22 réponses à ce sujet

[K Kin]

As far as I can remember, I've always ran into problems with the toolset. Mostly due to my own fault But a lot isn't.

 

Few examples are;

 

Areas randomly being corrupt, Blueprints in the toolset have disappeared (unable to click/select, even though the toolset says they're in the toolset) and many more.

 

How stable is Neverwinter Nights 2 and the toolset?

 

It feels like it's very hazardous at times. If you do one thing wrong, something explode, or if you just touch something, something bad happens.

I would say my most recent problems have been where, I go to use a skill in my project and it crashes the game. I reload and use the skill again and it works perfectly fine forever.

 

Neverwinter Nights 1 felt so much more stable and "solid" with the toolset. Neverwinter Nights 2 feels like a ticking time-bomb when it comes to custom made modules.

[K Kin]

Bump

[Tchos]

My experience has been positive.  I've found it no less stable than the dozens of other programs I've used intensively.

[MarshallV]

My experience is mixed.  I agree, there are a number of things that will cause you to crash, break, corrupt, damage and lose all your work.  That said, after years and years of use, I've learned what to click and what not to click.  Where the bugs are, and where the danger zones exist.  Now that I am armed with that knowledge, I can use the toolset, play the game and have a very positive experience with NWN2 as a whole.

 

In my opinion, you are right, there are a number of pitfalls and it takes a bit of work to know where they are and how to avoid them.  Today, I can create a complete adventure with custom code, plugins, maps and other things and not have a single issue, only because I know how to navigate around the instabilities you've described.

 

A good example, is just the other day - I had a module with a server to server transfer that would crash the client EVERY TIME when the door was clicked.  After an hour or so of head scratching, I discovered that I had a Waypoint Tag listed in the door's transition "Linked To" field.  Having that with a custom script to teleport from one server to another server crashed my client every time, cleaning it out, solved the issue.  Chalk it up to another thing to ensure I avoid.

 

M

[kevL]

i came *really* close to closing the TS for the last time a couple year ago - it closed itself actzooly.

... forging ahead. and Like Marshall said, develop a knack for what not to do at a particular moment -- i guess


But i was just looking at the WorldMap editor and thought, this is so cool.

[K Kin]

Even when you do pick up on something, it's still sometimes avoidable.

I was changing volume of an ambient today, and the popout properties box gave the error (which then makes the popout unuseable until you restart the toolset). It's annoying, so now all I have todo is edit stuff on the pop out very slowly lol

[Shallina]

Haven t  got problems in age, since windows XP and 7 everything working fine. It may be tied to the RAM. we have more RAM nowadays.

[Tchos]

Like Shallina speculates, I also speculate that what troubles I have seen are related to my relatively low RAM.

[K Kin]

My old PC had 12gb ram and I ran into quite a few problems then.

I currently have 8gb ram, and it feels "better" than before.

[Tchos]

4GB here.

[Dann-J]

I've never been able to open the Appearance Wizard without locking up the toolset, even across several computers. Not that I have need of it, but every now and then I'll accidentally click on the option in a popup menu.

 

I find that if I test a module in the game while the toolset is open, then I can pretty much guarantee the toolset will crash if I try to open an area after exiting the game. The crashes occur when I try to change the view in the preview window, so sometimes I'll get away with it if I select things from the lists in the lower left of the toolset rather than navigating the view to find them visually in the area.

 

Otherwise the toolset generally behaves itself for me. I almost never see the game itself crash.

[Groove Widdit]

Does adding a lot of trees effect anything? In NWN1 lots of placables crashes the game.

[Tchos]

You'll find many warnings about the use of too many trees or too many random seeds, but I tested that out by putting pretty much every tree in the toolset into a single area, with multiple copies of each tree using different random seeds, and it runs smooth as silk, both in the toolset and in the game, with all shadows on and at 1920x1080.  In fact, I liked the way it looked so much that I've been using it as my test area for quite some time now, and I haven't had any problems with it, either opening it or crashing.

 

(Note: the frame rate in the video is lower than it actually is in the game, due to the extra burden of recording the video at the same time as playing it.  Without Fraps running, it's smooth as video.)

 

[Dann-J]

I suspect the suggested limits were only relevant for the average computer in 2005/6.

 

I find that shadows are the major cause of framerates dropping in areas with lots of speedtrees. If I want to create a forest area with both large trees and understory plants, I generally set the understory plants to not cast shadows at all. The shadows cast by the larger trees (or large placeables such as buildings) will usually occlude the shadows of the smaller plants, so you don't notice much of a difference visually. However it seems that the game engine isn't very efficient at figuring out which shadows it doesn't need to render (because they're inside of larger shadows), so it wastes resources rendering shadows you won't be able to see anyway.

[Groove Widdit]

That's good advice. What's a seed?

[Tchos]

A seed is a number at which point an algorithm begins on a random number table.  The trees are generated through algorithms that include some randomness, and using a different seed makes it create a different tree.  The blueprints each use whatever seed happened to look like a good example of the tree, but you can use at least tens of thousands of variations, at least some of which will also look good.  I'm not sure if there's an upper limit or not.

[Groove Widdit]

Wow, the seeds are powerful. So is the scale in the tree's properties. Is it true you can only have 5 different trees and a different seed counts as one?

[kamal_]

Each seed counts as a tree, but the five limit was a recommendation based on computer power available at the game's release, you can get away with a lot more now.

[Groove Widdit]

Oh I thought I already had more than five. I guess you can tell if you're overloaded by if the game lags on play-through.

[Tchos]

Is it true you can only have 5 different trees and a different seed counts as one?

 

The point of my test and demonstration that I described and showed in that video was to show that the "5 different trees/seeds" thing is false, and is to be discarded and ignored.  In other words, no, it is not true in the slightest degree.  I have 207 trees in that video, most of which use different seeds from each other, with no lag or slowdown.  Further tests would need to be done to see if there is any slowdown with 300, 400, 500, whatever.

[Groove Widdit]

I have lags on parts of the original game--I'm not sure what it is exactly--large urban areas. I'll take your word for it in the trees, though. I love trees! Has anybody tested it on a different computer?

[Tchos]

Nope, but I'll send it to anyone who wants to test it, or they can just put a lot of trees in their own area.  My computer's around 8 years old at this point, though, so it seems like it should be a good stress test subject.

 

As I wrote in the comments to the video on the Youtube page, SpeedTrees (which is what these are) are made for performance.  You can get a lot of slowdown with poorly optimised placeables, though, like ones without mipmaps or LOD models, and as Dann pointed out, ones that cast shadows when they don't need to.  I wish I had learned that latter lesson in time to use it on my city area.

[kevL]

I have an entry level computer, literally a step above the minimum recommended for NwN2 (the minimum recommended doesn't work /heh)

speed trees are not a problem. I estimate the average placeable causes more slowdown than a dozen speedtrees. And shadows, but i don't roll with those except for screenshots.


area looks good, T.