Meaglyn, the roles don't expire ;-P

You are and have been a Vault Developer :-)

 

And happy to have you :-)

After six tries, finally got one that I could SORT of read... and made an account... now pending...

Ok, something weird there... 

 

Are people simply not getting the verification emails? Is it going to spam?

 

I've received all the test emails I've tried without a hitch, but there seems to be a rash lately of "never got the email"... :-P

 

Tawmis, your account is unblocked, but if you didn't get the one-time log in, I'll have to manually give you a temp password... PM me here please.

<preening just a bit...>

 

While I'm just a tad distracted|selfish|monomaniacal|stubborn to actually ever ask for help (except with the Vault. ummm, CTP. Er, Foundation, Community VFX Project, and a half dozen other things), I totally agree with this. I've been working on my own Gemworld concept for more than30 years and still don't quite have the engine I need to give it birth. I look everywhere for inspiration and sometimes I desperately need motivation, but it's my opus and the driving force behind my involvement with NwN.

 

The original concept called for a group of artists to get together and provide their own versions of fantasy, yet link them together into a *non*-homogenous whole. From the start I wanted to work *with* people (but have a real hard time working *for* people ;-/ )

 

I'm really in no danger of stopping anytime soon, but I really do wish my dear friends would coss-pollinate more. I think I've developed at least a small reputation for dropping what I'm doing to create or fix or improve some project other people brought to my attention. In fact, judging by the way Henesua is undoubtedly smirking, I probably jump on different projects a little *too* easily :-p Can't help it. I simply love to enable. 

 

The biggest problem with me is getting my attention and then me finding time. But I, like Henesua, am putting the offer out there. You need a bit of help, ask. And give something back in return. Not to *me* but to this community, to the rich reserves of resources and knowledge on the vault, to the people who share your hobby <obsession>. Pump up the energy, we all benefit.

 

On Henesua's last point, as he knows, I'm behind this all the way, too. I have really enjoyed dipping into other creations - TAD's Aenea, Henesua's Arnheim, LoW's Arbor Falls, all the servers I visited in the Player Appreciation Days a couple years ago. I'd love to be able to set up a round robin of play, perhaps with the Adventurer's Club on the Vault, or through them. But however, wouldn't it be great to schedule something where we all get to *play* once a week, and every few weeks our friends get to come see what's new in our own world?

 

And, at the risk of repeating myself in a different way and boring everyone, I wouldn't mind helping out on anyone. Just don't want the whole thing dumped on me :-P

 

Cuz I got things to do...

 

Does this post make me look fat?

 

<...in a fun-house mirror>

<preparing to slow roast...>

 

Damn. I just *knew* I shouldn't have trusted them pigeons! <actually, *i* told you three times not to use pigeons. you ignored me>

You didn't mention your new boy friend liked pigeons so much. <duh. he's a peregrine. do the math>

I did. 10 pigeons, one falcon. *One* of them should have made it through... <*whistles innocently*>

What? <nothing>

Out with it. <i had a little party. bbq for the holiday, you know, invited a few buddies...>

*face palms* <*snickers*>

Sorry, TAD. I *did* send the invite, though. I swear.

 

<...some slow squab>

<quibbling...>

 

The original texture specification was TGA, uncompressed. Bioware became an early adopter of the DDS specification (Direct Draw Surface, a compressed format) that provides a set of high and/or medium and or low res versions of a texture in one file, all based on power of 2 size (128, 256, 512,1024,etc.). This makes it very efficient for sending to graphics cards.

 

Unfortunately, being an early adopter, Bioware uses a slightly non-standard standard (their DDS files doesn't work for anything else expecting DDS, even NwN2), and needs a special plugin to load into image apps.

 

Where this matters is specifically in overwriting textures. A DDS texture in the hires texture packs will overwrite TGA textures in haks no matter how high up they are in load order. In general, the compression offered with the Bw DDS is pointless for small images (Icons & such), but having the DDS version in a hak means it won't get overwritten by an ancient texture in the texture packs.

