NWN2 TLK File

[danielmn]

Never underestimate the power of stupidity.

[AcadiusLost]

Are you saying through your testing, the new patch requires a statically linked tree of the toolset to function ?

Normally, the game evaluates materials in the haks, plus those in overrides, plus those in the install directory (/program files/atari/nwn2), plus those in the "localized" directory (usernamet/my documents/nwn2/). However, builders trying to make custom TLK files work early on discovered that nwn2server failed to recognize the tlk files from /documents/nwn2. The only way they could get custom tlk entries to read ingame was to place an extra copy of the file in the install directory (/program files/atarti/nwn2), same place that the main dialog.tlk lives. What's worse, at the time you actually had to also truncate the extension of the file (remove the .tlk part) as well. The "good news", so to speak, was that players and DMs did not need the extra copy; this was a limitation of nwn2server.exe only. Players and DMs could get by with a single copy in their /documents/nwn2/tlk folder just like in NWN1. This is why the bug/eccentricity didn't get more complaints and publicity; like many other things, it was something the community figured out a jury-rig arrangement for to move ahead.

A later patch must have fixed the need to remove the .tlk extension from the "extra copy", but seems to have also added an error if the tlk is missing when you open a module that needs it via the toolset (before it didn't throw an error in that case).

Whether it's inexcusably sloppy coding or just a minor oversight, this is indeed a requirement for hosting modules with custom tlk tables, and helps for toolsetting in such modules. It's not even getting into the +167,xxx,xxx,xxx trick you have to go through to get custom tlk entries referenced from hak'd 2da files.

So, not at all "full of it", and any stupidity is coming from somewhere other than dedicated builders like Thangorn, who have stuck with ambitious build projects despite having to wade through a cornucopia of arcane hurdles like the above. Obsidian isn't focusing their support/patching resources on multiplayer issues, especially not ones that have working interim fixes that the community is using.

[zicada]

It's extremely irritating to see how little they care about bug reports and solving long standing issues well. One would think anyone with at least a little sense of pride in their work would attempt to actually try and solve issues like that.
It really makes no sense to me...