27 réponses à ce sujet

[Laugh out loud]

 My toolset crashes more times than it works when I attempt to save a module I am working on and almost all the time now when I bake/save a module.  I am using windows vista with a 3GB processor and 4GB of memory.  Tell me what more info you may need.  Any suggestions?

[PJ156]

Do you know if this is one are not baking. It is worth narrowing down which area is giving you trouble, then you may be able to fix that. When this has happened to me I have been able to fix it by adjusting the recent mesh changes I have made and rebaking or going to a safe backup and starting from there.

PJ

[Morbane]

are you fully patched to v1.23?

[Morbane]

Do you have auto save turned OFF? It should be off.

[Clyordes]

As PJ stated above - it might just be one area that's causing the problem - what you could do is export each area individually into a new module and bake them as you import them - hopefully you'll come across one that doesn't bake & if you're really lucky, you'll be able to remember anything that you've changed recently and undo it. If not, hopefully you'll have a backup of that area that you can import into your module & won't have lost that much.

Its a hard way to learn to back up pretty much every session, but its something I think we've all learned at some point. Personally, I keep backups of at least my last two building sessions when I'm busy in the toolset.

I don't know if anyone's ever managed to put their finger on what causes toolset crashes, and different people find that different things help prevent them - some swear by working in Directory mode (massively cuts down on crashes for me, and loads much faster, but makes testing slower as you need to convert back to .mod file format to playtest), and as mentioned above, Autosave seems to cause problems too, as well as being annoying when you're building.

In the mean time - hope you didn't lose too much, happy building!

Cly.

[Laugh out loud]

I make a backup every time I make a new area and another for every time I successfully bake all of the areas.  I do have auto-save disabled.

[Laugh out loud]

I am fully patched to v1.23 but Ihad to check to make sure.

[Morbane]

Clyordes said - incorrectly - that if you save in directory mode you have to convert to .mod to play test - that is NOT true - you can test in directory mode within the toolset or by starting the game and selecting you project in the list.

But he is absolutely correct that you can load each area in a new module and import each area until you find the culprit - baking and making a note which ones load and bake successfully as you go.

[Shallina]

Bake one area after the other, not all of them together, toolset got some memory leaks.

[Morbane]

that is the truth - memory leaks - by importing your areas into a new module you can test each one alone and hopefully you might find that you can "repair" the problem in that way.

[Jezla]

I wouldn't ever use the bake all areas function. If you have an area done, there's no need to bake it at all. Only bake the area you're currently working on when you make changes that would affect the walkmesh (altering terrain, adding static placeables).

I usually save my backups in directory mode, with the working version in mod form. I keep the two previous versions as backups.

You can play a mod that is saved as a directory, but there are some features (such as the mod description) that don't show up in the game.

[Lugaid of the Red Stripes]

I once had a corrupt placeable in an area that was causing a crash whenever I tried to bake that area. If you can narrow down the area, go through and start converting any placeables you can into environmental objects, and then look through the rest to find any thing funny, and delete and replace as you need to.

And to repeat what they say above, saving in module mode uses up ridiculous amounts of memory, even with a modern rig like yours. Add in a memory leak, and you're bound to get a corrupt area that crashes the module. So do all your work in directory mode, and only save a copy as a module when you're ready to distribute.

[Laugh out loud]

How do you go into directory mode?

[MasterChanger]

Laugh out loud wrote...

How do you go into directory mode?

Choose "Save Directory" rather than "Save" from the file menu. After this first time, you can (and should) choose Save, because Save Directory as a different name will move your files to the new directory rather than making a copy.

When you are ready to open your module, choose "Open Directory". What you will be opening is the folder that contains your files for that module rather than opening an individual .mod file.

When saved in directory mode, you can browse your module directory directly with Windows Explorer. You can export or import resources with drag and drop rather than getting involved with ERFs.

[Morbane]

an erf is the suffix for exported module components - like area, creature, placed effect, etc.

But in directory mode you can copy paste all those components using windows.

[Morbane]

once you save in dir mode all you have to do is use ctrl + s to save your mod or when you exit the toolset and it asks you if you want to save - it will save in the mode you chose - in this case it will be dir mode.

[PJ156]

And to repeat what they say above, saving in module mode uses up ridiculous amounts of memory, even with a modern rig like yours. Add in a memory leak, and you're bound to get a corrupt area that crashes the module. So do all your work in directory mode, and only save a copy as a module when you're ready to distribute.

