NWN Omnibus: Offline search tool for select legacy BioWare forums, documents, CCG, Lexicon and more.

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               

View the introduction on YouTube, HERE. Download HERE at NWVault.
Requires about 500 megabytes of free space.  Runs from hard disk or USB drive and under Windows and Linux.

What is the NWN Omnibus?
It is an attempt to gather the majority of NWN reference material together in one place and allow very quick keyword searching against all of the documents at once.  It includes reference documents as well as all threads from selected forums(see below for complete list).

Who is going to get the most out of the NWN Omnibus?
Any NWN Custom Content creator or NWScripter who finds themselves frequently searching through the old BioWare forums using Google, the NWN Lexicon or the BioWare "For Developers" documents for specific topics.  Since so much raw information is available for searching, those who will get the very most out of the Omnibus are individuals who already have a decent working knowledge of how Custom Content and NWScript work but who often find themselves needing to look up specific keywords or topics to further advance their pursuits.

What information does this release of the NWN Omnibus contain?
2DA 169 - All 575 .2DA files, current to the 1.69 release

3DS Max Export Scripts - BioWare 3DS Max export scripts documentation, which includes a good deal of information on NWN Custom Content in general.  Downloadable separately here

BioWare For Developers - All 22 documents covering NWN file formats (and other things) from this page

BioWare Forums - Offline archives of the following forums from the old BioWare website, each thread in its own .HTML file.  The following full forum archives from the old BioWare site are included in this release (followed by the number of searchable threads from each):

NWN Custom Content (ARCHIVE) - 17,000
Custom Content - 3,567
Scripting - 15,194
Toolset - 4,907
BioWare News Discussion -1,372
For Developers - 988
Server Admin - 5,788

Also Stickied threads for 21 forums (all of the forums above and more)

Custom Content Guide 3.0 - The "Bible" of Custom Content.  Downloadable separately here.

GMax & Maxscript Help - Help files for GMax (3DS Max 4) and Maxscript, downloadable separately here

Lexicon 169 - The "Bible" of NWScript (and many, many other things as well!), downloadable separately here

Tileset Construction - BioWare's NWN Tileset Construction Tutorial, downloadable separately here.  I don't include any of the files, just index the information.

TXI - Every TXI officially released by BioWare as part of their content, segregated by the bif they were found in.  Extremely useful for looking up how certain TXI commands were used by BioWare and whether other commands or setting were typically paired with them.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_lordofworms]

               what? who are you? Santa Clause. I love you....

this is like...wow
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               Heh heh!  Well, I figured I could hold on to it for a few more months and maybe get it a little more cleaned up...or just get it out there and let everyone have at it.  I'm notorious for getting about 7/8ths of the way through a project and just dropping it like a hot rock to go after something more interesting. 

Anyway, I'm really loving all the cool creations that people are popping up with lately and if this helps shave some time off research it means everyone gets their goodies out sooner and I get to play with them sooner, too!

'>
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Zwerkules]

               This is great, OldTimeRadio!
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Bannor Bloodfist]

               Can't wait to get my grubby little hands on this one as soon as the vault approves it of course!

Thank you OldTimeRadio, this is appreciated much more than you can possibly know.  Too bad we didn't have this sort of resource available several years back!

Great work.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Bannor Bloodfist, 16 avril 2011 - 02:03 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Drewskie]

               Nice resource that I will be checking out.  thx
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_henesua]

               Not the right time of year for Santa, but perhaps the Easter Bunny! Thanks!

But wow... extracting this stuff... its like going after the Wikileaks archive. You've got like 60,000 files. Since we ran out of dessert I think I'll run down to the store and get some ice cream while I wait!
               
               

               

                     Modifié par henesua, 18 avril 2011 - 01:56 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               Thanks for the feedback!

If you ever want to add another source of information to your copy of the Omnibus just copy the folder with HTML or plaintext (it works with others, but your mileage may vary) into your data folder.

Then right click on the Search Scope window on the NWN Omnibus, select Create Index and then browse to the folder you want to index, within your data folder and click OK.  On the Index Management window, just make sure you have the plaintext and/or html extensions included for whatever kind of information you want to index and click OK.

You can remove an index just by right-clicking on it (again, in the Scope window) and select Delete Index.  Or, if you've added files to be indexed into an already-existing folder in your data directory, you can right click on the index and select Update Index.

If you're updating a lot of information, you can move the window so the list of updating files is nolonger visible.  This will actually speed up the process.  If you have to rebuild the whole index of everything included in the current Omnibus release, it takes about 20 minutes.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_JanrithShadowbloom]

               This has been covered in much awesome-sauce OldTimeRadio!  Great work!
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_The Amethyst Dragon]

               And now this is even more useful, since apparently the old BioWare NWN forums are actually closed/gone.  Thanks for gathering the information for posterity!
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Fester Pot]

               Just downloaded and installed myself. Still can't believe so much information, even outside of NWN -- Baldur's Gate anyone -- is no longer available.

FP!
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Calvinthesneak]

               Thank goodness for small miracles, though bioware said they'd store an archive somewhere eventually didn't they?
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               Oh my god you guys are right.  I just checked and they're gone!  I'm glad I went through the trouble to save that stuff off but it is unfortunate the masters are not there anymore. 

If there's one wish left in this old wand of mine, it's that them being taken down has nothing to do with a request from Atari.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Bannor Bloodfist]

               As has already been posted, the waybackmachine has all of them archived, and will keep that archive forever basically, that is their purpose.

What you can't get to is anything that required a login, so you can't get to your registered cd keys etc, but the actual forums were readable regardless, so they should all be there...
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Winterhawk99]

               Im very thankful OldTimeRadio took the time to do this. Thanks man.