Neverwinter Nights Forum Update
Posted Tuesday, September 24, 2002 - 16:24 CET by Z-Layrex

David Gaider, Designer

Multiple Hak Paks: It's hard to say whether multiple hak paks will become a reality. The Live Team has had some discussions on possible ways to make hak paks easier to use and download for the end-user... but exactly what will end up being possible depends on the outcome of investigations by the programmers. The Live Team is committed to just that, however. Considering what they've got planned for the creature hak paks, the actual solution may be much better than you expect.

Favorite Servers: Favorite servers is a function that's being added, as I recall. Not sure if it's in 1.25 or not, though.

Don Moar, Tools Programmer

Editing ERF Files: The Hak Pak Editor in the \utils folder is also capable of manipulating .erf files, although I think there is a bug that always forces the file extension to .hak (you can easily rename it, however). I'll see if I can get that fixed sometime.

Derek French, Assistant Producer

AC Bug: No workaround that we know of, but the bug is fixed and will be in the 1.25 patch. We will probably have a Beta build of the 1.25 for you next week, either Monday or Tuesday.

Trent Oster, Producer

Animated Textures: It can be done, but it is ugly. We were using animating textures here and there in the particle system. It requires a .txi file to set up the parameters. I can't really describe the method here since I'm pretty rusty at it but hopefully I've pointed you in the right direction.

Poly Limit: During the development of NWN we limited ourselves to under 1000 polys for a character, under 500 for a tile and as low as possible with placeable objects. We also said we wouldn't use more than 3 placeable objects per tile. Some creatures we planned to use in groups (like goblins) we modeled well below our limits to ensure reasonable performance. I think Mr. X gave a good summary of some low poly modeling tactics which are sure to help.

Tilesets: The limitation in tileset variety is indeed due to computer system resources and trying to maintain a "reasonable" minimum spec. computer for the game. We have a limit to the varieties of tile types in each tileset to keep the system memory / texture memory reasonable. The combined tilesets can get around this my requiring better systems.