ItemEmitters.xml

Attaches ongoing visual emitters to an item worn by a player: a flare that sits on a wing bone, sparks that drip from a sword tip, lightning that arcs between two bones. Each <Emitter> row is one spawner anchored to one bone of the item's model. An item can have any number of rows.

This complements CustomItemVisual.xml (which controls the model itself — tint, glow color, additive pages) and ItemPageEffects.xml (which animates the model's own mesh pages). ItemEmitters adds new visuals around the model.

The file is optional. If it is absent or malformed, nothing is emitted and the server keeps running. The server sends the whole table to the client at login; the client does the rendering.

File Location#

Data/Plugins/Items/ItemEmitters.xml

Loaded once at GameServer startup.

Dependencies#

• Type / Index identify the item, matching Item.xml.
• Delivered to the client at login. A player who is already online needs to re-login to receive changes.
• Emitters render wherever the item's 3D model renders — worn on a character, dropped on the ground, and in inventory/shop 3D previews (the same behavior as vanilla wing effects, whose icons twinkle in the inventory).
• Emitters respect the wing particle distance limit (ChromeLOD_MediumDistance in the client config): distant characters skip them, same as vanilla wing effects.

Configuration#

<ItemEmitters>
    <!-- Soft violet flare on the cape anchor bone -->
    <Emitter Type="12" Index="418" Bone="19" Kind="sprite" Bitmap="BITMAP_FLARE_BLUE"
             R="153" G="76" B="204" Scale="1.2" />

    <!-- Gold sparkles from a wing tip, one every 200ms -->
    <Emitter Type="12" Index="418" Bone="30" Kind="particle" Bitmap="BITMAP_SHINY+4"
             R="255" G="200" B="60" Scale="0.8" Rate="200" Offset="0,0,10" />

    <!-- Lightning arc between two bones -->
    <Emitter Type="12" Index="420" Bone="9" BoneTo="20" Kind="joint" Bitmap="BITMAP_JOINT_THUNDER"
             R="150" G="150" B="230" Scale="1.0" />

    <!-- Thunder strike effect model, roughly twice per second -->
    <Emitter Type="12" Index="420" Bone="11" Kind="effect" Effect="MODEL_FENRIR_THUNDER"
             R="153" G="153" B="230" SubType="1" Rate="500" />
</ItemEmitters>

Attributes#

Worked example: Wings of Satan#

The shipped ItemEmitters.xml includes a complete example on Wings of Satan (Type 12, Index 2): steady demonic glows at the wing tips, flame licks on the membranes, and embers off the spine.

Step 1 — find the bones. Wear the item and use the $bones chat command, or open the BMD in the MU Online BMD Viewer. For Wing03.bmd: bones 2/3 carry the right wing, 6/7 the left wing, 0 the spine.

Step 2 — place emitters on those bones:

<!-- Steady demonic glow at each upper wing tip -->
<Emitter Type="12" Index="2" Bone="3" Kind="sprite" Bitmap="BITMAP_LIGHT"
         R="255" G="60" B="20" Scale="0.9" />
<Emitter Type="12" Index="2" Bone="7" Kind="sprite" Bitmap="BITMAP_LIGHT"
         R="255" G="60" B="20" Scale="0.9" />

<!-- Flame licks: particles use the BASE name; the variant comes from SubType -->
<Emitter Type="12" Index="2" Bone="2" Kind="particle" Bitmap="BITMAP_FLAME"
         SubType="0" R="255" G="120" B="30" Scale="0.5" Rate="180" />
<Emitter Type="12" Index="2" Bone="6" Kind="particle" Bitmap="BITMAP_FLAME"
         SubType="6" R="255" G="100" B="25" Scale="0.5" Rate="230" />

<!-- Occasional ember off the spine (SPARK+1 is a standalone particle type) -->
<Emitter Type="12" Index="2" Bone="0" Kind="particle" Bitmap="BITMAP_SPARK+1"
         R="255" G="170" B="50" Scale="0.8" Rate="350" />

Design notes worth copying:

• One sprite per anchor carries the "always on" identity (cheap, steady, never flickers); particle rows add motion on top.
• The two flames use different Rate values (180/230) and different SubTypes so they never spawn in lockstep — synchronized emitters read as mechanical.
• Total budget: two per-frame sprites + ~14 particles/second. Safe even with a dozen players wearing it on screen.

Step 3 — tune in game. Wear the item, edit numbers, restart GS, re-login. Scale on sprites is world size; on particles it feeds each type's own size roll, so expect to iterate.

The four kinds#

Asset catalog#

These are the asset names the client accepts. A row with any other name is dropped at login and logged to the client console ([ItemEmitters] Unknown asset name), so a typo never crashes anything — the emitter just doesn't appear.

Family textures accept a +N frame suffix (e.g. BITMAP_SHINY+4) — different frames are genuinely different pictures, worth previewing in game.

Textures for sprite and particle#

Textures for joint#

Effect models for effect#

Important Behavior#

• Rate and smoothness. Rate="0" spawns once per 25Hz game tick — that is the vanilla effect density and frame-rate independent. Millisecond rates are also frame-rate independent. There is no way to spawn faster than once per frame, and no need to.
• Multiple rows stack. Ten rows on one item = ten emitters running at once. The client's particle pool is shared with everything else on screen (3000 slots) — a crowded event square full of players wearing 20-emitter items will visibly eat the pool. Prefer a few well-placed emitters over bone-spam.
• Joints self-maintain. A joint row keeps exactly one beam alive (it is re-created each tick internally). You do not need Rate on joints.
• Color is multiplicative. R/G/B tints the texture. White textures take any color; colored textures (e.g. BITMAP_FLARE_RED) mix with the tint.
• No emitters on RF sword-form glove hands? They work — the client maps the left/right hand models back to the owning glove item automatically.
• Changes need a re-login, like every login-synced table. /reload alone does not refresh what already-online clients render.

Common Issues#