building a shop, help please

Crimzonfist · Post by **Crimzonfist** » Mon Jun 12, 2006 5:28 am

ok here's the problem im building my shop and when i go to verify the area from the toolset i can't select a character to play it with and when it does load i can't see the character it loads. now i designed a house with another character(that i actually never submited but anyway) and i could see the character i tested it with fine before but now i can't. so my question is whats the deal, i like to be able to see the character when testing my mods. it makes it much easier to determine if i have my invisible chairs for tileset chairs posistioned correctly and orriented right and what not.

do i need to reload neverwinter nights and start from scratch maybe just refigure you the hacks to load and redo them? *shrugs*

DarknessFallsLight · Post by **DarknessFallsLight** » Mon Jun 12, 2006 5:36 am

question first is did you try loading your Avlis char? if so then there will be problems unless you load the haks to this mod correctly. If thats not the case then whoops on my part

Marleh · Post by **Marleh** » Mon Jun 12, 2006 5:46 am

If I follow what you are saying, you're selecting F9 to jump right into the mod from the toolset? If so, then it will choose the first character on the list. If you want to change that, then you will need to make or change the name of your characters to have the proper one appear when loading the mod.

I hope this is what you were talking about.

Crimzonfist · Post by **Crimzonfist** » Mon Jun 12, 2006 6:17 am

darknessfallslight wrote:

question first is did you try loading your Avlis char? if so then there will be problems unless you load the haks to this mod correctly. If thats not the case then whoops on my part Wink

actually Marleh said it better than i did.

its loading the first character on the list, which appears to be broken.

Marleh wrote:

you will need to make or change the name of your characters to have the proper one appear when loading the mod

Ill try that Marleh thanks

Crimzonfist · Post by **Crimzonfist** » Mon Jun 12, 2006 6:37 am

thanx Marleh that worked perfectly

Post by **Alexandru Stanicu** » Mon Jun 12, 2006 12:21 pm

you can also simply save the module you are working on, close it and then open NWN hit play then New then Other then Premade.
Yes this is more steps but it allows you to pick which character you test with, and it also is more stable. I have noted that the "test module" launch tends to be very unstable. (probably due to large memory footprint for the two together as well as the file being shared between apps)

Katroine · Post by **Katroine** » Mon Jun 12, 2006 1:24 pm

I always use Alex's method so I can test other sized PCs too.

dougnoel · Post by **dougnoel** » Mon Jun 12, 2006 2:50 pm

You can also leave the toolset running when you launch the game. Then you can create a little item that reloads the module. Then you can edit in the toolset, make the change and just reload the module without having to leave. This saves huge amounts of time and is much more stable.

Crimzonfist · Post by **Crimzonfist** » Mon Jun 12, 2006 5:24 pm

Dougnoel wrote:

Then you can create a little item that reloads the module

im not very good with scripting, how would i do that?

dougnoel · Post by **dougnoel** » Mon Jun 12, 2006 7:05 pm

Add this line to an item activation script soemwhere:

Code: Select all

StartNewModule(GetName(GetModule()));

Silk · Post by **Silk** » Mon Jun 12, 2006 8:17 pm

dougnoel wrote:You can also leave the toolset running when you launch the game. Then you can create a little item that reloads the module. Then you can edit in the toolset, make the change and just reload the module without having to leave. This saves huge amounts of time and is much more stable.

... and pray you have enough memory on your compuer...

Crimzonfist · Post by **Crimzonfist** » Mon Jun 12, 2006 8:22 pm

Silk wrote:

... and pray you have enough memory on your compuer...

well i've got 500 mb of ddr 400 so... we'll see...

dougnoel · Post by **dougnoel** » Mon Jun 12, 2006 10:09 pm

Silk wrote:
dougnoel wrote:You can also leave the toolset running when you launch the game. Then you can create a little item that reloads the module. Then you can edit in the toolset, make the change and just reload the module without having to leave. This saves huge amounts of time and is much more stable.
... and pray you have enough memory on your compuer...

Bah. I still do this on a PIII-800 with 384 MB of RAM. However, I also don't do this with full Avlis mods. That'd be crazy.

Marleh · Post by **Marleh** » Mon Jun 12, 2006 10:35 pm

For building a player-owned shop you should be fine Crimzonfist. You will have very few scripts firing, you shouldn't have any spawns, and at most you probably have 3 or 4 areas. This should load easily, so no worries.

CPU · Post by **CPU** » Tue Jun 13, 2006 1:43 pm

This isn't only for Crimsonfist, but everyone else out there too that is building a shop or house. Always playtest your house, loading it up as a seperate game module for reviewing purposes. I am constantly amazed by the number of houses submitted where the player built the house in the toolset, and then just submitted it, instead of play-testing it first. This is very obvious when items are bumped from their location in the module, or items are left floating in air, or the usage of or improper usage of some placeables that when loaded - look like modern art and less like a placeable, picture frames sunk into walls or away from walls, area transitions that don't work, etc...

You should run through your house module in the toolset to check for errors. BUT always play-test your house module by loading it up as a single player game and run through it looking for mistakes. You'll be happy you did.