Prefabia Restarted - #7

Ashes in my mouth

I have learnt, much to my dismay that just because you are performing backups, it does not mean you are storing what you think. I learnt this the hard way yesterday when I rebuilt my notebook, where my Prefabia work is stored. I thought that I had backed up my modules directory and on restoration realised I had made a copy of my NWN1 modules directory.
After cross checking and seeing what other copies I had, the penny dropped and I knew that Prefabia or at least the work to date was gone.

Looks like now I am about to recreate all of my work, though this time it should take under 5 hours, as I now know what I am doing and need not spend days researching how to do something.

Pyrrhic Victory

Before I manage to wipe my project, BTH cast an eye over it and proclaimed it rather nice but....
"The Trees need variation". I must agree that once I looked at my trees, they were all of the same seed and scale (XYZ). After some research I located a plugin by Aokis, the Tree Randomiser Plugin that allows you to randomise, seed, location and scale of trees. Unforntunately it was at 1.04 and no longer supported. After firing an email off to Aokis, he informed me that VCD had patched the Tree Randomizer Plugin and more importantly released the source. VCD on inspection was no longer supporting the plugin but at least I had the source to recompile.

Long story short, I managed to workout Tanis instructions on updating a plugin and after recompiling the code I now have a 1.13 working copy of the Tree Randomiser plugin. A victory of sorts, something to lesser the bitter taste in my mouth from wiping my own project.

Back to the Drawing board.

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 - #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

• ChaunceyBillups1 : G_Mines : http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NWN2PrefabAreas.Detail&id=352
• ChaunceyBillups1 : G-Wizardlab : http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NWN2PrefabAreas.Detail&id=353
• Zach le Bon: Generic Interiors From Simaeon : http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NWN2PrefabAreas.Detail&id=230
• Hellfire : High Pass : http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NWN2PrefabAreas.Detail&id=334
• Boozehound Blue : Mountain Summit : http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NWN2PrefabAreas.Detail&id=350
• Lady Lilia/Shimmer : Temples -Evil, Neitral & Good : http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NWN2PrefabAreas.Detail&id=133
• Briesence : Ships Interiors : http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NWN2PrefabAreas.Detail&id=284
• NeVerSun : Some Mine : http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NWN2PrefabAreas.Detail&id=281

Plugins

• Vordan : Vordan's Shop Wizard :http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NWN2PlugIns.Detail&id=5
• Sothis B : NWN1 area converter : http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NWN2PlugIns.Detail&id=60
• Sothis B and Seraldin : NWN2 Mapper (taken up by Sothis B) : http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NWN2PlugIns.Detail&id=62
• Sunjammer : Sunjammers Tintinator 2 : http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NWN2PlugIns.Detail&id=50
• Tani : TerraCoppa : http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NWN2PlugIns.Detail&id=25

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.

Prefabia Restarted - #4

I thought it was time to post up some screen shots of whats happening in Prefabia, specifically around the area of Stone Port. Stone Port, will be the first area a player gets to experience once they leave the welcome room and is intended to be the start area for all players regardless of factions.

Stone Port is intended to be gritty and dank, though in the screenshots that follow you can see that I haven't played with the fog, sky etc as yet. That will be one of my final touch ups before I sit down and replicate the area with TerraCoppa.

Image 1: Standing On the Bridge between the Rock looking down at the docks. This bridge is accessed via the moving up through the Rock or from the other side via the mines.

Image 2: Standing on one of the docks down int he port, looking North West.

Image 3: Standing on a dock, looking due North. You can see the Rock in the background.





Image 4: On the centre street in the middle of the buildings, looking East I think.

Image 5: In Stone Port on the West side of town, looking west. Rather pretty if you ask me. Baron or BTH would say too pretty but meh, dank is what they are good at.

Image 6: North West side of the Rock, looking Northwards at one of the High Bridges (walkable).
Image 7: High on the Rock looking down onto the river, no name for that yet.

Image 8: Walking along the spine of the rock, this takes you to one of the lighthouses.

Image 9: Just a pretty image looking Westwards on top of the Rock, ahh stars how you twinkle.

