1056 réponses à ce sujet

[Tchos]

BTW, on the subject of bad guys not seeming so bad -- for this module, aside from being chaotic evil, the main villain is actually a literal monster, and has indiscriminately killed hundreds of men, women, and children.  As much as I enjoy philosophy and difficult ethical conundrums, there's none of that with this creature.

[Dann-J]

PJ156 wrote...

I am firmly in that camp too, what is good and what is bad is always subjective. Often if you inderstand the motivation of the npc they do not seem quite so bad after all. I love to play with those sorts of complexities in my modules.

Mind you I do feel that there needs to be a basis of good and bad in a mod to allow the player the set his/her moral compass by and that should be fixed or you risk losing the player.

PJ 

I prefer a Buddhist approach that focuses on ethics rather than morality. I'd rather avoid obvious 'good' or 'evil' paths, and instead just have each character's choices have consequences. In real life, sometimes what seems the 'right' choice at the time can come back to bite you on the arse later. This was done quite well in The Witcher.

It does however make it much harder on the module author if you truly want to explore all the possible combinations of alignments, and offer multiple choices at several points in the module. Especially when it comes to testing all those torturously braided plot lines. I can understand why many authors stick with the simpler good/evil approach.

Certainly in my next module there will be opportunities to support rather than fight various seemingly 'bad' guys, if you happen to be working towards a common goal. There will of course be the choice to kill everything that moves, for those who prefer hack-and-slash over bluff-and-diplomacy.

[Tchos]

Yes, I agree with DannJ. Things are better explored with ethics than with morality.

[Dann-J]

Tchos wrote...

BTW, on the subject of bad guys not seeming so bad -- for this module, aside from being chaotic evil, the main villain is actually a literal monster, and has indiscriminately killed hundreds of men, women, and children.  As much as I enjoy philosophy and difficult ethical conundrums, there's none of that with this creature.

Whenever I meet up with an insanely homocidal monster, I like to present it with a kitten. If it eats the kitten and looks at me as desert, then it's 'game-on, mofo'. If, on the other hand, it turns into a sighing, baby-talking pile of kitten-tickling goo, then I know there's some hope for rehabilitating the creature.

So far I've gone through a lot of kittens though...

[Dorateen]

Tchos wrote...

BTW, on the subject of bad guys not seeming so bad -- for this module, aside from being chaotic evil, the main villain is actually a literal monster, and has indiscriminately killed hundreds of men, women, and children. 

Good. That's what us dwarves are used to fighting.

Harumph!

[Tchos]

I have learned that Dann is the man who feeds kittens to monsters, so as to avoid killing any potentially harmless creatures. ; I could see building a quest around that character.

Tsongo: I have used those golden circlets on my PCs, and I suppose those will have to do. Hard metal isn't much of a substitute for leaves and flowers, but they're better than the crown models, at any rate.

I've determined a workaround for the dock ramp problem. The terrain solution I had known about, but it really didn't seem workable in this case, since the ground mesh just doesn't have a polygon resolution fine enough to stop it from looking ugly in this particular area.

I'll also mention that there are no alignment changes in this module either. I don't see that it would have a place in here, for one thing, and such things tend to fall short of taking motivation and reasoning for a particular action into account.

[Dann-J]

Tchos wrote...

I have learned that Dann is the man who feeds kittens to monsters, so as to avoid killing any potentially harmless creatures. ; I could see building a quest around that character.

It's a perfectly legitimate test - like drowning old women to determine whether they're witches.

I've been doing a lot of research into hin culture ('halflings' to you too-talls), so I'm trying to build in halfling-friendly ways to resolve quests in my next module. Halflings prefer guile and subterfuge, and only resort to violence as a last resort, so I'll have to come up with lots of imaginative alternatives to killing your way through obstacles (although rampant slaughter is always an option). Stealth and trickery will be the orders of the day.

There was a halfling in one of the Moonshae books who got past some ogre guards by rolling a thayvian crystal ball into their midst. They were so enraptured by the shiny object that they failed to notice the halfling sneaking past them.

Tchos wrote...

