NWN:EE Modding
Allanon81
Member Posts: 341
I’m looking for a mod that adds ambients to the game. Searching through Neverwinter Vault is a slog. Correct me if I’m wrong but Project Q is no longer supported in newest NWN:EE or is already incorporated into it? Also, a lot of the GUI mods seem to contain errors(certain parts don’t show up properly). Can anybody point me to mods that work with minimal trouble? I spent 5~6 hours yesterday and my god I’m burnt ?.
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Meanwhile, NWN:EE still uses haks, Project Q will certainly still function in NWN:EE, however, since the aforementioned content has expanded the base game content, and, Project Q's indexed content in their 2da files do not reference this brand new material, using these packages can cause problems since adding them to a module will take away this new content (instead of only adding content). Making Project Q and CEP 2da's 8193.16 compatible would be considered among the easiest of custom content tasks (managing custom content is challenging overall), since the new content was intentionally placed "out of the way" of popular custom content packages like CEP and Q, allowing a clean lateral merge for anyone updating Q and CEP 2da's to include 8193.16 content.
Meanwhile, if you mean ambient sounds, like background cave drips, winds, crowded street chatter, etc, sound and music in general has never been a popular custom content category. I don't think I've found any on the vault that I would use, but as someone who is making background sound ambiences for another project right now, I think anyone interested can learn how the sound content in NWN:EE works in a day or so, and find a huge variety of content they could make NWN compatible with a little work out and about on the internet.
Free ambiences are far more available than they used to be, and the process of adding them to the game is nearly identical to adding custom music to NWN, which is more popular and documented more frequently.
Is this a valid userpatch.ini?
The normal procedure is to add it to your module properties custom content tab.
The filename extension needs to be .ini not .txt
A module can optionally include either the tiles hak (which overwrites the official tiles) or the tiles1/2 hak (which adds new tilesets) but not both.
Proleric is correct, it is not really good practice to include the expansion in your patching. These packs are designed to add content to NWN for module creation. There are some resources in CEP that replace Bioware's original assets, but that is a very small aspect of their content.
The Patch system is an override system, but if you add in a Project Q hak as an override that adds zebras to the game, you're not going to start finding zebras in the woods in Bioware's campaigns.
What you could do is make your own versions of the campaigns, open the woods areas, and put down your own zebras, which are now in the game because you added a Project Q hak with zebras, but as Proleric says, you should do this in your own copy of the module, with haks. You can reuse these haks for other modules you edit, but, you don't want them to apply to all work all the time.
Additionally, I don't think this ini will work, but, I'm not sure. The patch system locates referenced haks (in your userpatch.ini) in your Patch directory. I really don't think there is a function that let's you do both a [Patch] and a [Hak] list. I don't think the empty lines will break anything, but I'd get rid of those too, just in case. By default this is [Patch] list checks the /patch directory, but it can be whatever you set up in the nwn.ini under Aliases. It's very common for people to change their patch alias to their hak directory.
I don't recommend that, though, because, again, the patch system should be used as overrides instead of the override folder. It is a convenience to do things like take whatever 6000 colorized icon overrides out of the override folder, so it is not as stuffed, pack them into an icon hak, and use the patch system so that they are loaded from that hak. Think of the Patch system more like having override subfolders.
That way if you have 6000 colorized icons and one barkskin upgrade, if you want to check to see if the barkskin override is still in the folder you don't have to scroll through all of the icon files. You can use the override folder on a more temporary basis, like, making a stoneskin override, view in game, approve of your own work, and put it and your barkskin override into a skin override hak, and add that to the userpatch.ini too.
Then you will have 2 override packs, icons and skins, and 0 items in your override folder. This gives you agility, and a better idea at-a-glance of what overrides you have in your override folder, instead of having 8000 files that probably include all of the icons, and oh yeah the reforged weapon overrides, forgot about those, and oh I forgot to take out one of the NWNCQ ferns after I decided I didn't like it, etc. etc.
Now, if you have ambient sounds as an override (via patch?), and you are playing the original campaign, either these ambient sounds REPLACE the originals from the base game content, that Bioware intended when they made whatever campaign, OR, this ambient sound content you found has new names, none of which Bioware will have used when they made the campaign 20 years ago, meaning the game will not be any different.
You will want to differentiate between content designed to add new stuff to the game, and content designed to make original game assets newer, through replacement.
There is a big difference between adding an Atlantis tileset to the game, for making new Atlantean areas in the toolset, which you will never see in any module unless the builder also made atlantean areas with the same tileset (at which point you are not adding, the tileset is required content), and, adding an Atlantean tileset override, that turns all crypt areas into Atlantean underwater ruins or whatever. The content you are working with is mostly the first.