37 réponses à ce sujet

[PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

OK, I know this wouldn't be of use for a full on "Shift the whole planet through seasonal variations" Tileset with all the fixtures and fittings, but...

 

I'm currently thinking of a sort of triple approach, partly because of all the additional geometry maybe causing lag in a single big Tileset - and partly just a "how little work can I make this" angle...

If I have two Tilesets - let's call them "Normal" and "Apocalypsomized", the latter being being a reworked version of the first where everything's been pushed in with a catastrophically immense Eldritch Brick, both of which are fairly big anyway (being Hyenaomized versions of the TNO set with assorted additions from Q and of my own rubbish making), then putting them both into one set is possibly asking for trouble. And it's an awful lot of work to complete and find it's not really doing the job.

So, perhaps the answer, at least in my ridiculous genocidal desire to annihilate every last thing there is, is to create a third version with just the tiles - and ONLY the tiles - needed for the actual Area in which the actual change takes place. Preceding Areas use the "Normal" and subsequent Areas use the "Apocalypsomized" Tilesets. This keeps the extra geometry to a minimum and they can share walkmeshes since the big heaps of rubble for fallen towers, etc, can be script spawned as needed as Placeables at carefully positioned waypoints.

 

As I say, this won't help for a seasonally shifting game world - which would be awesome - but it might be the way to go for a sudden, total change of the world around a player, on screen, properly, not cheating...

And not adding anything else to Tilesets already bordering upon the bloated.

[YeoldeFog]

This is wizardry!!! 

[Zwerkules]

One place to get it is this Kit I put together, in the "MDL-Compiler Bioware" folder.  Found it tucked away on a Russian website some years ago and all the files in it are as I found them.  Works just like the Bioware DDS compiler, with in and out folders.  Sometimes I have to fall back on the DLA compiler, because it seems to have certain esoteric bugs related to characters fixed, but I always hit the Bioware one first.  BTW, the CleanModels in that kit is not current version but DLA compiler is fine.

 

Does the Bioware compiler handle "selfillumcolourkey" correctly? The compiler I have breaks all animations with self-illumination. I always use it for placeables but never for tiles because of this.

 

That demo looks great but I do have a question though. Don't you have to be careful with pure alpha textures? Isn't there a possible problem with punch-through? While I'm on the subject of punch-through is there a way to turn it off using txi files?

 

TR

Why would there be a problem with punch-through if the texture is 100% transparent? There's nothing to "punch through".

You can turn punch-through on or off in txi files. I never turn it on though because even though it fixes the blueish edges it changes the alpha. You don't get any semi-transparencies any more, everything is either completely transparent or not transparent at all and for textures that should have semi-transparent parts this looks even worse than the blue edge.

[Tarot Redhand]

Thanks for the explanation Zwerkules. My experience of punch through is limited to the simple things I make. I have never seen the blue edges you mention. My experience is that you can place a single placeable that contains alpha on top of a placeable that has no alpha with no problems. The problem arises when you try to place two or more alpha containing placeables on top of each other where all detail is lost in those placeables and any non-alpha placeables in the pile, exposing the tile beneath.

 

If you wish to continue explaining to dense ol' me about this, can you either pm me or start a new thread as I don't want to hijack this one. Thanks.

 

TR

[kamal_]

Cool stuff here, folks! Lovin' it.
I recall in NWN2 there was a useful method for creating 'deep snow' areas, where the snow lay over the terrain, matching the shape, and characters were knee deep or more in the stuff. I always liked that!
​​

If it helps in nwn1, I know how this is done in nwn2 as I've done it. It's not a trick that can be done dynamically. What you do in nwn2 is create a copy of your area, and in this copy you set the ground to whatever height you'd like (lets say one meter below where it was for the "deep snow" example, or you could raise it to walk on air. Then you bake the copy area so the walkmesh is generated. You take the original and copied areas and use a tool to break the area into it's constituant parts (content, objects, and most importantly the walkmesh). Then you use the tool to replace the walkmesh of area one with the walkmesh of area two and wrap the files back up into a cohesive area file. And viola, you are using a walkmesh from a second area in your first area.

What it looks like is being done here I'm not sure can be done in nwn2 as I dont believe the tiles have the anims to loop through. You could swap out vfx or even models, but you cant affect trees via any script and as far as I know the terrain textures can't be changed either.

[Tchos]

What it looks like is being done here I'm not sure can be done in nwn2 as I dont believe the tiles have the anims to loop through. You could swap out vfx or even models, but you cant affect trees via any script and as far as I know the terrain textures can't be changed either.

 

Tiles can be swapped in NWN2 by script, but as for terrain textures, I don't know.