Tsongo: I have used those golden circlets on my PCs, and I suppose those will have to do. Hard metal isn't much of a substitute for leaves and flowers, but they're better than the crown models, at any rate.

It wouldn't be too difficult to clone one of the circlet models and reskin it as a laurel wreath. You could probably even create an SEF that you could apply to an existing circlet to make it use a new custom skin, without the need to even clone the model. You can use model effects to change the diffuse, normal, tint, etc, textures of most models.

In fact, I could come up with an SEF file you could apply to one of the playable races that would cause a laurel wreath to show up on their head, even though they had no circlet equipped at all. That approach would limit the numbers of races you could apply it to though. Model effects can be extremely powerful tools for customising without having to clone models or edit 2DAs.

[Tchos]

I also did some halfling research recently, but it was mainly for character naming purposes. I have a web page full of information for later reading, but I did see the name "hin" in there. It led to some observations of spirited discussions regarding the way halflings have been altered throughout the editions. Personally, I think the default male halfling in NWN2 looks like it was based on Tasslehoff from Dragonlance.

I wanted the wreath for a magic head item that's sold at the temple, called Sune's Laurel of Favour, so it would have to work for all playable races. What would the limit be, that you mention?

This is the description of the item:

"This wreath of laurel leaves and roses was a gift from the temple of Sune to the priestesses of Hanali Celanil at the Hand of the Seldarine. The representatives of the human goddess of love and beauty were well received and the high priestess of Hanali Celanil wore the laurel whenever humans were visiting the Hand. The orcs discarded the laurel as useless trash when they sacked the priests' tower.

Loyal followers of Sune gain +3 bonus hit points while this wreath is being worn."

Currently, it's represented by a feathered mask model.

[Dann-J]

It sounds like an SEF applied to the item itself would be the way to go. Then no matter what playable race put it on, the SEF should change the diffuse and normal texture of the equipped item. Hopefully one of the existing circlets is wide enough.

There are some honey locust leaf images here that look like they'd make great wreaths (they look close enough to laurel - especially at the scale the item will appear at in the game). A couple of rose blossoms would be easy enough to include.

I'm always looking for new experiments to conduct with the visual effects editor. This'd be a good excuse to stop making VFX statues of deities for a while (I've done eight of them so far - damn polytheism!).

[Tchos]

Botany is not my forté, so you could easily play a hilarious practical joke on me, and make those wreaths out of stinging nettles, and I'd never know the difference until it was too late. In any case, I would appreciate it, and I'm sure others could also make use of a nice wearable wreath too!

[Dorateen]

Tchos wrote...

 Personally, I think the default male halfling in NWN2 looks like it was based on Tasslehoff from Dragonlance.

And I've always believed that the literary ancestor for Tas, to some degree, was Pippin from LotR. With his obnoxious curiosity always getting the Fellowship in trouble and all that.

"Fool of a Took!"

We need to bring back halflings with hairy feet.

Harumph!

[Tchos]

Hmm, I never would have made that connection, but I'm afraid I may have to admit to a heresy, and state that I've never actually finished the LotR book series. I did, however, thoroughly enjoy the movie versions, and have watched them multiple times, in both theatrical and extended editions. In the movies, Pippin didn't strike me as obnoxious, but more of a lovable scamp, even in that scene you mention.

I also support hairy-footed halflings.

[Tchos]

So it turns out that using a custom token in my quest journal doesn't help, because it doesn't update the custom token unless you change the journal entry. If I wanted to create a new journal entry, I could just put the new information in it manually instead of reading it from a token.

Also, my stairs and ladders weren't working for some reason. I tested to see if it was a problem with the walkmesh by putting a copy of the stairs and waypoint on solid ground, and trying it there, but that didn't work either. Strange, since the script worked fine on the ladder in one of my basements. It occurred to me that I had read something on these forums that might have something to do with it. Something about hit points and things that were converted to environmental objects and back again losing their hit points. These objects were all environmental objects at some point. So I checked the hit points of the stairs and ladders, and they were indeed 0. Why this mattered, I don't recall, but I gave them all some hit points just in case. When I tried it again, it worked. So just to restate what people said elsewhere, make sure your placeables have hit points if you want to interact with them.

