Make a single .hak from module in toolset?

DM_Morpheus

Hi,
It's been a while since I worked on my PW WOTR (War of the Ring) and I'm wanting to build a single .hak file from all the assets used by the game (e.g. CEP2 among other overrides, tlks etc). Is this possible? how?

thanks!
Morph

Ancarion

If you mean by this to extract only the particular assets from a hak that are used within a module, I think this feature has been requested, but is much more complicated than it may appear. For example, if you have a script that creates an object, then that object doesn't actually exist in the game until the script is called. It would be virtually impossible to know it should be included in the culled hak. Add to this the fact that people would have many gigs worth of duplicated assets for every different module they download, i.e. countless versions of cep2 etc, each with its own selected files culled from the main hak, and it's clear that this is pretty unworkable.

If instead you just want to combine multiple haks into one mega-hak, then I'd recommend against that as well. Even if you were able to keep the new hak down to a reasonable size, it would still be several gigs of possibly conflicting files that could easily be a nightmare to untangle. And if you updated anything, the whole package would need to be downloaded again by your players. Though far from impossible, it would be a daunting project that probably doesn't have any benefit over keeping your haks at a more manageable size.

DM_Morpheus

Gotcha. What's the best way to distribute custom content to players then? I use CEP but also have a bunch of other overrides, haks and stuff. I don't want them to download a bunch of files. Just zip them and let them unzip it in their Documents/NWN folder?

TarotRedhand

Never, ever redistribute overrides. They apply to every single module played on the machine they are played on. The rest of the advice is for single player mods. Do not bundle CEP along with other content. It only needs downloading once and it's good for any module that uses CEP. Post links to the pages containing the various haks. If you have your own custom materials including the 2das that you have merged put those into your own custom top hak and include it with the module in an archive. Never post a "bare" module for download. That is because the extension .mod is used for an archaic music format and browsers will try to open them giving a load of garbage on screen. Include a readme with the module with class and expected level. Oh and don't forget to use the description field in the modules properties.

For pw's on the other hand there is nwsync but apart from the name and a vague idea of what it is for I know nothing about it as I have no interest in pw's.

Personal comment. Why do I here this rubbish about people won't download more than 1 hak. Balderdash. If they are too lazy point them at the Neverwinter Nights Mod Installer Tool - NIT. It will do the downloading for them and only for stuff they haven't got already.

TR

DM_Morpheus

Ok, thanks for the advice. What tools can I use to build a custom top hak?

DM_Morpheus

Do all I need to distribute to them is all the haks in my hak folder and tlk? I can just zip those?

TarotRedhand

Beamdog\00840\util\win32\nwhak.exe

TR

Proleric

To create / edit a hak, use nwhak, which ships with the game.

A hak is just a container for files. A text editor is often all you need to edit those files in the top hak.

The files you need to distribute include your module, the haks / tlk it specifies in the Custom Content tab, and any others it sctually uses (so, not the entire content of your hak folder).

As previously mentioned, most players will already have common haks like CEP, so you just need to explain where to find them, rather than include them in your bundle.

The Custom Content Guide on the Vauit explains this stuff and more.

Distribution may be done in an archive (7zip > RAR > zip) if you prefer, but EE can be configured to download your PW stuff to players automatically.

DM_Morpheus

Thank you everyone. For the very helpful comments. It's been a while and I need to relearn everything, but am very happy to see this game supported as we will never see a "host your own" RPG like this again.

Winternite

I strongly recommend you never alter CEP haks, make your own and place them above or below is fine if they dont cause conflict, alternatively set up NWSync where you can edit CEP haks without much trouble but still recommend against that.

You should never have more than 800MB in a single hak, I don't remember the exact limit but it's not far off, if you hit the ceiling in a single hak it will break/unable to save.

Depending on the quantity of your own custom content, you should divide it into several haks, place one with edited 2das above the cep top 265 hak, and merge them via text editor, TLK2edit or something else.

Although with NWSync being a thing for the past 1½ year, I don't imagine a great many people will ever bother manually downloading haks anymore unless for building purpose.

Proleric

As I understand it, NWSync is only for PW / multiplayer sites. For single player modules, you can download everything automatically with NIT.

WilliamDraco

NWSync is available for single player modules. It's just not simple at the moment and rarely used. See patch notes for dev build 8193.6 which was finalised as stable 8193.9.

The Modules tab will show all singleplayer/offline modules you have downloaded via NWSync. To facilitate this, the Storage Manager UI now can download offline modules for you; however, by default, no remote repositories offering this are added to your game.

To add a remote repository, add the following lines to your settings.tml (right at the top is fine, the game will sort them in properly on next launch):

[[nwsync.downloader.repositories]]
name = "NWVault"
url = "http://sync.neverwintervault.org"

To actually generate a repository of your own that can offer singleplayer modules for download, you need to generate NWSync manifests that have module contents in them (nwsync_write --with-module --group-id N ...). Finally, add all manifests into a big json array in modules.json in the repository root (the nwsync_write tooling will update soon to do this for you). See the sample repository if it is unclear.

Modules downloaded this way will show up under "Other Modules" when clicking Singleplayer -> New Game.

TarotRedhand

Which is a long winded affair. Most people know little if anything of json. Which for the time being means that the Neverwinter Nights Mod Installer Tool - NIT remains the only viable way to get your haks etc. (that you haven't got but the module needs) to download at the same time as the module. It also has the added bonus that if a module is part of a series it will automatically download the rest of the modules in that series at the same time.

TR