Suppressing Personal GFX: /suppressCloseFx

THE TOGGLES! THEY DO NOTHING!

If you look under your Graphics Options (Menu / Options / Graphics and Audio Tab) you'll see in the Advanced Graphics Settings these two items:

Suppress Extra Player FX
Suppress FX When Close

When you enable these two options you'll find that one apparently does nothing and the other does nothing unless you know what to look for and how to modify it. In this guide, I'll show you how to make the one that does work actually work, namely, the Suppress FX When Close.



SUPPRESSING YOUR PERSONAL GRAPHIC EFFECTS (GFX)

What the Suppress FX When Close option is supposed to do is to shut off all the FX (graphical effects) of your character when your camera is close to you. The advantage of this is that when the camera is looking over your shoulder, you don't have to try to see past all blinding FX emanating from your body. The FX stops displaying when the camera comes in close.

However, right out of the box, when you enable Suppress FX When Close this option seems to do nothing. Why? Because the default distance between you and the camera at which the FX turns off is zero. That's right, no matter how close the camera pans in, the FX stays on until you finally snap into first person view. When the camera snaps into first person view, then will your personal FX no longer be seen by you.

But there's hope to make this more useful in the form of a slash command called /suppressCloseFxDist whose description is "Within this camera distance, personal FX will be suppressed.'

The format is...

/suppressCloseFxDist <feet>

So, if you input /suppressCloseFxDist 30, then when your camera gets within 10 yards of your character, all your special effects will stop displaying (the powers will still be working, of course).

This is good news for people who are finding their FX to be too much or headache inducing &lt;coughsoniccough&gt;. Just input a large number, like 300, and you won't ever see your personal FX again.



ADVANCED CONTROL

Now, you can go into your options menu to enable or disable Suppress FX When Close, or, you can use the slash command, suppressCloseFx, whose description is "Hide all personal FX when the camera is closer than the suppressCloseFxDist."

The format is...

/suppressCloseFx <int>

Where the integer is either 0 (disable) or 1 (enable).

Using the slash commands to turn Suppress FX When Close on or off and setting the suppression distance can then be set up in binds or macros allowing you to quickly turn the option on or off, or to switch the suppression distance. Since these options are sticky from character to character, you'll have to set up binds for each character so that you can turn it on or off easily when you switch toons.

If you set the camera suppression distance to a medium number like 90 (30 yards), then it's easy to turn the display of personal gfx on or off simply be panning your camera in or out.

SuperJumpers are particularly annoyed by personal gfx contrails that block the camera on each downward arc. A quick bind will set up SuperJumps to happen with personal gfx switched off.





DARK HISTORY OF THIS OPTION

This feature was, until a recent patch, not working correctly. Here is the thread to my previous guide which explained how this function used to work: Click here.

A patch on the Test Server, version 15.20070803.0T, on August 8th, 2007 had this note:

Is the distance setting per character or per account?

[ QUOTE ]
Is the distance setting per character or per account?

[/ QUOTE ]

Account: "... these options are sticky from character to character..."

nice

[ QUOTE ]
This new, fixed version is not suppressing *all* FX, just *most* of them. Inspiration and Leadership gfx are still seen as was a self buff from the PB set. Also, things you would expect not to be suppressed are, e.g., wings; or the Nemesis Staff being invisible, but not the energy beam it shoots.

[/ QUOTE ]

Thanks to a recent patch, temporary items like the Nemesis Staff and the Blackwand and costume items such as wings do now continue to display even when other GFX are suppressed. Thanks, Devs!

I tried this on my /dark scrapper, and it was pretty nice..... right up until I hit Cloak of Darkness and completely disappeared.

I really enjoy /dark armor, but I hate the weird purple and red rings everywhere and the total obscurement of my character. I really wish I could selectively turn off the graphical effects of some powers - either through game options or by adding "dummy" graphical effects in an override directory.

[ QUOTE ]
I tried this on my /dark scrapper, and it was pretty nice..... right up until I hit Cloak of Darkness and completely disappeared.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, it's clear that individual effects can be flagged to be suppressible or not. Perhaps you should send BackAlleyBrawler a PM asking that Cloak of Darkness be exempted from suppression, otherwise, you wind up with no character at all.

Hey Zombie, thanks for pointing out this command and how to use it. I stumbled across it the other night by accident, and it was like finding a gold mine. I've got a /Dark scrapper who looks really great (at least in my not-so-humble opinion) with his powers off, but tends to be kinda squishy in that mode for my taste. Maybe others don't get to appreciate his proper costume all the time now, but at least I can.