So now, instead of walkable ramps as I had planned, I have stairs and ladders that you click on to appear on the other side, with a little sound effect to help sell the idea. While I was at it, I added a line that fixed the problem of the player turning to face the door (or ladder) after using it, and instead face the direction of the destination waypoint. Also added a line to use a default door-opening sound effect if none is specified via local string, and put in a tiny delay before the jump, which lets the sound play, and shows the door opening just barely, much like the way doors are shown to open before a transition in Skyrim, from the videos I've seen of it (I haven't played it, myself).

I wanted the player to be able to activate some holy water and then click on a quest item to sanctify the item, so I wrote a tag-based item activation script, but it didn't override the normal holy water behaviour, and my PC tried to make a ranged touch attack on the item instead of doing what I said to do in my script. Maybe the holy water would have to have a Unique Power property for that to work. I'll have to instead have the player activate the quest item, and do it that way, which isn't quite as neat. I could probably get around it by using a "special" holy water quest item instead of the normal stuff, but I wanted it to be flexible enough that if the player already had some, she could use that. So I'll have the quest item just check the player's inventory for normal holy water, and I'll try to make the procedure explicit in the quest instructions for the player.

One correction: I tried putting that custom token information I mentioned earlier in a floating string over the player's head, but that didn't work either. But while searching for information on why, I did find an explanation of how to make it work in the journal, which is where I had wanted it in the first place. To make it update in the journal, I just have to remove the entry and then re-add it. I did that, and it worked.

When it comes to walkmeshes, the toolset is a horrible beast, but these other things (like making special quest items that do fun interactive things for quests, or interesting interactions and conversations, or special little treasures) more than make up for that bother. It's fun, and I love it.

I experimented with using the encounter triggers to place some things in the cursed forest. I had to read a tutorial to see how they were supposed to work. I thought at first that I'd draw an enclosed area, and the game would just put the specified creatures into that drawn area, but it's actually drawing a trigger that the player walks into, which spawns creatures at spawn points that apparently you have to "paint" down while the trigger is selected, with the spawn point painting tool that I've never used before. Right-clicking the trigger only gave the option to delete spawn points, not create any to move around.

I'm not sure about this system. I prefer to have everything out on the table so that stealthy players can scout around, and placing enemies that they have no chance of seeing because they haven't spawned in yet seems very unfair to the player. I'll see if this "active" box makes it so that they spawn without player interaction, which I think would be better for my purposes.

Nope. "Active" just means the trigger actually works, and if it's not ticked, then it doesn't do anything when you walk on it. Also, I don't like the sudden game hiccup that happens when the creatures spawn, which I remember from the OC. It always signaled that enemies who weren't there before are there now. I think that pause could be eliminated if I put the resrefs of the creatures into the area's "creature cache" field, but this test has determined that I won't be using encounter triggers. I'll just place the creatures manually.

This "dirt mound" placeable I'm using for this quest is untintable, which makes it difficult to make it look good in the actual environment, so I added a tint map to it. Of course, this means that any instance of that dirt mound that exists in the game so far will be tinted black, because Obsidian set all the tint channels to black on any item without a tint map. Don't know why. Yes, come to think of it, that's not a good idea. I'll just make a new placeable of it so it won't replace the existing ones.

Yes, that looks better.



Now to something I'm having trouble with: random loot drops. In the OC and expansions, creatures dropped things like pelts, claws, etc., which could be distilled for essences to use in crafting, and in the expansions, they just dropped essences directly. I've been combing through the spawn scripts and treasure generation scripts, and they claim to use chests to generate the loot, but those chests don't seem to exist in the blueprints. Do I have to find them in the OC and import them? They also say that beasts don't drop any loot, but they should certainly drop pelts. Sure enough, when I tried just placing a dozen wolves in an area, none of them dropped anything. So I need to get that working. Any tips?

[Dann-J]

Here's the wreath

I learned some important things making it:

- Weapons seem to be the only equippable items capable of showing effects

So the SEF option for changing the skin of an existing helm model wouldn't work.

