Have you been customising the Premium Modules?

[Legacy_LostChangeling]

               

Have you been customising the modules that came with NWN1, as in adding new side-quests, items, henchmen, even new areas etc? If yes, what sort of customisations have you made?

 

I've heavily modified 'The Dark Ranger's Treasure' so that the Inn of the Lance now has an upper floor and a basement (with several side-quests placed in them), Talias sells some basic equipment and has a daughter who also works in the inn, and the spider cocoons have live people in them waiting to be rescued. I intend to go a step further and let the Dark Ranger be a powerful undead creature who abducts Talias and his daughter after you steal his treasure, so you'll be forced to rescue them.  '>

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_werelynx]

               

Wow. Dark ranger's treasure is not premium though. Premiums are hard to change as they are encrypted. You could potentially use overrides to change their content, but Haks>Override. Maybe a patch hak would work, idk.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Zwerkules]

               

Wow. Dark ranger's treasure is not premium though. Premiums are hard to change as they are encrypted. You could potentially use overrides to change their content, but Haks>Override. Maybe a patch hak would work, idk.

Haks assigned to a module have higher priority than a patch hak, so if the content you want to modify is in a hak and you can't change the module because it is encrypted (no way to add an extra hak) you won't be able to change the content.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_werelynx]

               

@Zwerkules: can Premiums be even edited in Aurora toolset?

 

PS: can't check until my machine is fixed.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_LostChangeling]

               

I've actually been able to use the toolset to open the modules comprising the very official campaign itself, though for some reason only the chapters I've completed playing. Quickly saved those now-openable modules for future editing! Haven't made any additions or modifications to them yet; will be thinking of what to add or modify. Perhaps some puzzles and riddles solving which will give the PC some extra xp plus reward him/her with some nice items. Also maybe I'll put in things like orbs, statues or fountains which when 'used' will bestow some beneficial temporary effects on the PC, say increase his/her AC or enable him/her to regenerate, etc. 

 

In the meantime, have any of you made any interesting modifications/additions to any of the modules, say 'The Winds of Eremor' and 'To Heir is Human'? (I've modified these, too!)

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_werelynx]

               

Okay I will explain the nuances of our vocabulary:

 

Premium modules =/= Official Campaign (OC) ~ Expansion Campaigns (HotU and SoU) =/= demo/short modules (ranger's treasure, winds, bucket of gnolls etc.)

 

What we mean by premium are the modules that are not campaigns, not free-bundled with game. They were sold separately and made "officially". They can now be downloaded at: http://neverwinterva...premium-modules

They are Infinite Dungeons, Kingmaker, Pirates of the Sword Coast, Shadowguard, Witch's Wake and Wyvern Crown of Cormyr. I suspect you have not played those '>

 

Now, for OC modules, they are provided in .nwm file format. You need to rename their extension to .mod to be able to edit them. They are located in your "nwm" folder. If they are still locked you might want to change some lines in .ini files to unlock them, but I can't recall which .ini it was.

 

Now back to Your question: http://neverwinterva...eries-list-nwn1

Scroll down to "Official Campaigns and their continuations, expansions, side stories etc." and you will have your answer. Is there more than this small list? Yes. List was made by yours truly (me) so if you know/find any other lemme know. When you release your edits lemme know.

 

 

EDIT: I don't mean to discourage you or anything. I think it is nice thing that you try to achieve. I have myself modified community-made module: http://neverwinterva...e/thing-island Basically gave it some eye-candy and fixed few errors.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_LostChangeling]

               

Ummmm... I think that last link isn't working very well... 

 

I've actually tried 'Witch's Wake'. It was a very frustrating module to play. My character (I always like to play a half-orc paladin for some reason  ) never had a chance to heal completely, there was hardly any nice stuff to collect that's seriously useful, and he had no opportunities to level up, so he always remained very weak and even a mouse was a dangerous enemy to him!

 

This is one of the reasons why I like to modify the modules -- not only for the sheer enjoyment of it, but also to make them less frustrating. The modules 'To Heir is Human', 'Winds of Eremor' and 'The Dark Ranger's Treasure' are actually also very frustrating if not impossible in their original form -- well, if you start off with a level 1 character, that is. (Dunno what the original designers were thinking.) That's why, among other things, I put plenty of opportunities for levelling up in the starting areas of these modules, often in the form of an NPC or a placeable that gives the PC a riddle to solve and rewards him/her with XP and a couple nice items if s/he solves it.  '> Pity I can't modify 'Witch's Wake' as yet...

 

Here's a riddle I had an NPC challenge my PC with in my 'remake' of 'The Dark Ranger's Treasure'. See if you can solve it.

 

"I have a face and no mouth,

And have two hands but no feet."

 

There's only one vowel in my name. What's the vowel?

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Tchos]

               

The first is a

   Spoiler
   

clock.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_werelynx]

               

Fixed last link.

Some modules are not meant to be played with 1st level character. That's what "export character" is for. Or one of the many modules that are basically trainers that equip, level and change the appearance of the character.


