

i can run 16 toons on my laptop with 4 gigs of ram and a cheap I5 processor....go all in on main toon..stick on the rest with min clip planes and actors....you will be fine...

Are you running EQplaynice in wineq2? If so you have to shut that off. MQ2 and it conflict and cause large ram usage.

Here is a version of MQ2Test for the new RoF client. It is a beta version -- all features are working but I haven't played with it at length yet. Let me know if you have any troubles with it please.

If the client starts with a black screen remember you can type /viewport reset to reset things.

Download link (http://www.houseofstrix.com/mike/MQ2MTest.dll)

for some reason my bot client crashes when i zone to FG hall or T5 mini (same zone)
only fix I've found is to replace the GlobalLoad with the original

If you wanted to keep the reduced global load settings, I suspect that stripping the zone file for that zone would fix your problem.

Change illsalina_chr.txt to
1
dke,dke

and see if that works.

Nice, thanks for the updated test plugin Blarr!

Yeah Blarr, thanks for sharing the new MQ2MTest plugin :)

That worked =D ty

My box army is freezing like non-other, and it is zone specific..  like I enter my guild instance of TOFS and i am stuck loading until I do a fuckin char mover..  wtf.

Most of these work fine on RoF2 client, didnt install anything, just select folder tweaks.  I dont like to completely gimp my clients (e.g. stick figures) but the changes i made have it at:

Memory:
Main Char: 480,000 k
Alts: 270-320,000 k each

Not sure if its on EZ's end, or EQemu.. but this freezing is making it unplayable. 

In your EQ folder, check for a Log folder. Inside it, you should find an error or crash log. This will indicate if WHY you are crashing. I'm guessing it may be missing zone/map file...but who knows. Check that and let me know (or email me directly).


-Hate

http://tinyurl.com/TOFSFILES

Try those.

I have just recently received a free SSD 500gb HDD. It was an external backup drive that I have stripped of its case and plugged into my desktop directly.

I'm a little sketchy on if I should have added a Paging file on this drive?
It's currently a secondary drive ( norm - HDD main)... I've copied a version of EQ over that's cut down to this SSD to run atls from. Should I just ghost my OS to this SSD and use it as main and then run paging files on HDDs?   Still run a paging file from all drives as I do now?

Quad core 2.5 AMD
8g ram

Current system.    On (2) hdd-s 12g page file on SSD - 15g page file.

When I was running 24 clients with 6GB of memory putting the paging file on my SSD helped enormously, as you would expect.

However, you are certainly adding a tremendous amount of read/writes to the drive, likely to the same sectors. I would not be surprised at all if my SSD had a 'dead zone' imprinted in that location, though I haven't tested it extensively.

i'm sure you could look up some more technical research out there, but it comes down to how comfortable you are potentially burning out areas of the drive.

I certainly recommend getting your OS and EQ clients on the SSD.

Does the StickFigures=1 command in eqclient.ini not work for RoF2? I have a core i5 4690k with 16GB of ram and my primary account/page file is run off my SSD and running 12 accounts is laggy as hell.

EDIT: nm, i had it at the bottom of the file and it needed to be up higher

I'm currently playing on PEQ and made these changes to my secondary install. Now when I zone out of PoK, my bots can't see or target the PoK book in the destination zone. I can see it just fine on my main install.

I assume this is because I need to add something back to my GlobalLoad file, but I have no idea what. Any help?

PEQ =/= EZ. Their custom zone files are different from ours.

There is a post in forum about bird bath (Aug sealer) not showing and how to get it back. I believe this would fix your issue as well. Just need to search.

I have 6 GM RAM on my laptop...

I suck at math, but what is the precise number should I put in the page drive setting by the EXACT numbers?

Including a screenshot so I know exactly what to put in based exactly what the screenshot looks like...

Appreciate any help I can get.

(http://i.imgur.com/s8PqAHX.jpg)

How many clients are you going to run?

Unless you are planning on running 18+ I think 2 x system memory should be sufficient--
Initial size: 12000
Maximum: 12000

6 clients, that's it for now.

The page file is effectively the "I ran out of RAM" space. It utilizes hard drive space instead of RAM, which is @#%@tons slower. However, full RAM and no page file = game over. Full RAM + Page File = slower, but functional. Depending on the size/function, I aim for 10-25% of the total RAM value. Since you aren't running a server with 100+ GB of RAM, I would shoot for 25% of your RAM. You said 6GB, so you could set it to something like 2048 MB (which is ~33% of your RAM value), which would give you *similar* (but not the same) to 8GB of RAM.



-Hate

For 6 clients 8GB should be fine, can always up the value if you start to get crashes.

