Community Patch discussion and development thread

[Legacy_Gruftlord]

               

or add more and cooler features to drag builders attention to it and force them to want it and use it.
 
Either way the final release of 1.72 is scheduled at June (same day when 1.71 was released two years ago), no matter what.

Ok, i like that there is a clear release plan. Among other things, since this would also mean an update to the CPP/CEP 2das '>

As far as public reach of the CPP goes, i can relate to your frustration. But i think CPP is beyond the point where it could get any major traction from builders. CPP has attracted it's audience, if small. Nothing you could change would increase that number drastically. I could pull a dozen crazy ideas out of my nose how to drastically restructure CPP to make it appeal more to any reluctant builder. There would still be no guarantee it might attract a bigger audience.
Speaking for myself, i'd rather see you stick to your vision of CPP and see it through. I'm one of those (players) who uses it, and you did convince me of CPP. Every idea for major changes runs the risk of "unconvincing" me, and i guess it may be the same for others. So i'd prefer you'd just appreciate us, accept CPP's reach, and focus on your vision of CPP, and those ideas presented by it's users, rather than hunting any ghosts. I promise you, the user base will grow. It may reach twice or three time the numbers it has now, but it will remain a fraction of the NWN community.

(If i'd had to make one shot at going all in, i'd split CPP in three parts. One for players/client, focused on meshes, textures and clear broken abilities, one as a patch hak focused on improving client side shortcomings and slight rebalance inducing fixes (colored spell icons, AI, Circle kick fix...) and the third purely for builders/experienced users (anything currently switched off by default, changes that add ease of use when building, spell scaling...). None of it would change the content of the whole package, it would only increase the amount of work, because you would need to maintain two versions of each script. It would more clearly make CPP's modular nature visible, which might convince some to at least try the first module, which in return could sway them tu use the next more sophiticated. it would be a pure PR move. It's not worth it, it wouldn't attract as much as you'd hope and only runs the risk of introducing bugs)
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Shadooow]

               

I really don't get this need for modularity and as you I don't really think that the CPP audience would get any bigger if I actually brought such feature.

 

But for a project like this it doesn't make a sense. Why would anyone not want to install spell fixes? CPP is unlike EMS not a hak, it does not overwrite your scripts - if you have all spellscripts changed nothing will happen. This is also not hitting any limits like PRC with too many classes from half of them are bugged or CEP with 16k resources issue, DM crashing and overally slow initial game loading. If there would be such issue, I would understand the need for modularity, but there simply isn't.

 

Also where would that end? Currently CPP consists of over 4k various fixes and only per category there would be over 20 of them, and would that even be enough? I do think that even if I did this, it wouldn't be enough till there was possible to select specific file or specific fix in the file (in case of includes for example some of them have over 100 different fixes in there)

 

NWNX_Patch and NWNCX_Patch are basically standalone, even that there are 2das and scripts in CPP that are needed, it will work without them. This content attracted several builders already, unfortunately, all of them were only interested in source - took away what they didn't have yet to their own plugins and gave nothing back.

 

Imo, module switches are already providing enough modularity. I said it many times already and Im saying this again, an usual builder should not even notice anything has changed after installing CPP. Yes some things might happen especially if you won't merge 2das but even these issues are now fixes in 1.72 so they won't happen again once 1.72 will be released.

 

Im wlling to consider to make colored icons modular, on the other hand - those who require/criticize not enough modularity are builders who doesnt even notice there are colored icons as thats content aimed for (new to the NWN) players only. Those working on a module will see it probably only if they go test something with F9.

Anyway the problem with making anything modular is that the BIFs are not modular. CPP is unique project as it uses BIF files, but there is no way to put content into BIFS dynamically, the whol BIF which as now 150mb is packed as is in the installation. So if colored icons should have been modular, they would need to be added as an override. Which would then replaced already existing icons in override directory if player wouldnt paid enough attention and didnt unchecked that option in installer. Also there are class, skill, spell, emote and other icons and then it would be "we want each icon category to be module" again I bet. So I don't think its a good idea afterall. The current method of automatically adding colored icons and tell those who doesnt like them to download restoration pack is not ideal but I believe that its not ideal only for a minority of CPP users. Okay there were probably some players who installed, didn't like icons and uninstalled whole CPP but at least they tried, the only ones who I've heard are not installing CPP because of icons were again builders which is bogus anyway.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Gruftlord]

               

Yeah, like i said, it makes no sense from a technical point of view, or anything objectively quantifiable. It would be a psychological move. Make CPP look different enough from the way it is now, to get people over their threshold to give it another try. And i wouldn't actually want you to do that, it leads no where. CPP will be better if you focus on your vision. With the permissions on CPP everyone not interested in the whole package has the means to get what he wants. This has to be enough of an invitation for the critics. At this point you should stop worrying about what they might think and focus on the feedback you get from those interested. And your own ideas, of course.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_henesua]

               

Shadooow is right on this. No need to change how CPP is structured. It works best structured as it is.

 

The real issue you here is that a bunch of people spread FUD about the project, and so a wider segment of the NWN community is unsure about the project. Its all nonsense. A bit late now to worry about it.