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.

Prefabia Restarted - #2

A small update but one highlighting an excellent tool by Tani called TerraCoppa. Sadly it is no longer maintained but Tani has kindly provided the source code so that it can be compiled to work in later releases of NWN2.

http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Nwn2plugins.Detail&id=25&comment_page=3


TerraCoppa allows a builder to rapidly replicate an area and the contents. It can rotate, raise/lower the height of the terrain and migrate all the bits and pieces you would find in area, over to your duplicate.

TerraCoppa will be a major part of my workflow, allowing me to grab and move parts of areas from other prefabs across into my own world. Using the tool you can map up areas outside the walkmesh and make them a new area that you can walk in.

Work Flow.

1. Rotate the map by 90 degrees due to the map orientated in the wrong direction.

2. Shift the map backwards by one grid row, so that the docks that were out of the walkable area now fall into it.

Original Map

Shifted Map, note the green textured sothern part of the map. You get that when TerrCoppa moves things around, texture is default to the map.

3. Shift map one grid to left, so more of the hill is in the walkmesh.

4. Replicated the terrain on the eastern edge and dropped it over the green texture, same with southern. All that remains is to clean up and remove bits that you don't want. You can see the joins in the image below, but a little brush work and gone.

After some quick work and tweaking the water, it is done. This area will form the starting ton for Prefabia. The area will nee some fine touch ups and wameshitig,but is prety well ready to go.

Prefabia - Restarted #1

After discssuing some excellent stuff with Sir Elric and BarryTheHatchet, I thought I would dust off my NWN
Prefabia - Restarted Post #1 After discssuing some excellent stuff with Sir Elric and BarryTheHatchet, I thought I would dust off my NWN2 PW project and begin work in earnest.

Core concept of my project is to use primarily prefabs that already exist on the web as a core for my world and only build areas where I have to. Not really rocket science and will allow me to rapidly implement interiors, stores and specific areas that fit with world concept. The flavour of the world is present day FR on the North shore of the Moonsea, focussed on RP with PVP as a possible consequence. Main reason for FR is that the NWN2 toolset is FR and items etc are already specific to that world concept. Baron pointed out to me, rightly so, that I can either make a vanilla flavour world or one with true angst and grit. After thinking on this I reckon I shall give the angst and grit a good shot. Will take me time but the darkness will be worth it. One of my previous posts had the docks as the world entry point, this will not change as it is complete now and all areas are connected with prefab interiors. I will put posts and updates here as I move along on this. Decisions so far… Working Title is Prefabia AI - Jasperres NWN2, though for now default will be in place Persistence via some form of database Spawn System from Aeon, may require a minor tweak, unsure On enter/On Exit area - Aeon, tweaked for nwn2 Naming standards - require update for NWN2 Haks - to be decided, though BTH Haks are a must Intention is that I shall track in this blog my efforts Spor2 PW project and begin wrok in earnest. Core concept of my project is to use primarily prefabs that already exist on the web as a core for my world and only build areas where I have to. Not really rocket science and will allow me to rapidly implement interiors, stores and specific areas that fit with world concept.

The flavour of the world is present day FR on the North shore of the Moonsea, focussed on RP with PVP as a possible consequnce. Main reason for FR is that the NWN2 toolset is FR and items etc are already specific to that world concept. Baron pointed out to me, rightly so, that I can either make a vanilla flvour world or one with true angst and grit. After thinking on this I reckon I shall give the angst and grit a good shot. Will take me time but the darkness will be worth it.

One of my previous posts had the docks as the world entry point, this will not change as it is complete now and all areas are connected with prefab interiors. I will put posts and uipdates here as I move along on this.

Decisions so far…

Working Title is Prefabia
AI - Jasperres NWN2, though for now default will be in place
Persistance via some form of database
Spawn System from Aeon, may require a minor tweak, unsure
On enter/On Exit area - Aeon, tweaked for nwn2
Naming standards - require update for NWN2
Haks - to be decided, though BTH Haks are a must

Intention is that I shall track in this blog my efforts

Spor