New Wilderness Hak

[Belasco]

The arrow keys on your keyboard will give you even finer tuning than the mousewheel for zooming in and out. Playing an archer as my main, I've gotten good at adjusting my view as I go along...I don't even notice when I'm doing it anymore.

I'm 90percent certain that I can fix the areas where the trees decided to replace walls. All in all I'm not going to sweat that kinda thing too terribly much. Just assume some Verossan druid got happy and replaced a structure with nature

[Moredo]

I haven't really experienced any of these issues. I'll have a walk through the forest one of these days and check it out.

[llhht]

The arrow keys on your keyboard will give you even finer tuning than the mousewheel for zooming in and out. Playing an archer as my main, I've gotten good at adjusting my view as I go along...I don't even notice when I'm doing it anymore.

I'm curious, do you use your right hand on the arrow keys and stay off of the mouse, or do you move your left hand over?

[Belasco]

I move my right hand off of the mouse Using the mouse to click and move is taxing on the server so I do almost all of my navigating with my left hand on the W,A,S,D,Q, and E keys (which no longer have letters left on them now that I look )

[NayalaGelbert]

Just to throw my voice in as well... The trees are griefing me.

After reading this thread I thought about other servers with the hak, Le'Or and Visimontium, and whether the hak had changed my play/enjoyment of the server. I am seldom in Visimontium, so I didn't really notice the change, but I realise in hindsight, that I simply stopped going to foresty areas in Le'Or because of the foliage. The roots in particular.

I now find myself avoiding the upper-half (Hippy-Half?) of the Wilderness server because of the tree visibility issue. When I am in a treed area on the Wilderness server, I find myself either spending more time adjusting my camera view than doing anything else, or simply flying blind if I only crossing it. More and more, I simply try and stay away from treed areas because they are such a pain, and deciding not to go to particular destinations because I will have to cross treed areas. This sounds suspiciously like the definition of griefing to me.

*shrugs* Maybe I'm oversensitive to the issue, but there it is.

This, of course, is not a complaint about any of the efforts of the Team, but merely the unintended effects of the new haks.

And I can't wait to see the new areas... assuming I can see my way there...

[korak]

Just to throw my voice in as well... The trees are griefing me.

Yeah!! I use to get that in Visimontium. They DPd me a couple of times up there. They came walking over, knocked me down and put me in my bleed script.

I will agree with you that I tied to avoid the areas in Visi with trees and in LeOr. I wish that I had known about that hacked hak before now.

I also agree that things look nicer when I actually pay attention, I just wish the view was a bit clearer with the un-hacked hak.

[gutemensch]

I downloaded the hak again not paying attention and went to copy it into the hak folder to learn I already had it. However, the version at http://www.mediafire.com/?9nd1ynchhn7 is 2 meg and change bigger than the one I previously had. Can't say I have felt any real difference or anything. So, I guess all is good.

[sinn]

poking my head into this again...

when visi went live with its forest up there, I REALLY enjoyed it all of the trees (blocking the view), made it feel like a forests.. raw and untamed... I remember a few DM plots that different DMs ran for the shemathen in that forest.. those events till rate as some of the best ever... and I think ALOT of it had todo with the way the trees fell... if you get my point

the problem with add the hak to the wilderness is EVERYBODY plays there.. and has been playing there, so are used to it being a certain way... now it is different, you have to look at it a different way..... it will take some getting used to, even myself have found it difficult at times.... but I know I will get used to it....

advice.... slow down... enjoy the trees.... oh yeah SLOW DOWN! hehehehe

[Gorgon]

I love the look of the trees, but don't like them not fading out higher up if you choose that option. I'm sure there are a few hardcore players who do things with no upper fade, but sorry, it isn't for me. Realism vs playability issue, and since the wilds sees a good chunk of the action, it is gonna make a mess out of quite a few events IMO. I'll be overriding annoying trees with old versions to make the wilds playable and live with the other areas that use them being fugly.

[Mark Oban]

As a player I like it, gives me the sense of limited visiblitity, As a DM, I find it quiet restricting that I cannot zoom back to get an overall picture of the action.

[llhht]

As a player I like it, gives me the sense of limited visiblitity, As a DM, I find it quiet restricting that I cannot zoom back to get an overall picture of the action.

The zooming back part is what kills me as a player. Getting a scope of your surroundings every once in a while is pretty keen to survival. Sure, it's fun to get actually surprised and have bad guys run up on you. I enjoy surprises as much as anyone.

It sucks though having your character stand there like a bump on a log because the damn bad guy ran 2 inches and got lost in some leaves, making you miss on your click and getting AoO's as well as the normal pounding they're dishing out.

I have to go with a view behind my character in the forests, and since (my main typically uses feats every turn) I click on the enemy every turn, I misclick like mad. Normally clicking myself in the back.