When I was running 24 clients on 6GB of memory I needed at minimum a 16GB page file, that was with fully stripped clients. There's no good X * GB of ram number to advertise as it just comes down to how much memory someone is going to need. (Which is very variable here on EZ!) Thus I always shoot high and don't have to troubleshoot crashes down the road ;)

True enough. My info is from a sysadmin stance, not so much optional gaming performance. Ymmv (your mileage may vary).

-Hate

I am thinking of a new system and I find this topic fascinating...

Nowadays with modern hardware things are (delightedly) simplified.

Back on my old computer with 6GB of memory and lots of clients I explored a lot of rabbit holes trying to get things to run quickly with stability. How Hate described the page file is exactly right, and I needed a huge page file. It started with one large page file on a 7200 RPM drive, then two, then three paging files spread out over 3 7200 HDDs. Then ReadyBoost was a thing and it got even faster! (I was using multiple ReadyBoost drives of course :D) Eventually I could afford a SSD and put the entire paging file on that, ultimately much faster than all the HDDs and USB drives put together. (Although doing this probably caused some damage to the SSD, thrashing it that way)

Then along came the new computer and 32GB of memory --> imagine all the clients that could be added :D

Here is a custom ROF2 MQ2 build based off MQ2Emulator.net source code. There are some minor modifications to the build to allow 3rd party plugins. (Yes, MQ2MTest is included)

It should have all the standard plugins included in MQ2Emulator's release, though I have tested nearly none of them. Please let me know if you have issues only present on this build.

I believe everything else is standard except for MQ2MoveUtils, which should behave almost identically to the versions you are used to. It will also run a little smoother in zones like T5 than you're probably used to...

www.houseofstrix.com/mike/MQ2EmuROF2_Blarr040916.zip (http://www.houseofstrix.com/mike/MQ2EmuROF2_Blarr040916.zip)

Many thanks to Dimur for helping test.

How do you open a .rar type file?  I downloaded but it wont open.  ???

Use Winzip.

Winzip, winrar, 7zip are good starters.

-Hate

when i extract with 7zip it is still a .rar file  ???

Nevermind i got it....just not 10% smarter than the equipment I am working with......  ::)

only have to be 2% smarter

Downloaded this so i could try to use the MQ2MTest.dll to help run more than 12 toons on one computer....but I can't get the MQ2 to load through or connect to the EQBC server...the settings are all the same (right click>properties>Windows XP service pack 3>Run as Admin box checked) but it wont load in....I get a message on character select talking about recent changes to the MQ2 build, not sure if this is what is keeping it from loading in....the RoF2 MQ2 build i downloaded from the linked site works 100% but wont allow the MQ2MTest.dll to function (when you click on the client's screen it stays black) figured downloading this might allow it to work....any tips?

Working fine for me

Have you changed the ip address in MQ2Eqbc.ini?

Use your true local ip address , ie 192.168.xxx.xxx, not 127.0.0.1, i think its a win10 thing, and dosent like it
assuming your are using win 10, but i always use the true ip anyway

Hope it Helps

How do you find and use "your true local ip address"? the 127.0.0.1 in mq2eqbc.ini is the same on both builds and works on one but not the other, which seems odd to me that that could be the problem.....

Type CMD in the start/run box, or Cortana box
That will open a dos window
Type ipconfig in the dos window
That will give some basic ip info - you want the ipv4 address that's you local ip

But ......

i just downloaded this build again to look, changed the ip and added mq2mtest to the plugin section of the  macroquest.ini file
and noticed mq2eqbc wasn't their, so added that as well, and all working
That is prob why your /bca commands aren't working, try just adding that, and leave the 127.0.0.1, as see if that sorts it  

Hope that works =)

Downloaded your compile today to get access to MQ2Mtest - Works extremly well for me, notice the performance gain right away.

However, I think something's terribly wrong with mq2moveutils - For some odd reason I have toons flickering all over the screen when I issue moveto commands :

//Moveto Loc ${Me.Loc} ${Me.Z}

Should ask the toons to move to my location, and they do - But once they arrive, they start flickering all over the screen, back and forth - It's like they're fighting for space, all trying to stand on the exact same coordinate, but that's not the problem - Even if I issue the command to a single toon /bct xxx //Moveto Loc ${Me.Loc} ${Me.Z}, I get the same result.

Any ideas how to fix this? is it the compile, or can it be helped via settings in the ini?

Thanks :)

//Ekiir

I noticed when I use /bca //stick id ${Me.ID} !front UW

that the moveutils settings pop up and they don't respond to the command. What did I miss?

Try lowercase uw Expletus. If that doesn't work try rearranging things, or taking out one at a time until you find the culprit that's breaking things. Then let me know which one and I can help debug via the source.

Ekiir it sounds to me like your moveto distance is set too low. Try deleting your moveutils ini and trying again or looking up the ini settings and adjusting to something larger.

