Harakiri's Updates

I tried (again) to figure out why the first spell gem ignores the recast timeout sent from the server to the client. The recast timeouts are an array of int with milliseconds till cooldown is done. It works flawless for spell gems 2-8, but not for the first. Its frustrating to see it should be so easy, yet it is not. Its similar to the issue i had with disciplines not working (executing /disc xxx never reached the server) because one bit in the profile was not set (one of 10000 =p).

Anyway, in my reverse engineering i figured that the client has 2 different checks for the recast delay, one is executed for the velious fullscreen ui, one for the classic UI (it can drive you insane when you just found a breakpoint, but for no reason it doesnt work the next time you start the eqclient). The check points to some memory location depending on the spell gem number, if the value is 4, the spell is on a cooldown. Well, now the issue is i havent found where this value is set - there must be a separate thread which countdown the recast delay and set this.

So finally, i came to the conclusion that it mostly aint an error in the playerprofile, why?

When you set the value in the profile, which is loaded once you zone in, the spell gems are greyed out the second you are logged in, except for the first one. There is a similar client side mechanism when you cast a spell - the client knows what the recast timer the spell has. So i did a small test finally, I cast a spell with a recast of 12sec, like bind affinity - on the first gem slot the spell was available immediately (after global cooldown), the same spell however had the correct recast cooldown in any other slot. So this leads me to believe that this is indeed a bug in the client.

There is a slim chance its something else, but it doesnt look like it - i could only be certain when i had the executeable from either a later patch or an earlier velious one (we currently use the 22/08/2001 patch exe).

Its actually not even worth investing so much time into this, because its purely cosmetically (you cant cast the first gem anyway when the server prohibits it, but its not greyed out). However, issues like these are like riddles which just scream out loud to be solved by reverse engineering to get a better understanding of the client.

~ 300min
= 420min