Hi all,
I didn’t know how to name the topic so I’ll explain. Anyone ever experimented with making interior areas made entirely from placeables? For example BCK comes to mind, in order for a no transition to happen when entering an interior. If so, how did the camera treat you and how much more/less work is it to make an entire module with no “proper” tiled interiors?
I experimented a bit with BCK-only interiors, using the invisible tiles from the vault:
Lava river inside a standard interior area: https://youtu.be/Ddc5wBcJQxw?t=53
Big forge, inside a standard interior area: https://youtu.be/Ddc5wBcJQxw?t=1022
Full BCK area: https://youtu.be/Ddc5wBcJQxw?t=1619
For the full area, I had to duplicate the BCK 2da entries, so I have a variant of each wall that can fade, so the player’s view is not obstructed too much (I only used it for high border walls).
A good thing to also know is that nwn2 handles much more smoothly a lot of identical placeables rather than many different placeables, so it’s better to use the base wall and duplicate it rather than using complex assembled walls from the BCK.
You will always a loading screen, since most of the loading time is used for loading placeable properties, textures, models, …
This looks so good! If I understand it right, you’ve created interior areas and placed invisible tiles on which you placed BCK, right? What I meant is similar, but I had in mind an exterior area with say a big building. The doors to this building are not area transitions, but the same exterior area… just behind a wall.
ps. There is some awesome work in that PW. The conversation UI and the UI that pops up when climbing down for example. Are these assets available elsewhere or just in the PW?
In Sarmates! some buildings made with BCK are accessible from an exterior area, actually they are part of the exterior area (see the gallery pictures 16 and 20, gallery link in the module description).
Advantage : no loading time, connected enemies outdoors and indoors in the same area , a bit more ‘realistic’…
Drawback : for the player when there is a roof, much better rendering in camera “FPS” mode, that many players dislike …
As exemple of an interior area made of placeables BCK and others, the spaceport terminal (image 23 of 16 Cygni Strike Back gallery; link in the module description). Landscape viewable from the “windows”, snow effect outside, no snow inside …
You will probably end up having a lot of camera obstruction issues, even with no roofs or fading placeables, and IMHO the forcing the FPS camera is a bad solution. One issue I typically had was that only the placeable right in front of the camera would fade, and the others wont, making the character appear as if you were looking at him through a very narrow window.
If you are building a single player campaign, you can probably “cut off” the building when the player enters, by hiding placeables (like with an invisibility VFX) from the building that can obstruct vision. I’m curious to see how this solution would look like, but the performances will probably be horrible for large or complex buildings.
So in general it might lead to reduced quality of play because of the camera issues? And the roof issue, if I would create such buildings is it better to leave roof out or make it fadeable?
@CromFr The thing you suggest sounds like a big undertaking to be honest. I would have to do a lot of micromanagement, right?
To clarify what exactly I had in mind: An exterior area (maybe 24x24) with many ruined buildings where the player can enter, walk up or down, walk on some rooftops etc.
If the roof is one single placeable, you shouldn’t have any issue if you make it fadeable. However is you build your roof using multiple placeables, only the placeables right between the camera and the player or selected object will be faded, and you will have very weird looking structures (like flying placeables because those that are supposed to hold it are faded)
For the cutting trick, you’d have to tag all your placeables to be cut with the same tag (ex: building_cutout), and then add a trigger inside the building for triggering the cut, with the following scripts:
// OnEnter
void main(){
object oPC = GetEnteringObject();
if(!GetIsPC(oPC))
return;
int i = 0;
object oPlac = GetObjectByTag("building_cutout", i);
while(GetIsObjectValid(oPlac)){
ApplyEffectToObject(DURATION_TYPE_PERMANENT, EffectVisualEffect(VFX_DUR_CUTSCENE_INVISIBILITY), oPlac);
oPlac = GetObjectByTag("building_cutout", ++i);
}
}
// OnExit
void main(){
object oPC = GetExitingObject();
if(!GetIsPC(oPC))
return;
int i = 0;
object oPlac = GetObjectByTag("building_cutout", i);
while(GetIsObjectValid(oPlac)){
effect e = GetFirstEffect(oPlac);
while(GetIsEffectValid(e)){
RemoveEffect(oPlac, e);
e = GetNextEffect(oPlac);
}
oPlac = GetObjectByTag("building_cutout", ++i);
}
}
I haven’t tested the script, but i hope it works ^^
One of the bck prefabs on the vault is exactly that, though not that large. It was always a goal of mine to use it, but it never fit purpose-wise into anything I was working on. I did expand the walkable size of the prefab though. I could track it down.
This giant foundry
Is technically an “interior” made in an exterior map, with giant placeables for walls and roof.
For a ruined building, you can have one damaged roof or no roof at all to mitigate the camera issue. What I did in a Sarmates! area (picture 6) . Sometines I even left the entire roof, not fadeable (picture 20). Just don’t do it often.
Too bad people do not like the FPS mode :-).
As far as I have experienced it, walking on rooftops do not bring any specific camera issue. You can find snaphots in Sarmates!, Al Andalus and 16 Cygni Strike Back galleries.
I’d be more interested in seeing someone make an interior look like an exterior, myself 
Interior area lighting works a little differently than exterior, so it might not produce the naturalistic results you may be expecting.