1.69 and ALFA

Zelknolf · Post by **Zelknolf** » Sat Jul 12, 2008 10:03 pm

That'd be a misread of Zel's post.

What I was saying is that we only break ALFA's modules if we update our haks to 1.69 by moving ALFA's contents out of the way instead of moving Bioware's content over to empty 2da lines. It's some grumpy model renumbering on the clothing/armor/whatnot (at least where it's not a duplicate) but it's less work than module rebuilds.

My suggestion is that we use Bioware's content, and accept that doing so while minimizing work will involve bloating the haks a lil' bit, and probably a fair amount of swearing and kicking when getting doors to cooperate with the new tilesets.

//edit -- in any case, I'm going to get started on this. I bet most of this could be done before we've even elected a new TA. Anyone keen on being put to work toward the same ends can message me on IRC or somethin... I'm not usually in main chat, but I am usually on sorcery.net.

Post by **paazin** » Sat Jul 12, 2008 11:43 pm

Any help anyone can offer in dealing with the 1.69 patch for NWN1 is more than appreciated. Right now the tech team's hands are more than full with trying to not only deal with NWN2 additions, but bugs, content problems, conflicts, you name it.

With cipher's departure, the going will be only tougher.

MorbidKate · Post by **MorbidKate** » Sat Jul 12, 2008 11:55 pm

Mulu,

The whole purpose of the vault is to allow inter-server travel so the one way ticket you propose (you seriously expect more than one server fully remaking... if that?) is really just a means to port characters from one project to another without the need for rebuilds though all items would be lost. Why not come out and offer to rebuild AND equip characters who will leave ALFA... because that's what you are proposing.

You say you've built some in NWN1 but the suggestion that building new servers from scratch and bringing them to life is somehow faster than getting a group together to make 1.69 functional is too stunning to contemplate. Would making 1.69 work with what we have take a year or more to accomplish?? It'll take time certainly but nowhere near the time needed to create a new server with fully tested and debugged statics, NPCs and all the other real time-consuming bits that go into getting a server out of beta. And then do it all over again with other servers? Better yet, would this rebuild happen with multiple servers at the same time? I truly and honestly do not see where those resources could possibly come from.

Based on that and the practicality of the matter, I see this as a one server project that will be detached from anything we'll be running... even if we do get 1.69 working with existing servers. And that by definition is not ALFA so if you want to start your own project as many others have just go ahead and do it. There are plenty of ex-Alfans building servers out there.

Kate

Brokenbone · Post by **Brokenbone** » Sun Jul 13, 2008 1:54 am

I know probably too little about "what to do upon a patch" to be of great assistance, though I am assuming a lot of the work is achieved through updating 2das, at least the ones we've got custom versions of. Current ones would have lots of padded filler type lines, reserved for Bioware use, now I assume there's content in many of those lines (in the base game 2das, not our hak'd ones obviously), from the patch.

I am not sure if stuff like CODI's custom content helper helps make that work any less mind numbing, basically like merging 2das to "plug all the holes" in our custom ones. For stuff like monsters it might be easy, as there's I think less than 20 new ones, all with clear names, worst case one can do that manually. For stuff like placeables, the patch detail is something like "over 300!!" but without additional clues, so it's a bit more of a pain in the butt unless there's some good tools at hand or other shortcuts people can teach each other.

Anyhow, I'm sort of grasping at straws with little in terms of methodology on this one, due to lack of experience in going through patch stuff. Maybe if someone's got some plans / vision on this one, some tasks can be farmed out to folks with different levels of ability, even the basics like "volunteer A to fix these five 2da files, volunteer B to fix these other four 2da files, etc." Figuring out whether to let horses (even just model changes to our existing system) stand as a project for another day might also be part of a prioritization type exercise.

Also, since it came up in the locked thread, I am definitely not the only NWN1 technical contributor, I think Zelknolf and Electryc helped dispel that myth in quick fashion - - they've been key contributors, there's others as well happy to help with miscellaneous issues, often quickly and anonymously in IRC etc. If there's "folks out there" who have been through a patch of significance and done some heavy lifting technically, I guess this thread is as good a place as any to post about help offers.

