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[Tonden_Ockay]

Does anyone know of a top hak that has been made to use Project Q and CEP in the same module. I have found that I like both. Do I like everything no but there are things I would like to use if I could. I am really just after the placeables and creatures from both.

 

I have toyed around with 2da's a little in the past few days but to do what I'm talking about items would have to change 2da lines and I don't know how or what I would need to change on each item to get them to work once their 2da line was changed.

 

Thanks for your time.

[The Mad Poet]

And the search for the holy grail continues...

 

 

Seriously though I'm unsure anyone has done this yet. I remember some talk about it at one point. If someone has releasing it on the vault would be a HUGE boon to people.

[Fester Pot]

It was discussed that Project Q 1.8 final and CEP 2.60 final would be merged together to create CEP 3.0.

There is a thread regarding it around here somewhere from 2014.

Otherwise, nothing like this has been done and released to the community that I'm aware of.

 

FP!

[boodah83]

I think Andarian (the author of the Sanctum of the Archmage modules) was talking about this as well on the old Q forums at some point. Maybe you could contact him via pm...

 

However, just merging the placeables and creatures wouldn't be that big of an ordeal. And changing 2da line numbers of placeables and creatures doesn't require any additional work to get them to work (except changing blueprints and scripts in your module that reference those 2da lines).

[Pstemarie]

Both Andarian and TAD (aka Amethyst Dragon) have merged Q with CEP and I'm certain either would be more than willing to share the 2da files they used.

[Tonden_Ockay]

Thanks I will try and talk with them about it then.

[meaglyn]

I've done it as well. But mine have a lot of other changes that no one else will probably want.  Unfortunately, it's not just 2da files but all the blueprints. It's also not really a merge as renumbering one or the other's lines.  Andarian's are downloadable since his modules are single player. There are also in those 2das some other pieces of module specific CC.   And I don't know if he's updated recently.

 

It's totally do-able but somewhat painful. I'm off for vacation in a bit, but will give some thought to whether I have the time and interest to support a cleaner version of Q-over-CEP, which is the direction I took (since at the time Q was going and CEP was dead). It does seem to be a popular request...

[Tonden_Ockay]

Now that Q has been passed on to Amethyst Dragon it would seem that most of Q stuff will become part of CEP at some point. CEP has far more then Q so it would seem that it would be easier to start with CEP and add Q. But this is coming from someone who has never done it so I really wouldn't know. I for one know if I was to do it I would take out all the beams of light, elven twisted things, and what not. I'm more of a fan of placeable objects not lights, lasers and the likes. Then again I am more of a lower magical fantasy kind of guy.

[Tonden_Ockay]

It would be nice to have on the vault for download I'm sure it would get a good amount of people downloading it. Shoot I might even give it a try one day if no one does it first. I just have a few other things I need to take care of first before trying to do something else that I have never done

[meaglyn]

You are of course welcome to do it however you want. I wanted it to default to the Q stuff.  Also since the armor parts get complicated I simply started with the Q files and only when there were no conflicts brought over the CEP lines. I did not bother to renumber the CEP parts, I just don't use them if they conflicted. As I said, when I did this it was the right decision. I did not know Pstemarie was going to retire and TAD would resurrect CEP. I would not have any interest in doing it the other way around now since that would not do me any good at all having built a fair bit on top of it this way.  Same reason TAD won't do anything to mess up CEP numbering in his merge.

 

Also, the Q stuff if it gets pulled into CEP will not be compatible with existing Q builds. It can't be done because the both use the same lines in a number of places... 

[Tonden_Ockay]

Right, but it would seem that all the CEP users in the future may have all the Q items, placeables, and creatures to add to their modules. It just wont help out Q users/builders.

[meaglyn]

Well, the CEP-over-Q version is probably better something that comes from TAD either as CEP pulling in the Q stuff in new places or some top hak that puts the Q stuff somewhere else.  But yes, if you are starting now with no haks you may be better of starting with CEP and then going from there.  I don't know what TAD's plans are for Q now that he controls both.  There may not be enough interest in Q-over-CEP to make it worthwhile...

[Tonden_Ockay]

He uses Q and CEP for his server so he must like something about Q. On the other hand since he already uses both he may not feel a need to merge the two.

[meaglyn]

He has effectively merged the two. That's how you use them both.  But he had CEP first and so he, rightly,  won't do anything that makes new CEP incompatible with old CEP. 

 

I hope he likes something about Q... he's in charge of it now

[Tonden_Ockay]

lets say I wanted to bring an item or placeable from cep to Q how many files would need to be moved and what would they be tagged as?

 

I know I would need the 2da what else?

