Tools for importing new assets and, in general, for creating custom content?

Dark_Ansem

The game's formats are quite old and the NWN bioware website is down (too bad because it was amazing, I don't think I have it archived anymore). Any chance for official tools and/or for more modern formats (like for music, BMU is MP3 anyway, can't we hope for an OGG remaster?)?

Proleric

Neverwintervault.org

is your friend. A community site that has conserved the tooks and assets over the years and is still making new content.

Dark_Ansem

That only helps partially. And of course those tools won't take into account any (hopefully) improvements.

Proleric

At present, all of the community tools work for EE except NWNExplorer. The vault is a living community, so you can be sure that we will make new tools if and when EE makes format changes that require it. The NWNExplorer issue has already been partly addressed by scripts that niv recently published.

Dark_Ansem

I thought the vault had died off?

thirdmouse

The vault was rescued by Rolo & Friends and migrated over a period of time. They saved almost everything, even HoF records (though creators that had established a following were obviously hit hard regardless, and I don't think anyone will ever trust a non-community run site, again...). Despite that, a lot of people that just saw the "absence of vault" didn't learn of the migration.

New content has been created for NWN every month for over seven years through varying contributors to the monthly Custom Content Challenge. The original Bioware forums and loads of CC tutorials and info are downloadable and searchable through the Omnibus, and while I'd like to see the last incarnation of the forums added (before Bioware pulled the plug), there are still archives of those, as well

Dark_Ansem

Oh bugger - I simply disappeared due to the collapse of the IGN vault and never was aware of this!

TarotRedhand

@Dark_Ansem you might want to visit The rescued vault. if you created stuff that was hosted on the ign vault because there is a good chance that your stuff was migrated. If it was and you want to reclaim it you will need to register so that you can post a request in this thread to do so.

TR

thirdmouse

If you're into internet-archaeology, you could check out this archived thread for a look at when it got in gear and the people that pitched in at the time. Once you realize that five pages in people are still talking about setting up a site only if the Vault goes down, it's kind of a "thank **** people started migration, beforehand".

A bit off-topic now, I suppose, but it's a preservation-saga that surely deserves love from the greater-community :P

Dark_Ansem

TarotRedhand said:

@Dark_Ansem you might want to visit The rescued vault. if you created stuff that was hosted on the ign vault because there is a good chance that your stuff was migrated. If it was and you want to reclaim it you will need to register so that you can post a request in this thread to do so.

TR

I did release something on the vault: this portrait pack: https://neverwintervault.org/project/nwn1/images/portrait/artwork-portrait-collection

I suppose I'd have to update it for the re-release? have portrait guidelines changed at all?

thirdmouse

Existing custom content like haks and portraits shouldn't be affected. Keeping compatibility with the years and years of user-made content is a big part of the EE's goals, as I understand it. There are already people rolling with Project Q and Zwerk's facelifts as patch haks to override the base game

Edit: Here's a how-to on getting patch haks working with EE

Dark_Ansem

What's the difference between a hak mod and a patch mod?

thirdmouse

You know how you'd override base game resources with loose files via the override folder (eg hands override to banish "fists of doom", or colorized GUI icons, etc)? Patch haks are basically the files you'd throw in your override folder, only in a hak format that the game will preload. It's much neater, cleans up your override, and makes it easy to add-remove packages vs loose files.

You can put content in patch haks that extend the game (Q does this), but you'd need to take care as a builder at that point, to avoid relying on non-vanilla resources accidentally. If you were building a module, you can/should of course associate your own hak files with it directly to make it look how you want, but a lot of people use overrides to "refresh" the look of the game in any module, including the OC, and opening them up in the toolset to associate them directly is a pain.

Priority wise, it goes hak > patch hak > override folder > core resource, so if a module uses a resource in a hak, it will not be overridden by the player's patch hak or override.

Dark_Ansem

So it allows for better compatibility?

Proleric

Pretty much, yes.

Patch hak changes every module.

Regular hak changes only modules that specify it.

Since hak > patch hak > override > core, the module author can be confident that the content they specify in their haks will override patch and core, so the module will play exactly as they intended even if changes are made to patch and core. That's a high degree of compatibility.

There are loopholes. If hak does not include resource X but depends on the core version of X working correctly, and patch hak or override contains a modified version X' which behaves differently, the module can fail. This is rarely a problem, but nevertheless unnecessary patches and overrides are best avoided, and Beamdog are quite rightly reluctant to make changes to core X that would likely cause compatibility issues.

Likewise, custom haks can undo bug fixes in core etc if they are based on old code, but again that's not a big issue.