- Most of the helm models don't support an alpha mask on the diffuse texture

Otherwise I'd have been able to override one of the existing circlet models with just two texture files. I tried colouring the areas between the leaves black, but it didn't look as good as proper transparency does.

- SSbump Generator is an incredibly useful tool

It literally took me about 30 seconds to generate a normal map the first time I used the interface.


I found that the best results were achieved by cloning every version of cloth helm no.4 (a brown bandana) and pointing them to the new textures. I'm pretty sure that none of the helm models in the game use that appearance type, and if you export a character with a wreath into another module then it will revert to being a bandana (but is still usable). The belladonna icon (it_alch_belladonna) looks pretty good for the item, and also ensures that the icon will still be valid in other modules.

[Tchos]

Thank you! It's definitely more suitable for this item than the current model. It's too bad the roses are "pressed flowers", but I understand why. It's a pretty funny contrast with the stern expression on the character wearing it in your screenshot.

[Lugaid of the Red Stripes]

With custom tokens in the journal, you just need to use the "override higher" option in script to update the journal entry. The player will hear the chime and see the journal updated message at the top of their screen, but it will be the same journal entry, just with the new custom tokens.

With the holy water, you need to poke around in the spell scripts and write-in a special case for your sanctify action. Look at the alchemist's fire scripts to see how it's done.

I don't use encounters for the same reason you're resisting them, to give trackers and stealthy PC's their due advantage. I like to spawn in creatures using the area-on-enter script, but you can do something similar with encounters. Paint down the trigger straddling the entrance, select it, and then hit the 'Paint Spawn Point' button up near the 'set start location' button and click on the map to place your spawn points (they should look like waypoints). You can place your spawn points as far away from the trigger as you like.

For the loot drops, you need to look through the include scripts mentioned in the death script. One of them includes a 'bin' system which it really just a set of lists of different kinds of loot. If you want to just modify this script, make sure to use 'recompile all' to make the changes stick in the various script that use the include script.

[Tchos]

Okay, then I suppose the line that removes the existing script isn't necessary if I use the override higher option. I'd really prefer that it didn't play that chime and put the update on the screen for this minor thing, but that's what happens with the removal approach, too, and it seems to be the only way to update that token.

Are you sure about a "bin" system? I don't see anything called "bin" in the includes of the death scripts. I did find the missing crafting drops, but that uses a 2DA file.

What's most confusing is that there seems to be 3 or 4 different treasure generating systems scattered around various scripts with the toolset.

[kamal_]

DannJ wrote...

Here's the wreath

I learned some important things making it:

- Weapons seem to be the only equippable items capable of showing effects

I did some experiments with weapon vfx, partway down this post. You can do some fun things, like a portable snowstorm. A scripter could probably get the portable force field to work.
kamalpoe.blogspot.com/2010/04/when-do-you-toss-out-area.html

[Tchos]

There were several factors at work in preventing my creatures from dropping crafting components. The biggest one was that the default death script, which appears in the global script 3 times, along with all other default scripts (probably once for each of the official campaigns) was edited in SoZ specifically to remove the line that would have fired the command to generate the crafting components. I assume they did this because they use an entirely different system of crafting, and they changed the animal drops to the "bounty items" that were used in collection quests there. Personally, I like the crafting from the OC the best. The others were more convenient, yes, but a little too convenient. I didn't feel like I was making the items, but just paying for them. Crafting is a side pursuit that I enjoy in most games, so the one I'm supporting is the OC version.

So, having found the problematic part of the script, I set about changing it. Rather than edit the death script, since I wasn't sure if editing it would affect the normal campaigns, I instead created a new script which included the dummied-out line, and specified it on the Deathscript variable on the creature, which the default script fires if there is such a variable set. I mentioned before that I use saved sets of scripts and variables for easy customisation of placeables and creatures, and so I saved a set that added this death script alongside the "wandering around" variables I like to have on my creatures.

