235 réponses à ce sujet

[MerricksDad]

I'm looking at some of the character models, and wondering if I get all the data around, somebody else might be interested in trying to extract unity animations for use in NWN. I have no idea what I'm doing when converting those. Just like my stuff I built to extract models and convert from torchlight 2, I've just not got the patience or desire to put that much effort into such complex animations. The models do look good though, but are really high poly compared to NWN1 stuff. Still, if somebody wanted to wrap them around existing animations, it would probably not be that hard. The only problem is that the characters are in poses in the base model file, and without the animations converted, you can't easily get them to a T-pose or NWN 0-frame.

 

So, anyway, I'm just going to stick with extracting what I need right now for the cavern tilesets I'm working on. Rocks, pillars, bridges, speleothems, etc. The pile I have mass converted also has a bunch of oak trees and fancy schmancy stuff for outdoors areas. If I can determine what goes with what, I can bundle those for gmax importing for somebody else to play with.

 

Due to the complexity of some models, it might be handy to break them down into files containing only a single unity submesh (same as a single trimesh in nwmax). I may end up writing a program to do that, and then name all the files based on which file they go with. SCL already did that with tile groups. One of the 2x3 hallway S shapes uses over 30 files of parts. Granted, that is a 2x3 NWN sized tile group, which has 3 large placeable groups to modify the base models, and which also has 2-3 other alternate prefab spots on the model.

Another problem I have with the meshes is that some of them are in 1/10 scale, and some are in 10x scale. Some are also rotated 90° on the X axis, for no good reason. Somehow the engine, or the other files, tell the SCL scripts to fix that when the parts get used. Just kinda annoying, but then again, I shouldn't complain, as I didn't make all this stuff.

Tomorrow I'm back to building my barn, fence, and deck, and might not get back to this until next Monday. We'll see how it goes.

[Ssythilac]

Hi MD!

 

Glad to see that you have return to work on this terrific project of Underdark! This looks incredibly promising.

 

Good idea to extract models from Sword Coast legends. In the last months I had some free time to play the game sporadically, and I think that It is not a bad game in any form, but neither a truly good Dnd game like the great works of the past...

 

But anyway, I think that the strong point of the game focuses in the atmosphere and construction of some áreas. Especially the Underdark, one of the best concepts in this fictional environment that I have seen in a videogame. If you could recreate that feeling in your tileset (or something similar) that could be a truly great day for NWN!

 

Keep up the great work, man!

[MerricksDad]

That middledark region is my favorite, with all the giant mushrooms. I was able to find and extract all the resources they used in those maps. Still not sure I have found the maps themselves, as I can only find a few tiles, and they are named horribly. But I got all the mushrooms, rocks, skeletons, cave corals, and all the textures that go with them. I'm just putting them together now. Looking forward to making a new placeable library with them, and to making few tileset additions based on those tiles from SCL.

 

I also pulled out the draegloth skin and a few other T-pose character skins that I'd like to wrap to some existing NWN1 animations. I want to see if they are too heavy a load for NWN.

 

I've also noticed that a great portion of the detail in SCL is hidden, at least the geometry, by the fact that everything has specular bump maps applied. Still, this leaves a lot of nice medium detail texture with which to work, but also leaves room for me to dumb-down some of their tileset parts to a more NWN polycount, without much loss. I certainly can't use their tiles as is, because the poly count is far too high for GMAX to load, but, I at least have the layout and map images that I can use to base my work on.

[MerricksDad]

I also found Drizzt and Gwen models, complete with Todd Lockwood style scimitars. Interested in viewing those with the textures on.

[Ssythilac]

Good! If you can adapt all of those placeables to work in NWN, that will be an incredible addition for all of us that works in an Underdark module adventure!

 

By the way, have you seen the Mantol-Derith enclave from the free expansión of SCL? Pretty neat, I think.

 

PD: another thing this game excelled is in the duergar buildings of Gracklstugh. They can be converted/adapted as placeables? Because of this concept (good duergar buildings) is something never seen in NWN.

[MerricksDad]

I have not seen any files for the stuff that was supposed to be in the expansion, but I'm still looking for all the new stuff. I see a lot of unnamed files and resources.

 

Gracklstugh is all available. Chunks can be pulled from almost all of the meshes that are small enough to import. Those too large, I can probably shrink into multiple meshes and recombine after import.

[MerricksDad]

OMG the expansion came out!?

[Ssythilac]

YES!

[MerricksDad]

Man, this expansion takes forever to load. I still haven't checked the stream folder for assets yet, but I like the new textures and shapes. Hope I can grab em, and that this long download time before playing isn't a sign of server-side assets from here on out.

[MerricksDad]

That was the shortest expansion I have ever played, but I really like the new graphical content. Locating it now....

[Ssythilac]

Ey, you finished it?? I have played the expansión briefly, but I haven`t enough time to dig in it... I am still in Mantol-Derith, not going anywhere.. But this "advanced-weird-commercial-outpost" looked really good!