EDIT: Note the reason I mentioned "mind numbing 2da work" is because once a contributor understands what 2das are for, fussing with them is pretty easy... but HORRIBLY MIND NUMBING. Picture comparing a couple of spreadsheets to each other, each with maybe hundreds and hundreds of lines, but with subtle differences between each others' entries. Low complexity, high tedium, type comparison / rewriting work. Volunteers handy for such, though still need someone to orchestrate who's doing what, why, and when.

Zelknolf · Post by **Zelknolf** » Sun Jul 13, 2008 2:10 am

You've got step 1 there, BB. Horribly mind-numbing, yes, and sadly CODI doesn't help me much ('cuz I lurve my ctrl+f).

I've got an appearances.2da that I think will work, and I've got dibs on ambientmusic.2da and ambientsound.2da. Prolly be best if we're vocal about which 2das we've done and which ones we're working on, so as to spare us the horror of doing work twice.

Pretty sure we'll want to tweak some scripts (acr_horse_i -- Bioware's horses are less buggy and much prettier) and make some item resrefs (there're a lot of horses on appearances.2da, and I think they're all ridable) poke the doors on the new tilesets (old Murky work makes them misalign) and renumber some models (I think we'll have some conflicts there... our haks aren't very respectful of padding on the parts_<whutev>.2da files ... prolly 'cuz Bioware hasn't used any until now!) too ... ... and then we get to romp about in a 1.69ified mod to see if we can break anything.

Not sure I could put an ETA on it. Lots of stuff in 1.69, and ideally we'd make it all available to ALFA.

White Warlock · Post by **White Warlock** » Sun Jul 13, 2008 2:15 am

Brokenbone, there are two things that make working with 2da files a lot easier than you indicate: Excel* (tab & space deliminated import) and Winmerge -- http://winmerge.org/ . Computers were created to take the tedium out of our tasks.

* In place of Excel, you can use OpenOffice Spreadsheet program.

Mulu · Post by **Mulu** » Sun Jul 13, 2008 2:18 am

MorbidKate wrote:You say you've built some in NWN1 but the suggestion that building new servers from scratch and bringing them to life is somehow faster than getting a group together to make 1.69 functional is too stunning to contemplate.

Hard to say, really. It would depend on just how much effort it would require to make ALFA haks 1.69 compatible and bring in all the new content. The CEP team worked for six months to get CEP 1.69 compatible, and Barry is a god. All I had to do to update my mods to 1.69 was update them to CEP 2.1. Took about twenty minutes each. That's the advantage of using these community projects, they do the heavy lifting for you.

Besides, TSM went live with exactly 9 quests.... Live isn't that high of a hurdle. And quests can be imported, as can a lot of other content.

But, it looks like it's a moot issue. If updated old mods is preferable to building new ones, that's just less for me to do. I won't make my FR mod anywhere near as large if it's just for me. My build time just got cut at least in half. ALFA loses the new tilesets, or more accurately never gains them, but doesn't have to deal with transfer issues, and gets to the end goal faster.

Brokenbone · Post by **Brokenbone** » Sun Jul 13, 2008 2:31 am

Z: I agree, a "check out system" to be kept organized someplace or other, for done vs. not done work, makes sense for garbage like 2das. The main ones I think will be intimidating relate to stuff that the patch notes didn't detail except to say "yay new weapons, armor, placeables." Sometimes a few, sometimes dozens, sometimes hundreds. That could involve a lot of hunting around, and if we've been hit or miss on respecting "padding" over the years, ouch.

Also, thanks for the bad news re CODI functionality. I've used it only a bit, and really am not adroit with the controls it offers, but I've usually liked it better than Excel and similar programs.

WW: Thanks for the suggestions - - I don't have a lot of Excel skills, but the... "deliminated input thing" sounds helpful. If we've done a crappy job about respecting reserved/padded lines though, ouch. Maybe this will be helpful though for beast sized 2das, like placeables related ones (i.e., merge them and hope you don't lose any appearances, and gain as many of 300 new ones as possible, if some new ones get missed, they get fixed some later date).

