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Messages - Acacea

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1
General Discussion / Re: NWN Enhanced Edition Information Compilation
« on: February 03, 2019, 04:43:48 pm »
(I've updated the OP with more current links/info, but it somehow did not get any shorter.)

2
Rumour Has It / Re: Gotta See A Tree About A Guy
« on: January 26, 2019, 10:05:08 pm »
Seems to be working alright. At least one thing has gone right today, if hours later than I would have liked :P

(8:30PST update, two halflings call it a night, perhaps tomorrow!)

3
Rumour Has It / Re: Gotta See A Tree About A Guy
« on: January 26, 2019, 06:53:20 pm »
Sorry for the lack of updates, I had to run to town  while stuff was running and even after returning it's hard to use these forums on my phone.

It seems like I've got so many different issues that it is just whack-a-mole trying to get going, heh. Unfortunately the dicey drive failed me and I lost a lot of stuff. NWN 1.69 is still alive, but not the haks (because the folder it pointed to for all my user files didn't make it), so I have to download them anyway... and my internal hard drive is giving me @#$%, too...

Anyway, I'm looking at shooting for 7pm PST at this point. Sorry to anyone who was planning on attending for the bouncing around :/ If something else explodes, you'll just have to go on a less tree-friendly trip without me!

4
Rumour Has It / Re: Gotta See A Tree About A Guy
« on: January 26, 2019, 12:04:45 pm »
AN UPDATE! I've reinstalled, but this restore looks like it is going to take hours. I suspect it doesn't help that I'm copying from a shady drive, but I've felt pretty gambly with my entire digital history in the last 48 hours, heh! Unfortunately, just downloading NWN itself for now would also take hours on my internet, so the haks on top of it would be eternal. It's faster just to let it restore.

Afternoon? Evening? I'm not sure what's convenient. :)

5
Rumour Has It / Re: Gotta See A Tree About A Guy
« on: January 26, 2019, 10:56:53 am »
FYI I'd mentioned computer problems on Discord but was pretty sure I could get going. It's at least running right now, I have some things partitioning and then a reinstall and a restore, so I am looking nervously checking the time :) I'm hoping it's done by 10. I don't know who was planning on attending but fingers crossed heh.

6
Rumour Has It / Gotta See A Tree About A Guy
« on: January 21, 2019, 01:47:12 pm »
Word gets around between this circle and that that a halfling is looking for a "tree-friendly" group to help escort a friend to and through the Great Forest for some manner of healing. "We've been to see the druids of the desert, we've been to a cradle of forgotten wilderness, and our only recourse seems to be the Great Oak!" Apparently ships are out of the question for some reason, making it potentially a year-long journey overland all the way from Arnax at the opposite end of the continent.

An oft-repeated addendum is that a mage who can levitate things is apparently high priority.  "Trust me, I've got it all figured out." There's a promise that everyone can keep anything found, but also the occasional odd "I will try to scrounge a lot of backup food for us, but I've been gathering feed for so long that my sleeves are fair bursting! At least I will never lack a bed..." remark.

PS no horses, please!


// Escort Mission From Arnax to Great Oak
// NPC is squishy, ill-tempered, and subject to sudden attacks of suicide
// Magic will occasionally be needed for some obstacles.
// I'd assume that any wizard of high enough level to be traveling on Belinara could have a Levitate banging around his spellbook somewhere.
// Looking at Saturday Jan 26 in the PST AM, maybe around 10, but could be shuffled around if needed.

7
Ask A Gamemaster / Re: New Character Submissions
« on: October 29, 2018, 11:14:11 pm »
Simple is good, hah! I'll try to tone down my usual flavor of wall of text :D Hope to see you all in-game, soon.

8
Ask A Gamemaster / Re: New Character Submissions
« on: October 29, 2018, 09:25:47 pm »
Yep, we are. I try to get them the same day, but sometimes when I'm in a different environment (OS/browser/device) I totally forget to check since it doesn't come up much... hehe.