I think I could roll with it if I didn't have to click on enemies as often as I do.

Man, that was some rambling gibberish...

[spool32]

I love the look of the trees, but don't like them not fading out higher up if you choose that option. I'm sure there are a few hardcore players who do things with no upper fade, but sorry, it isn't for me. Realism vs playability issue, and since the wilds sees a good chunk of the action, it is gonna make a mess out of quite a few events IMO. I'll be overriding annoying trees with old versions to make the wilds playable and live with the other areas that use them being fugly.

The problem with this is that some rather large structures are going to be completely invisible to you. If you have a look at some of the screenshots, you can see there's one where a bridge winds its way up a massive treetrunk... that bridge is walkable and there's a door transition at the top of the path. You won't be able to see tree, bridge, or door if you override the hak with the standard one.

Anyone have any idea how to make jxp_forest respect the 2nd story fade?

spoo32

[Daecon]

I think/hope the way I edited the Hak (as linked to earlier) won't override any new content so new areas built using the JXP_Forest hak should look alright. There's actually two versions of the DC Forest hak out there if I recall. One overrides Bioware's forest tileset (which gives the tall trees to all existing areas originally built with Bioware's Forest Tileset), and one doesn't.

Tile second story fading is handled through the mdl files, so changing that isn't exactly painless. It's something I considered taking a look at if I can work it all out and get enough free time in a day to play around with it all.

[Daecon]

There's actually two versions of the DC Forest hak out there if I recall. One overrides Bioware's forest tileset (which gives the tall trees to all existing areas originally built with Bioware's Forest Tileset), and one doesn't.

Whoops, meant to say DLA Canopied Forest - not DC Forest. JXP_Forest is just a combination of several haks + edits. The one that give the canopy forest look is down to DLA + a slightly edited update addition someone once released

- http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Ha ... il&id=3992

[othotbail]

Is it fun? That is the main question.
Is it fun for you as a player to have vision problems in the wilderness?
Is it fun for you as a DM now that parties have these vision problems?
Is it fun just crossing the wilderness now?
Do you think you will be playing more or less in the wilderness area now with the new hak?
Do you think you will be DMing more or less in the wilderness with the new hak?
I am personally not a big fan of the new vision problems in the wilderness but have faith in the team that once the question of "Is it fun" gets addressed they will find a way to make it fun if they don't think it is. The trees are beautiful and realistic I am hoping that a way is found to give us the best of both haks myself.

[Chemical-Burn]

...new vision problems...

That pretty much should say it all.

[Darkfire]

*cheers for not caring about the view*


The vision problem doesn't bug me a bit... I guess I'm just too quick with my mouse. Hell, when I was running around I didn't even notice for a little while. Then stopped and checked out... was hawt.


I'll try a few more times to see if I can get annoyed at it... and if I don't maybe I can figure out why I don't get annoyed and pass it on.

[Chemical-Burn]

Part of the reason i dont use the wheel a whole lot to constantly move the camera is that it has often been the bane of a frozen nwn followed by it crashing. I still use it but i dont want to be forced to use it so much more to navigate.

[Pathos Street]

I like it, and have had no problems with obscured vision in battles etc. Maybe it's just because I'm used to flying around with my camera and always play in FS mode so I can mouse over to the edge to rotate the cam real quick.

I can understand how it might be annoying though.

[MadK@]

The tileset will probably require some MDL hacking to make it fade. If anyone is capable of such a thing please be my guest.

[MadK@]

You will all be happy to know the JXP_forest hak now comes with fade.

Send your thanks and praise to Kinarr and Gorgon who managed to modify the hak to allow this to happen.

Get the file JXP_Forest_with_fade here
Nighthawk4_File_Mirror

or directly from here
JXP_Forest_with_fade.rar

Simply replace the existing JXP_Forest.hak with the above and thats it you're done.

Game on!

[aldo ixnay]

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!!!

[Gorgon]

It isn't quite the same as normal fade on trees, since the trunks don't fade out. For that to happen, the tree models would have to be chopped in half and redone to let the top part fade, and that would be a bunch more work.

It does fade out all the foliage (leaves) on the tops of the trees, and it makes visibility a whole lot better. Since the trunks don't fade, using the always fade setting can make forests look rather dead, but auto fade is pretty sweet. Of course you still have the option to not fade anything if you like it that way too.

Kinarr is my hero by the way. I figured it would be a simple matter of just changing a setting in each file until I ran into some that were misbehaving. He not only knew what the problem was, but also had fixed versions of the models done up. He probably saved me weeks of pulling my hair out trying to figure out how to fix it.

[Eponine]

Awesome change, I did not want to complain but the earlier hak was making the area of wilderness where my main char lives a real drag. Step - move camera - step - move camera - step - move camera.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

[CPU]

The old version made me motion sick = no playing. Hope this one does me good!