I've been distributing in directory mode for the last three mods. It works just fine but is a little more confusing when telling people where to put the folders.

PJ

[Laugh out loud]

Can you "play test" the module in directory mode.

[Lugaid of the Red Stripes]

Yes, you can use 'run module' from the toolset. Directory-mode modules can also be played from the game like .mod modules.

[NWN DM]

Although, you may not get good performance out of your system while doing so, depending on your specs.

[Kaldor Silverwand]

One thing to note when testing with "run module" within the toolset is that changes to campaign scripts will not be recognized.

Also, when you are working in module mode and if it crashes the toolset while trying to save, then what you will find is a .mod file that is probably much smaller than it should be and a temp..module name directory that is what the toolset had before you attempted the save. So after a crash you can just use open directory on that temp directory to recover your work.

Regards

[painofdungeoneternal]

PJ156 wrote...

And to repeat what they say above, saving in module mode uses up ridiculous amounts of memory, even with a modern rig like yours. Add in a memory leak, and you're bound to get a corrupt area that crashes the module. So do all your work in directory mode, and only save a copy as a module when you're ready to distribute.

I've been distributing in directory mode for the last three mods. It works just fine but is a little more confusing when telling people where to put the folders.

PJ

Use nwn2packer to create a module prior to distribution, mod files are really set up for players. It is a lot easier as a builder to be able to just hop into a module and delete files when you feel like it. Strongly recommend using it especially if you are having problems with the toolset. Even converting from a module to a directory and vice versa it's a lot more reliable to just do it yourself with nwn2packer.

Do not bake an entire module ever, it will run out of memory and takes forever. Bake areas as you work on them one at a time. You only need to do it when you change the walkable area. Bake all only works on very small modules, and i know the toolset gets very unstable whenever you have opened more than 3 areas, even if not at once. ( i will restart toolset periodically but i try to focus on 1-2 areas at a time. )

If it's a bad area, get the terracoppa plugin and try to duplicate the area to a new area. Definitely open each area one at a time until you find the culprit. Make  sure you have a safe backup regardless.

I actually have a live module, and a development module which is the exact same except it only has the areas i am working on. I copy back and forth areas as needed. Since most of the resources are in haks or override ( or you can use a campaign folder ) it's pretty easy to manage. That way my real module is pretty safe since i am usually only working on a copy, if i mess up an area ( lol i dropped a ton of ice walls in the center of town accidentally since i had show placeables set to off, so i just go get the original town )

It also lets me structure specific short cuts, ie portals and such in town so i can get deep in the module without needing to walk there.

Modifié par painofdungeoneternal, 21 novembre 2011 - 09:34 .

[Laugh out loud]

 Can you bake in directory mode?

[Morbane]

you can play the piano in directory mode - even if you didnt play the piano before ;/

[painofdungeoneternal]

Yes - everything works in directory mode just like in module mode. Just bake areas one at a time just like you need to do in module mode. ( you only need to bake em when you edit them, if you are saying its an issue with bake all, well that is your main issue )

Everything works just like in a module, except it's in a folder. Technically the issue is when you work in module mode, it's putting everything in directory mode in a temp0 folder which you can use to rescue your work. Everyone saying module mode works fine is technically in directory mode, but their modules are either small enough, or they have a beefy enough system, or are just lucky enough to not have an issue.

The issue is that it saves this data back to the module in such a way that if something unforseen happened at the wrong moment, you can lose everything, it does not always maintain the old module file as it's saving, and at such times if you are smart you can find your module in those temp folders. I basically cross my fingers.

Then there are similar issues with this when you change from module to directory mode, where it deletes your module or directory effectively moving the data instead of saving a new copy.

Note all the file formats, erf, mod, hak, and probably a few more are the exact same format, just with different names. A module is just a hak which the game knows by it's extension should have the areas and some other files. As such you can use NWN2Packer to get things into and out of these formats, and just extract them out into a folder. It is a good idea to sidestep all the formats and just copy the raw files, this however is not "easy" looking as you end up learning which files do what, but then in the long term you really want to learn how everything works or you are going to be working a lot harder than you need to.

About the only other differences is you use -moduledir on the command line, and use open directory to open the files. And of course it's just a folder in your modules directory. Other than that it works just like a module, the game really can't see the difference except it's not having to extract every file it needs whenever it needs it.