Placeables Project: Corridors Beta

[Buddha]

For the past few weeks, I've been mucking about with 3ds max/nwnmax to see if I could figure out how to create placeables. It all came about as I was working on a player house, and couldn't find anything better than tables sunk to negative values to use as an alternate floor cover. Don't even get me started on the walls. I searched the vault and found a few floor/wall covering packs, but for the most part, the wall coverings were severely neglected. They generally consisted of a simple cubical object that would cover a straight wall, but when it came to stairs or doorways or anything else, you were fooked.

It took me about three weeks to get the first placeable done to a point that I thought it was acceptable. I've done the other 8 in the past three days. There's a bit of a ... learning curve cliff with 3d modeling, I've discovered.

Corridors - The Alternative

What tileset is this, you ask?



"Not a tileset" is my response. That is a set of 9 placeables used to cover a 4x4 area made from the Corridor terrain tile. All pieces that extend above the wall height have Aurora Trimesh Fadeable property set, so if you have the second story set to fade automatically, they should. Yep, 16 lovely squares ... and it only cost me 58 placeable instances and about 15 minutes time to place them. Not only that, but part of my learning cliff in 3ds max was to figure out exactly how to set up the model so that when you place it in the toolset that you're not working with .000001 of a decimal point for placement to get it lined up right. I succeeded:



Simply drop the placeable in, rotate it, then drag it close to where you want it. When you next go to adjust location, you'll be close enough to type in nice round numbers and have it slap right up against the wall or floor. The only things that don't follow this rule are the floor coverings when there are carpets involved. The reason for that is that I really designed this to work with the blank city interior rooms hak. If there are carpets, you'll have to set the z value to about 0.03 to hide them.



So why the post? Does Buddha just need a little ego stroke? No, not really. What I need is some folks that enjoy toolsetting to take this thing and try to break it. Don't focus so much on the textures, as I plan to make a set of about 10 different kinds, and there is much fine tuning still for me to do in that department. Focus more on fit and ease of use, as well as trying to discover if there is any part of the City Interior Corridors that I neglected. Give me feedback on what you think of the set so far, and what you think it might still need for the corridors.

NOTE: I've discovered one known issue that I can't seem to figure out. Sometimes, when a straight wall piece is placed along the outside wall of an area, even though it shows up fine in the toolset, the actual IG wall is jet black. If this occurs, you can fix it by moving the wall into the room a mere .01.

Instructions

1. Right click and download the following .rar file: Corridors.rar

2. Extract the files, placing the hak in your ..\Neverwinter Nights\hak\ folder and the mod in your ..\Neverwinter Nights\modules folder.

3. Fire up the toolset and open the Corridors module. There is an example area built already; feel free to examine it, or dive straight into making a new area.

4. The placeables are all in the Custom category, under Miscellaneous Interior.

Living room is next, followed by shop. Quite a few combinations for these, so it may be a bit before the next batch comes out.

[Gorgon]

The floor of your mod cuts off the feet a bit like a raised carpet placeable, but that is expected. I'm sure most people wouldn't notice, but it stood out like a sore thumb to me in a second. I'll mess around with it in the toolset and see if it can go any lower later. Walls are the same if you stand close. You get body parts buried in them. Also to be expected considering what you have done.

I'll start messing around with more ways to be critical later, but I like the idea. While a placeable can't replace a tile, it does open up lots of options that aren't normally available, even with a new tileset.

[MadK@]

Floor can be safely set at 0.01 rather that 0.03 eliminating the sunken feel.

Buddha this looks amazing well done.

[Marleh]

NOTE: I've discovered one known issue that I can't seem to figure out. Sometimes, when a straight wall piece is placed along the outside wall of an area, even though it shows up fine in the toolset, the actual IG wall is jet black. If this occurs, you can fix it by moving the wall into the room a mere .01.

I've seen this happen with placeables that are put half in/half out of a wall. My best guess is that somehow the game figures that the placeable needs to be lit from the other side. If I ever get Tevez's bar in-game, there are two examples there that I just can't figure what to do with them. You will understand what I mean when its submitted for checking.

I've not fiddled with it yet, so I'll ask this now, are these wall placeables made so you cannot walk through them? For example, could I use these walls to divide a room, and a character couldn't walk through like a magician?

Which brings up another question, which might be too far off the subject. Is there any plans for the blank city interior room hak to be added to the rest of the mods? Or is it too kludged up to mess with?

