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NWN2 hard-coding & PnP slots


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Crosspost from NWVault. Relevant to the forum, Obsidian, NWN2, and the evolution of PnP.

 

Posted by chris421 at 2007-07-05 21:55:19 Voted 9.50 on 07/05/07

 

Love the new skin. Charlie, given you're probably NWN2's most experienced custom UI'er to date, what do you think the feasibility of overriding Obsidian's item slots with a system that follows closer to PnP standards? Here's what we're supposed to have:

 

FACE: Goggles, lenses, masks, spectacles, patches, third eyes.

THROAT: Amulets, badges, brooches, collars, medals, medallions, necklaces, pendants, periapts, scarabs, scarves, torcs.

BODY: Armor, robes.

HANDS: Gauntlets, gloves.

WAIST: Belts, girdles, sashes.

FEET: Boots, sandals, shoes, slippers.

HEAD: Circlets, crowns, hats, headbands, helmets, phylacteries

SHOULDERS: Capes, cloaks, mantles, shawls.

TORSO: Shirts, tunics, vests, vestments.

ARMS: Armbands, bracelets, bracers.

RING #1:

RING #2:

 

I know it would be a pain to manually update and segregate a bunch of item UTIs. But if one could 'fix' the back-end Constants, scripts, functions and 2DAs, would it be much a stretch to represent the new slots in a custom UI?

 

Posted by charlievale at 2007-07-06 11:35:21

@chris421

 

Thanks for the vote and compliments.

 

For what you are proposing (changing the slot system to be more like PnP AD&D) I can see a few technical obstacles from a UI point of view. Primarily: how to get the item being equipped / unequipped. A lot of the UI relies on built in functions. It is easy to add new things to the UI from your own scripts or to rearrange the appearance of existing functionality. Changing existing functionality is generally much harder. I think what you are proposing would be achievable in some form.

 

For me this is not a project that really interests me. 'Realism' and 'More like PnP AD&D' are big turn offs for me - though they are obviously of importance to many others in the community. I won't commit myself to working on this project.

 

You probably realise that you are proposing a fairly complex change to the game. There are likely to be many side effects to this proposal: what happens when the engine tries to render two head items (head & face)? What happens to scripts that cycle through inventory slots? I'm not saying you shouldn't simply because it looks difficult - just be aware that you are trying to change something that is fairly fundamental to how a lot of other parts of the game work. I suggest that if UI is not your area of expertise, you try to get this working from script & conversation first. It is generally true that conversation scripts can be adapted to be called from the UI latter.

 

Good luck & cheers

 

Posted by chris421 at 2007-07-07 23:33:46 Voted 9.50 on 07/05/07

 

Turned off by trying to promote the rules which ultimately piqued enough interest to create this, along with hundreds of other similar titles globally over the past 20+ years??? PnP is still pretty dang popular you know. But to each his/her own.

 

Anyway, it's impossible. Without decompiling and writing my own ManagedElectron.dll (which would be illegal), Obsidian's hardcoded inventory slot references ruin any chance of doing this via a simple combo of UI XML, 2DA and function changes. I tried.

 

For a "data driven" game, they sure hardcode the @&*! out of things. :thumbsup:

post-21377-1183877353_thumb.jpg

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Posted by charlievale at 2007-07-08 14:17:59

What about just making the creature slots available to the player? If you renamed them to be the face and arm slots, I think you could get some of the functionality you are after.

 

Alternatively you could have players equip their items to a bag (of holding) and then copy the properties to a creature slot. With a UI, and replacing the bag with a hidden container in the module you might even make it seamless.

 

As this discussion is not really related to my UI, please email me charlievale at gmail dot com to discuss this further. Alternatively start a thread in the bioware forums and PM me the link.

 

cheers

 

Basically the game was too new (or I was too lazy). But I had a similar plan way back then.

 

It'd leave the UI relatively unchanged except for those three new (mask, clothing, and hands) inventory slots. Give your new players (and force-equip) their three uniquely tagged invisible 1-slot, weightless bags onenter of the module.

 

I guess what the bag approach would break is every cursed item, disarming script, pickpocket, equip/unequip, and iterative slot checking function in the game. :brows:

 

Considered using the creature slots for extra player ones as well. But those I believe have specific item type rules which allow only normal weapon items or creature weapon items...just like you can't mount a helmet to your feet. Would take some kludging of baseitems.2da to fix this. But not impossible within the current 5-bit item slot scheme.

