NWN Neverwinter Nights (NWN & NWN2) Modules Thread

[Gargaune]

Guys, is WCoC broken on the EE? I thought I'd give the module another chance but I'm at the jousting training and the post-tilt cutscene gets stuck every time, my PC is riding back along the list for another go and then teleports back to the far end and soft-locks there. The scripting was always wonky as all hell in that module, but I definitely got past that point in the DE. Anyone know of a fix?

 

[Shuruga]

Guys, is WCoC broken on the EE? I thought I'd give the module another chance but I'm at the jousting training and the post-tilt cutscene gets stuck every time, my PC is riding back along the list for another go and then teleports back to the far end and soft-locks there. The scripting was always wonky as all hell in that module, but I definitely got past that point in the DE. Anyone know of a fix?

I recall having the same issue on EE; I'm afraid I don't know of a fix. I only have EE so I'm afraid I've never finished the module. Sorry I can't be more help...

 

[ds]

Guys, is WCoC broken on the EE? I thought I'd give the module another chance but I'm at the jousting training and the post-tilt cutscene gets stuck every time, my PC is riding back along the list for another go and then teleports back to the far end and soft-locks there. The scripting was always wonky as all hell in that module, but I definitely got past that point in the DE. Anyone know of a fix?

Happened to me to but not every time - was able to complete the module last year. But there have been EE updates since I played it so it's possible they broke it even more.

 

[Gargaune]

I recall having the same issue on EE; I'm afraid I don't know of a fix. I only have EE so I'm afraid I've never finished the module. Sorry I can't be more help...

Frankly, I don't think you're missing much, I did play farther on the DE a few years back and it was very rough all around, just lost interest eventually. It's why I was so surprised it made the final PM cut over DoD.

Happened to me to but not every time - was able to complete the module last year. But there have been EE updates since I played it so it's possible they broke it even more.

The only time it hasn't happened is when I got unhorsed. Didn't get to unhorse my opponent in my attempts last night, so I suppose I could try savescumming it and see if it works that way, but I have doubts. If I can't find a way around it, this will be the first module that's actually broken for me on the EE, which wouldn't be too surprising given the state of WCoC's scripting. I think the Vault crew were messing around with a "movement teleport fix" in the last two patches, so I wonder whether that might have something to do with it, either that or some collision/pathfinding glitch.

 

[Gargaune]

Must've tried like twenty times, the only way to be sure I don't get stuck is to get unhorsed or unhorse the opponent, meaning the return cutscene doesn't play, and the one time I managed the latter I still had a bug where the announcer looped and cried "No score!" as if a second bout had played out. All other attempts and outcomes, I only got the return cutscene to execute correctly once.

What a bloody mess, this scripting. I'll have to see if I can muster the patience to savescum my way through two KOs in a row. Don't suppose anyone's got a cheat sheet for the jousting positions? It's no fun trying to suss out the tactics when you've gotta Alt+F4 after every failed attempt.

P.S. Nevermind, managed it at last.

 

[Gargaune]

Great, there's a second set of jousting matches. Motherfucker.

 

[Shuruga]

Great, there's a second set of jousting matches. Motherfucker.

Great example of why it'd be nice to be able to open up the official campaigns in the toolset. I understand why they don't let you, but... ouch.

 

[Pikoman]

Just tried out Swordflight finally and I can see why it's so highly regarded. You can see it's going to be great module compared to its peers from the first chapter alone when you see the little things such as alignment shifts being integrated heavily as well as skill checks plus the writing being pretty IMO. I realize that a lot of modules have those features and they aren't exactly difficult to implement, but I've been often disappointed with how lazy some module creators are with those sort of things. There's so much potential in the Aurora for roleplaying reactivity and the like, but people seldom focus on those things in particular instead opting to go heavy on the hack and slash - don't mean to criticize dudes who've done them for free in their spare time of course, but yeah.

So yep, it's good that Swordflight has so much reactivity even if it's heavy on hack and slash, I was pleasantly surprised just by the wererat quest at the beginning plus the Evil shift and prompt telling me that I stole from an innocent guy amongst other things afterwards. Small things like that are a really big plus in my book, dunno if I'll ever finish the entire module since Imma be real - I suck at NWN mechanically, but we'll see. For now Swordflight scratches my itch for great mods after I was left a bit hanging in that regard after finishing ADWR and not finding another module with similar quality in regards to RP options.

What are some of your favourites when it comes to RP heavy mods as well as the more innovative or interesting ones, boasting features that aren't normally seen such as that fun little mystery oriented module with a time limit which name eludes me currently?

