Head and cloak issues in the CPP and Project Q

[Legacy_Sir Roderick]

               

Hello,


I recently finished playing through the original campaign and am about to create a new character for the expansions.


I've noticed a few bugs in the game, so I suppose you'd like to know about them?


I decided to make a new thread rather than reply to an existing one and post all the bug reports here. Mainly because a couple of the bugs are shared by the CPP and Project Q, and you guys are all reading this forum anyway. Also, I've installed quite a few modifications into my game, so I'm not 100% sure that I'm able to pinpoint the causes of the bugs correctly, but feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. I've got version 1.72b7 of the CPP, with Project Q 2.0 manually installed with the hak-patch method, and a semi-organized heap of other stuff on top of that.


Okay, bug #1 (this is caused by the CPP):


Male human heads 50-63 look something like this:



Now, if I can interpret what NWN Explorer is telling me, the game has helmets in these slots, and the extra face textures are found in patch171.bif and xp2_gui.erf, both of which are CPP files. Fortunately this also means that this should be a very simple bug to fix: just delete files pmh0_head050.plt - pmh0head063.plt from patch171.bif and xp2_gui.erf for the next release of the Community Patch.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Sir Roderick]

               

Bug #2:


CPP and Project Q replace default higher-resolution heads with lower-resolution heads.


The CPP does this for pfa0_head007, pfd0_head006, pfd0_head007, pfd0_head010, pfg0_head001 and pfg0_head002-008.


Project Q does this for pmh0_head002.


Human male head #2 (original):

Human male head #2 (Project Q):




Fixing this depends on how meticulous you want to be. The simplest way of course would be to delete these plt files from the CPP and Project Q. But both the CPP and Project Q are attempting to replace the default head textures with colorized versions (with eyes, lips and eyebrows using tattoo and hair colors), so a better way would be to replace all these files with higher-definition colorized versions. Such things do exist. The "Realms of Mythology Heads" collection on the Vault contains colorized versions of pfg0_head001.plt and pmh0_head002.plt, and their use of color channels is consistent: tattoo 1 for eyes and tattoo 2 for lips.

http://neverwinterva...mythology-heads

And the JenX collection contains good-resolution colorized versions of all of these heads, although their use of color channels is less consistent:

http://neverwinterva...-cep20-versions


Now, I'll digress for a moment to describe the special case of human male head #143 (if you're bored by my wall of text, skip this part). As far as I can see, it's the only head in the game with no good-resolution version available in the texture packs. We could say this is a bug in the game itself, an oversight by Bioware. Currently the CPP replaces it with a colorized bad-resolution version and Project Q doesn't replace it with anything. There's a higher-definition reskin by Yavel on the Vault:

http://neverwinterva...head-143-reskin

The game data contains models for both phenotypes, pmh0_head143.mdl and pmh2_head143.mdl, both of which use the texture pmh0_head143.plt. Yavel's reskin contains pmh0_head143.mdl in addition to the texture file, but the mdl file is identical to the unmodified version. And as for the plt file, there's a colorized version of Yavel's reskin available here:

http://neverwinterva...-upgrades-heads


Human male head #143 (original):



Yavel's reskin:




The eyes on the reskin could use some adjusting, to make their position on the plt better match their position on the mdl or vice versa, but it's still a clear improvement over the original.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Sir Roderick]

               

Bug #3:


Cloak animations for half-orcs are broken in the CPP and Project Q.


I played through the OC as a half-orc and didn't even realize that the cloaks were supposed to have animations.


With an unmodified game, cloak animations work for half-orcs.


With the CPP, cloak animations don't work for half-orcs of either gender.


With Project Q (with or without the CPP below it), cloak animations work for female half-orcs but not for male half-orcs.


For humans of either gender, cloak animations always work. I haven't tested with other races except for humans and half-orcs.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Sir Roderick]

               

Maybe that's almost enough bug reporting for one night. I'll finish with an observation regarding the Biorural facelift hak by Toro and Zwerkules.


Here's a window in Beorunna's Well (Chapter 3 of the OC) in the umodified game:



Here's the same window with the Biorural hak active:




Is that a bug or not? I mean, is that simply caused by the modified window texture being darker than the original, or is there something here, an illumination effect perhaps, that's supposed to work but doesn't? So, I can't say whether that's a bug or not. Zwerkules can decide.


All of these projects - CPP and Q and Zwerkules's Facelifts - are really good, and I hope these bug reports don't discourage you guys or anything. '>

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_henesua]

               

thanks for helping out with this reporting. But I would like to offer some basic help in your endeavor and say that I think its better if you simplify the bug reporting. At present its hard to tell what are bugs here and what packages the bugs are in. You did a great job showing the differences when you have the biorural override, but the other stuff I am not so clear which package is the culprit or if you have found anything.

