Questions about importing CEP2.62 and new area types

Salvanus

Hey guys! Just started working on my old mod (The Lands of Acheron) that has been offline for 12 years - I updated it from CEP1 to CEP2.62 last night and I'm trying to just play around with it to refamiliarize myself with the mod, the toolset, and CEP.

2 quick questions for now and probably more to come, hopefully you guys can help!

1) The hak order shows this: Phenotypes Set: (optional)
cep2_add_phenos1
+ cep2_add_phenos2
+ cep2_add_phenos3
+ cep2_add_phenos4

But I noticed there is a phenos5 as well. Is it intentional that it was not listed, or did it come out after that hak install order was created?

2) I decided to go ahead and also install the extended and CEP tilesets - could someone please give me a little detail about what makes them extended and what makes the CEP ones different from extended? The areas listed [CEP] appear to be the same types as the extended ones (which I assume are the rest with the * at the end of each name). I thought maybe the CEP ones had things like slopes, but I noticed even the ones not named [CEP] have slopes where applicable.

Thank you in advance!

-Salvanus

Proleric

You do need phenos5 - its omission is an error in the documentation.

The wiki entry on CEP tilesets is considerably out-of-date. In brief, CEP adds some of the best fan-made tilesets as additional tiles in the classic Bioware ones.

To give you a flavour, CEP City Exterior gives you alleys, ships/airships, the classic look, stone reskin, gothic reskin and Sigil exterior in one set. CEP City Interior includes windows, plus elven & sigil interiors. CEP Castle Interior has windows, stairs, towers, maze. CEP Crypt has classic look, grey reskin, chult and dwarven halls. And so on... worth looking at the detail for yourself.

The implementation is sometimes rough and ready - for example, you can't paint Sigil tiles next to Gothic tiles, but you can place them in the same area with intervening water.

CEP tileset development ceased a few years ago, so you will find slightly improved versions of some tilesets in Project Q, but personally I'm using CEP as it gives you so much in one compatible package.

Salvanus

@Proleric thanks for the info! few more questions for you if you don't mind!

1) So the areas called [CEP] are basically duplicates of the existing ones but come with all the additional features, so basically don't use the non [CEP] named ones at all?

2) What the * mean when CEP stuff is added? For example, all of the other areas not listed as [CEP] have * symbols, as well as items, creatures, etc. even though they did exist in the base game prior to adding CEP.

3) If i create CEP areas with all the cool features such as slopes but then for some reason I have to remove CEP hypothetically, are those zones going to be unloadable, or will the CEP assets swap to non-CEP assets, ex, slopes becoming walls and flying ships just dissapearing?

Thanks again!

Proleric

1) True, CEP versions are complete duplicates of Bioware with additional features. Personally, I chose to add CEP tilesets as extras rather than overwrites. This is for the slightly obscure reason that I wanted to import one or two areas from an older module, which used the Bioware version.

2) Sorry, don't understand. Exactly where are you seeing the * ?

3) Either unloadable, or loadable with missing tiles.

As far as the toolset is concerned, the tileset is baked in when an area is created, and can't be changed.

Fortunately, the moneo tool (or GFF editor) allows us to change any field in any object in a module. For example, you can change Bioware Rural to Bioware Rural Winter (or vice-versa) just by changing the Tileset field in the .are file from ttr01 to tts01. This magic only works because Bioware assigned the same tile number to the equivalent tiles in each set.

In theory, therefore, you could change an existing area from the Bioware tileset to the CEP extended version. What I don't know for certain is whether the tile numbers of corresponding tiles are identical. If there were differences, you'd simply have to edit the tile numbers manually.

So a more complete answer to (3) is that you can edit an area built with a CEP tileset back to the Bioware base, but any tile number which does not exist in the Bioware version would need to be changed by hand to one that does. For a 16 x 16 area, that would be 256 numbers to check and amend manually in the worst case. You could write a moneo script to automate it.

IndyWendieGo

I think Salvanus's question about the asterisk is when it's by various things within the toolset when CEP is loaded.

TheAmethystDragon

cep2_add_phenos5, as of 2.62, is an empty hak file, but it is kept in the download for anyone playing or building a module that used earlier versions of CEP (2.1-2.61).

---

The asterisk * after each creature/placeable/tail/wing/etc. appearance in the toolset dropdowns basically just tells you it's content that was added to the game in the CEP (aka, non-BioWare stuff). It's a notation that was included in past versions, so I kept using it.

Where possible, I've also been adding content creators' names for each such addition so builders can see that information right in the toolset.

I highly recommend using the NWN Toolset - Modification (by axs), which enables you to see much more in the toolset dropdowns.

---

As far as tilesets go...yeah. I haven't really touched anything with the CEP tilesets, as that is a type of custom content I have next to no experience creating (besides some retexturing).

Salvanus

Thank you for the info!