1.69 and ALFA

[Mulu]

Lots of redecorating has been done in Shadowdale in the last year too. New areas and redecorating of old areas.

-Bill

Well now you're making me feel like checking it out. I guess I was wrong to assume the mods basically looked the same as they did in 2004.

I still think a total redo would look cool, but I won't suggest it again.

[White Warlock]

Let me clarify that a total redo is not unreasonable. I simply did not like your personal agenda, and thus indicated so. If a redo is to be done, it should be 'across the board,' and not merely a personal project that is independent of all other ALFA1 servers.

I also agree that the haks are very large in their present chaotic mass, but alfa has 11+ NWN1 areas built up, if not all updated to 1.68. As one NWN1 builder indicated, it could take about two months or so to rebuild an entire area with NWN1 (much easier than NWN2). However, the challenges are in getting said modules engineered to include all the ALFA-dependent material that this community has invested so much of its time on. Without the technical staffing to get the job done, i see these issues as major obstacles.

So, two directions to go: EVERY team agree to rebuild with all new haks (a lot of planning and testing would need to happen) or as many people as possible help to update ALFA's existing NWN1 haks.

[Mulu]

I simply did not like your personal agenda

You assume a personal agenda where none exists, and that's *your* issue. My only "agenda" is to make ALFA more player friendly, and I've been consistent in that agenda since I joined in 2004. I didn't know that was a bad goal.

Now, I will admit that I did not know there was such a huge schizm between the NWN1 and NWN2 crowds, nor did I know that Zelk had been fired from tech, or really *any* of the issues that occurred in the other threads. Had I known I was standing in a room full of gasoline I would have been much more careful to raise the 1.69 issue without striking any sparks, though it was probably impossible.

Anyway, it looks like exactly you and I are the only ones who think a redo is both not unreasonable and that the haks are a mess, so it ain't gonna happen. Besides, Zelk and BB look positively excited at the prospect of so much geek work.

And not that it matters now, but I also think that in a rebuild scenario we could dump a lot of empty areas.... TSM has proven that you don't need 200 empty outdoor maps to have a successful server. I had some other ideas on the redesign too, but I'll just keep quiet about them now. Nothing to see here, move along.

[paazin]

I simply did not like your personal agenda

You assume a personal agenda where none exists, and that's *your* issue. My only "agenda" is to make ALFA more player friendly, and I've been consistent in that agenda since I joined in 2004. I didn't know that was a bad goal.

Now, I will admit that I did not know there was such a huge schizm between the NWN1 and NWN2 crowds, nor did I know that Zelk had been fired from tech, or really *any* of the issues that occurred in the other threads. Had I known I was standing in a room full of gasoline I would have been much more careful to raise the 1.69 issue without striking any sparks, though it was probably impossible.

Anyway, it looks like exactly you and I are the only ones who think a redo is both not unreasonable and that the haks are a mess, so it ain't gonna happen. Besides, Zelk and BB look positively excited at the prospect of so much geek work.

And not that it matters now, but I also think that in a rebuild scenario we could dump a lot of empty areas.... TSM has proven that you don't need 200 empty outdoor maps to have a successful server. I had some other ideas on the redesign too, but I'll just keep quiet about them now. Nothing to see here, move along.

Mulu, a whole redesign of our system isn't a bad idea. In fact, if I had the time to do it, I'd love to help out and work on re-integrating our NWN2 ACR into our NWN1 ACR as it's of a far better quality than our NWN1 ACR ever was. If we somehow are able to bridge the two into a single consolidated code base, I'd be overjoyed. Alas, it's likely a task that we don't have the manpower or time for.

[Mulu]

Not worth its own thread, here's some info on 1.69 horses:

1.69 horses for players

1.69 horses for builders

[Zelknolf]

Not worth its own thread, here's some info on 1.69 horses:

1.69 horses for players

1.69 horses for builders

It's some good infos -- very specific explaination in x3_inc_horses.nss, too. Buuuuut, we have some very nice features in Acadius' horse system (namely persistency across servers sans-central database.) that I would like to maintain as I do the update. Combine that existing phenotypes (tall and slight) create conflicts with non-chubby 1.69 mounted phenotypes, and my plan to solve such being to move Bioware's phenotypes 3, 5 and 6 to 9, 10, and 11. So, yeah. It renders a lot of that moot, 'fraid.

Excellent models, though, and they're beautiful when in action. I'm sure ALFA will be most pleased once they're in action.

[Brokenbone]

For some reason I'm taking this to mean one could have all the infrastructure of the existing horse system, it's just that more appearances (or replacement appearances) may be available. Animation differences between current and new, may make people lean towards the new in a big way. Not sure anyone would ride around the jousting horses with the big colorful skirts and whatnot except in a tournament situation, but the other horses (even with a lot of barding on), people might be into.

So yeah, my impression is "keep the system, cherry pick the appearances."

[White Warlock]

the new horse system also includes many horse functions i do not believe is embedded in alfa's version.

[Zelknolf]

For some reason I'm taking this to mean one could have all the infrastructure of the existing horse system, it's just that more appearances (or replacement appearances) may be available. Animation differences between current and new, may make people lean towards the new in a big way. Not sure anyone would ride around the jousting horses with the big colorful skirts and whatnot except in a tournament situation, but the other horses (even with a lot of barding on), people might be into.

So yeah, my impression is "keep the system, cherry pick the appearances."