 

[Pikoman]

Must've tried like twenty times, the only way to be sure I don't get stuck is to get unhorsed or unhorse the opponent, meaning the return cutscene doesn't play, and the one time I managed the latter I still had a bug where the announcer looped and cried "No score!" as if a second bout had played out. All other attempts and outcomes, I only got the return cutscene to execute correctly once.

What a bloody mess, this scripting. I'll have to see if I can muster the patience to savescum my way through two KOs in a row. Don't suppose anyone's got a cheat sheet for the jousting positions? It's no fun trying to suss out the tactics when you've gotta Alt+F4 after every failed attempt.

P.S. Nevermind, managed it at last.

Yeah, jousting and horse/mount mechanics are generally a mess to script and add from what I've been told and seen. A lot of the PWs I've played and SP modules don't implement mounts at all for a reason.

 

[Gargaune]

Great example of why it'd be nice to be able to open up the official campaigns in the toolset. I understand why they don't let you, but... ouch.

You can and I have, all you gotta do is copy the "wc_*" hak packs from inside your install directory's /data/hk/ folder into your user's /hak/ folder and Neverwinter Nights - Wyvern Crown of Cormyr.nwm from /data/nwm/ into your user's /modules/ and change its extension to .mod. You can then open it up in the Toolset and have a look around. There's also a .tlk file but it wasn't relevant in this case.

But there's two problems:

1) Everything in WCoC is externalised to the haks, including areas and scripts (was wrong, see below), so I'm not even sure what exact hoops I'd have to jump through to edit those resources in place. You'd have to import them into the module without breaking references, edit them and then inject them back into the original haks.

2) Even if you can edit them, the jousting logic is an absolute quagmire. I actually made a little patch hak that let you spawn an item with dialogue which would correctly execute the first joust's ending cinematic, but there's other quest variables and processes that get set by the joust matches themselves, so it didn't make clean progress through all the pertinent stages.

I was pleasantly surprised just by the wererat quest

I think the troll is my favourite puzzle in any cRPG. Not blowing smoke up anyone's ass, it's just a great instance of an organic, unmarked puzzle that invites you to use your brain naturally.

I suck at NWN mechanically, but we'll see.

Oh, you'll really see beginning with the finale of Chapter 2.

Yeah, jousting and horse/mount mechanics are generally a mess to script and add from what I've been told and seen. A lot of the PWs I've played and SP modules don't implement mounts at all for a reason.

Yep, even in later implementations, horses are an absolute pain in the ass, both design and scripting-wise. There's a reason TotM only gave you one mounted setpiece, and even that forced me to reload once.

In this case, however, it's the overly elaborate and insufficiently robust cutscene. My guess at this time is that it's either the placement of the arena's central waypoint, which is actually just on the other side of the list, that's causing a pathfinding failure (there was some change to that code ages ago), or just a race condition somewhere. The joust cutscenes are stacked with manual delays, so it's easy to imagine a minor handling change would make the whole thing utterly shit itself.

 

[Shuruga]

Thanks for that -- I had no idea (obviously) that you could get into those modules, but yeah, it sounds like a pain. I suppose it is no surprise that it'd be too much to ask to have something easily decipherable such that you could insert a simple script that allows you to jump past the jousting scene entirely with all relevant flags set to allow you to continue smoothly.

 

[Gargaune]

Thanks for that -- I had no idea (obviously) that you could get into those modules, but yeah, it sounds like a pain. I suppose it is no surprise that it'd be too much to ask to have something easily decipherable such that you could insert a simple script that allows you to jump past the jousting scene entirely with all relevant flags set to allow you to continue smoothly.

A simple stopgap would be to hack the joust so you always unhorse your opponent, thus allowing you to progress without the return cutscene and it should be a single edit to one script. Just save the script under a different name, rename it externally and inject it back into the hakpack. But I'd have to track down where that result gets returned, which would be quite the pain in the ass.


P.S. Just for the record, now all .nwm modules are like that. For instance, you can edit SoU just fine by changing it to .mod and then back to .nwm. I don't know why the DLA crew externalised so much to .hak files for WCoC, maybe for patching or version control?

 

[Gargaune]

Okie-dokes, found the fucker! It's dla_i0_joust, I've rigged the DLA_DoOutcome() function to have the PC always unhorse his opponent and it seems to be working. There's one snag, though, digging through the scripting it turns out there's a specific story encounter with some preset outcomes which I'm not sure how to interpret yet, I'll have to progress to that stage and see what can or has to happen there.

Also, I was wrong about the hak contents earlier, the areas and dialogue are externalised but the scripts are internal to the module so I was able to recompile the library and just replace the module file for now. Turns out I still don't have a very good grasp on what does and does not get baked into the save file.


