The Unexploited Power of Dynamic Creatures

[Legacy_Nevercallmebyname]

               Reading through the tutorials for custom creatures I found that the game has a maximum capacity of 100 creatures. This could be wrong but that's what I read. Anyway, the game also allows dynamic creatures that can have so many options for each body part. This can be exploited to create a potentially infinite pallet of creatures. I mean you could get every DND creature ever without using all 100 creature spots up by using this method.

This has been a public service message from NCMBN.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Athain]

               I'm not sure what you read, but it's not correct.  I believe the limit on creatures.2da is 16 thousand lines (though I could be wrong and it could well be infinite), and you can include art assets for as many creatures as you like (albeit only 16,000 files per hak, but you can just keep on making haks).

So, while there is probably a practical limit to the number of creatures you can make, it is in the tens of thousands.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Nevercallmebyname]

               Well that's pretty cool to know. Still, dynamic creatures would multiply the number of creatures by potential thousands so I'll be doing my mods that way if I can ever get started on them again.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Athain]

               The maximum number of things (creature blueprints, placeable blueprints, areas, scripts, everything) you can have in a module is also 16,000.  So there's a practical limit there that you'll hit before you can make use of of these hundreds of thousands of dynamic combinations.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Nevercallmebyname]

               well that's disappointing.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Lightfoot8]

               I have no idea where you cam up with a 100 creature limit?   Could you provide a link for your tutorials for custom creatures.    

Because this number is way off.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               

Nevercallmebyname wrote...

well that's disappointing.

Not necessarily.  I mean, I'm no expert on the topic but I believe you could generate the dynamic creatures in some base form and then use a custom 2DA (which would theoretically act as a data container capable of holding more than 16,000 entries) in conjunction with NWScript's SetCreatureBodyPart function to tailor it to your liking after its creation, in-game.  This is all off the top of my head, though.  I don't think that setup pushes any envelopes, function-wise.

The gurus in the scripting forum would probably be able to address the validity of that idea more thoroughly, though.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Nevercallmebyname]

               

OldTimeRadio wrote...

Nevercallmebyname wrote...

well that's disappointing.

Not necessarily.  I mean, I'm no expert on the topic but I believe you could generate the dynamic creatures in some base form and then use a custom 2DA (which would theoretically act as a data container capable of holding more than 16,000 entries) in conjunction with NWScript's SetCreatureBodyPart function to tailor it to your liking after its creation, in-game.  This is all off the top of my head, though.  I don't think that setup pushes any envelopes, function-wise.

The gurus in the scripting forum would probably be able to address the validity of that idea more thoroughly, though.

I almost didn't understand what you were suggesting. If someone can confirm that this would work then the next thread I start will contain a download link.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               Hopefully someone will catch the discussion and chime in.  It's late, and I'm a little sleepy.  

There are already a number of custom dynamic races created by the community over the years.  Here is one list, though it might not be current.  Search down for "Currently Allocated Race Letters by the NWN Community" to see what I mean.  

As a first, sleep-addled side note, notice how in that table the available characters for dynamic races are comprised of A-Z, 0-9 and some other symbols, including the "&" sign?  Those are likely not the entire list of characters which you can use.  If you search the Omnibus for "good news regarding", you'll find a message by Kinarr Greycloak from 2004 which indicates that the possible characters includes as least some extended ASCII characters.  Now, I never went through the trouble of testing that, but I did confirm that, at least, some extended ASCII characters can be used in model names, successfully.

As a second, even sleepier, side note, there's no reason a dynamic creature has to actually be used as a dynamic creature and not, say, something like a placeable.  In 2006, NWC Snake proposed (Omnibus: "I have been working on a set of furniture") using furniture-shaped robes on "null" humans to allow for colorable furnature.  In the same thread, Monferrat furthered the idea by suggesting the use of a dynamic creature with furniture-shaped bodyparts, instead.  A little earlier in that same thread, CID-78 brings up some potential drawbacks to the method but, since then, the application of effects like EffectCutSceneGhost() and/or turning off "Targetable" in the appearance.2da line for that creature is just one way to potentially prevent it from being bumped around or interacted with, for instance.  This is not to say that all of CID-78's points have been negated.

In conclusion, I'll mumble something about a multi-state, colorable "placeable" and a give a drowsy warning that if phenotypes are used instead of races, to recall that per 1.69 patch notes, the "Fixed issue with textures not displaying correctly in the Toolset for community made creatures that use a phenotype of 10 or greater."

<>


               
               

               

                     Modifié par OldTimeRadio, 17 janvier 2014 - 09:59 .