For all files (modules and trainers included) we currently have this repository: http://neverwintervault.org/

Example of trainer module: http://neverwinterva...3-powered-igipe

Definitely not the best one, but the one I use.

 

Well Witch's Wake and Shadow Guard are excluded from my playbook since they are first chapters of unfinished stories. Infinite Dungeons is simply randomized HnS with random puzzles. Pirates, Wyvern are very good, while Kingmaker is considered either mediocre or good. Those last 3 I can recommend with my whole heart.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Grani]

               

I have fond memories of ShadowGuard, though it was painfully short. As you said, Werelynx, it's an unfinished story. Such modules, to my mind, should not have been premium modules to begin with.

 

Anyway, I made two attempts all in all to allow premium modules to be played 100% offline. It's still a nuisance to be required to be connected to the Internet whenever you want to play single-player modules.

 

I noticed that Diamond Edition premium modules can authenticate offline thanks to small (1KB) .dat files that are installed into the game. I tried some magic to create similar files for other three premium modules, but to no avail. I also tried it the other way, to trick other premium modules into using these .dat files instead of requiring their own ones, but in this I failed as well.

 

Of course it would be best if they could be decrypted totally, so that they could be opened in the toolset, but I can't do this.

 

The most optimistic thing I can say in this matter is that it can be done.

I remember someone posting on the old forums a screenshot of PotSC opened in the toolset, but he wasn't eager to share the methods he used or the decrypted modules themselves, for that matter.

 

To be honest, if we don't count the engine and hardcoded scripts themselves, premium modules are nowadays the last remaining part of Neverwinter Nights that has not (yet?) landed in the hands of the community. We currently have our own master server and patches, but premium modules are still unbreached fortresses that we can neither analyze to learn from them, nor fix some of the bugs they have. I'd guess that nobody really bothers to do anything about them and that's why they remain unbreached. '>

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Tchos]

               

Such modules, to my mind, should not have been premium modules to begin with.

 

To be fair, the atmosphere at the time suggested that module authors were about to enjoy a long partnership with Atari and that the modules would have been completed series.  And if not for a series of bad decisions made at Atari that we speculate ultimately led to the lawsuit over Atari's mismanagement of the D&D license, we might have.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Grani]

               

To be fair, the atmosphere at the time suggested that module authors were about to enjoy a long partnership with Atari and that the modules would have been completed series.  And if not for a series of bad decisions made at Atari that we speculate ultimately led to the lawsuit over Atari's mismanagement of the D&D license, we might have.

 

Even then, selling a single chapter of a larger story for a completed story's price is something that should have never been invented.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Tchos]

               

It's true, I would be much happier with a completed story.  There's no reason a series couldn't be made with each "chapter" being a full, complete story that stands on its own, and these were not like that.

 

(Well, some of them, like Witch's Wake.  I seem to recall Wyvern Crown of Cormyr was a complete story.)

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Tarot Redhand]

               

The one thing to remember about Witches Wake is that it was free to download and was supposed to be finished in part 2. Unfortunately part 2 never materialised...

 

TR

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_windwakr]

               

...

The most optimistic thing I can say in this matter is that it can be done.

I remember someone posting on the old forums a screenshot of PotSC opened in the toolset, but he wasn't eager to share the methods he used or the decrypted modules themselves, for that matter.

 

To be honest, if we don't count the engine and hardcoded scripts themselves, premium modules are nowadays the last remaining part of Neverwinter Nights that has not (yet?) landed in the hands of the community. We currently have our own master server and patches, but premium modules are still unbreached fortresses that we can neither analyze to learn from them, nor fix some of the bugs they have. I'd guess that nobody really bothers to do anything about them and that's why they remain unbreached. '>

 

I guess you're referring to me there:

http://forum.bioware.../#entry10719696

 

At the time, I definitely didn't want to talk about how I did it, but it looks like someone has released a python script to generate .dat files for premium modules. So, I guess it doesn't matter anymore. Check the latest comments here:

http://neverwinterva...premium-modules

 

You can easily modify that script to just save the decryption keys to a file. Then, like it says in the script comments, the last portion of the key is the md5 hash of the module's corresponding nwm file. You can decrypt the module with blowfish using the full 56 byte key you've built, skipping the first 8-byte block of the file(the "HAK V1.1" bit

, and you'll want to change that to "HAK V1.0").

 

So much easier than the process I had of getting the decrypted premium modules(which involved dumping them from memory while playing).

 

 

But just decrypting the modules isn't enough to start exploring their contents. All of the GFF type files inside of the modules have headers that need to be fixed. They're missing the first 8 bytes(like "IFO V3.2" or "ARE V3.2"), and all of the byte offsets in the headers are too high by a certain amount(different per module, no clue how the game determines the amount. With basic knowledge of the GFF format you can quickly work out the value).

 

So, you'll need to extract all of the files from the module after decrypting it and fix up any GFF type files.