Another factor was the fact that it reads what component to create from the des_crft_drop.2da file, and most of the creatures in it just don't have anything specified to drop! But Shortbusrider did the work of providing a 2da file that specifies appropriate items for most of the creatures, like bear claws for bears, leather for deer, fire mephit hide for fire mephits, etc. So I used that. I don't know how they did it in the OC (unless I'm misremembering and they hadn't actually done it), but perhaps they had some other script, or they just put the components in the creatures' inventories manually.

Next thing to fix was that the generator script checks to see if you have any crafting skills to determine whether it should drop anything. It doesn't check crafting feats, just skills. And it seems to only check the skill of the character that dealt the killing blow. If the character has a skill lower than 5, the comments state that it assumes that the player has no interest in crafting, and so it doesn't drop any components. For this reason, I wasn't getting any drops, because my sturdy tank dwarf that I was using to plow through the test creatures has only 3 points in crafting.

I don't like this limitation, because if it's not taking the whole party's crafting into account, and if the highest damage dealers aren't the crafters of the party then the player may get very few components. So I moved the code from the include into my new death script, and removed that condition entirely

Anyway, it works now. I spent most of the day on that problem.

Next I reinstalled SoZ to restore the campaign resources I accidentally deleted when I was importing some material from the campaign.

Then I started importing resources to use in creating some sailors and dock workers. Here is where I came to understand that there are no separate "pants" in this game, because I wanted the dock workers to be shirtless. I guess I was spoiled by starting out my real modding life with Oblivion, which had many separate and displayable clothing slots. I ended up doing some extensive texture work to make the various resources suitable for my purposes, and combined multiple resources, including some donated by PGB. I ended up using a nude base, and adding pants through Jester's catsuit base, since just painting pants onto the nude base resulted in something too skintight. My result is adequate, but could still use a more convincing material for the pants, and it doesn't quite match up on the side seams, which I'll have to fix.



Then I placed the rest of the quest items in the forest and started populating it with wildlife, now that I have the loot drops working properly.

[I_Raps]

DannJ wrote...

Here's the wreath

I learned some important things making it:

- Weapons seem to be the only equippable items capable of showing effects

So the SEF option for changing the skin of an existing helm model wouldn't work.

- Most of the helm models don't support an alpha mask on the diffuse texture

Otherwise I'd have been able to override one of the existing circlet models with just two texture files. I tried colouring the areas between the leaves black, but it didn't look as good as proper transparency does.

- SSbump Generator is an incredibly useful tool

It literally took me about 30 seconds to generate a normal map the first time I used the interface.


I found that the best results were achieved by cloning every version of cloth helm no.4 (a brown bandana) and pointing them to the new textures. I'm pretty sure that none of the helm models in the game use that appearance type, and if you export a character with a wreath into another module then it will revert to being a bandana (but is still usable). The belladonna icon (it_alch_belladonna) looks pretty good for the item, and also ensures that the icon will still be valid in other modules.

This is rather frustrating.  While the OCs don't use it, I make extensive use of that headband in my own stuff.

Why didn't you use a new number?  And more to the point, what would I have to do to the files to make it a standalone to drop into Override?  I'm sure there's more to it than just renaming the files ...

As for using the wreath itself - that precise item - Sune's Laurel of Favor - is supposed to be a reward in Icewind Dale (from Denaini for restoring the pools), but it doesn't spawn in the NWN2 module.   I have created one using a golden circlet that I have consoled in, but I would surely prefer this wreath and I'm sure slowdive.fan would love to get his hands on it, too;  but a persistent version (across modules) would be so much better.

Modifié par I_Raps, 21 juillet 2012 - 09:44 .

[Tchos]

Well, whatever I can do to make it persistent across modules, I'll gladly build in, as long as someone can tell me what it needs.

One thing you might need to know is that the item includes a script that makes the bonus hit points only appear if the wearer is in fact a follower of Sune.  How would one ensure that the necessary scripts go along with an item when it's imported into other modules?

Modifié par Tchos, 21 juillet 2012 - 10:18 .

[Tchos]

While I was doing some texturing, I went ahead and looked for a suitable flat plane placeable that I could use to make some placeable notes and envelopes. I made three: a piece of parchment with writing on it, a blank piece of parchment, and an envelope. Then I encountered the most bizarre and incomprehensible problem yet. Only one of them will work at any one time.