 

I discovered all this in a quite embarrassing moment when I noticed the Mistress running around rather... bare... in a mod I made. She protested and I scratched my head for a couple hours until I discovered something I'd installed had modified the DDS textures for bodyparts in the texture packs themselves, so even though I had, er, modest versions of all my textures in the haks, I still had an immodest Mistress tapping her foot at me. Had to re-install the original texture packs from CD <and offer up a wheelbarrow full of Dove's chocolate> to get out of *that* imbroglio!

 

So, yeah, it's good practice to include both versions of a texture (TGA & DDS) unless you are absolutely sure there's no name-space collisions with old textures

 

<...because that's what he does>

<working at being clear as...>

 

Short take: Nope

 

The thing is, that (I believe) the TXI hack still cascades through the PLT, so any alpha in the redirected texture will fall through the original PLT to the chrome layer. That is the redirect overlays the redirected texture on top of the PLT layers so all the non-alpha pixels hit the new texture, but alpha falls through.

 

Did any of that make sense?

 

Now, the cloaks had that problem until 1.68 or 1.69, I think, when Bioware added a toggle in the 2DA for alpha/envmap. But applying the same kind of shader pipeline to bodyparts isn't possible afaik in an un-hacked nwn.

 

<...metal>

<sharpening his torch...>

 

The Dragon mentioned somewhere he was in the middle of moving across the country or somesuch and would be hard to reach for a while.  Let him deal with real life for a bit and he'll get back to NWN in due time.

 

-Dave

Yeah, he moved out of state right after I moved in, the bum! ;-P Missed my wedding, too :-/ He couldn't stand the heat so he got out of the Hitchin' =)

 

Both pretty busy, but neither of us gone.

 

(p.s. For anyone who doesn't know, I love Big Purple like a brother. Actually, better than most of my brothers :-P So don't take my teasing wrong, please. Hate to get banned or anything ;-)

 

<...and lighting his pitchfork>

<stepping out on the balcony...>

 

A 3-eyed version of my raven familiar VFX shouldn't be too difficult. Do you have any reference pics?

 

I'm not sure what we're talking about re the weapons or heart-trees, though I'm interested in them both. Possibly a modified version of my ghoul model with the glowing eyes I did for 3RM for the White Walkers, if I recall their description correctly (been about 15 years since I read the books, don't remember 3-eyed ravens).

 

Anyway, I'll make a GoT version of the raven if I get some nice piccies here :-)

 

<...of dreamguard>

<humming a tune by...>

 

<indescriminately hugs everyone, netting quite a haul of gems, jewels, coins, dice and fish>

 

Oh! 

 

<drops the fish discretely back in someone's pouch>

 

Sorry about that...

 

<...eliza's father... something about a church and time>

<scrounging around...>

 

If you're looking for something to tinker with, Java-wise, might I suggest the NWN 3D Java Model viewer as fodder?  That came with the source code and I'd uploaded both the program and the source code to the old Vault.  Not sure where it is at the new one but I assume it made it there. (?)

Sorry about the lag...

 

That's actually in my jNwN sources folder along with PSpeed's  and Abie's asset loaders, both of whom have given permission to extrapolate from their code.

 

<...in other people's rubbish bins>

<straining really hard...>

 

Wha..? Oh. Hmmm... Uh, what I miss?

I'm *almost* ready to return to activity, which of course means catching up on stuff, first...

 

Well, maybe second... the new HQ is still pretty rough...

 

<...to pass a message>

<hopping about...>

 

Ow! Ow! Ow! *hams it up*

 

Actually, Tarot's approach has merit.

 

Also, thinking about it, I've been treating phase and state as independent things, but really, phase is driven by moonrise.

When the moon rises at sunrise, the moon is new.

When the moon rises at sunset, the moon is (Edit) FULL.

 

So we use the modulo approach combined with a moon-defined cycle local variable to determine moonrise and use moonrise to determine phase.

 

That way, systems with more than one moon can use the same script, yet have very different periods.

 

<...holding his foot>

<playing with...>

 

I'm liking that a lot, Meaglyn :-)

Didn't find it in dropbox, btw... ;-/

 

I put wrappers around the debug statements, but otherwise left it as is... replacing the demo mod now...

 

<...stars>

<tries to still...>

 

Here's my first approach. This is on the Area Hb. It compares the current hour against a a variable stored on the area (initially null) and, if they don't match, it updates the sun & moon states.

