Official ALFA CC haks:

AcadiusLost · Post by **AcadiusLost** » Thu Aug 09, 2007 5:19 pm

Allright, got some good progress on these this week, thanks to GF's guidance. So far, we've got more or less integrated:

Clothing Tintables
Door, fireplace, and wall Tintables
Faerun Stained Glass Windows
Arched Bridges
Cave Roof Placeables
Castles, Towers, and Ramparts (building pieces)
Deep Halls tileset
snow textures
Heed's PC tools
Blood Splatters [now added]
Spell VFX mod (tones down buff effects) [now added]

under consideration:

Deep Sewers tileset
Hatsplosion for more hats

?

Any more must-haves? Shouldn't be too long before we can distribute these. Just have to resolve the door 2das and decide on a naming convention for the haks.

[edit: added fx]

ç i p h é r · Post by **ç i p h é r** » Thu Aug 09, 2007 5:26 pm

Great. Are we still reviewing the content "under consideration"? We can certainly use the sewer tileset sooner rather than later.

Thanks AL.

Grand Fromage · Post by **Grand Fromage** » Thu Aug 09, 2007 8:08 pm

ç i p h é r wrote:Great. Are we still reviewing the content "under consideration"? We can certainly use the sewer tileset sooner rather than later.

Thanks AL.

I just want to test the sewers first. I'm 99% sure they'll go in but I want to check.

ç i p h é r · Post by **ç i p h é r** » Thu Aug 09, 2007 8:59 pm

Ok, thanks GF.

Thangorn · Post by **Thangorn** » Thu Aug 09, 2007 9:13 pm

GF wrote:I just want to test the sewers first. I'm 99% sure they'll go in but I want to check.

Make sure you have the most current version as the creator may have updated since I told him/her about the missing walkmesh on a tile. He/she did say they were going to update based on my bug report may or may not have happened.

Grand Fromage · Post by **Grand Fromage** » Fri Aug 10, 2007 5:56 am

The sewer tileset is very incomplete, though it is technically usable. Do you guys need it now? If you do we'll add it, if not we'll wait for them to finish.

Thangorn · Post by **Thangorn** » Fri Aug 10, 2007 8:41 am

The sewer tileset is very incomplete, though it is technically usable. Do you guys need it now? If you do we'll add it, if not we'll wait for them to finish.

I dont need it now.. for Beta 2 most likely..

AcadiusLost · Post by **AcadiusLost** » Fri Aug 10, 2007 3:54 pm

These are coming together nicely- we've padded all the 2das we've merged now, Indio went through and changed all the Ramparts blueprints to fit the new 2da rows, GF has been invaluable at helping to work out what should go where, and how we should handle naming and padding.

so far it's looking like:

alfa_2da.hak
alfa_acr.hak
alfa_fx.hak
alfa_gui.hak
alfa_items.hak
alfa_placeables.hak
alfa_terrain.hak
alfa_tiles.hak

Eight haks for now, all the 2da rows documented, along with most of the other haks, with text files bundled inside the haks.

I've tested Deep Halls, put down snow textures with blood splatters on them, next to tinted stone wall placeables, guarded by an NPC wearing a fully tinted "snow gear" robe. Everything seems to be cooperating well.

Some of the previously untintable content will turn black once the haks are first associated- but once you've decided the tint you like for them, export the tint and apply it collectively to all the instances you want in that color, makes it pretty easy to fix. If someone wants to make an ERF of the tintable placeables/doors that is pre-tinted, we can make that more widely available to builders. Until then, if you get an all-black placeable, it means it's newly-tintable.

Other than a few loose ends to tie up, all we're waiting on is a final call on Deep Sewers- right now I'm hanging about halfway through adding it so it's easy enough to go either way with it. GF says it's incomplete / work in progress, but there is probably enough there for people to play with in the near-term. What do you think, Cipher? Put it in now, so you can get started, or give it time to "mature" first?

ç i p h é r · Post by **ç i p h é r** » Fri Aug 10, 2007 4:26 pm

The note on the vault says that they'll be expanding the tileset "in the future", but that's awfully vague. That could be weeks, months, years, or even never.

Rick's already working on sewers and was interested in making use of it (in combination with his existing work). From the screens I've seen (especially some samples Aelred put together), I really like what they've done. So I guess if what's available now is usable and not something they intend to redo, I would very much like to add it. That's just my preference though.

BTW, the HAKs look really well organized guys. Great work!