All three are clones of a single model, with textures reassigned to unique ones using MDB cloner. They each have very different names in the placeables.2da. But when I place them into a scene, they all have the same appearance. Even if I manually change the appearance of the placed instance, it looks exactly the same.

When I have only one of them in a scene, if I change the appearance to an unrelated model, and then back to one of mine, the appearance will change! But placing any of the other two items will make them look like that one. This is both in the toolset and in the game.

I can go to a different area, and place a different one in that area. So I know they're all working. They all show up normally, but not in the same area together. I don't know what to make of it. I was going to make two more envelope variants, but considering this strange circumstance, I'll leave it as is. If I can't put a letter in the same room as its envelope, then it limits its usefulness. Still, having these available is better than having to use a book or a scroll when you want to reveal information through a handwritten note.



One of the things I really love about this toolset is that any placeable can be made interactive. That was a major limitation of the Gamebryo engine games, like Oblivion. If you wanted something to be interactive, it had to be made into an "activator", and I don't think it had all these different ready-made events to which to attach scripts.

I was looking for owlbears today, and had no luck. I found some for NWN1, but I don't see they were converted to NWN2. I also found a WIP thread on the RWS forum from three years ago showing what looked like a finished owlbear for NWN2, but couldn't find any release for it.

While I was placing some mobs, I was a bit put off by the fact that the toolset doesn't come equipped with any creature variations. Is there supposed to be a script somewhere that adjusts the abilities, skills, levels, etc. of a base creature's template? I'm thinking not, or at least Obsidian didn't do it that way, since I opened up the OC and found the customised goblins which mostly only existed as placed instances, though a couple of special ones existed as blueprints. I exported several of them from there, since they were of a more appropriate level and had appropriate sets of abilities for this location. I also came to understand the purpose of creature blueprint sets, like those made by Storyteller. Previously, I had assumed their main purpose was for visual variety, but as I learned, the different looks also include different sets of skills. I imported Storyteller's humanoid blueprints.

I also imported Gizmo's Spawner, since it looked to be very simple and straightforward, using only 1 script and 1 placeable, and it uses variables extensively. With it, I can essentially do the same thing a placed encounter can do -- specifying a group of possible enemies to randomly pick to spawn -- except not require the player to step on a trigger. It uses a heartbeat script, which makes me a little wary, because I don't want to have too many things running in the background. Plus, I don't need it to respawn anything when the creatures are dead. For now, I've just added a line to the script that sets it to inactive at the end of its first run, but it would probably be better to find another way to fire the script that only happens once.

Then I opened up the SoZ campaign and exported many nice creature and item blueprints that would have been useful to have in the base toolset. I won't be using many of them, but I like to know what's available.

One exported creature had gb_wanderer script set on it, which I hadn't seen before. It seems to be an alternative to the variables I've been using to set things like stealth spawning, walking around and using animations, etc. Reading through it, I saw a line that I had seen before in the death script, which allows creatures to shout things when fighting, like calling for help or yelling a one-liner, but I didn't see any option for setting a variable to enable those. That led me to a forum post where Pain explained how to use those flags with a variable. Personally, I would prefer that they just all had separate variables that could be set, but I can use that one master bitwise one. It'll just make it hard to read which ones have already been set, though I suppose I could put that information in the comment field. What I don't know is if using the separate variables like X2_L_SPAWN_USE_AMBIENT will interfere in any way with the use of NW_GENERIC_MASTER.

[Dann-J]

I_Raps wrote...

Why didn't you use a new number?  And more to the point, what would I have to do to the files to make it a standalone to drop into Override?  I'm sure there's more to it than just renaming the files ...

I originally did have it as a new helm number, but it occured to me that exporting a character with the wreath and using them in another module would result in a black cube with red question marks imbedded in their head if the original module used a HAK pack. Not everyone knows how to extract the necessary files and put them in the override folder.

You can use the MDB Cloner tool to rename the MDB files and create a new helm appearance. Renaming the files directly wouldn't work.