Showing posts with label Prefab. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Prefab. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Prefabia Restarted - #6

I have been going a bit crazy trying to get walkmeshes and boats working, using Heed's Boardable Ships hak. So to give my mind a break and stop working in circles I thought for a laugh I would set up the persistence portion of Prefabia by adding a database behind the scenes.

I have settled on using MYSQL 5.0 and NWNX4 1.08, which after reading the basic instructions, were damn easy to set up and get running.

Excellent video how to on installing MYSQL on Vista http://www.sebastiansulinski.co.uk/web_design_tutorials/web_server/install_apache/install_apache.php?id=mysql


That was the easy part, the next problem was how do I get all the scripts and such working? NWNX4 forums are full of help if you need to set up the core database engine and plugins but be buggered if I could find anything to aid me in logging the cdkey, ip, coordinates on exit and so on, (stuff I consider core to running a PW).

My inital experiences in this space were the use of an excellent set of scripts and routines developed by Rowell called Rowell's Persistent World Toolkit. This set of scripts was awesome and allowed people with little to no experience on databases using NWNX4 to read write from their database, as soon as the rowell erf was loaded into the module. Sadly, he stopped supporting it, due to issues with NWN2 and Atari and so on. (it all got too hard and I can't blame him).

For a bit I thought WTF, I might as well pull his stuff to pieces and try to get it working on the NWNX4 1.08 version and NWN1.13 until....

I visited Rowell's PW site, Englington and noted he had it up and running and it was patched to the latest levels and the PW datbase was working. I hunted round on his site, looking for his email so I could send a question to him regarding his toolkit, until I stumbled over this thread..

http://www.hideyhole.org/engliton/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&file=viewtopic&t=2830&start=250

The thread listed the efforts of a person called Xildjian, how had decided to do what I was about to do and rework the scripts. Not only had they already reworked his scripts, they also went as far as to release their efforts to date. So far, I have tested this and it works a treat. Suddenly I have some pesistence in my Prefabia PW and effort has been minimal. Kudos to Rowell and Xildjian

Hi All, Below is a link to my attempt at getting Rowell's updates
working. Here is a list of the modifications I made:

1. Made use of NWN2 ability to send variables to a script from a
conversation.

2. Made the bank player specific instead of character
specific

Only active quests get added back into the journal when
a character logs on

Fixed some bugs I haven't tested everything
so there might still be errors, and I was using NWNX4 1.08 and NWN2 MoTB
(standalone server) to do my testing and
development.


Below is the URL to get the update.
I kept my files different from Rowell's so the files of interest are Xildjian_updates.erf and Xildjian_Test.mod.


I haven't changed any documentation from Rowell's so if you have a
question check the test mod.

http://myweb.cableone.net/sanaya/RowellsPWKit.rar

Enjoy!


Friday, August 22, 2008

Prefabia Restarted - #5

One thing that is often forgotten by builders and players alike is acknowledging and voting on the sources they use in their world. Without input from the users, the modders and scriptors eventually loose heart and move on things that they perceive has more rewards or community thanks.

Taking the above statement as a truth, I think I should begin to thank the people for the contributions that I am directly or indirectly using as part of Prefabia.

Acknowledgements

Prefabs

Plugins

Updating Plugins .... Tani and Grinning Fool


On another subject but one that comes about due to a scriptor moving on is updating plugins to the latest NWN2 release. Pplugins make life much easier for builders and has made Prefabia a lot more fun to build, shame NWN2 Atari did not include some of these essential tools.

Tani Provided some instructions on how to recompile the plugins to the latest version of NWN2, main thing you need is the source code.

  1. Grab visual c# express from m$ (it's free, the 2005 version is enough, don't know if 2008 is different). http://www.microsoft.com/express/2005/
  2. Grab the source code and unzip it to a folder of your liking.
  3. Open the project file in visual c#.
  4. Look for the broken references to nwn2toolset.dll and oeishared.dll, maybe others too (they are marked with an exclamation mark in a yello triangle). remove the references and add new ones to the latest version of these files.
  5. Compile the project, and move the new dll (found in subfolder bin/release or just bin) to your plugins folder - you should be fine.in case that was to quick take a look at the video at Link . This shows how to fix the references and compile nwn2packer and especially stripease.