Neverwinter Mod Madness

[Legacy_B_Harrison]

               I've just posted the first few (of many) NWN development posts over at my blog, now that I'm modding the game again. There'll be a lot of theory and project-specific stuff on there, but I'm also going to be releasing any and all functional resources for the community's use; that might include tutorials, techniques, re-makes of vanilla content & old mods, etc. as well.

Neverwinter Mod Madness

I thought I'd put any/all updates on my NWN content here in one thread, to keep things like "release" posts in one place and for any comments or suggestions that would never reach my blog.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Jenna WSI]

               Glad to have you back, Ben. '>
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Bard Simpson]

               Welcome back, Mr. Harrison!! '>

Those are some nice preliminaries. I really like the axes and spear 2h, but I love blade 1h! Heh, maybe I'll even run into a plaguesword someday. Well I don't want to literally run into one, of course, but........well, you know what I mean.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_B_Harrison]

               Thanks guys!

#002: World Scale

If anyone wondered why it was NWN mod madness, the madness part is starting to kick in as of #002. But I'll also be posting some actually useable content soon, hopefully.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_B_Harrison]

               

Bard Simpson wrote...
Heh, maybe I'll even run into a plaguesword someday. Well I don't want to literally run into one, of course, but........well, you know what I mean.

Ha! I could convert the Plaguesword to (read: remake it for) NWN without much effort, though it'd necessarily lose all its normal and spec detail. Same goes for any of my higher-poly/newer game stuff.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_WebShaman]

               Ben is back!

Glad to have you back, Ben!
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Rolo Kipp]

               <thinking things...>

B_Harrison wrote...

#002: World Scale

Ben! Glad you are back. Glad *I* am back, for that matter :-)
I am really glad you are exploring this fork. It's something I have been thinking about for a while and really want to work on.

As soon as I get up to speed, again :-P

<...are bigger than they are>
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Borden Haelven]

               Very interesting. If you could scale the PC it would make a Giant's Lair more interesting... Movement speed would have to be halved to carry the effect properly though.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Bannor Bloodfist]

               I guess we need a sticky somewhere about the HARD CORE limits of the NWN engine.

It is designed and ONLY uses 16 bit memory space.  The toolset/engine REQUIRES 10x10 meter tile space.  Sure you can create a 5 meter sized tile, but the engine paints that tile into a 10x10 meter space, leaving gaps.  You can NOT get the engine to place a 2nd 5x5 meter tile into the gaps between.

The toolset/engine does NOT really recognize more that 640k of ram.  Sure, there are options to increase stack space etc, but the core doesn't really use it much.  It can NOT run on more than one core on a multi-core processor nor can it truly recognize 32/64 memory space.  The ram extensions that it can recognize are just 16bit mem space that is linked together.  (Wording is wrong, a programmer would be able to expand the description better, but the facts are the facts).  NWN core engine is written, hard coded, as 16 bit so it will run on a win98 16 bit OS.  The extensions added by vista, xp, win7, et al, can't change the core coding.

The latest version of 1.69 STILL runs on an old win98 computer.. slow as hell of course, but it runs.  Without having to change anything.  It will also run in 32bit mode on a win7/8 box, but it never utilizes the power of the later operating systems.  It can't, if it did, it wouldn't run on win98 without major duplicated hard code.  Something never done by Bioware.

Great ideas, but not practical for such an old engine that just can't handle that sort of power.

Sure, you can create a 32x32 sized area, but once you fill it with creatures, and placeables, a server has issues, and the client/dm client crashes due to lack of ram, and a trashed stack space and even if it loads, it runs slower than molasses, even on a truly powerful computer.

Multi-cores?  Nope, the only option you gain with that is the ability to force nwn to use a core other than core zero, so your os can run in that space.  Some savings, but truly very little, and the core goes fully utilized.  NWN can not actually use the extra cores, it was not written to use multi-threading which is required to use the extra power of the newer computers.  It was written, hard coded, for win98.  Check the min requirements on your box or the download page wherever you purchased the online-download version.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_B_Harrison]

               Just responded in the blog comments, but I will briefly here too-

NWN either isn't limited to, or doesn't need more than 1MB(!) of system memory. The recommended minimum system memory to run Win 98 is stated by MS as 16MB...

In any case, 32x32 areas were brought up by Sherincall in the comments. I've no intention of using areas even half that size, nor are my tiles sized differently to vanilla NWN tiles (rather modeled to a different scale). The NWN engine can easily handle this for my purposes. For the purposes of gigantic placeable-cluttered action PWs using vanilla art, probably not.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par B_Harrison, 23 septembre 2012 - 01:26 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Rolo Kipp]

               <nods at all the good points...>

@BB: Yup, I know that. but what I was proposing and what it looks like Ben is already experimenting with is changing the scale of the geometry. The tile will still be (for engine purposes) 10mx10m, but with all the geometry scaled down (by 50% in his case, to 10% in mine), the *illusion* will be of a much larger area (with, yes, a lot of geometric detail).

The thing I'm hoping will  make a difference is how much of the 3D stuff is put off onto the GFX card - notably the textures and vertexes. I don't *know* this will work the way I want, but if I can create a "Skies above the forest" tileset scaled so each 10m tile represents 100mx100m, then a 12x12 area ill be 1.2kmx1.2km. With an alternate set of (scaled down) appearances with appropriate flying phenos, we might just have an interesting alternative to overland maps.

Or, as ben demonstrates, a method of making *really* impressive boss fights ;-)

<...while dancing around the edges>
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Failed.Bard]

               I'd been considering altering the base races in my mod to just use the human and dwarf base race models.  Halfling, elf, half-elf, gnome, and half-orc would just be used for scaling purposes. 50/75/100/150 in the human chain, and 50/100/150 in the dwarf chain.

 I was just planning to use it to allow enlarging/shrinking spells on PCs, but it looks like there could be some potential for it beyond that.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_NWN_baba yaga]

               very interesting thought. I wonder why bio never used it from the get go so the whole game would have been much larger in scale;)
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_s e n]

               I think making tiles of double the scale, or even more its very cool idea, but I think its not doable, basically because there is an inverted proportion: the higher the scale, the lower the chance to customize tesselation: imagine the use of crossers: its already too squarish at 10x10, i cant imagine being bound with a 20x20 or even bigger scale... yes, you have more room to bend a river crosser, but you will need a lot of tile variations to make it look "different", and still you'd be bound to the 20 meters large edges, this would make the area just like a poorly cooked seamless texture: in a good one, you dont spot the seams, and everything will look unique, in a poor one well, its ugly.... by my tastes, i would do the opposite: making 5x5 tiles to increase the tile randomization!
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Rolo Kipp]

               <chalking one up...>

I see what you're saying, Sen. The smaller the scale of textures the worse it looks. But that is (IMO) a cosmetic challenge, rather than a technical one. And larger textures (2048x2048) *do* work fine on modern machines...

The other issue, of pathing, is rather moot for my aerial tilesets as the pathing will be wide open - i.e. you can fly over just about anything that would be considered an obstacle at normal scale/ground travel. On something like your pretty new tileset (scaled down)... ouch.

It rather reinforces the importance of hand-crafted tilesets. Indeed, at the scales I'm talking about, I'd like to create my areas en toto (perhaps even with aerial images mapped on them) and then tileslice them for unique tilesets. Again, a laborious, custom-crafted approach that may or may not be worth it.

<...for the craftsmen>