NWN2 Toolset out a month early with pre-buys

frogmella · Post by **frogmella** » Wed Sep 27, 2006 2:37 pm

Can someone confirm where we regeister our pre-seel toolset codes, please?

The one on my box (http://www.nwn2.com/presell) doesn't seem to work ... and the (http://www.atari.com/nwn2/presell2.php) just hangs.

thx

Krator · Post by **Krator** » Wed Sep 27, 2006 2:38 pm

http://www.atari.com/nwn2/presell/count ... in&lang=us&

dougnoel · Post by **dougnoel** » Wed Sep 27, 2006 5:26 pm

frogmella wrote:Can someone confirm where we regeister our pre-seel toolset codes, please?

The one on my box (http://www.nwn2.com/presell) doesn't seem to work ... and the (http://www.atari.com/nwn2/presell2.php) just hangs.

thx

That's what I used. hopefully Krator's link will work for you.

drunkenpig · Post by **drunkenpig** » Wed Sep 27, 2006 8:02 pm

So, I just heard from my bookie that Vegas odds are 5 to 1 that the toolset is delayed again

frogmella · Post by **frogmella** » Thu Sep 28, 2006 6:57 am

Thanks Krator.

It was my misunderstanding. I thought I had to input my code right now, but I guess there will be a place to do this on the day of release.

g1asgow · Post by **g1asgow** » Thu Sep 28, 2006 12:29 pm

After phoning GAME (UK) they tell me that codes will be sent by email next week to the preorders of the limited edition.

They only have so many codes so not all preorders of the Chaotic Evil edition will receive them.

The rumour mill rolls on....

dougnoel · Post by **dougnoel** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 5:41 pm

So,

Downloaded it last night. It looks good, but was a bit laggy in situations on my 3 Ghz, 1 Gig RAM, Nvidia Geforce 6800 machine. I was a bit saddened by this. Looks pretty frickin' good tho. No screenshots yet.

Zyndro · Post by **Zyndro** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 6:22 pm

I have an almost identical machine, and it does get laggy when you're doing something like the armor manipulations. That's where wizards woudl come in handy, as the thing wouldn't be redering multiple 3d windows at the same time. It doesn't lag at all when you're just looking at the main area screen, though, at least not indoors.

Some things I found:

1) you can make it so an object doesn't cast a shadow, so light sources will look more like light sources. In NWN1, even a 'beam of light' cast a shadow. You can actualy select which specific types of shadows an object recieves and/or casts.

2) Tinting, rescaling, are very straightforward. Not all things tint, or at least, they don't all show up tinted in the editor, but that may be fixed.

3) Items do have material types in addition to their other properties. For instance, you can have a steel sword, which is different from a silver sword, or a adamantium sword. There are many material types. With this, it should be possible to have weapons in game to harm each type of supernatural creature without making the weapons +3 or even +1. They can be mundane except for their material and still work.

Some bad things:

4) customizing armor and items takes longer - no wizards. It's laggy with armor, and weapons only appear in a seperate window from the appearance selection window, so you have to keep flipping back and forth to see what you're doing. There also doesn't appear to be a way to hear any of the voice sets in the editor. You just have to know what they all sound like when you pick one.

- luckily the editor can have plugins, so the community will probably fix those things.

5) You have to copy the music files from the toolset folder to the nwn folder in 'my documents.' Otherwise music will only play the first time you open the editor and will be missing after that.

Zyndro · Post by **Zyndro** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 6:29 pm

Drangonari king & duplicate with shadow special affect:

Closup:

Outdoors:

Krator · Post by **Krator** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 6:58 pm

Some landscaping done, work in progress on the centre as you can see.

I want to climb that.

Heed · Post by **Heed** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 6:59 pm

dougnoel wrote:So,

Downloaded it last night. It looks good, but was a bit laggy in situations on my 3 Ghz, 1 Gig RAM, Nvidia Geforce 6800 machine. I was a bit saddened by this. Looks pretty frickin' good tho. No screenshots yet.

Hey, good to see you finally got it.

What situations was it lagging? It runs pretty smooth for me, but I'm a bit higher spec (x2 3800, 1 gig ram, 7900 gs).

It is pretty frickin' good.

Creating outdoor areas will be a lot slower, though. You're essentially a modeler and texturer when it comes to the terrain. The tools are pretty good, but it's simply a thing that will take time and practice. I would say spending at least a week creating the terrain for an area would not be out of the ordinary -- there's so many layers of detail you can apply.

Here's something I've been messing with (the art direction is so much better than NWN1):

Krator · Post by **Krator** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 7:10 pm

It is pretty firckin' good. Very Happy

Creating outdoor areas will be a lot slower, though. You're essentially a modeler and texturer when it comes to the terrain. The tools are pretty good, but it's simply a thing that will take time and practice. I would say spending at least a week creating the terrain for an area would not be out of the ordinary -- there's so many layers of detail you can apply.

Agreed.

There are no 'cheap tricks' available like in NWN1. If you get a good hak with nice looking models or tile groups there, you can't go wrong. Making something that looks really awful is quite difficult in NWN1. You'll have to watch out with golf course looking grass and hills, swimming pool-water areas, and empty space.

The new toolset just takes a ton of time to use - the learning isn't that difficult. The area in the screenshot above took some hours (4ish) to make. It's about 1/16th of the area.