Mulu · Post by **Mulu** » Sun Jul 13, 2008 2:34 am

Oh, and for those of you who play elsewhere in NWN1 where they've already updated to 1.69, you can avoid doing reverts: Just rename your current 1.68 NeverwinterNights file to "OLD Neverwinter Nights" (or whatever) and then reinstall the game from scratch, copy over all the files from the old NWN folder (portraits, haks, tlk) to the new install, and then update the new install to 1.69 (and CEP 2.1). That way you can have two installs on the computer at the same time. Just don't confuse your shortcuts.

Takes less time than you think, especially if the have the DVD version of the game. Beats the heck out of doing reverts every weekend.

I have players who play on PW's that are going to be slow to update (it isn't just ALFA), and I'm already updated, so I'm going through all these issues in my campaign.

Zelknolf · Post by **Zelknolf** » Sun Jul 13, 2008 4:21 am

Brokenbone wrote:Z: I agree, a "check out system" to be kept organized someplace or other, for done vs. not done work, makes sense for garbage like 2das.

Done and done. Imma use this post, and pray that Wynna doesn't beat me for cluttering her thread with gorey details.

Done
Everything (I win.)

For those interested, yeah. Big list. It sounds like those interested in whiddling away at that list know what they're doing. Any who want to help but don't know where to start can PM me. I'll put ya to good use.

Weapon models and the parts_*.2da files should probably be handled by people who've dealt with weapons and armor parts before, bein' that they're more evil.

MorbidKate · Post by **MorbidKate** » Sun Jul 13, 2008 3:59 pm

Mulu wrote:I won't make my FR mod anywhere near as large if it's just for me. My build time just got cut at least in half. ALFA loses the new tilesets, or more accurately never gains them, but doesn't have to deal with transfer issues, and gets to the end goal faster.

That's a rather curious way of looking at it Mulu. The way I see it 4 ALFA servers stay in touch with the rest of the community by being 1.69 compatible and it's DM teams gain the option of using the new tilesets and placeables in new areas or revamped older ones that would be worth the time to do. All without the need to rebuild 4 entire servers to get there.

And as for TSM going live with "just" 9 statics how long did it take to get to Live with minimal buggy statics and no loot drops? Seriously, getting NWN1 servers compatible is far less time consuming than total rebuilds which would never happen in the first place... and you know it.

Kate

Mulu · Post by **Mulu** » Sun Jul 13, 2008 5:25 pm

Yeah but it's a *lot* more fun to build new than it is to debug old. I'm rebuilding all of my old mods rather than updating, I only updated my current campaign mods.

And using new tilesets only in new areas on mature mods that aren't going to be getting many if any new areas really isn't getting the new tilesets.... Most areas will still be good old Bioware rural and such. You should download and play some mods using the new tilesets to get a good look at them, so you can see what I mean. There is also the issue of all the broken systems and doodads in the ALFA haks, including Murky's doors, dogs, herbs, etc. A clean slate rebuild eliminates all the errors in the hak set.

For me, I really like the new look and prefer a gameworld that is 100% new tilesets and no broken systems, and that's what I'm doing will all my mods over time. Apparently that isn't the norm here, so different strokes and all that. Though I was pretty amused by the accusations that I'm trying to start my own project, heh. Been there, done that, never doing that again.

I'm still a little surprised at the outright hostility to just making the suggestion.... Seriously ALFA, take a chill pill.

psycho_leo · Post by **psycho_leo** » Sun Jul 13, 2008 5:36 pm

Mulu wrote:
And using new tilesets only in new areas on mature mods that aren't going to be getting many if any new areas really isn't getting the new tilesets....

Says who? I've seen a crapload of new areas in NC in the past few months. Granted those were mostly used only for campaigns and such, but that's where I have most my fun anyway.

wvincenti · Post by **wvincenti** » Sun Jul 13, 2008 5:42 pm

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

-Bill

Zelknolf · Post by **Zelknolf** » Sun Jul 13, 2008 6:43 pm

I don't suppose anyone has that nifty old stack of bw_* series of haks that were put out way back when Bioware started on this patch? They'd make my work exactly one whole mess easier.