[OldTimeRadio]

Does the Bioware compiler handle "selfillumcolourkey" correctly? The compiler I have breaks all animations with self-illumination. I always use it for placeables but never for tiles because of this.

Is this really about "selfillumcolourkey" or the whole "setfillumcolor" vs "selfillumcolor" thing?

[Zwerkules]

Is this really about "selfillumcolourkey" or the whole "setfillumcolor" vs "selfillumcolor" thing?

The compiler I use breaks all those animations because it probably looks for the misspelled "setfillum" instead of "selfillum". Changing "selfillum" to "setfillum" will break the uncompiled models and there's no guarantee the models will compile correctly, so I just don't compile tiles any more. Another reason for not compiling tiles any more is that though they might load faster, the compiled models are so much bigger that haks (not counting textures) have between 160 and 200% the size they had before. The disadvantages of compiling the tiles far outweigh any advantages compiled models may have.

Placeables however, though they too grow in size when compiled, don't have any problems with animations and they load noticeably faster, so I compile those.

[OldTimeRadio]

The compiler I use breaks all those animations because it probably looks for the misspelled "setfillum" instead of "selfillum".

I believe the problem you're dealing with comes from an error in a model compiler/decompiler which is based off some of Torlack's code. Which means it could be Torlack's original compiler or even the model compiler/decompiler which comes with Acaos' NWN Explorer Reborn 1.63. To remedy this, use the DLA compiler in this archive here. This compiler has the correct "selfillumcolor" spelling in the code, along with several other helpful fixes.

The Bioware internal compiler (also in the pack at the link above) also has the correct spelling but can not decompile models. However, for tile/placeable compiling, I have found it to be superior.  It usually does a better job with non-characters than anything.  Torlack's model compiler and any of its derivatives (Acaos', DLA's) all work the same way, which is reverse-engineered from the old Bioware model viewer's behavior, for the most part.

 

The Bioware internal compiler is not a reverse-engineered community tool.  It's basically a standalone version of the bit of code which compiles models in the toolset and game. It's not perfect, but it's my first choice before the DLA compiler.
 

Another reason for not compiling tiles any more is that though they might load faster, the compiled models are so much bigger that haks (not counting textures) have between 160 and 200% the size they had before. The disadvantages of compiling the tiles far outweigh any advantages compiled models may have.

Meh.  I've written about the benefits of compiling models a bazillion times so I won't belabor the point, except to say (again) that no model ever hits the screen uncompiled.  All models are always compiled by the toolset or the game if they're in ASCII format when they're loaded.  Having the same model compiled again and again, on the fly, is only the first of many reasons why pretty much all (finished) models should be distributed in compiled form.  Most of the others can probably be gleaned with a Google search of site:bioware.com "oldtimeradio" AND "compiled".  

 

I understand that in some remote sense where people have tiny, tiny hard drives, the enlarged file sizes could be off-putting.  But when we're talking about 100k vs 200k for a model, is that really more of a burden than making every single player, ever, wait while that model is compiled on the fly, every time it's loaded?  For tilesets, especially, that can be such a timekiller.

 

Speaking more generally, I know this won't change any minds already made up on the point.  It never seems to.  But it's such a funny thing for people to reject for whatever reason, I honestly find it confusing.  

 

Cheers to you, though, and I hope if you experiment with the DLA model compiler that you have better experiences with the process and, maybe, a change of heart on the matter.

[MerricksDad]

Really, the issue of space should have been taken care of when we started getting above the 200 MB hard drive size....well as long as the computer owner has funds for today's equipment. I remember having that discussion with my dad years ago, and he was saying how big of a mistake it was to just keeping getting a larger hard drive, so you could have more and more stuff to fill it with, opening a gap for crappy programmers to leave junk in their code, instead of making cleaner code. As a coder at the time, I agreed with him, but it isn't about code now. It is about saving processor time, and game smoothness. Code really accounts for such a fly spec of anything on a drive now, and image resources account for, from what I can see, a great majority of anything on a drive (not counting compressed music).

[Tarot Redhand]

Depends how much of your hard earned cash has been spent on a nostalgia fest through GOG (guilty as charged - 230+ games and counting "but they're so cheap!!!" and it took years to get there). Otherwise my 2tb data drive has over 1tb to go yet.

 

TR

[henesua]

How do you script tile animations? Is that an NWNX thing?

[OldTimeRadio]

How do you script tile animations? Is that an NWNX thing?

I don't think that's possible.  It might be an NWNX thing already but I believe VirusMan commented that if it were ever done, people would only see updates on re-entering the area.  So nothing "dynamic" that I know of.