[MerricksDad]

It was released unfinished. I don't want to spoil it, but 9/10's of the named characters in Mantol-Derith never get used, unless they put more work into it. It's basically 2 main quests in town, and one outside of it, and then the credits roll.

[Ssythilac]

Damn! That is monstrously short!

[kamal_]

Damn! That is monstrously short!

The dev closed up shop when it was apparently near beta, they shipped off what they had to the publisher, who finished up what they had received, probably on their own dime, and got it out the door.

 

Back on topic: I want to see some of these extracted assets!

[MerricksDad]

Working on it. I had to shorten the lists by putting them in folders based on what asset file they came out of. This also told me that multiple textures and models have the same name, but exist in different asset files. Which then means that there are 10s of thousands of files to play with. 47,158 files so far, from 33 asset kits. Granted, about 1/4 of those are textures, and some of the files are fully duplicated from pack to pack. Just got to weed through them all systematically.

 

Anyway, I did find the "middledark" and "lava caves" files. The rest of the new content seems to be inaccessible in dungeon crawl, but I'll eventually find it in the assets. Probably got dumped in some horribly named, or shared asset file.

 

I can confirm that lava caves and middledark are both mods for the drow caves/bandit caves areas. They also added two more larger tile groups to the cave kits. One is called pretzel, and it has a x shape in a rectangle. You can cross the room in the middle of the x, or traverse the edges. Interesting room, but I can't seem to get it to randomly pop up EVER in the dungeon crawl. It appears to be a 6x6 NWN sized room. Another room is a long tunnel on a diagonal, with two door slots at each end. Kinda like an X stretched way out >------< on a 6x6 NWN sized room, called "skull". I also see some "balcony" rooms, which are 3x6, with the top half of the room up a level higher than the bottom half. These too do not show up randomly in the dungeon crawl for me. Other shapes include "tadpole" 3x6, and "choke" 12x12, and some corner "stairs" rooms.

Here's a few samples of the stuff I've pulled out of just the underdark descent and drow caves so far (244 unique mesh groups):

 

[MerricksDad]

I find that the scale of drow characters exported from the game is almost exactly 2m. That makes the large adamantine gates 4m tall, and the giant green mushrooms in the underdark descent 13-14m tall.

[MerricksDad]

Starting to get really slow as I run into hundreds of duplicates each packed into every single file. At least I can start to assume by name that something is a copy now.

[Ssythilac]

Wow! So much posibilities with all of those things converted as NWN placeables... I am beginning to salivate like a hungry jackal.

[MerricksDad]

Starting to run into a ton of files over 1 meg. GMAX can't seem to load files over 800k using nwmax model import. I may have to start writing some code to split the meshes into useful parts. This might be something I have time for next week, but not this week. I'm getting unexpected, and unrecorded visits to my home by building inspectors who do not announce their presence, and for violations of permits I don't need under those ordinances. I think my neighbor and his "friends" are messing with me, but he's in for some sad information: I'm going to be working on "loud" projects on my house all summer. He's going to have to get used to it, or rent somewhere else.

[3RavensMore]

I think my neighbor and his "friends" are messing with me, but he's in for some sad information: I'm going to be working on "loud" projects on my house all summer. He's going to have to get used to it, or rent somewhere else.

 

When my wife and I lived in town, my neighbors just loved it when we used to cut up firewood with an insanely loud chainsaw.  When we replaced a 105' badly cracked concrete driveway we had the idea that we could save some money by renting a jackhammer and doing most of the work ourselves.  We leaned a couple of things doing that.  1) Running a jackhammer is surprisingly fun--well for the first 50' of driveway or so.  2) Running a jackhammer will not make your neighbors like you.  3) The sight of two women loading concrete into a pickup and running a jackhammer attracts a surprising number of comments.  4) For the amount of money we saved it wasn't worth it beyond the satisfaction of doing most of the job ourselves.  5) There is no way in hell we'd ever do something like that again.

[MerricksDad]

Well I've found I'm completely within my limits so far, except his house is too close to the property line, so my noise is over the limit because I'm building right next to his house. What he needs to do is clean up his property (or the landlord should do it) and remove his illegal side porch, which amplifies the sound. That thing is right next to where I am putting my shed. I've still got 64 feet of fence to do, and about 60 feet of new railing. And that's just in the next 30 days or so. He was so nice the first few times I talked with him, but now he's just gone berserk.

[rjshae]

...and they say fences make good neighbors... 

[3RavensMore]

...and they say fences make good neighbors... 

 

Only if they are tall fences. 

[MerricksDad]

The city requires that I be somewhat personable, and limits my fences to 7 feet tall. My back yard is at least 20 feet higher than my house base, so I can see him and hear him really well. I'm thinking that the city doesn't restrict my number of fence line trees, so white cedar/arborvitae sounds like a winner to me. There's a tall and dense variety I think called Emerald Tower which should do nicely.

[Tarot Redhand]

Curb your neighbour annoyance - build an improved ogre and put their face on it. 

 

TR