 

Even though I don't like everything in the patch, over all it is very much worth it and I recommend it to any project I am working on so that we don't need to reinvent the wheel as we fix all the scripts. This project saves a lot of work and adds some good functionality. Its much easier to adjust a few things here or there (which you typically do with 1.69 stuff anyway) than to rewrite hundreds of scripts and upload 100's of woks and things to a module specific HAK.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Shadooow]

               

Got new NWNCX feature.

 

Ability to pick custom race in character creation screen.

 

This works by using Subrace which must match with a Label field of a custom race set in racialtypes.2da. If subrace entered match any playable race Label, then the character race is set to that race.

 

Ability modifiers works as intented, racial feats works as intented, all is 2da driven.

 

The only problem is that the appearance must be a "C" type otherwise game crashes and I am not able to fix this. It is doable but its a project on its own which I can't afford to maintain atm. Workaroud is to set human or whatever appearance and set custom appearance in OnClientEnter based on race.

 

Tried it with CEP Wemic and except of the fact that the Wemic head is barely visible in that window it works perfectly.

 

Screenshot1, screenshot2, screenshot3

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Gruftlord]

               wow, nice
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Gruftlord]

               So, i just fought a blue Kobold with a spiky helmet and a breast plate on a PW. It looked like it is using this appearance:
http://nwn.wikia.com.../Kobold_footpad

i realized the helmet and the plate were semi transparent. the environment shader setting in appearance.2da is probably wrong. is this something CPP already fixes (PW is using CEP 2.61, so did overwrite CPP appearance.2da)? if not, could you look into it?
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Shadooow]

               

So, i just fought a blue Kobold with a spiky helmet and a breast plate on a PW. It looked like it is using this appearance:
http://nwn.wikia.com.../Kobold_footpad


i realized the helmet and the plate were semi transparent. the environment shader setting in appearance.2da is probably wrong. is this something CPP already fixes (PW is using CEP 2.61, so did overwrite CPP appearance.2da)? if not, could you look into it?

Im not proficient with this. Someone else needs to fix this.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Gruftlord]

               so in principle it's quite easy. you need to find the lines in appearance.2da where the model is called. i'm sure you can find the kobold footpad in the toolset and find out it's model name, then find the line in appearance.2da. then in that line, there is a column called "envmap". most of the time the content in that line is either "****" or "default". i do not know which is which, but i know one makes the alpha channel in a texture on a model appear as transparency (good for models with tattered cloaks or loin cloth), the other makes it shiny (shiny armor, mostly) [i know because i need to switch that for a few custom models brought in from project q, sixestrice and monster mash]. i can't see a reason why the footpad kobold would need transparancy, but i know it produces an error for the armor.



edit: so **** is transparency, "default" is shiny.

i'm not 100% sure i'm seeing a vanilla model though, since as i said, met it in a CEP PW. But you might see if you see the same thing on your end.



edit 2: i see it in the toolset. kobold footpad, vanilla, needs default as envmap setting

it's that line:

303 "Kobold: Footpad"

alternatively the texture needs a change.



edit 3: i'll check the CEP appearances tomorrow and will let them know, too.



edit 4:

300 "Kobold: Thug" needs the change, too. basically the two entries using the models c_kobchiefa and c_kobchiefb. The stars right after the model name (and the three following spaces) need to be switched to say "default"
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Shadooow]

               

Ok I trust you. Will be included in next beta.

 

Im still slowly working on the custom spellcasting possibilities and Im almost done, finally encrypted the memorized spells structure. Next beta release should be next week.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Valgav]

               

Would it be possible to change number of spells learned on level up and/or even hide them from list? I would love to block wizard's spells on level up and force them to learn spells via scrolls/books also would be great if they want be able to see available spells list.

 

And now for something completely different:

 

Is there any chance for hooking dialog.tlk and override tlk lines with scripted text for player?

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Shadooow]

               

Would it be possible to change number of spells learned on level up and/or even hide them from list? I would love to block wizard's spells on level up and force them to learn spells via scrolls/books also would be great if they want be able to see available spells list.

 

And now for something completely different:

 

Is there any chance for hooking dialog.tlk and override tlk lines with scripted text for player?

1. yes, but there are two problems, first its client side, those without running NWNCX will get those 2 spells anyway - so you need to remove them after levelup with RemoveKnownSpell function (which will be part of nwnx_patch now), second, I need to figure out the format of this externalization, how to set it up.

 

That needs a server-client comunication. Which isn't part of my plugin. Even if it was I don't know where to start so no this won't be in scope of my plugin.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Valgav]

               

Well I'm going to force using nwncx so that's not a problem. Main problem is how learning from scrolls will work (i know that nwnx_cool has some hooks for server side that i could use to handle learning spells from scrolls) and if I will be able to allow learning spells from scrolls and using spellbook without levelup spells menu.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Shadooow]

               

Well I'm going to force using nwncx so that's not a problem. Main problem is how learning from scrolls will work (i know that nwnx_cool has some hooks for server side that i could use to handle learning spells from scrolls) and if I will be able to allow learning spells from scrolls and using spellbook without levelup spells menu.

i softcoded learning spell scrolls in order to allow classes other than wizard to learn

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Valgav]

               

When we can expect release of 1.72 with support for spellcasting classes ready for devs (I a' assuming full release will be in June?)

 

Also I'm not sure if nwnx_patch is somehow connected with community patch but does it work only on windows or there's also linux version?