 

 

<...his beating heart>

<initializing...>

 

Ok, I have this on area onEnter. It initializes the temple array based on month, day, hour and the moons variable setting iMoonPeriod (how long it takes to pass through all phases - default 28 days) and iMoonCycle (time from one moonrise to the next - default 23 hours): It will rotate the moon to the correct position on the moon dial, set it activated if up, deactivated if set and do the same for the sun:

 

 

<...an update>

<downing a tall orange juice...>

 

oh, my aching head...

What's wrong with yours? :-) We'll help, if we can.

 

<...and three willow-bark tablets>

<sneaking in...>

It wasn't bad at all, in fact it was what I've been getting at. :-P

What's been throwing me is why destroy and create the placeable...?. I'm not getting that.

Anyway, just to be clear, I'm really happy you've been posting this stuff, because these kind of threads are so valuable to our knowledgebase. I'd rather you pull some hair out (and I yank on my beard a bit) than no dialog at all.

<...a little forumula>

<feels like he is...>

 

Ok, let me try a demo...

 

I wrote a simple script just to demonstrate the rotation of the moon. I used GetTimeSecond() because Minute only counts to 1 (counts realtime minutes 2 per game hour, whereas hour counts game hours... Be nice to get game minutes...) and GetTimeHour is too slow for the demo (and too fast for the orb :-P Which should be based on day of the month (& hour?)).

 

 

And in game...

 

What I was hoping for was a low impact way to trigger the setfacing once a game-hour, and to check the time for moonrise/set and sunrise/set...

 

<...speaking in tongues>

<spinning...>

Good explanation, TR, but... Not wanting to waste valuable time, I designed the moon orb so that the only thing a script needs to do is rotate it. The moon's spherical mesh is located 5 meters away from its pivot point (which was what I meant by origin).

Load up the demo mod and hit rotate in the toolset and you'll see what I meant.

I wanted to keep the scripting as simple as possible, doing the geometry in the model, rather than the game ;-/

<...in place>

<ticked...>

 

*whispers* CCC gets to show on the front page... ticked the "First Release" box ;-)

 

Shhhhhhh...

 

<...on>

<taking care of...>

 

Suna

 

<...the caretaker>

<looks totally confused...>

 

Um, the dial *is* a separate model. All three parts are separate, but all have an origin at the same center point. So you place/spawn all three at the same location. Then you setfacing on the moon... either continuously or every 45 degrees... You don't *move* the moon... The sphere is hanging off to the side of the origin by 5m...

 

I'm soooo confused!

 

<...and feels like it, too>

<complicating...>

 

Actually, the origin of the moon is the center of the circle, so all you need to do is calculate the new facing based on % of lunar cycle * 360 degrees 

SetFacing(fDirection); With fDirection being in degrees. An offset might be provided for moondials not aligned to true north, also.

 

If *I* were doing the script, Lunar period (I think is the right term for how fast it goes around the planet, and determining Moonrise and Moonset) and Lunar cycle (how long it takes for one complete cycle of phases) would be local vars, letting builders customize things.

 

<...simpler things>

<squeaking...>

 

So, yeah. I'm busy lately. But I made these cool Celestial Orbs for someone...

 

Only someone else would really appreciate it if I wrote the scripts intended to work with them :-P

 

I may, one day, but not anytime soon ;-(

 

So, does anyone want to contribute to this project?

 

Write a script that will:

• Activate the Sun at Dawn and deactivate it at Dusk.
• Activate the Moon at moonrise and deactivate it at moonset.
• Advance the moon (change facing) around the moondial based on the day of the month.

Credit will of course be given and I'm sure at least three people will be very grateful =)

 

<...with rust>

<yells "timber"...>

 

Ok, looked at the dag_bluewater4x4.mdl. It's set static in the 2DA and has the animated planes linked to dag_bluewater4x4a node, just as expected.

 

Compared that to my skyball_sr.mdl... set static in 2da with animated bits linked to skyball_sra node...

 

Same construction, same 2da settings. Skyball fades, water does not. Grrrr....

 

<...because he's stumped>