This is what I'm working on currently. It seems that one of Bioware's fixes on the "prevent memory leaks" front is making the skill/movement effects (or, more accurately, their removal) a right bother, so I'm not sure I have an ETA on winning that struggle.

re: funny horses and/or jousting skirts -- I'm setting out the basics to let people dress their horses however they like. More of a "make it easy on yourself for the next patch" than a "make it work now" change, but I'm sure people will be happy with the results.

And I'm giving warhorses barding. And there's nothin' y'all can do about it!

(sorry 'bout it, they just look warhorse...ier.)

the new horse system also includes many horse functions i do not believe is embedded in alfa's version.

It does! And it's pretty. But right now I'm mostly interested in making something that works so we can update to 1.69 without rebuilding our NWN1 servers. We don't have anyone with the authority to say if and how we change the ALFA1's core rules and won't until the conclusion of the TA election, so I'll save those ideas for a potential ahp_3.06, and let ahp_3.05 be the "1.69 compatability" hak. Altering the mechanical way things work is quite time consuming, anyhow, and we start looking especially lame if we take more than a week or two to get up to 1.69.

[Lusipher]

Ok, I just set this up. If there is anything wrong with the post or anything I might need to add please say so. I hope this will help some. We also can do other things like promote on the Vault to garner more interest in both NWN projects. Just a new Blurb promoting both projects as sort of a player drive etc.

Anyway, here is the new Bioware forums blurb promoting the NWN1 servers:

http://nwn.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic ... 3&forum=44

EDIT: Had a typo. Bioware boards wont let you edit anything so I had to make a small post explaining the typo. Its all been corrected now. Just sucks I had to make another post to fix it.

[Zelknolf]

*puts foot on conquered horse system and declares great victoree*

*ahem* Real reason for the post is to laud Acadius for his horse scripts. It's rare for me to go into anything with the nwscript editor and find out that I only need to change what I went in to change.

(well, okay, I might've added a conditional to give the *falls off of his horse* emotes the potential to be *falls off of her horse*, too, but compared to other things I've rummaged through? Makes me want to build a little Acadius shrine and sacrafice a chicken at it.)

Also, with the conquest of visualeffects.2da, appearances.2da, the horse system, weapons/armor, and the altered functions, I think I can dub the work for a 1.69 update as between 30-40% done. So... yeah. Salvation is at hand and all of that jazz.

[MorbidKate]

I think I can dub the work for a 1.69 update as between 30-40% done.

Holy Crap!!

Truly awesome news that will be appreciated by all. Of course my Chi requires more life energy that only forum drama can provide so don't rush it and pull a hammy or something

Thanks,

Kate

[AcadiusLost]

(well, okay, I might've added a conditional to give the *falls off of his horse* emotes the potential to be *falls off of her horse*

Hah! I guess I have a bit of the sexist pig in me after all, I'd totally overlooked that choice of wording. Glad the scripts weren't too bad to wade through, they were my first time since undergrad classes for writing more modular code, shoving more things into functions and less in the body of the code. In retrospect, I suspect it's a pretty tangled mess, but I'm glad it was one that wasn't too bad to unravel. I suspect there will still be the lingering (but difficult to reproduce) bugs with everything happening at login (camera freezes in a cutscene-like angle, horse duplicates, etc) from time to time, but those only seemed to show up during laggy moments, so wasn't ever able to hunt them down completely.

Nice work on the adaption progress- I must say I love the "BTW it's done now" counterargument to "OMG we will never be able to achieve this".

[Zelknolf]

Hah! I guess I have a bit of the sexist pig in me after all,

You said it, not me! (though I'd say it's more sexist against the men -- clearly, the code seems to believe that no woman would be dumb enough to pick a fight while on a riding horse. )

Glad the scripts weren't too bad to wade through, they were my first time since undergrad classes for writing more modular code, shoving more things into functions and less in the body of the code. In retrospect, I suspect it's a pretty tangled mess, but I'm glad it was one that wasn't too bad to unravel. I suspect there will still be the lingering (but difficult to reproduce) bugs with everything happening at login (camera freezes in a cutscene-like angle, horse duplicates, etc) from time to time, but those only seemed to show up during laggy moments, so wasn't ever able to hunt them down completely.

Tangled, yeah, but functional, and not wasting cycles! With comments! Holy crap comment lines that show up in more than just the script's header are a godsent, along with the functions that're named for what they do, instead of a 500 line main function? Maybe my expectations were low, but it made me happy.

And I'm hoping that the fact that the horse under the player and the horse about to spawn next to the player being the same model will defeat some of those bugs. We'll have to see come the more hardcore testing, 'spose. I might be able to sneak an early return into the OnClientEnter sequence to defeat some of those quirkier bugs (like logging in mounted resulting in two horses), but that seems less vital, and I was hopin' on putting it off 'til 3.06.

Nice work on the adaption progress- I must say I love the "BTW it's done now" counterargument to "OMG we will never be able to achieve this".

I was always a fan of that counterargument.




More on the topic of the thread - I think I have a workable hak. ahp_3.05 will be getting tested for functionality with NWN 1.69 starting tomorrow. I expect I'll need a few days to run through everything. The two people who've helped me (props to Misty and kmj, btw. Updating nwscript.nss and rummaging through the cls_ set of 2das aren't particularly fun or glorious, but they came through. ) will get first dibs on testing the new toys, 'course, but I might be hopping into chat to recruit extra testers for others who are curious.

[White Warlock]

you could have it say, "falls off the horse" instead. It may very well not be his or her horse (stolen, borrowed, etc).

*burp*