[henesua]

The number of files depend on the asset.

 

Lets say you wanted a particular placeable:

 

You would need the MDL, a PWK if it has one, and as many TGA and/or DDS files (textures) as it uses. And then after that if any of those textures have a special TXI file you would want to get that too.

You would also need to add a line to a "placeables.2da" (I assume this is the one in project Q - in whihc case you extract that from Q, make edits and put it in a new HAK so as not to change your copy of Q).

 

Usually however 1 placeable is 1 MDL, 1 PWK, 1 DDS, 1 TGA, and one line on the placeables.2da.

 

This is a multi step process in which you will learn how to extract resources from HAKs, read and write 2DAs, find texture names in a MDL file, and then combine all the new stuff into a HAK.

 

I started writing the steps below, but then realized that its better that you just get started, rather than get hung up on the exact process.

 

Here's a very rough sketchy and incoplete step by step

 

 

 

How do you go about doing all of this?

Step 1: load up a module which uses CEP and has all of its blueprints (to make it easy on you).

Step 2: call up the "properties" of the placeable that you want. Look at its "Appearance" property. This is a string value.

Step 3: open up CEP's placeables.2da (you previously extracted it from the CEP HAKs) in a TLK editor or if you are an menche use Notepad++ (ubermenche's use vi from commandline). Me I just use Tlkedit.

Step 4: search for the exact appearance name in the placeables.2da (hopefully CEP did not obfuscate these values with TLK entries because I don't feel like adding that step to this) (copy this entire row for later use into a separate text file)

Step 5: On the same row as the matching appearance name, look at the name of the MDL.

Step 6: Find the MDL and PWK with the MDL name in the CEP HAKs and extract (if the PWK is nowhere to be found don't sweat it)

Step 6: open up the MDL in Notepadd++ or any text editor and search for BITMAP, and TEXTURE and write down all the BITMAP/TEXTURE names (someone probably has a script for this. (I did once but don't know where i put it))

Step 7: Get all of the textures from the CEP HAKs

Step 8: Recombine this stuff in a HAK

Step 9: put the copied placeable line at the very end of your placeables.2da and put that in the new HAK too

 

 

 

Edit ....

 

and lastly I want to caution you again from caring about art assets. Build the game content first using default assets. Then worry about going back and providing the shiny art assets. You can spend all your time just curating art assets. I've done far more than my fair share and wrote command line tools to manage this stuff at one point (on linux) because I was dealing with ... far more assets than could be moved about by hand, renaming, changing textures, and so on. And then I stepped back and realized that you can never have enough art assets. You always want more and more and more.

 

My philosophy became use what you've got and make a list of what you absolutely must have. Put that list aside. And then maybe later import the stuff.

 

For you I again recommend just using  Project Q or CEP as they are and try to use everything thats in them. Just build with something that is plug and play. If someone gives you a top hak for merging, great. But don't wait for it. Move forward with teh actual game play.

[Tonden_Ockay]

Here is a placeable.2da file I put together that has both Q and CEP. I started with the 2da file Zwerkules had for his witcher 1 placeables. 

[Tonden_Ockay]

Thanks henesua I might want to try and do this at some point. I just have a friend who is helping with my module and he is pushing me along so I don't have the time right now. However its something I may try my hand at when I do get the time.

 

 

Edit: So we really have Zwerkules to thank for this placeable.2da.

 

Thanks Zwerkules   

[Jedijax]

Such an undertaking has been in the works pretty much forever. The problem I see is it would need be HIGHLY modular, and such usually needs insane amount of work and testing. Neither project was ever meant to fit with the other. Not impossible, but highly unfeasible and unpractical. Still, I bet about 99% of the community has wet dreams about it.

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[NWN_baba yaga]

my 2 cents. Not everyone uses ProjectQ or CEP and both combined chances are lower that player will want to download such enormous files!

I dont have cep and i dont download it

My suggestion would be take out from CEP what you need if pQ is your first preference and create a module hak with everything in it. I hate it myself to download 20 haks just for a module and i would say NO to that. Because keep in mind players also download other stuff...

 

Personaly i like smaller modules with specific custom content when needed. And keep your overwrites in mind too

And yes stuff is very different from pQ and CEP because of it´s age. So lots of stuff to me from CEP would be completely useless when i try to create an environment that has a look of a continous quality or "feel" to it. The color palette alone comes to mind!

[The Mad Poet]

That's pretty much the reason I made my own haks after it was announced Q was not being developed further. Long ago I stripped what I wanted from CEP, and then merged them with my own hak set. Then I merged Q with them as well because it wasn't going to change any more. Easier to keep up with everything when it was just one hak set for me.