Heed · Post by **Heed** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 7:32 pm

Yep, that's right Krator. Greater control also means less things are already done for you.

A couple of other observations:

"Baking" an area partially consists of cutting the terrain into tiles (for purposes of the bake operation -- it doesn't actually cut your terrain in the toolset). It seems it generates the tiles dynamically at bake time. An interesting approach -- it just drives home the point you are actually creating a "tileset" of sorts each time you make an area. Everyone is a tileset maker now.

A walkmesh file (.trx) is pretty compressable. I compressed a 13 meg one with winrar at best compression and got it down to 2 megs. So, if they are made available in an archive like haks are it shouldn't be too bad. Still, that's one 16x16 area at 13 megs uncompressed and 2 compressed. There might be some tricks to reduce the size. Using walkmesh "cutter" triggers a lot might be help cut down the size. There may be ways to use them that are more efficient than other ways, too.

Melakin Skywieder · Post by **Melakin Skywieder** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 7:35 pm

dougnoel wrote:So,

Downloaded it last night. It looks good, but was a bit laggy in situations on my 3 Ghz, 1 Gig RAM, Nvidia Geforce 6800 machine. I was a bit saddened by this. Looks pretty frickin' good tho. No screenshots yet.

Damn

maybe the V-card?

*does more research on his necessary new system*

szabot · Post by **szabot** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 7:54 pm

In case this helps anyone else: I had trouble downloading the files when I accessed the ftp site with firefox. Ended up getting them when I accessed from IE. Might have just been a coincidence - I don't really know about this stuff.

As for the toolset, I miss the wizards. At least with those you could start right away with the basics. I couldn't even figure out how to start an area when I first opened the toolset. It's also extremely cramped, but I suppose that once I figure out which boxes I really need, I can minimize the rest.

Any tutorials out there? I understand there might be one with the toolset itself, in which case I'll check that out when I get back home.

Zyndro · Post by **Zyndro** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 8:02 pm

As far as the lagging goes, I remember that NWN1 lagged a lot more in the toolset than it did in game. Hopefuly NWN2 is the same, so at least the game will run. It lags for me if I'm using a lot of animated effects, or if I have two or three 3d windows open at the same time (like when modeling and changing armor on an npc).

Heed · Post by **Heed** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 8:09 pm

szabot wrote: It's also extremely cramped, but I suppose that once I figure out which boxes I really need, I can minimize the rest.

Any tutorials out there? I understand there might be one with the toolset itself, in which case I'll check that out when I get back home.

Those menus can minimize off to the sides and will pop out when you mousover -- instantly changes the feeling from cramped to spacious:

Check out the "Documentation" directory -- some very good primer docs there by Obsidian.

Krator · Post by **Krator** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 8:34 pm

Zyndro wrote:As far as the lagging goes, I remember that NWN1 lagged a lot more in the toolset than it did in game. Hopefuly NWN2 is the same, so at least the game will run. It lags for me if I'm using a lot of animated effects, or if I have two or three 3d windows open at the same time (like when modeling and changing armor on an npc).

It used 90% of my CPU time with effects and sounds on. 60% without. Quite an intensive thing. However, it ran very smoothly even with the high CPU usage. No waiting times, no glitches.

Krator · Post by **Krator** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 8:36 pm

Oh, and for those interested in tutorials, I'm going to write one with some 'tricks' I discovered using the terrain paint tools. Just things that work well and look good. Probably going to put them on NWN2 wiki, I'll link it here.

frogmella · Post by **frogmella** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 8:59 pm

I'm finding it much harder to get going than I thought I would ... but then it looks like it will repay the steepness of the learning curve ...

Can anyone tell me if, having saved an area, I can create a character to go into it and explore the work up close? Or do we need the actual game engine for that?

Krator · Post by **Krator** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 9:04 pm

frogmella wrote:I'm finding it much harder to get going than I thought I would ... but then it looks like it will repay the steepness of the learning curve ...

Can anyone tell me if, having saved an area, I can create a character to go into it and explore the work up close? Or do we need the actual game engine for that?

You can't do that. Need to wait until the game is out.

szabot · Post by **szabot** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 9:19 pm

Heed wrote:
szabot wrote: It's also extremely cramped, but I suppose that once I figure out which boxes I really need, I can minimize the rest.
Those menus can minimize off to the sides and will pop out when you mousover -- instantly changes the feeling from cramped to spacious.

Check out the "Documentation" directory -- some very good primer docs there by Obsidian.

Awesome, thanks.

Krator wrote:Oh, and for those interested in tutorials, I'm going to write one with some 'tricks' I discovered using the terrain paint tools. Just things that work well and look good. Probably going to put them on NWN2 wiki, I'll link it here.

GISteve · Post by **GISteve** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 9:31 pm

just some shots while futzing around and people asking to see a few different things.

Zyndro · Post by **Zyndro** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 10:36 pm

Decided to mess with the lighting by making an interior antique/art shop with no windows. Used gold, blue, and red lights of varying intensity, each placed inside an object that looks like it could put off light, thanks to the ability to selectively make some objects not cast shadows.

View from doorway:

Proprietor with bodyguard:

Opposite corner from door:

This shot's good because you can see the detail. Try and read the dice in the lower right corner:

Thalarian Arc'Thass · Post by **Thalarian Arc'Thass** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 11:05 pm

holy shit, Zyndro, these are cool shots!

*is looking forward to it NWN2*