AcadiusLost · Post by **AcadiusLost** » Fri Aug 10, 2007 4:30 pm

I think that group (RWS) is working with a mind to backward compatibility, so hopefully it won't be too bad to upgrade later as content is added. If Rick is ready/starting already to focus on the sewers, best to get it in so he's got the tools he needs to work with. I already made the 2da edits, so it's just a matter of throwing the content in, documenting, and testing briefly.

Grand Fromage · Post by **Grand Fromage** » Fri Aug 10, 2007 7:26 pm

Yeah, go ahead then. I just wanted to make sure someone really wants to use it first. It's missing a lot of really basic features like doorways and stairs, though those can be worked around with regular old ground ATs for the time being.

Aelred · Post by **Aelred** » Fri Aug 10, 2007 11:01 pm

Acadius thanks alot for putting all the work into this. Sorry about my usual technical njubery but the extra things that came along with the Deep Halls set like the Entry .erf (entrance, door and floor placeable) and the icon bitmaps which go in the \\Program Files\Atari\Neverwinter Nights 2\NWN2Toolset\Tiles Directory --- Will those still have to be added in seperately or are they somehow included in the hak?

I suppose it is more of a question for any new builders that might sign on in the future. If a new builder will need to use the alfa hak AND throw in a couple more things for the toolset we might want to keep a running list and have the "builders extras" on the downloads page. It would be for stuff that a normal player would not use like those toolset icons for the Deep Halls set.

AcadiusLost · Post by **AcadiusLost** » Fri Aug 10, 2007 11:20 pm

Much like in NWN1, the haks will be sufficient to host or to join a module (as a player or DM), so they'll support all the content available.

When it comes to actually building with the new content, things get a bit more complicated.

Currently, some of the 2das need to be in the override to have their associated content appear in the toolset. Seems to be a NWN2 toolset limitation currently. The tilesets also have custom icons that need to be installed to build with them. So, there will be instructions and an override pack for builders to use while toolseting.

For things like the custom placeables, effects, doors, etc: the content will be in the toolset as soon as you associate the haks with your module, but there won't necessarily be any blueprints that use them by default. It was the same with NWN1: you had to import a pack like "Burt's placeables" to actually get blueprints for many of the custom placeables- but if you were to make a new blueprint and pick an appearance, they do all list in the dropdown menu.

Unfortunately, the erf files with blueprints in off the vault get broken coming into an ALFA module, because we juggle things around with our 2das- part of this is to use later entries, to leave room for new content coming in with the expansion this fall. I've been editing these minimally so they agree with the new 2das, but it's time-consuming. I did arched bridges, cave roofs, stained glass windows, and the Deep Halls/Deep Sewers ones- Indio jumped at the oppotunity to do all 116 of the Castle Ramparts ones as well- so we should have a decent set of working, importable erfs for builders to use, in place of those that are packaged with the systems off the vault.

Once the haks are out, anyone is welcome to put together erfs of blueprints, like the blood splatters for example (currently only available by creating new effect blueprints and finding the right effect from the list). This might be useful for some of the base content as well, as much of what is now tintable (under the haks) comes out looking a little broken (solid black) when used straight from the base version currently.

Hope this helps clarify?

Aelred · Post by **Aelred** » Sat Aug 11, 2007 3:25 pm

AcadiusLost wrote:so we should have a decent set of working, importable erfs for builders to use

I know I am a pain in the @#$% but I honestly just don't inderstand. Each of us will have to import each erf individually? and there will be 200+ to do?

I've only used existing blueprints so far. When you create a new blueprint what are the steps to doing it?

I am truly sorry but I need some help - please! I know you have done a ton putting together the hak Acadius but would there be any chance that you could write up a "readme for dummy builders" - to detail everything that needs to be done step by step - Deep Halls/Deep Sewers was usable for me only because of the clear readme they included - otherwise I wouldn't have had a clue what to do.

ç i p h é r · Post by **ç i p h é r** » Sat Aug 11, 2007 3:32 pm

Aelred wrote:Each of us will have to import each erf individually? and there will be 200+ to do?

Only if they are not packaged together in one large ERF. An ERF can contain any number of blueprints, scripts, or other NWN objects.

Oh and creating a blueprint is easy. Just right click on your palette and choose from the popup menu options. Then fill in the blueprint properties and you're done. Of course, you'll want to be mindful of our conventions noted in the wiki (varies depending on what you are creating).