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!

Prefabia Restarted - #3

No real screen shots today, more of a small note detailing my progress on Prefabia. One of the things that has been annoying me on the Starting Area of Prefabia "Stone Port" is that the docks were not walkable. I have spent a fair bit of time, trying to make them walkable through various methods and having no joy. I tried, lining up the placeable, putting a walkmesh helper placeable on top and finally lifting terrain under then but they still didn't allow a pc to stroll along them.

Then I read a small note on the Bioware forums, where a person suggested setting the dock placeables to environment, draping the walkmesh helper placeable over the top and baking the area. I tried this and bam! My docks are now walkable and you can stroll out past the ships and look out onto the Sea and dream about where you may go or come from.

Now that docks are walkable, I now need to make the ship decks walkable, so that players can interact with the crew and such. The docks will only have two ships in at a time, one inbound and another outwards bound. Players will start on the dock of the inbound ship, the outbound will not take on players and mainly be there for ore/trade collection.

Some images of the process will be posted up later on today, to give people a feel for how to do
this.