I think you're probably best judge on the age! For the most part the general world and public facing writing aims to be family friendly, but obviously we've had quests/series/stories in the past that have sometimes dealt with more mature themes/plots as long as they kept within the lines. There's not a lot of DM activity lately (although WeepingLily ran a quest last week), so you generally always know who you are going adventuring with and can talk to your friends about which dwarven swears are not appropriate for an 8 year old, I guess :P

Usually I think everyone's pretty happy to see young spawnlings picking up the torch, though :)

9
Layonara Server / Re: NWN on Mac?
« on: October 06, 2018, 08:57:44 pm »
Yep, you can see here some of the info I was compiling for it when during beta. A lot of that is outdated, there have been further developments and new things, eg toolset works again in Linux with Wine. I meant to update later, but there was still a weekly dev patch at the time so I couldn't keep up :)

You can't use it to play on Layo, which is not running on EE and is still on version 1.69. I think this is still true:
Quote
I'd encourage anyone that wants to support NWN's future to buy EE (it's worth noting that Steam takes a big bite out of that if you get it from there), though obviously if you are only interested in NWN insofar as it involves Layo, don't rush to the bank because I think you'll be alright until further notice :)

I'm not a big fan of the OC, so if I were someone whose only interest in NWN was Layo and the OC, I would not buy it or recommend it -- provided I could actually run 1.69, which is of course not true for a lot of people on modern systems. I love NWN though, so I'm happy it was picked up and is being actively developed, again - especially by people pulled from the modding community.

What problems are people having on modern systems? We've got 1.69 running on modern systems here, core i7, nvidia 1070 ti and gtx, windows 10... haven't had any issues... I keep hearing about issues, but i've never seen them... can you explain?

People who like things to "just work", not "could not possibly get to work". There are lots of people that don't have 1.69 working, anymore. Can work, yes, "works automatically and without tweaking", not always and not for everyone. I'm fine with tweaking, hence why I continue with NWN forever and ever, but not everyone wants to deal with the various methods of running games on changing systems as they age.

10
Layonara Server / Re: NWN on Mac?
« on: October 03, 2018, 11:38:03 pm »
I've never used a mac; the last I heard running 1.69 on one needed Wine. (Since it's Not an Emulator, I guess that technically counts? :P )

11
Layonara Server / Re: NWN on Mac?
« on: October 03, 2018, 11:24:10 am »
Yep, you can see here some of the info I was compiling for it when during beta. A lot of that is outdated, there have been further developments and new things, eg toolset works again in Linux with Wine. I meant to update later, but there was still a weekly dev patch at the time so I couldn't keep up :)

You can't use it to play on Layo, which is not running on EE and is still on version 1.69. I think this is still true:
Quote
I'd encourage anyone that wants to support NWN's future to buy EE (it's worth noting that Steam takes a big bite out of that if you get it from there), though obviously if you are only interested in NWN insofar as it involves Layo, don't rush to the bank because I think you'll be alright until further notice :)

I'm not a big fan of the OC, so if I were someone whose only interest in NWN was Layo and the OC, I would not buy it or recommend it -- provided I could actually run 1.69, which is of course not true for a lot of people on modern systems. I love NWN though, so I'm happy it was picked up and is being actively developed, again - especially by people pulled from the modding community.

12
Ask A Gamemaster / Re: Server access / Character submission required?
« on: September 26, 2018, 11:27:35 am »
davidhoff's got it right :) Your old characters will still be there under whatever Bioware login you used back in the day. I've PMed you the server info and a link to a timeline. Welcome back!

13
General Discussion / Re: ok got a problem
« on: April 27, 2018, 11:02:37 pm »
Hey Rainstorff, I've sent you a PM with the server info. Feel free to ask here or there with any further questions!

(PS welcome back.)

14
General Discussion / Re: Summoner Character Build?
« on: April 10, 2018, 09:02:03 pm »
Yeah, vanilla NWN doesn't really do "summoners", especially since familiars aren't for fighting. Since anyone can cast the same summon as you, it doesn't really feel like building a summoner to me, if that makes any sense - vs building an enchanter, who actually needs to be able to beat SR and saves in order to succeed at enslaving minds. Depending on if you wanted the real concept behind summoning (ie "from beyond") or just the experience of having minions, you're either kinda stuck (because the RP build gives no real benefits or perks that help develop it) or going with something like Chazz suggested with a more generalized take than summoning per se.