Hey Blarr,

Thanks for the tip - I have tried with a clean ini, I also tried with default ini listed at mmobugs, had same result, they continue to flicker all over the screen - It's really strange - Were you able to do moveto like I posted without trouble?

The ini i tried :

[MoveTo]
AlwaysUW=off
ArrivalDist=10.0
ArrivalDistX=10.0
ArrivalDistY=10.0
BreakOnAggro=off
BreakOnHit=off
DistBackup=30.0
MoveToMod=0.0
UseBackward=off
UseWalk=on

Edit :

Started from a clean slate, and did as you recommended - Clean ini, and then tried to change /moveto dist from 10 to 100 and numbers inbetween - Made no difference - I am wondering what I am doing wrong, if the plugin is healthy.

Any chance you could post, or link to a pastebin of your ini?

Edit 2 :

Solved

After much testing, trial and error, I found out that moveutils does'nt like cap L's anymore :) - Maybe it never did in the first place

Thanks!

//EKiir

the lower case UW works perfect! Thank you!

So the main performance booster for me was restricting the FPS (as instructed above) on my box accounts. I can now run well over 6 whereas before 6 was a struggle.

I am currently investigating performance issues I am having with RoF2 client. As I posted on another thread, I have a Ryzen 7 cpu, 16 gigs of DDR4, a 960 EVO M2 drive, GTX1080 gpu.  RoF2runs like shit on this system in anything but 16-bit color in Windows 7.
In windows 10 and all current drivers (and fresh install of all software and system, it is NOT my OS or software,) I literally fired up a single instance without my isboxer or any other mods, ran the graphics configure and turned everything off or down. I went into the client and turned clip planes off except for 10% on main clip and actor clip plane then spun around and stuttered horribly anytime there were toons around (nexus players or npc in any zone.) I did every optimization listed in this guide and still had similar results, even stick figures.
I just re-downloaded ROF2 from the wiki link and am going to do everything all over again and see how it goes. So far it's the same, I turned all graphics down, models and sound off and it's a stuttering mess. I need to do all of the ini tweaks still and filters.
Am I the only one having such issues? I can't even play one windowed instance, let alone actually box. I can run 16 in Win7 in 16-bit desktop color mode no problem.

hmm. i run windows 10 with 4.0ghz quad core i7 chip not overclocked, 16gb ddr4 ram, solid state hardrive, and an nvidia gtx 1060 3gb video card and i can easily run 18 toons with zero lag or stutter on rof2 client. im using the latest graphics card driver, and keep all drivers up to date with zero issue. and the graphics are turned all the up on all clients. i use Blarr's ez file pack found in the first of this thread. this post prolly doesnt help you much but maybe it can help to narrow it down.

I think the issue lies with the 1080 gpu.   Potentially it is conflicting with Direct X 9 or 10.    Or maybe an issue with the driver.    Not positive but this is the 2nd issue I've seen with the 1080 running ROF2 with less performance than other older cards.      I run a 1070 and it works well with ROF2.       

Are you able to play other more modern games with your 1080?    Is ROF2 recognizing the card or is it defaulting to your integrated graphics?

Do a search for DDU (Display Driver Uninstall) and try running that and reinstalling your drivers.    If that doesnt work I'd research potential issues with Direct X 9 or 10 (whichever EQ uses). 

I run a FX8350 and have found that if I OC it even a little to 4.2 say instead of native 4.0 RoF2 won't even run. However if I keep it at 4.0 and leave everything else alone (24 Gb of DDR3 1666 RAM, and a 850 EVO SSD running with a slightly OC'd GTX1050Ti) it runs smooth with 18 loaded 99.9% of the time. I do get some slight issues with video lag, but only when a lot of clients are zoning or zoning into the Halloween version of the nexus at first.

I run all modern games with 0 issues. I just installed Destiny 2 two days ago and have been playing the hell out of it in glorious 4k, no problems or lag at all. Also I do have 3 different computers with wildly different hardware and all have this issue. One has a GTX 780ti haswell I5 cpu, other is a gen2 I7 with an ancient GTX 260. I think it has to be my settings due to the problem being across them all. I always just ran in 16-bit and even then, I could not run more than 8 reliably on the old hardware, which is why I updated to the Ryzen 7.
I did re-dload all rof2 files and put in the ezserver files and tried many settings in game (and ran the options editor and turned all graphics down, sound off) and had the same reslults.  I mean even without all of the .ini tweaks this game should not run so horribly with one instance.

As for my OS, I run it really clean. I am an old school tech and always have payed attention to my running processes and have everything in the nvidia display properties set to performance, and pre-rendered frames 1, aa off etc. I also Have windows settings set to performance and cpu minimum set to 100%.

