I am looking for help in modernizing a PW that went down in 2009 (and subsequently posted to the Vault). Myself and several other players from World of Amon have taken up the mantle of defenders of nostalgia.
I would like to update as many aspects as I can without rewriting the module. Some things will have to be rewritten anyway, and I’d be looking for advice on those as well.
Things I’d like help with (currently):
-Henchmen AI - I believe it’s using vanilla AI, though I can’t be sure.
-Spawn Scripts - Currently uses NWSS 2.4.4 - Replacing this seems daunting to me as it’s embedded in every spawn… Yet I can’t really understand the NWSS system in its entirety.
-Tileset - Currently CEP 2.2 (with no compatibility with 2.65+)
-Summon/Companion/Familiar - Most summons seem to be intended for a lvl 20 environment. Amon goes well beyond this and quickly outpaces the usefulness of currently scripted summons/companions/familiars
-Persistent Journal/Storage/Map (as much as possible) - Currently quest status’ are maintained by individual item/tokens per quest line.
-Classes/Spells - Would like to extend/upgrade the usefulness of what’s already present
I’d like to have somebody give me a really good short sales pitch for NWNX (server and client). I’ve done a lot of reading, and salivate over what it’s capable of… but I am a retired Marine and not a software developer and find it hard to convince the server admin of the benefits.
Mostly I’m looking for guidance (try this, not that… Oh, you have this script, well that’s not compatible with this). We’re on a fairly high end Windows server, maintained by a hardware IT professional, with a high speed business class internet. So the physical should not be considered a limitation.
Any help is better than the status quo, and I appreciate it all.
Thanks
Sknymick
If you want to modernize old PW I say install my unofficial patch.
BTW you are using NWN:EE right? If so, then you can kinda forget about NWNX if you want to host on windows anyway…
From what I saw, it is using vanilla AI though there are some edits from some henchman controll system (never heard of) and DMFI.
Either way, unless you want to switch into custom AI then installing community patch would help you immensively there.
I am not aware of any summon useful post 20 package. I never saw this as a problem, mages has another means to fight after lvl 20. And from summons epic mummy is still quite good and summons can be (ab)used even on epic levels at least as a meat shield. Familiars are usefull on all levels, animals are bit weaker. Also community patch will help you there to fix all the various bugs with familiars and animals such as missing creature weapons or special abilities on certain level. As for how to improve animals without actually modifying animals I would have some ideas from PW I used to work on…
definitely community patch - if you don’t have every single spellscript modified already then it is perfect opportunity to upgrade onto CPP spell engine. It will allow you to dynamically change spells almost in any way. Increase caster level? check, Change elementala damage type? check, increase DC ? check, make all spells automatically extended? check. There is probably nothing you can think of that cannot be done dynamically just by setting variable thus it is possible to grant that to certain player/class/item/feat/skill ranks/whatever. Also with CPP spell engine it is possible to re-code almost all spell related changes on PW without making edits into spellscripts (something I plan to make tutorial for).
As for classes, CPP adds Shou Disciple and Eye of the Gruumsh, they are bit controversal as opinions of their usefullness vary a lot one thinks they are useless other thinks they are overpowered, but if you want new options without using haks, it is possibility.
We are running both 1.69 and EE simultaneously. Using the same .mod file.
I would like to install custom Hench AI (in particular the Mod Builders Henchman Kit), but I don’t know which mods are compatible, and which are mutually exclusive. I don’t want to paint myself into a corner by implementing something, then not be able to expand, or have to root through scripts to dig out/change something installed.
This particular PW has a steep growing curve, that outpaced all summons. The creator wanted things to become epic, so mobs have more HP and more AB/Damage (still usually easy to hit though). Any summon/familiar you can get at a particular level will die within 2 rounds of combat, as the mobs and encounters are designed for intelligent party play (with adequate gear). With the reduction in the player base, people need to have access to companions that can survive in the harsh world. I’ve seen PWs with beefed up summons (in particular NeverSummer 4). I just don’t know how they did it.
I’m starting to get the feeling that I should use the Unofficial Patch. It sounds very enticing. I’ll pitch it to server admin. Is the CPP the same as the Unofficial Patch? Will both server and client have to have this installed?
I’d also like your take on the benefits and negatives of NWNX. I’ve seen you on the NWNX boards a bit too. I enjoy how engaged you are, and I’d like your opinion.
assuming you give a try to my unofficial patch then I would propose to revisit/remove all changes in AI scripts you have in module right now and try it as is, if you won’t be satisfied with AI from community patch you can install anything else
and then edit each blueprint manually, lot of work…
CPP is a shortcut given to my project as a whole, though recently a lot of ppls started reffering to it as unofficial patch because they doesn’t consider it to be community project (because they don’t like it and they think they are community) w/e. Community/unofficial patch or shadooow’s personal house rule pack, all the same. Clients doesn’t need it.
if you are running server on both NWN:EE and 1.69 you probably don’t want to have differences, so I would avoid nwnx because nwnx for nwn:ee is not directly supporting windows servers, also, and even though there is a workaround which they suggest, to use “docker” which is basically linux dedicated server + linux VM, the plugins for linux aren’t interchangable with plugins for windows 1.69 so you would end up with two different versions as you would have to code things differently for 1.69 and EE.
if I could convince the Server Admin to host both on VM Linux would that be worth it? And would it alleviate that problem? Or is the requirement to code for 1.69 and EE inherent in their versions?
I am not familiar with linux plugins but I think that neither linux plugins for 1.69 are interchangeable with plugins for nwn:ee, functions are using different names and not every function/plugin exists for nwn:ee
so that won’t help you and you end up with maintaining 2 modules one for 1.69 and one for nwn:ee - whether that is worth is up to you - in fact you will run into same issue when you will want to implement some nwn:ee new feature such as scaling or copying areas