(By default, arcane summons go off alignment. Remember that deity field and arcane devotion options exist to RP true devotion to a single deity, not just a cosmetic option or to get better stuff. Nowadays there are obviously less eyes in the sky and things going on, so it doesn't come up much, but on quest or about with a DM around you would be expected to RP that devotion and uphold the dogma you adopted!)

15
General Discussion / Re: Deleting Characters
« on: April 01, 2018, 11:53:25 pm »
Those requests go here. Dorg or orth are the only ones who can handle the deletions, somebody should see it after while :) (Don't forget your Bioware nick.)

16
Character Submissions / Re: Character Submission - Bolger
« on: March 26, 2018, 10:12:44 pm »
Okay, I'm back! Sorry for my slowness, I try to tackle these in the same day :\

So, with this being your first Evil character, we've hit a snag, I'm afraid... Evil is still a restricted alignment, so there's a pretty big "active" time commitment in place to quality (9 months). If you still wanted to go ahead with the concept, I was going to suggest a LN alignment instead, but I see that LN is not one of the allowed starting alignments for Deep Dwarves! (I'm double checking on the intent behind this one, since Sulterio is such a big deal with them, so I'm not a 100% on that.)

Would you be interested in a LN version of the character? Or was your heart set on Evil? :(

17
Character Submissions / Re: Character Submission - Bolger
« on: March 26, 2018, 12:43:44 pm »
Welcome back, and sorry for the delay. Need a notification or something for this forum  ???

So, I was digging around through your old characters, and it looks like this is your first evil one? Does that sound right? I was looking across two forums, so I'm not sure I missed any of your cast  :D

18
General Discussion / Re: NWN Enhanced Edition Information Compilation
« on: March 13, 2018, 01:17:31 am »
EE is will be released out of beta on Steam before the end of this month - March 27.

While this FAQ could probably get a couple updates, it's a pretty good summary of what will be included at release. Mainly, it's the EE itself: works on modern systems and resolutions, lots of  old bugs fixed and exploits closed, performance improvements, some glitter (the default shaders, with the exception of the SSAO shader, are pretty filtery), Steam Workshop support, NAT punching, etc. I hate to etc all of that, because it's easy to overlook, but for NWN veterans that aren't going to be all "aw, I haven't thought of this game in years", some of the most fingers-crossed parts are still in development (ie still a lot of hardcoding, can't add new shaders without replacing old ones or do anything scriptable with them yet, UI is an eternity away and toolset is still Windows only and doesn't work in wineAcacea 2019 update, this was fixed a couple patches from the time I wrote that, toolset works well with wine now).

They seem pretty committed to the longevity of NWN though, and they've been patching BG for 5 years, now. They see NWN's future more as a platform for people to make their own stories and content for, so I'm happy with this. They're also responsive to feedback; while I wasn't keen on them tackling a refresh of core assets (there's just so many things I'd rather them prioritize, I don't play NWN for the eyecandy), it was one of the most requested features, so that seems to be a long-term project they're doing.


(This was a WIP and still needs work, but does demonstrate the addition of normal/spec maps. PC model has also "had work done". I think things like this will be released on Workshop - and Vault, I'd assume - for now, so they'd be optional overrides. There are a LOT of objects/tiles/creatures in this game...)

Normal maps are in, which is pretty sweet. When you look at surfaces in games, whether objects or characters or whatever, most of the grooves and wrinkles and rivets and, well, "bumpiness" comes from bump/normal maps, not actual modeled geometry. Being able to fake detail on custom NWN models will be great. Specular maps, which define your highlight color and how glossy something is and where, could also make for some interesting changes. Both of these can also have some downsides in that they are new ways to overdo things, hah, and also that it will be awhile before there are many things taking advantage of this (so mixed quality additions).

