Mods and/or Hakpaks: either, neither or both?

omedon666

So it occurs to me that the steam workshop would be an invaluable replacement for the ol' NWNVault, for those that play on Steam.

At least... that occurs to me until I realize that NWN didn't have mods, it had hakpaks, and for PWs (the only context in which I even remotely target my passion for NWN), they were things baked in and compiled by builders, and then required for players to have installed in the associated folder.

I guess I'm asking if this has been mentioned already, and I guess I'm asking what the answer was. I really don't have the time or interest in combing the forums or trying to sway the development: The game will come out as it will and it will either let us pick up where we left off in our PW adventures (and a whole slew of my friends buy it) or it won't (and we don't buy it), but I guess I'm just curious as to whether or not the workshop will be utilized, vastly simplifying the use of "mods" for players, and how that will work for the builders' end, who will have to interact with these "mods" (hakpaks) in a different way.

Thanks in advance for any and all helpful replies.

MadHatter

I completely agree with you. Steam would be a fantastic way to manage custom content (especially for groups of friends who have one dedicated builder/DM). The auto-updating and syncing of files would be a god send. One of the most frustrating things I've ever done is get NWN and my custom content installed on a less-than-tech-savvy uncle's computer while communicating by phone.

Some folks on here have dug their heels in and claimed that this would divide the community because not everyone will buy the game via Steam. Of course, we've had multiple points to download content for years and it hasn't caused the downfall of the NWN community.

That said, if we're talking about a new wave of NWN players coming in large numbers from a Steam release and connecting via the in-client server browser it would be amazing for them to be able to autodownload haks or subscribe to things in Steam. A lot of folks don't get why that would be such a great thing because they haven't had problems managing this Custom Content for 15 years.

omedon666

It's funny, I asked this question before I dug deeper and saw that "Oh... they want the Vault to remain relevant... Ok then...", which, I mean, I don't know, I could argue for or against, but if the Vault is still very much a hard-lock to exist going forward, I guess it's a moot point so long as that doesn't change.

I guess I just always saw the vault as something that "could evaporate at any time because... not a professional entity."

I think many former NWN players have similar twitches about the rug being pulled out from their favorite game.

Sherincall

omedon666 said:

I guess I just always saw the vault as something that "could evaporate at any time because... not a professional entity."

One could argue that "not a professional entity" means less likely to evaporate. Some examples from NWN history are the old vault (owned by IGN), gamespy and bioware master server. They all disappeared without a warning causing a lot of pain. They were all replaced by community run alternatives that have multiple backups and are much more resilient.

This isn't an argument against steam workshop. Merely against it being the only source of content.

omedon666

Sherincall said:

omedon666 said:

I guess I just always saw the vault as something that "could evaporate at any time because... not a professional entity."

One could argue that "not a professional entity" means less likely to evaporate. Some examples from NWN history are the old vault (owned by IGN), gamespy and bioware master server. They all disappeared without a warning causing a lot of pain. They were all replaced by community run alternatives that have multiple backups and are much more resilient.

This isn't an argument against steam workshop. Merely against it being the only source of content.

Good points. My room mate (who was once my PW's best scripter and will be again soon!) compared it to the nexus and the workshop both serving Skyrim in different ways.

Ancarion

I'm all for having as much exposure for user modules and haks as possible, but I wouldn't want Steam to be considered a "replacement" for all the work done maintaining the Vault for all these years.

Proleric

The OP conflates two entirely separate issues.

Will the module-hakpak architecture change? Maybe, but perhaps unlikely, given the commitment to backward compatibility.

Where will modules be hosted? Wherever authors wish, no doubt, but, as has been discussed at length elsewhere, the community that has kept this game going for all these years is very committed to neverwintervault.org owing to deep distrust of commercial sites for the reasons already given.

By and large, the NWN community culture has been unusual in its willingness to share assets & knowledge in a friendly way. Personally, I choose NWN as a hobby because it's a much nicer place to be than Skyrim / Nexus / Steam.

FreshLemonBun

I don't mind, Steam is essentially DRM with convenience combining social media and digital store. A hak is essentially like an archive so you don't need to manage all individual files and solve conflicts between haks for different things. An override is a local only mod. The main difference is the game was built from the ground up for modding, so it's as easy as dragging and dropping files in your hak or override folder or protraits folder.

I don't think downloading mods from Steam will have much impact. A modder will have the choice to upload there, the nexus, the vault and other locations. A pw can point to haks on either of those options, or continue to provide their own installer or mega zip file that automatically unpacks everything to the right place. When they add a pw auto-downloader to NWN you'll have another option too.

In the end the content you see in the game wont change depending on how you download it.

Verilazic

@omedon666, just a little context in case it helps: the neverwintervault.org site was built in response to the collapse of the professionally run original nwvault.

The vault community tends to take the long view, which is why I donated significantly to it even back when I didn't have much disposable income, and even when I stop playing NWN for months while I try out other games. I always come back because I know it will still be here even years later.

At the end of the day, BD is a company, and that gives it certain strengths and weaknesses. My perspective is that it's important to manage the different long term risks, because I want to continue playing NWN for literally as long as possible. I bought the deluxe edition of NWN:EE for the simple reason that I want to support BD as much as possible so that they have the resources to improve NWN as much as possible. But I don't expect BD to be able to continue developing NWN:EE for 10 years. Maybe they will, but we can't rely on that. There's a better chance that the vault will outlive it.

That said, I don't feel like Steam is a threat to the vault. It won't take that many people away from the vault, and if it does a good job of supporting new players, great. Any large influx of new people to a relatively small community can cause serious disruption, and having Steam around to take some of that influx I think would help reduce the short term risks to the vault community.