Official hak suggestions thread

Rick7475 · Post by **Rick7475** » Mon Oct 08, 2007 11:24 am

ETA? I am already working with some of this stuff.

Grand Fromage · Post by **Grand Fromage** » Mon Oct 08, 2007 3:24 pm

Depends when Acadius and I have time to go through it and get it in, after dealing with anything MotB breaks. You should probably stop already working with it, since the 2das have to be changed and all of it will be broken. Maybe next week if MotB is an easy upgrade.

Also new haks will have commando drow

Rick7475 · Post by **Rick7475** » Mon Oct 08, 2007 6:53 pm

I am using the new round towers and walls, and that's it. All the walls and towers of SM have been replaced, so if you could keep those the same it would justify my 30+ hours on it over the last 4 days and help us get closer to live

Thangorn · Post by **Thangorn** » Mon Oct 08, 2007 9:49 pm

Rick are you aware of how the 2da entries work in the haks?

Every placeable needs its own 2da line to be visible in the toolset/client.

If the entries for the new buildings you are using currently conflict with any other placeables in alfas 2da hak, you will get random looking stuff in your areas rather than the buildings you have so meticulously placed..

I'm just letting you know so you dont waste any more of your time unless you are just draft/test building with them.

If you are attached to that build you might want to post a thread in this forum requesting which 2da lines you want the placeable towers and stuff at. I'm not one of the hak guys but if you are requesting particular 2da lines and those 2da lines are already taken up by something else, its a real PITA to shift things and that will break other people's builds therefore I would suggest that the hak guys probably cant move everything around and you may need to rebuild.

If you hak guys do rule to switch the 2das, can you please tell me which placeables are going to be borked so I can rebuild. That'll be an inconvenience to me as I have already rebuilt Zhentil Keep countless times to accomodate new content but I'll make the sacrifice if its not going to be too bad.

If the 2da entries for the new tower placeables are free in alfas haks however, then it probably doable but once again, up to the hak guys.

AcadiusLost · Post by **AcadiusLost** » Mon Oct 08, 2007 10:00 pm

Thangorn: have you tried opening areas containing placeables that have changed 2da positions yet? It seems to me they'd still be selectable via the Area Contents window, and one could reset the appearance via their properties window- even do this collectively across multiple instances of the same placeable (eg: select all the dissapeared "Tower 1" placeables, open up the collective properties tab, then find and select the new "tower 1" appearance from the dropdown menu).

If this works- could save a lot of time for builders like Rick who may have already built up a fair bit with non-ALFA-tized placeables.

I'll talk to GF in the next few days to plan our next 2da wrangling session- hopefully by the end of the week, we can get it in along with the MotB changes.

Rick7475 · Post by **Rick7475** » Mon Oct 08, 2007 10:14 pm

This is the hak I am using I listed it on page 3).

http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NW ... ail&id=221

I did check with Indio and he said to go ahead and build with them. Honestly, these are the best tower-like and wall building tools out there. The stock stuff doesn't even come close. I'll be posting screenies in a few days, and you won't believe how much they have changed what Indio did initially to Silverymoon.

If they can be preserved, it means 30+ hours I can spend on interiors and getting Silverymoon up to live, otherwise it's a major setback.

I'm not trying to be a dick here, I am trying to build as best I can. There are a lot less people, builders, and custom content in NWN2 than there was in NWN1, and the interest is slacking off. Yes, we want the best quality, but we are limited. These walls and towers have been something we have needed for a long time. Sorry I jumped the gun, but believe me, they are worth it.

Grand Fromage · Post by **Grand Fromage** » Mon Oct 08, 2007 10:37 pm

They will be going in, but the 2da has to be altered to fit ours. Everything you've placed will be broken, and the module may become incompatible. For the best chance of success you need to delete all of that stuff, then remove the hak and resave as a new file.

I have no idea how well this would work, but it's a trick you could try. Make groups out of all the identical placeables, then change their appearances to something else. After the new haks, switch the appearances back to what they're supposed to be (keep notes). In theory that should put everything back and it'd only require minor adjustment. I have never tried this though.

For future reference for everybody. No matter what anyone tells you, do not build using any content not in the ALFA haks. There's always a chance we won't add it, and even if we do the 2da entries will be different and they will not work.

AcadiusLost · Post by **AcadiusLost** » Mon Oct 08, 2007 10:45 pm

Also, note that the 2da-shifting approach we've used with the ALFA haks is saving us from having essentially everything built with custom placeables from being broken by upgrading to MotB- very few vault content contributors took the expansion's changes in mind when choosing how to release their hak. So, by waiting until we incorporate things properly, you're saving yourself a headache on the MotB transition as well.

Apologies that this was not conveyed earlier- if you'd like to put your area up on the DMFTP later this week, I can try to test those tricks for preserving the work across the shift in 2da positions.

Rick7475 · Post by **Rick7475** » Mon Oct 08, 2007 10:51 pm

Well F.

I think I am taking a break for a while.

AcadiusLost · Post by **AcadiusLost** » Fri Oct 12, 2007 5:20 pm

We managed to maintain the same 2da positions for the City Walls hak, so you should be able to just swap the custom hak out, and the updated alfa_2da and alfa_placeables haks in.

Every now and then, a vault builder does think ahead on these things, hooray.

indio · Post by **indio** » Fri Oct 12, 2007 7:16 pm

Well now, what were the odds of that.

Grand Fromage · Post by **Grand Fromage** » Fri Oct 12, 2007 7:24 pm

Not good, so no one else do it! But you got real lucky this time.

Buy a lottery ticket.

indio · Post by **indio** » Fri Oct 12, 2007 7:35 pm

I wish it was luck. Sadly, he included the secret 2da locations in his description:

Hi, this is a set of placeables to help with making city walls, castle etc. There are 19 placeables and 3 doors in this set currently, it is a work in progress so i might make changes to some things later.

placeables.2da lines are 7000+

doortypes.2da are 700+

I'll just have to buy cigarettes at the newsagent instead.

Grand Fromage · Post by **Grand Fromage** » Fri Oct 12, 2007 8:06 pm

Don't take that as a free pass to just add haks as you wish. It's not how we want to order the 2da, but wasn't a big enough deal to break Rick's work over. The next person who starts incorporating non-ALFA haks with the assumption they won't interfere will not be so fortunate.

AcadiusLost · Post by **AcadiusLost** » Fri Oct 12, 2007 8:29 pm

Just for example, just to maintain the 2da row numbers for City Walls, we had to add an extra 4000 rows of padding to the placeables.2da- do-able this time, but not what we're going to want to do often.