Player and server-wise, I expect it will still be some time before most PWs migrate, and thus most of their players, etc, especially because a good chunk of that will be dependent on NWNX progress (currently Linux only, several plug-ins not yet ported, others merged into core, etc), which is a separate thing. I'd guess that most initial activity would be on nostalgia plays of the OC and downloading modules from the Workshop (of which there won't be too many to start), but I could be wrong. Mostly, I'm just really excited for NWN to have been adopted for the long haul. There are changes coming down the road that will make PW players lives easier, if nothing else - autodownloads are nice, and so is killing resource duplication wherever possible, like how every robe needs to be duplicated for every phenotype, blowing up hak sizes.

Once some kind of material system is in and proper shader-script communication, you could tackle seasons with the ability to change textures on the fly, or apply shaders to make leaves disappear or snow accumulate on roofs/ground, making skyboxes with moving sun/moon/stars, plus being able to properly scale PCs and objects ... my brain hurts. It'll probably be awhile before unhardcoding some of the deeply entangled things happen, but there's a whole lot of people waiting on it :P

I'd encourage anyone that wants to support NWN's future to buy EE (it's worth noting that Steam takes a big bite out of that if you get it from there), though obviously if you are only interested in NWN insofar as it involves Layo, don't rush to the bank because I think you'll be alright until further notice :)

19
General Discussion / Re: NWN Enhanced Edition Information Compilation
« on: March 06, 2018, 01:27:57 pm »
I keep intending to update this post as there's been more and more things happening on this front, but just haven't had the time! So much for my information compilation! I looked at editing it just now and the formatting went all weird, so I'll think about how to categorize information a little better for a rewrite in the future. For now, some updates and links:

  • The master server is back (Obviously these are EE-only servers!) There's been some vague assurances that if BD were to ever go out of business or otherwise not be able to maintain NWN, that there would be contingencies for the MS so that it never disappears like before.
  • Current roadmap for EE It's worth looking at the things that have already shipped.
  • Input board for commonly-requested features gauging community interest (you can vote on these)
  • Steam Workshop support is now in beta - if you have a beta copy of EE, you have a Steam Key. (Not sure how long this will be true.)
  • Some resource manager work needs to be done for non-Steam users for the same ease of downloading, but implementation is/was still up in the air.
  • Any requests regarding the toolset or UI are long-term projects
  • Many very cool things added that open up modding potential - normal and spec maps are in, some arbitrary limits are gone, scripting support for shaders is still in progress

There's still some bugs and breakage (beta is beta), but my hopes for EEs are generally pretty "low" - cleanup for modern systems and resolutions, cross-platform fixing, bugs, some "modern" features or quality of life changes. NWN is different though, and I appreciate greatly that they seem to recognize this and are thinking long-term adds that would tempt an existing community. This WIP Aribabe is a good example of a potential asset refresh using some of the engine changes they've made (though there are already some remixes of it), but it's important to note that just because some CC makers or servers may get the ability to go "higher quality" and skinmesh routes, doesn't mean anyone will have to. Other people are using low-poly models and shader capabilities to go in different directions*, which is awesome. The cool thing about that shot is not just the obvious "pixel" shader, but also the way an existing shader helps - generally areas at the bottom of cliffs or buildings or water edges and such are darkened manually in the texture itself, but an Ambient Occlusion shader is handling that here to good effect.

(I'm really happy with the shader potential, which is probably no surprise as I've jumped on every shader train that ever drove past NWN :D It's not the "vibrancy" or "high contrast" shaders that are exciting, it's that it supports shaders at all, which offers so much my mouth gapes stupidly open thinking about it.)

On the NWNX front, Windows support still languishes, waiting on a rewrite of a thing. This is a pretty major roadblock for Windows servers, but some people seem to just be rolling with the offered Linux containers. Several 1.69 plug-ins don't yet have equivalents in EE, though there's obviously also lots of new stuff.

*Yeah, that's a Quest for Glory attempt, if anyone recognizes the look. It's a childhood favorite, so I'm pretty excited about that too :P

20
General Discussion / I'm not at all familiar with
« on: December 20, 2017, 09:00:24 pm »
I'm not at all familiar with that ecosystem, sorry. NWN 1.69 and EE run on Fedora, though. :P

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