@Proleric thank you very much!
The model update for NWNEE was absolutely superb, not just the character models but the armors, so much detail and just wow. I can see why updating creature models would be a future goal.
Tile sets would be a good area to work with as well. The ability to change the size of the area would be a good functionality.
Placeables, I can only think of the possibility to change the scale like with creatures.
It would be so good as well if you could scale a creature in an area and was able to then add it to the pallet at that scale, rather than or in addition to the creature large: [250] thing. This is useful if you want a super large creature, maybe 8 times the size. That leads on to the possibility of expanding the scaled invisible objects.
Some creatures become really strange when scaled up like the bat and demilich model, they go way up in the air. It would be nice to have an upscaled version with the bat, demilich and other similar models to be closer to the ground for better scaling.
Those are some of my experiences in those areas, but your builders will have much much more Iām sure!
Since EE added scaling functionality, there arenāt many reasons to ever include different size of placeables. Well unless it doesnāt scale walkmesh either - untested.
Even the usage of differently sized creatures dropped a bit, but the NWN-EE scaling is still imperfect and doesnāt scale creature hitbox so differently sized npcs can still be useful sometimes.
Anyway if you didnāt know, in EE toolset you can scale things by selecting them in area and then holding CTRL and using mouse wheep up to make them larger or down to make them smalller.
Different size placeable models still have their uses. Scaling only works with non-static placeables and users in Discord have reported various performance issues in EE with large numbers of non-static placeables in the same area. Unfortunately, I donāt have specific numbers to share on how many non-static placeables you can have before encountering issues.
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It only scales/moves/rotates the visuals and not the placeableās walkmesh. Thatās why the function is called SetObjectVisualTransform(). You can end up with placeables that can be walked through. Great for illusions, not so much for everything else. Different sizes are still needed.
TR
And you also have the drawing distance issue for being non static plcs (walls, rocks)
I see, I havenāt run into this problem with placeables yet so I thought maybe the walkmesh is scaled also. I guess that since I am only scaling upwards and not by that much, it is not a problem (which applies to creatures too - scaling down is a problem).
@Pstemarie @Tarot_Redhand @Baireswolf @Shadooow
Never had big problems with hit boxes unless I made extremely changes to the scale. Most of the time itās how well the hit boxes are made.
The EE scaling feature is something Iāve used sometimes, but in reality, usually I just use the CEP INV and tail models once the scale is known.
If you wanted to make a giants lair or a pixie den for example, itās useful to scale placables. The NWN2 toolset was much better at this (thereās even an example of this being done in the giants cave in NWN2 SOZ) but scaling creatures more than 5x was a problem.
Skyrims creation kit is the same, worse actually, you canāt scale things more than about 1.2 times before the hitbox starts breaking.
I feel dumb to backtrack on my own suggestion (why did I suggest that??), but dare I say, itās bad practice to drastically scale stuff unless the software scales collisions and hit boxes really well, or you have a system like CEP which is the best system Iāve experienced.
The best practice to make a super huge or tiny creature variant is just to make another model.
It would be nice to be able to scale placables, just got to know the limits of the game.
I am not sure what are you talking about.
Do you mean these invisible appearance models for creatures? If so then this is not CEP doing, this was added in patch 1.69, CEP just obviously contains more appearances to use via tail.
And to be honest, this is the worst mechanism for scaling we have. It has numerous issues, from creature height, to incorrect creature sizes defined in appearance.2da, the ugly glow (which you can turn off, but that is not a fix but workaround and many players prefer the npcs to highlight it is more convenient) and animations issues. EDIT: oh and I forgot about weapons not fitting creature hands obviously. And there is more - inability to set correct blood, shadows, etc. etc.
This is really just a hindmost choice for those who donāt know how to scale models themselves using NWmax or blender.
Guys, very interesting, but way off topic - more like toolset feature requests?
Iāll close this discussion for now. Watch this space for the CEP 2 Creature Update project.
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