[MadK@]

The walls work just like the placeable windows. They'd need to be placed back to back to achieve a solid wall

Lets wait and see bout the hak list.

[Buddha]

The floor of your mod cuts off the feet a bit like a raised carpet placeable, but that is expected. I'm sure most people wouldn't notice, but it stood out like a sore thumb to me in a second.

I see we feel the same about missing feet. It drives me absolutely apeshit as well. That's why I love the blank city interiors hak -- you can slam the floor right down and not lose your feet.

Walls are the same if you stand close. You get body parts buried in them. Also to be expected considering what you have done.

I can fix this one, and have debated doing it. It's relatively easy, but will increase the size of the final product. I can just slap a walkmesh plane on each of the wall pieces, and you won't be able to walk into them. Marleh, to answer your question, right now they are "illusionary" walls, in that if you put them across a room, you could walk right through them. This is definitely one area that I'm looking for feedback in -- is it worth the size increase to add the walkmesh?

[Buddha]

The walls work just like the placeable windows. They'd need to be placed back to back to achieve a solid wall

This is another area that I'm not sure on which way to go. By deleting the back sides of all of the wall placeables, I just about cut the poly count in half, sometimes more. However, it does make it interesting when trying to click on one in the toolset from behind.

I could just as easily leave the simpler pieces "whole" and then you wouldn't have to put two together to make a wall. However, I'm not going to go back and readdress the more complicated doorframes, as that falls outside of the scope of this project. They're odd enough that they'd look like crap placed solo anyway. Some pieces, though...

PS: Even if you put them back to back, you'd still be able to walk straight through them until/unless I do the pwk.

[Marleh]

I've solved the illusionary wall problem by using a fallen timber placeable where I don't want people walking. How much of a difference is there between using a second placeable, or adding the walkmesh? Myself, I think I would like the walkmesh added for a cleaner look.

There are several one-sided items in the CEP pallete, so that really isn't that big of a deal. Check the large and small paper screen windows to see what I mean.

[Buddha]

I've solved the illusionary wall problem by using a fallen timber placeable where I don't want people walking. How much of a difference is there between using a second placeable, or adding the walkmesh? Myself, I think I would like the walkmesh added for a cleaner look.

Resource-wise, it would probably require less to have a walkmesh than use another placeable to make the area solid. And, using another placeable goes contrary to the idea that formed this project in the first place. I was sick of having to jiggle things about trying to get a result I wanted. Kinda like the Radioactive Man episode of the Simpsons where the film crew is painting horses to look like cows:

Martin: Uh, Sir, why don't you just use real cows?
Painter: Cows don't look like cows on film. You gotta use horses.
Ralph: What do you do if you want something that looks like a horse?
Painter: Eh, usually we just tape a bunch of cats together.

I'll put a walkmesh on one of the more complex pieces and see what the cost in bytes is.

[Buddha]

Full walkmesh for all nine placeables took the hak from 2470KB to 2736KB. That's nuttin. Guess I'll be putting walkmeshes on all of them.

Was going to put up an updated version with walkmesh and new textures, but I'm still trying to figure out how to handle the floor placeable that goes over the stairs so that the texture matches up with the rest of the floor tiles.

[Buddha]

Updated. I tweaked some models, added walkmeshes, made a second texture and changed the first one. I also added a floor tile that allows you to change the direction that the boards run at the corner (basically marries the planks up at a 45* angle). Redid the mod and put in a second area to demonstrate the new corner pieces as well as to show off the textures. If anyone is still interested, download the file again (same link) and you'll get the new stuff. I'd appreciate any feedback.

Instructions

1. Right click and download the following .rar file: Corridors.rar

2. Extract the files, placing the hak in your ..\Neverwinter Nights\hak\ folder and the mod in your ..\Neverwinter Nights\modules folder.

3. Fire up the toolset and open the Corridors module. There is an example area built already; feel free to examine it, or dive straight into making a new area.

4. The placeables are all in the Custom category, under Miscellaneous Interior.

[Ensoleille]

I haven't done any playtesting or buildtesting of this, but I REALLY like the look of the corners!

[Horred the Plague]

Very nice, Buddha! I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who's been buried in 3ds max for the past few weeks.

I'd offer advice on how to deal with the stairs placeable, but not enough information for any intelligent response.