Rain of Dragons

[Legacy_Jedijax]

               

Definitely. I tried using that one as a white dragon override to crashy outcomes. The Rust Dragon works well as a copper dragon replacement though, without tweaking anything, I believe.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Vincent07]

               

I've had Hardpoints dragons in my haks for some time, testing them before I fully add them into my server.  I had to set each of the models to be untargetable in the .2da or they crash.  Changing to or from their model in-game to anything that is targetable, causes a crash if you have your mouse over them at the time. (ie: it highlights the model)   I solved that by just making my dragons immune to polymorph spells.

 

But if there is a better fix for these models y'all come up with, that'd be great.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Malagant]

               

 

Having experimented with that dragon for my failed Zmey a few CCC's ago, I can confirm the super is likely the issue. It has a lot more heads than it needs

I'm not entirely certain, but c_drags also doubles as the super for his hydra models, I believe, hence the number of heads. I've always been curious what the difference was between all those numbered versions is if they were really all that necessary.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Pstemarie]

               

I'll have to look through the ones I've got on my old WIP files - now that I've got time to breathe I seem to remember spending a lot of time working on the animation supers.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_tenor_general]

               

I'm looking at including these into my brothers' and my module/eventual PW.  Am I correct in my understanding that with changing the supermodel to the base NWN green dragon, the crashing issues go away?  Admittedly, the updated animations would be missed, but I think I may be able to live with that.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Carcerian]

               

They also still crash because some still have too many nodes, and need to be reworked by a modeller...

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_The Amethyst Dragon]

               

I borrowed a couple of small bricks from PHoD's workspace and started carefully pummeling some dragons to get them below 80 nodes.  They don't seem too upset yet, but then again I've only beat up a half dozen animation supers and a few Tartarus dragons so far.

 

Anybody know if there's a fast way of getting a count on the nodes/objects in a model, perhaps with gmax? It would help to know which models I really need to do cosmetic surgery on and which I don't, and how much work may remain on any individual without, you know, actually counting.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_The Amethyst Dragon]

               

Aha!  I'm no expert at writing batch files for Windows, but I managed to do one that lets me drag and drop an uncompiled .mdl file onto it to get the number of lines that contain "endnode". '>  Now I can work on a dragon model, export it, drag & drop it onto the batch file, and get the model's current node count.

 

 

For those that would find it useful, it's only two lines:

 

find /c "endnode" %1

PAUSE

 

Note: This does count each occurrence of "endnode" in the file, so it's unreliable for models that have built-in animations.

 

So, for an example of node savings just by combining some parts, how about that Tartarus dragon? For the great wyrm version (hp_drgtar12), I attached the spikes to the corresponding body part that they were linked/parented to. The model went from 128 nodes to 64. Here's hoping the tediousness of the work pays off in non-crashy dragons.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_The Amethyst Dragon]

               

For the few dragon models that include animations (that'd be all those "base" ones), I got my node counts by importing them into gmax (geometry only) to strip out the animations and exported them with a slightly altered file name. I've even managed to get the Tiamat and hydra models down to 79 nodes (with only minor sacrifices to existing geometry or movement). Those fang dragons were the worst offenders though, as each little spike and spine was a separate object...though those were some of the easiest to fix since I could just quickly combine them into fewer objects).

 

When I'm done, I'm going to run all of Hardpoints' dragons through CleanModels 3.5.2. Hopefully when all is done, the crashing problems will be a thing of the past.

 

Only about 60 models to go (as I haven't done anything with ones already at less than 80 nodes).

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_The Amethyst Dragon]

               

If your computer is one of those ones that crashes using Hardpoints' dragons in the CEP, you're just the people I need now.  My own computer has only crashed 1 time with any of these dragons in-game since CEP 2.4 was released, so I need people to test the modified models to see if the crashing issue remains.

 

308 models (6 animation bases, 302 dragon appearances that supermodel to those bases).

 

What I did:

- modified each model to have 80 or fewer nodes (or left those alone that were already at less than 80)

- set shadows to 0 for all of them

- ran all through CleanModels 3.5.2

- compiled all models

 

Test steps needed:

- download cep2_dragontest.hak (13.6 mb .7z download) and add it to your testing module above CEP files

- make sure the dragon appearances in appearance.2da have targetable column set to 1

- add Hardpoints' dragons to one or more areas to test from DM and player perspective

- test shapechange/wildshape function (crashes previously reported on returning to non-dragon shape)

- report results here

- - - if still finding crashes, please report exactly which dragon models crashing

- - - if no more crashes, that's something we want to hear about, too

 

Thanks in advance for helping out with this testing that I can't do on my own.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Vincent07]

               

I'll get to testing these, as I already put in test versions for my PW haks.   .... though I'm going to have to go change all the targetable lines back to 1.  That will be fun.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Carcerian]

               

*Tested*

 

The crashes are all seem to be gone, but hyrda heads just stick out in front of them and lost their animations neck up...

 

Winged Hydras lost their wings, and are down to 1 head...

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_The Amethyst Dragon]

               

*Tested*

 

The crashes are all seem to be gone, but hyrda heads just stick out in front of them and lost their animations neck up...

 

Winged Hydras lost their wings, and are down to 1 head...

Thanks for testing.

 

I just uploaded an updated version of the cep2_dragontest hak (same URL as before), which includes the missing updated hydra model and has an updated appearance.2da file (which changes the model name of the winged hydra). The updated version works for me, but how about for others?