 

There is the oddball chance your player-race actually has an existing claw or bite attack already in one of those slots though, which would fall into inventory the moment they put something in them, if you didn't prevent this via a special IP intercept script. Curious how this would work for druids wild-changing.

 

Still though, mapping hands to primary creature claw slot, mask to creature bite, and clothing to creature hide oddly enough--makes sense. A Pit Fiend monk would just have to deal with not being able to equip Fists of Balance. Boohoo.

 

Best way is still for Obsidian to commit to ripping those hardcoded constants out of their DLL and use the damn 2DAs like the rest of us. With 2da caching working much better now, there's little excuse.

 

 

Thanks again for the insight!

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Wait, how is this relevant to this forum?

 

Saying that it is relevant doesn't really change anything, right? I fail to see what this is doing in PnP.

kirottu said:
I was raised by polar bears. I had to fight against blood thirsty wolves and rabid penguins to get my food. Those who were too weak to survive were sent to Sweden.

 

It has made me the man I am today. A man who craves furry hentai.

So let us go and embrace the rustling smells of unseen worlds

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It's relevant because he's talking about NWN2 staying true to PnP, jackass.

 

Well, it's a little relevant at least. :D

Fionavar's Holliday Wishes to all members of our online community:  Happy Holidays

 

Join the revelry at the Obsidian Plays channel:
Obsidian Plays


 
Remembering tarna, Phosphor, Metadigital, and Visceris.  Drink mead heartily in the halls of Valhalla, my friends!

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Yeah, and quite a bit relevant to General Gaming. :bat:

kirottu said:
I was raised by polar bears. I had to fight against blood thirsty wolves and rabid penguins to get my food. Those who were too weak to survive were sent to Sweden.

 

It has made me the man I am today. A man who craves furry hentai.

So let us go and embrace the rustling smells of unseen worlds

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Yeah, it would at least get more substantial posts in general. That or the Bioware modding forums. :bat:

Fionavar's Holliday Wishes to all members of our online community:  Happy Holidays

 

Join the revelry at the Obsidian Plays channel:
Obsidian Plays


 
Remembering tarna, Phosphor, Metadigital, and Visceris.  Drink mead heartily in the halls of Valhalla, my friends!

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True enough.

 

I'll ask a mod.

 

Edit: Ehhehe done

Edited by Musopticon?
kirottu said:
I was raised by polar bears. I had to fight against blood thirsty wolves and rabid penguins to get my food. Those who were too weak to survive were sent to Sweden.

 

It has made me the man I am today. A man who craves furry hentai.

So let us go and embrace the rustling smells of unseen worlds

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  • 1 month later...

wow, thanks so much for moving that post. this whole 'internet thing' is way too complicated for my dim wits to know what's relevant to what subfolder of a f'n game site. thank geebus for ego-driven, pseudo-academic forum Nazis.

 

7,339 posts in 2 years. mighty busy RL life you have there, Mus. I wonder why they haven't made you a moderator so you could've just deleted the post yourself.

 

 

Edit: Ehhehe--wanker.

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That is not, Chris. If we add in all my posts from my varioous alts here I think I might be around 20,000. :thumbsup:

Murphy's Law of Computer Gaming: The listed minimum specifications written on the box by the publisher are not the minimum specifications of the game set by the developer.

 

@\NightandtheShape/@ - "Because you're a bizzare strange deranged human?"

Walsingham- "Sand - always rushing around, stirring up apathy."

Joseph Bulock - "Another headache, courtesy of Sand"

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Edit: Ehhehe--wanker.

I sorta thought I was helping you, getting this thread read, since General Gaming has about thrice the viewers of PnP.

 

Now I see that's not the case, rather you are more inclined to mock my past mistakes from a supposed high horse you don't possess - being that you spend time on the internet to campaign for better pnp-crpg feature interchangeability. In other words, you probably think Lockwood is an artist

kirottu said:
I was raised by polar bears. I had to fight against blood thirsty wolves and rabid penguins to get my food. Those who were too weak to survive were sent to Sweden.

 

It has made me the man I am today. A man who craves furry hentai.

So let us go and embrace the rustling smells of unseen worlds

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Thanks for stripmining my faith on humanity once again.

 

See what happens when you have faith. :)

Murphy's Law of Computer Gaming: The listed minimum specifications written on the box by the publisher are not the minimum specifications of the game set by the developer.

 

@\NightandtheShape/@ - "Because you're a bizzare strange deranged human?"

Walsingham- "Sand - always rushing around, stirring up apathy."

Joseph Bulock - "Another headache, courtesy of Sand"

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