Posted: Tue Sep 10, 2002 2:47 am Post subject:
The NWN Toolkit!
I can't stress enough how cool the NWN toolkit is. I have never, in my entire life, seen a more powerful piece of modding software, or, at least, OFFICIAL modding software. Areas are rendered in full 3D, with every kind of camera moving possible (Pitch, Roll, Turn, Zoom, Rotate, the whole nine yards), custom weapons, armour, clothing, amulets, rings, etc. right at your fingerprints, and most of it is done for you, like, if you're making a City Interior area, and click "Living Room" as terrain, then click somewhere, it makes a literal living room with bookcases, fireplaces, chairs couches carpets, lighting... Also, there's prefabs for things like Wizard Labs and dungeons, which you can then edit. Adding sounds is easy too. Just click on "Fire: Small" in the sounds menu, then click near a fireplace, a voila, you got a fireplace with the nice crackling sound of burning wood on it.
The only real gripe I have with it is making new stuff. When you make a new weapon, for example, you go to New Weapon, then click which category (Ie. Ranged -> Crossbows) and base (Ie. Light Crossbow) it is, then give it a name (Ie. Light Crossbow of Doom +5), appearance (each part of it has a bunch of different appearances you can choose from, so you can customize it really easily, and it also spits out images for the inventory and hotkey bar while its at it), then choose the three or four or however many colours there are. Now, here's the part I don't like. When you make this, it's basically a normal Light Crossbow. What you gotta do to make that "Of Doom +5" part of the name real is go to the Properties tab, where you choose all its additional properties, like Attack Damage +1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 (We'd choose +5), then give it special properties (Ie. high accuracy, Haste (When you have it equipped, your attacks are the speed they'd be if you had Haste caste on you), fire damage, piercing damage, added vulnerability to certain damage types (Ie. Melee, since you can't block with your sword, becuase you're using a crossbow), or added damage to certain races (Like Half-Orc because they're really big and easy to aim at). The bad thing is: Each of these options has a PRICE associated with it. Like:
Now, then game adds those together to get the price of it. It is NOT POSSIBLE THE EDIT THE PRICE! You can make it MORE expensive, but not less. Also, it has a SET level. Level 20, if we use what's above. How in the HELL am I gonna equp a Level 20 weapon??? It's a pain in the proverbial ASS. I wanted to add my Light Crossbow of Doom +5 to a merchant (Actually, the merchant was me. It was in an area called Kane's House, and the merchant's name was Kane), but it didn't work ingame, because it cost so much I could never HOPE to afford it, and I'm only Level 7!.
Other than that, the editor is one of the best I've seen. Hopefully in the later patches, they'll provide a way to cheapen stuff like plot items so you can buy them and equip them. It is a fairly new game. *shrugs*
BTW, I'll post a pic of my map later tommorow, just to give you guys an idea of the editor. QUICK_EDIT
CC, this isn't a Warcraft 3 forum. Besides, the War3 editing tools aren't as powerful as the NWN Toolkit. The NWN Toolkit can edit just about any value in the game without needing to muck around in C, as you do to change core values in War3. Stop using every topic I post about NWN to say that War3 is better. Both games are probably equal, though I find NWN more fun. Anyone found posting topics and replies about OTHER, NON-NWN games, will have their post edited.
Anyway, here's the shots from the editor:
http://ppm.entexplode.com/kane/aurora/image1.jpg - Just an example of the prefabs in the NWN editor. It only took one click to make that (The steam, BTW, is animated, and animated quite well, I might add. NWN has a pretty good particle system). Note, the little floating balls made of dots that have a semicircle around them are sounds. The circle is the sound object itself, and the dome around it shows how far people can hear the sound.
http://ppm.entexplode.com/kane/aurora/image4.jpg - I LOVE this effect! When you give a weapon a really high fire damage (Additional fire damage), it literally catches on fire. It's visable ingame, too.
Cant you see? I DELIBERATELY rant about warcraft in reply to EVERYTHING you say about NWN. 'Cause its fun. Edit my message and I'll peel off your skin with an apple peeler. QUICK_EDIT
Joined: 25 Nov 2002 Location: An Analogous Reality
Posted: Sun Dec 01, 2002 1:01 pm Post subject:
.hak files maybe?
anyway the auto price and level thing is for balance.
If you want to reduce the price then change the merchant's mark up and mark down and so on.
Joined: 25 Nov 2002 Location: An Analogous Reality
Posted: Tue Dec 03, 2002 5:05 pm Post subject:
hey, he said he knows about it, just never messed around with it, there's a difference, messing around with stuff you don't need can screw up your module really badly. Anyway, Kane probably knows stuff that I don't, I don't use the Aurora set much, I just know some stuff. QUICK_EDIT
Also Known As: banshee_revora (Steam) Joined: 15 Aug 2002 Location: Brazil
Posted: Fri Dec 06, 2002 2:57 am Post subject:
yea, I know, TS.... but, returning to the initial topic... this toolkit sounds promising. I mean, if it's really that easy to edit stuff (except prices :p), as long as you don't need to appeal to the damn wordpad... mate.. sounds promising... QUICK_EDIT
Also, I recently discovered the joy, love, a soft fluffy bunnies of the .2da files. They work in a table format (Which there is an editor for) and are similar to the rules files for WW games, only less powerful. With them, you could add spells, classes, weapons, graphics, sounds, music... Just about anything. Unfortunately, a lot of the data is in a 2da.bif file which is a pain in the ass to go through (And can't be opened by the editor). There are some files extracted from it, though, and they are in the override directory. I'm playing with them, but I'm still not sure exactly how they work... QUICK_EDIT
You should be able to get 2daEdit here: http://www.geocities.com/nwntool/. It can only open the .2da files in your Override folder, and in order to use them, they have to be in the override folder (Otherwise, it uses the defaults). Basically, it's like excell, and fairly easy to use, but the actual data you need to make some serious changes is in 2da.bif, and reading that is like trying to swallow a small planet. QUICK_EDIT
Joined: 25 Nov 2002 Location: An Analogous Reality
Posted: Fri Dec 06, 2002 6:05 pm Post subject:
I have already got 2daEdit, yeah, only thing small enough to read easily is the XP table and even that makes no sense at all. Ah, well, world domination schemes will have to wait. QUICK_EDIT
Terror, does that even matter? If I run a character through to Singleplayer campaign I can make a character just as powerful as anyone who uses the Toolkit. People who use the toolkit just do so to get things they missed in the singleplayer game, or to make a new character if they don't want to play 300 hours of Singleplayer. QUICK_EDIT
You can post new topics in this forum You can reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum You cannot attach files in this forum You can download files in this forum
The NWN Toolkit!
.