I am wondering if my Gfx card is throttling down or something, I am thinking I will force it to run at 100% full time and see what happens (I think I can do this with EVGA precision.)Also, I am going to use the Blarr files if I can get them. I tried once and it was a broken link. I do not run an anti-virus, but I do scan with a remote service once a week and re-load my OS from known good (and recently from scratch.) I have 0 issues with any of my pcs in any other games or applications. My internet is also not the fastest around, but consistant with 30MB dload, 2MB upload. ( I know eq does not stress this at all, especially running just one instance.)

Use this linkhttp://www.thoughtmedium.com/mike/EZ%20File%20Pack.zip (http://www.thoughtmedium.com/mike/EZ%20File%20Pack.zip) you will manually have to load the mq2MTest plugin.  just type /plugin mq2mtest.

could be the same OLD problem EQ always had with AMD.
there's some settings in the bios you need to tweak I think... idk.. google it.

AMD - when second best is good enough(tm)!

Does anyone run on a Chromebook?  Would be nice to have something that i could use on the road...  I only run six toons.

bit of a rez of an old post but. 

in the eqclient.ini  you can set CPUAffinity1=  from its current setting of =1 change it to =-1 and this will allow everquest to use multiple cores.   i didn't see this anywhere but i may have missed it.   

Something I always liked to do was set the affinity of my clients to use all cores. I was hoping your trick would do that Lookin but I wasn't able to get it working that way on RoF2.

In the past I used a program called ProcessLasso, believe they have a functional free version still, that always worked well.

windows 8+ users
Cpuaffinity

so my pc crashed the other day and I got a new one. doing a full re install I found some help on how to properly confifure cpu affinity

Edit your eqclient.ini file in the [default] section
CPUAffinityx=-1 (change all cpuaffinity=-1)

after this log on just 1 toon

start task manger
goto the "details" section
find eqgame.exe
right click to set affinity
set to all
close
restart eq
watch your cpu drop dramatically


This is a huge upgrade.
worth the time and effort by far

Anyone happen to have further tips for specifically oldcommons (T9)?  Any other zone I can do mass pulls and no issue, but as soon as i seem to pull more than like 20ish in oldcommons half my boxes ld.  Tried additionally doing /maphide on npcs/pets and groundspawns but still bunch go to server select.

Happened to me a lot in OC and of course in SR..

Try to park your other toons a bit away from your main and let em look to the bottom … this works

Same with your main… let him look downwards while fighting big piles of mobs

Hope it helps… for me it worked wonders

(Cannot wait to come back to SR .. miss you guys lol )

Check you map make sure all the labels/names are off on all your toon.

http://ezserver.online/forums/index.php?topic=5110.msg66225#msg66225

Have hotkeys to turn off the views, see thread referenced above.  Works like a charm.  I use it in OC, SR, and HoS.

Old thread but still a good one-

Questions- Been off for awhile with heavy work load, when I popped back in all my boxes are loading up full graphics.  I followed the guide again just to confirm but i cant get the per loaded character memory down.

Globalload.txt is the same as it was but it seems that more things are loaded into each zone then before

Anyone else notice a change?

Is there a better global load to run back to the stripped down version for my boxes?

I am not the biggest fan of stickfigures but i could go that route i guess.

I think the old global load had almost all big mobs as human or basiclly it was original EQ content only or it superimposed a human body over the mob.

Its actually kinda funny to see what the real mobs look like after all this time haha.

Thanks in advance!

Tankmeout

I rolled with giant humans in most zones too until this past Halloween event I lost a mag corpse in the geometry. No more humans for me.

A tip for those with lagging graphics or high gpu load

There is a Microsoft project called D3D9on12 that allows you to map directx 9 calls to use directx 12 this is an opt in driver.

https://github.com/narzoul/ForceD3D9On12

This project forces applications to use the mapping library.
Just download the release and drop the d3d9.dll into the everquest folder,

For me all graphics lag is gone, no measurable gpu load each client is 0% in taskmanager, it uses an extra 100mb of ram for me but the complete lack of stuttering makes it more than worth it

Am I reading correctly that the "only" step required for this to work, is dropping the DLL into the EQ folder and starting the client?

Correct, the d3d9on12 is already installed on windows 10/11 (by Microsoft) so the dll just forces eq to render through dx12.

Microsoft also released d3d9on12 as an open source project on git if you are curious how it works, see https://github.com/microsoft/D3D9On12

That's pretty awesome. Going to give it a try now with 24 boxes. Thanks for posting this!

I tried it, brought ram usage to about 1gb per and performance was great, but stability of clients went down. I was crashing too often so I removed it.

It didn't seem to do "anything" for me, shrug.

Everyone,

Check this link here if you have a modern PC. The old guidance on shaders and a few other things are incorrect (some stays the same) for newer PCs.

https://almarsguides.com/eq/gettingstarted/boxing/PopularEQIssues/ReduceYourLag/

I was excited about the hideafk feature but ss far as I can tell, our client doesn't have it.