EDIT: Well, I finished the module and my bodge worked, either that special case isn't used quite how the scripting suggested or It Just Works™. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how I could package this for sharing in a way that didn't involve all the rigamarole of opening up the .nwm to import the edited script - redistributing official modules isn't permitted and patch haks/overrides have lower priority than module content.

 

[Shuruga]

I've never once watched a video of someone playing a video game, but if you re-enacted the process by which you worked this out, on video, with a dash of sliding into madness*, then explained to the viewer that you were committing your subsequent playthrough to video so others could see how the module is completed, I'd watch it.

*Like This

 

[The Jester]

Isn't "Neverwinter Nights : Blades of Netheril - Chapter 1 : Doom of Icewind Dale" a bit too long for a title?

 

[Gargaune]

I've never once watched a video of someone playing a video game, but if you re-enacted the process by which you worked this out, on video, with a dash of sliding into madness*, then explained to the viewer that you were committing your subsequent playthrough to video so others could see how the module is completed, I'd watch it.

I don't think it'd be suitable for YouTube, maybe PornHub. Nah, it wasn't the end of the world, started with the dialogue and dug around until I traced it into the include, fortunately the main joust functions are properly written into a single library. I can share the hack if you like, it's okay to apply if you're comfortable with the Toolset.

Isn't "Neverwinter Nights : Blades of Netheril - Chapter 1 : Doom of Icewind Dale" a bit too long for a title?

How about "Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition: The Blade of Netheril - Chapter 1: Doom of Icewind Dale" instead?

 

[Shuruga]

I can share the hack if you like, it's okay to apply if you're comfortable with the Toolset.

Thanks -- I appreciate the offer but I doubt the module will bubble up to the top of my backlog for a while. I'll hit you up if/when it does down the line, though!

 

[the mole]

new to the game, zen archer seems like a fun meme for a first playthrough 1 level monk 39 level ranger

I read somewhere that you can only take 3 classes, so I was thinking I'd do 1 monk, 25 ranger, 1 wizard, 13 arcane archer but I guess that isn't possible

does the dex and wisdom stack for bow hit chance? I'm guessing it does for ac just like in pathfinder

 

[the mole]

Isn't "Neverwinter Nights : Blades of Netheril - Chapter 1 : Doom of Icewind Dale" a bit too long for a title?

no it seems fine

 

[luj1]

Just tried out Swordflight finally and I can see why it's so highly regarded

Better than most commercial RPGs

Especially new ones

 

[Gargaune]

I read somewhere that you can only take 3 classes

You can mod it in the EE with a .2da edit but I've never looked at it myself. luj1, maybe you can advise.

does the dex and wisdom stack for bow hit chance?

No, the Zen Archery feat means that your ranged attacks will use either your Dex or your Wis modifier, whichever's higher.

 

[Lacrymas]

You can have more than 3 classes now, yes, but you'll have to google that shit.

 

[luj1]

I read somewhere that you can only take 3 classes

You can mod it in the EE with a .2da edit but I've never looked at it myself. luj1, maybe you can advise.

You can multiclass into 8 classes now. Personally I use 4 instead of the default 3. It's done via ruleset.2da with a mere text edit

I also suggest these modifications:

- removed EXP penalty for multiclass (pick any race you like) (via classes.2da)
- enabled maximum HP per level from level 1 (via game options)
- enabled natural 1 and 20 (critical failure and critical success) (via game options)

I consider this mandatory for playing NwN

 

[the mole]

I settled on 1 monk, 9 cleric, 30 ranger

 

[Pikoman]

I think the troll is my favourite puzzle in any cRPG. Not blowing smoke up anyone's ass, it's just a great instance of an organic, unmarked puzzle that invites you to use your brain naturally

It's really cool that the mod has great puzzles as well, as I've said earlier - the Aurora has a lot of capability to add a plethora of interesting ideas and mechanics, imaginative puzzles being of those things, and it's always welcome to see a module creator implement such features well.

As for the difficulty of Chapter 2 you alluded to, admittedly it's a daunting prospect for me, not gonna lie, that's one of the reasons I'm gonna put on hold Swordflight for a bit, tinkering on a fun yet powerful build (thinking of LE Monk/Rogue) plus I want to finish up some other stuff on my backlog, namely the second part of the Return to Ravenloft mod, big fan of the setting in general. The first part was decent, hopefully the second chapter is much better though.

Better than most commercial RPGs

Especially new ones

Might be the case, though NWN has its own faults which a fan module would be unable to fix - as much as I love the game, having sunk countless hours in it via PWs and singleplayer. Swordflight seems like an all-arounder CRPG good or even excellent in the main relevant areas, unlike most of the new commercial releases which are either bad/uninspired all around or tunnel vision themselves into a singular design philosophy, leaving the other traditional aspects of a good CRPG sorely lacking in quality, so I can definitely understand where you're coming from.