chevalier
Tue, 18th Apr '06, 2:12pm
Here are today's Neverwinter Nights 2 forum highlights, collected by NWVault (http://nwvault.ign.com). Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context. Bear in mind also that the posts presented here are copied as-is, and that any bad spelling and grammar does not get corrected on our end.
<font size="3" face="Verdana, Arial" color="#cc6600">Anthony Davis, Programmer</font>
Creature of the Week [Zombie] (http://nwn2forums.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.html?topic=477625&post=4079172&forum=95&highlight=)
<hr />lol i didn't notice that the typo i noticed was in the body of the description "sheet numbers"? =} lets not nitpick though hehe<hr />Yeah I reported that bug. Thank you.
<font size="3" face="Verdana, Arial" color="#cc6600">Rich Taylor, Programmer</font>
NWN2 GUI - Script Interaction (http://nwn2forums.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.html?topic=477320&post=4078987&forum=100&highlight=)
Just a couple answers real quick. I'll talk about this stuff much more when the game is out and I can point to examples in the existing .xml files, and stuff like that, since it'll make way more sense to see it in context.
But with regards to:
"Question: Is this scripting interaction the very stuff you as developpers used to create default shop/inventory/character sheet/journal/chat windows with?"
Only in a few limited cases. For example, the UI used to define companion AI behaviors uses some of this support to make it easy for end-users to add their own companion AI details and have them being settable via the companion behavior UI screen. There might be a couple other cases, but probably not a lot. It's more efficient for us to write specific engine callbacks for this stuff just to keep things as speedy as possible.
"So, between these couple options, we as builders would be able to control any gui screen, so long as we know the ScreenID, including the Character Level Up screens? I would love to be able to restrict the choices in the screen on the fly, e.g. PC hasn't visited their requisite trainer and paid their training costs - no class button available when they try to level up"
Somewhat. By default, most GUI screens will not be accessible to script functions. There will need to be some .ini changes in the user's 'UI' directory (Where all the XML files and textures are stored). So if you want to muck around with the user's GUI any, I think the end-user will have to download a UI pack for your module or something along those lines. This is something that might change a little over time. Especially if it gets to the point where GUIs could be created completely in script (Which definitely won't happen by release, but maybe in the future?)
"Is the Wordmap functionality using this GUI stuff, or is it a different system? There seems to be a fair bit of overlap, as a world map is essentially a custom GUI with clickable areas."
Sort've, but not really. The world map was made before much of the stuff I've described made it into the game, so it had to be done without this stuff. It might've been done slightly different now, but probably not by much. It is using a couple of its own custom script functions to get the job done, but I don't know the details since I didn't write it.
Again, I'll by happy to go over these things in way more detail when you can see them in context. All in due time. =)
-Akari
<font size="3" face="Verdana, Arial" color="#cc6600">J.E. Sawyer, NWN2 Lead Designer</font>
ATTN: PW people RE: module sizes: Part II (http://nwn2forums.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.html?topic=477412&post=4079404&forum=100&highlight=)
They were posted just after a dev chat. Anyone really interested in this sort of stuff isn't going to miss it. Come on.
<font size="3" face="Verdana, Arial" color="#cc6600">Anthony Davis, Programmer</font>
Creature of the Week [Zombie] (http://nwn2forums.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.html?topic=477625&post=4079172&forum=95&highlight=)
<hr />lol i didn't notice that the typo i noticed was in the body of the description "sheet numbers"? =} lets not nitpick though hehe<hr />Yeah I reported that bug. Thank you.
<font size="3" face="Verdana, Arial" color="#cc6600">Rich Taylor, Programmer</font>
NWN2 GUI - Script Interaction (http://nwn2forums.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.html?topic=477320&post=4078987&forum=100&highlight=)
Just a couple answers real quick. I'll talk about this stuff much more when the game is out and I can point to examples in the existing .xml files, and stuff like that, since it'll make way more sense to see it in context.
But with regards to:
"Question: Is this scripting interaction the very stuff you as developpers used to create default shop/inventory/character sheet/journal/chat windows with?"
Only in a few limited cases. For example, the UI used to define companion AI behaviors uses some of this support to make it easy for end-users to add their own companion AI details and have them being settable via the companion behavior UI screen. There might be a couple other cases, but probably not a lot. It's more efficient for us to write specific engine callbacks for this stuff just to keep things as speedy as possible.
"So, between these couple options, we as builders would be able to control any gui screen, so long as we know the ScreenID, including the Character Level Up screens? I would love to be able to restrict the choices in the screen on the fly, e.g. PC hasn't visited their requisite trainer and paid their training costs - no class button available when they try to level up"
Somewhat. By default, most GUI screens will not be accessible to script functions. There will need to be some .ini changes in the user's 'UI' directory (Where all the XML files and textures are stored). So if you want to muck around with the user's GUI any, I think the end-user will have to download a UI pack for your module or something along those lines. This is something that might change a little over time. Especially if it gets to the point where GUIs could be created completely in script (Which definitely won't happen by release, but maybe in the future?)
"Is the Wordmap functionality using this GUI stuff, or is it a different system? There seems to be a fair bit of overlap, as a world map is essentially a custom GUI with clickable areas."
Sort've, but not really. The world map was made before much of the stuff I've described made it into the game, so it had to be done without this stuff. It might've been done slightly different now, but probably not by much. It is using a couple of its own custom script functions to get the job done, but I don't know the details since I didn't write it.
Again, I'll by happy to go over these things in way more detail when you can see them in context. All in due time. =)
-Akari
<font size="3" face="Verdana, Arial" color="#cc6600">J.E. Sawyer, NWN2 Lead Designer</font>
ATTN: PW people RE: module sizes: Part II (http://nwn2forums.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.html?topic=477412&post=4079404&forum=100&highlight=)
They were posted just after a dev chat. Anyone really interested in this sort of stuff isn't going to miss it. Come on.