Neverwinter Nights Forum News

Remove all ads!

(Originally posted by chevalier)

Here are today's Neverwinter Nights forum highlights. Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context. Bear in mind also that the posts presented here are copied as-is, and that any bad spelling and grammar does not get corrected on our end.

Georg Zoeller, Designer

Community expansion pack: Yepp, I always thought that the CEP team was quite quiet for such an awesome project. It's something NWN needed for a long time now: a high quality, standardized content package that will cut down the high number of different Hakpaks currently required - I have no doubts that module builders will embrace it with open arms.

Further:
One more reason to be happy about CEP:

They will most likely handle the 2da updates required when a patch adds new creatures, etc, ect - which means that people who use CEP in their modules will be able to get an easy update from them without having to bother to update their files. Apart from DLA and CODI, CEP is definitly THE project I have been waiting for for a long time because it will make using custom content so much easier for non techies. Again, all praises should go to the CEP team!

Further:

Quote: I never quite got the hang of the whole hak pack thing. Can we put this one in the override and have it work? If yes, I'm happy.

Hakpaks have their merits - putting stuff into override wouldn't make it magically appear in your game in most cases - new content requires modules that actually use it to show up 90% of the time. It would just prevent you from playing on most servers if you dumped the files into override and would cause a nightmare on your end when it comes to updating to a new patch that changes 2da files. (I partly blame the name "hakpak" from the aversion people have against those). However, you will just have to put CEP into your HAK directory and don't worry about it (not even that, I imagine they will probably do an installer for it as well) and as soon as you start a CEP enabled module, the new content will be just there - not much harder than putting files into override, and certainly more manageable.

Dawid Gaider, Designer

Community expansion pack:

Quote: But didnt BW complie all the best community work and make it jive together? seems to me like it would be one holy mother of a scripting nightmare, but then again i still mix up cin and cout.

No, no. We may have brought this project's existence to a lot of people's attention today, but that's it for our involvement. This is an expansion pack being brought to you by the community, not by us. Basically some community members (rightfully) thought it would be a good idea to sift through all the submissions on NWVault and pick out the best stuff, applied a standardized level of quality that these elements had to meet and are putting it altogether into one hak pak for the rest of the community to use.

The good part of this?

1) You know that what you're getting works.

2) You know that there's a certain level of quality being adhered to, so it will likely see more widespread use.

3) The collection can serve as a base standard, the hope being that future projects can safely say "uses the CEP" and expect that the majority of players already have it and don't need to download the same hak paks over again in a different order.

A big part of the problem with all the elements that are in the CEP is that they all involve 2DA changes and that, individually, form the biggest obstacle towards widespread use of community content. One download = only one 2da change = biggest bang for minor pain. Also, leaving tilesets out (for now, I assume) means a much smaller download... and since tilesets don't involve 2DA changes their hak paks can safely be used over top the CEP without conflict. All that being a long-winded way of saying that this is a GREAT idea and that some hard-working community members are the ones who deserve all the accolades here.

Jay Watamaniuk, Community Manager

Community expansion pack: No tilesets for the time being as they would add a whole lot of stuff to download...but that does not mean tilsets will never be considered. The CEP team is a remarkable bunch of folks and my hats off to them and the very talented builders who created all this new content. Let me say again this is not a BioWare product of any kind but a lot of community members getting together and sharing time, work and a wee bit of madness. BioWare is very excited about the CEP and the potential it has for our community.

Further:
We had small talk on seeing if it possible to make the CEP, DLA, CODI and the d20 groups compatible with each other. It has to do with adjusting some current limits we have placed on the NWN engine. I have no tech background so I can't say if it possible or not but more talks will be had...As for official expansion packs; we are not developing any at the moment and have not considered compatibility with CEP as a result.