 

In fact I suspect that the biorural thing maybe a bug in the original that the builder of that module used to their advantage. The best way to test this is to work with that tile in the toolset (and back and forth in game at different times) and see if you can toggle the animation states in anyway. Or if somehow zwerkules' biorural eliminated the animation by mistake.

 

Anyway, not a big deal. Its just that its hard for me to tell what is a bug and what is not here because you ave so many packages interacting with one another.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_kuronue bloodlust]

               

I am cataloging the CEP items in the starter module i can make a quick test mode when i get to the items in question and test them to see

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Sir Roderick]

               

Pinpointing the causes of the head bugs (#1 CPP, #2 CPP & Project Q) is relatively easy, because it's a fairly simple matter to browse through all the heads in a package with NWN Explorer. Henesua, your own facelift hak by the way (that Llyra/Vives thing on the Vault) has those same low-resolution heads in there. So bug #2 is rather widespread.

 

Looking at head textures is simple, but the cloak animation and window illumination issues are beyond my understanding. If you want to know how I tested the cloak issue, I started a new game of Shadows of Undrentide with three different characters - human male, half-orc female, half-orc male), had each of them type "##DebugMode 1" and "##dm_spawnitem nw_maarcl031" and run around with the cloak to see if it moves, saved these three games and reloaded them with unmodified game, with CPP only, with Project Q haks only and with CPP and Project Q together.

 

You're all welcome to verify whether you can replicate my findings on your own installation or not.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Sir Roderick]

               

I am cataloging the CEP items in the starter module i can make a quick test mode when i get to the items in question and test them to see

 

CEP is one package I don't have though. '>

At least not all of it, just one head for my new character. '>

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_kuronue bloodlust]

               

CEP is one package I don't have though. '>

At least not all of it, just one head for my new character. '>

that may be part of the problem the CEP is a rather huge hack

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Sir Roderick]

               

that may be part of the problem the CEP is a rather huge hack

 

Which is why I'm not using it as such. '> Extracting, text-editing and renumbering one single head is a simple matter though.

 

The bugs I've reported in this thread have nothing to do with the CEP, and I haven't had anything from the CEP included in my installation while I've tested these.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_henesua]

               

How do you turn the CPP on and off? are you testing on an install with the CPP and one without? Again it is not clear to me what you are actually testing here.

 

Again, not a big deal. I'm not here to start a debate with you. Just letting you know that it is not clear to me what you are testing since you have so many packages layered on top of one another.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_meaglyn]

               

You can turn the cpp on and off by switching which xp2patch.key file you use.  You don't need multiple installations.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Sir Roderick]

               

Exactly. I switched between xp2patch.key and its backup version. And Project Q and the other haks can of course be switched on or off with nwnpatch.ini.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Sir Roderick]

               

All right, I did a bit more testing of the cloak bug, with CPP only, all other modifications off.


This time I tested by starting a new game with dwarves and gnomes.


Gnome female: cloak animations work

Gnome male: cloak animations don't work

Dwarf female: cloak animations don't work

Dwarf male: cloak animations don't work


I assume this has something to do with the division into the animation categories a_ba / a_fa / a_da / a_dfa. Frankly I don't know much about this at all, but this division is explained here:

http://ccg.animecafe...itle=Animations


Because according to those categories, gnome females belong to the same animation category as human females, whereas gnome males belong to the same animation category as dwarf and half-orc males.


So, CPP seems to break cloak animations for all race-gender combinations in the a_da and a_dfa categories.


And although I haven't tested Project Q here more extensively, I assume the difference between the male and female half-orc there could be due to a_dfa animations working right in Project Q and only a_da animations being bugged.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Shadooow]

               

Hello,


Now, if I can interpret what NWN Explorer is telling me, the game has helmets in these slots, and the extra face textures are found in patch171.bif and xp2_gui.erf, both of which are CPP files. Fortunately this also means that this should be a very simple bug to fix: just delete files pmh0_head050.plt - pmh0head063.plt from patch171.bif and xp2_gui.erf for the next release of the Community Patch.

PLT is not a texture, PLT is a file that controls colorization. Meaning what on the texture is hair and what is skin. CPP adds tatoos into head to allow color lips/eyes. I dont see how this could alter the actual head in any way.

 

 

CPP and Project Q replace default higher-resolution heads with lower-resolution heads.


The CPP does this for pfa0_head007, pfd0_head006, pfd0_head007, pfd0_head010, pfg0_head001 and pfg0_head002-008.

I dont think this is correct. CPP does not replace textures (DDS/TGA) only models, those uses the same textures so it should not be caused by CPP. AND even if CPP actually overrided textures, it would not appeared the way you see because the CPP is BIF and bif has lowest priority, the textures from bif are used only if you are running on lowest details (or you dont have texturepacks folder in your installation).

 

If someone can verify this I will look into it but im currently not around NWN stuff...