NWN1 Custom portraits

[Nalo Jade]

I have a player wanting to give us a copy of his custom portrait. I have seen some folks with links in their signatures to their PCs portrait.

Can anyone help me explain how to do that?

[hollyfant]

1. Put the portrait on the web somewhere.
2. Put the link in your forum signature via the User Control Panel.
3. ...
4. Profit!

[AcadiusLost]

I should say, officially we're still frowning on custom portrait use for TSM; we have had a reproducible problem whereby when 10 or more players were on, any custom portrait use would make the server essentially impossible to join for DMs- if they do make it in, they lock up trying to AT between areas. We've had one Obsidian patch since then, but it didn't say anything about resolving the issue in the patch notes. We haven't coordinated any tests lately (getting 10+ players plus a DM or two on at the same time when a plot isn't going on is a bit of a challenge), but I'd say for now it's best to hold off on using the custom portraits.

If you're dying to use a custom portrait, at least switch it off when the number of players on gets above 8 or 9, lest you cause a world of frustration for the DMs who might otherwise be able to DM for you.

Once the bug responsible is solved by Obsidian or others, we'll put portraits back on the Worldgate, and maintain an "official" portrait pack which can be updated for everyone at the same time, alleviating the need for linking in forum signatures and such.

[Nalo Jade]

you can "switch" your custom portrait "off" in NWN2?

Is there any problems you know of with NWN1 ... the only way that would happen is if another DM happened to run their campaign on the same night as mine... so far that's only happened once and I don't think we hit 10 players.

[AcadiusLost]

Ah. The prior post was regarding custom portraits for NWN2. Custom portraits for NWN1 don't cause any problems, people just need a copy in order to see them. We can see about adding the ALFA NWN1 portrait pack to the NWN1 Worldgate server, though. That'd be the best way to distribute them to all the NWN1-ALFA players simultaneously.

[GarrettX]

Please dont do that! Last time I added all the content of the portrait packs in my portrait folder it took about two minutes to load portraits when I was creating a character and I clicked on the Portrait button.... Anyway I've made my own portrait and thats the one I wish to distribute (yeah I'm the player)

[AcadiusLost]

And yes, one nifty thing Obsidian added for NWN2 with a recent patch was the ability to switch out portraits to your heart's content via an in-game GUI without having to rebuild your character. However, perhaps unsuprisingly, it came with a subtle yet infuriating bug hiding in between the lines. I'd have listed it among NWN2's benefits elsewhere, but we're still discouraging it's use until we work out why it's causing problems for us.

PS: I do dimly remember having similar "portrait lag" while trying to roll up a NWN1-ALFA PC years back, we could certainly just add portraits to the worldgate for new/current PCs to keep the size down, or just skip them entirely and continue with how we've been handling it otherwise.

[JaydeMoon]

Please dont do that! Last time I added all the content of the portrait packs in my portrait folder it took about two minutes to load portraits when I was creating a character and I clicked on the Portrait button.... Anyway I've made my own portrait and thats the one I wish to distribute (yeah I'm the player)

Yes, the drawback to having tons of portraits is that it takes time for those portraits to load during character creation.

Two things you can do and still keep the lovely goodness of having all those portraits available (which is important if you want to see everyone else's portraits):

1. Just deal with it. It's two minutes to wait during the character creation process. How much of an inconvenience is that really?

2. If you know what portrait you will be using, rename your portrait folder to portraitsstandby (or something easy to remember), create a new portraits folder, put in your portrait there. Create character. rename the portrait folder with only your portraits to portraitcreation (or something) and rename portraitsstandby back to portraits. Make sure your custom portrait is back in the portraits folder.

#2 really doesn't go any shorter than #1, but sometimes it feels like it's faster when you are actively doing something instead of watching the water boil, as it were.

Kinda like driving the backroads from point A to point B isn't any faster than sitting in heavy traffic on the highway, but it feels good to be moving.

[wvincenti]

Nalo,
If it's for NWN1 you won't run into any technical issues at all regarding the server.
You might even want to create a thread in the NC Forums where your Players post links to the custom portraits they're using.

-Bill

[FanaticusIncendi]

Nalo's talking about NWN1 most likely. Custom portraits are no problem with NWN1, I have one (see my sig), lots of people have 'em. (lol guess that's one more thing to add to the list on the nwn1 side )

First, you have to create 5 different sizes of the same portrait. Instructions for the exact dimensions and such are found here.

Then you take your pics and rar them up. Then you host them somewhere (I have mine on our FTP). I think there are free file share sites out there you can use. Then you put a link to the rar in your sig and/or email them to the people you play with. People download the rar and unzip it to your NWN/portraits folder.

That's it. Easy.

[Nalo Jade]

Thanks FI!

I edited the post title to reflect which platform I was talking about. Sorry for the confusion.