Problem with Selecting Halfelf Portraits in Toolset

[Ken_Cotterill]

When changing an NPC’s portrait in the Toolset, I’m encountering strange behaviour if I select Halfelf for the Race.

When selecting Human for Race, humans are shown first; others (gnomes, dwarves, etc.) follow. When selecting Elf for Race, its much the same: elves shown first; others follow.

However, when selecting Halfelf, humans and elves show up first. I’m not sure which of the images are actually halfelves, but the ones that showed up first were the same humans and elves that I saw before.

I added some portraits using a hak pak. For the race column in the 2DA I used: elf 1; halfelf 4; human 6. Now, when selecting Human Race, my humans appear at the end of the first batch of humans and elves appear at the end of all the portraits (but there’s no halfelves there). Similarly, when selecting Elf Race, my elves were at the end of the first batch and humans right at the end (again, no halfelves). When selecting Halfelf Race, my humans and elves were at the end of first batch of those; no halfelves anywhere.

When I unselected the Race checkbox, all my portraits (except 2 flagged as plot) appeared right at the end. The 2 plots ones do appear if I choose the Plot radiobutton.

And, in another twist, when clicking on any of my humans or elves, the display area on the left is completely filled (I’m guessing L-size); however, when clicking on one of my halfelves, the display area is only partially filled with the surrounding area being just black (I’m guessing M-size).

I also tried starting a new game and creating a character. Halfelves showed up in this and filled the display area (that’s presumably H-size) the same as the humans and elves.

I have all 5 sizes for the sets of portraits. I checked they were in the hak pak. I also noted that they roughly quadrupled in size with T around 1-2kB and H around 400-500kB.

I got a copy of portraits.2da from cep2_top_2_60.hak (I have CEP 2.65 installed). Here’s what I added to the end of that:

12000   el_f_kc_0000    1   1   ****    1   ****
12001   el_f_kc_0001    1   1   ****    0   ****
12002   he_f_kc_0002    1   4   ****    0   ****
12003   hu_f_kc_0003    1   6   ****    0   ****
12004   el_f_kc_0004    1   1   ****    0   ****
12005   hu_f_kc_0005    1   6   ****    0   ****
12006   he_f_kc_0006    1   4   ****    0   ****
12007   hu_f_kc_0007    1   6   ****    0   ****
12008   hu_f_kc_0008    1   6   ****    1   ****

The hak pak only contains the portraits.2da and the *.tga files. I put it first in the order (i.e. right at the top) so it should take priority.

I’m completely stumped with this and don’t know what else to try. Any help would be very much appreciated. I’ve aimed to put all the relevant information that I could think of in this post – but ask if you need further details.

[pturner20]

Howdy Ken,
This won’t be of much help, I’m afraid, but I think that the game expects the person creating either a PC or NPC half-elf to simply choose a portrait from the Elf or Human examples. That’s to say that your half-elf is assumed to look like one race or the other, perhaps depending on the dominant gene/bloodline.
If you look at the game’s master portraits.2da, there is only ONE entry with a racial value of 4, and that is for a portrait called _godfray (and I can’t actually find a set of .tgas with that name!)
Also, the game never uses the Huge-sized portraits for NPCs as far as I am aware, so that may be why your portraits show up smaller in the toolset.
With any luck, someone a lot smarter than me (not hard) will be able to give you better advice.
Cheers,
Mr T

[Ken_Cotterill]

G’day Mr T,

Thanks for your response. It was, in fact, helpful by way of a confirmation.

I had wondered if I’d just been unlucky and the two image sets I’d chosen for the Half-Elf were damaged in some way. I looked around for some other examples. I found Half-Elf Portraits on this site, and noticed that the 3rd sample image, top-right corner, was the same as my he_f_kc_0002. A link from that page led to Saesha Half-Elf which is also the same image (and I’m guessing, closer to the original). My set of images had come from some other portrait package I’d downloaded years ago. Anyway, it occurred to me that these images may have been packed and unpacked several times and all the compressing and uncompressing may have led to some bit-rot. I decided to remake the hak pak with the Saesha images and retest.

After deploying the hak pak, I went to the Toolset but, unfortunately, had no better success than previously. However, I decided to record the results in a more succinct manner; the prosaic approach I had used initially was probably not the best way to describe the problem. Here’s the Toolset notes:

Toolset:
    * Characters and Creatues
        Gender: Female (unchanged for all tests)

        Race: Elf
        Selection: only elves (el_* + 2 named)
            Named: drowfem_, kathnee_
            Last: el_f_kc_0001, el_f_kc_0004
                (full display in left panel)

        Race: Human
        Selection: only humans & class icons (hu_* + several named)
            Named: villager*_, girl_, cls*_, irieni_
            Last: hu_f_kc_0003, hu_f_kc_0005, hu_f_kc_0007
                (full display in left panel)

        Race: Half-Elf
        Selection: elves, humans, named & class icons
            (basically a mixture of Elf & Human selections)
            Last: el_f_kc_0001, hu_f_kc_0003, el_f_kc_0004,
                  hu_f_kc_0005, hu_f_kc_0007
                (full display in left panel)
        No Half-Elf portraits!

        Race: <unchecked>
        Selection: Looks like probably all females (dw_f_01_ onwards)
            Last: all my 7 non-plot portraits
                (el_f_kc_0001 to hu_f_kc_0007)
                Display (left panel):
                    el* & hu* - full
                    he* - partial

    * Plot Characters
        All of these not seen above.
        Many recognised: Aribeth, Nasher, all henchmen, etc.
        Last: el_f_kc_0000 & hu_f_kc_0008 (my only 2 plot ones).
                (full display in left panel)

    After tests:
        Test area verified & saved successfully.
        Build Module
            Checked: Missing Resources & Compile
            Result: No errors found
        Module: Close
        Toolset: Exit

It appears that my plain text notes are being rendered with some syntax-highlighting. Sorry about that – I don’t know how to fix it – please just ignore.

Next I looked at character generation in a new game:

NWN - new game - create character
    Character Generation
        Gender: Female

        Race: Elf
        Portrait:
            Starts like Elf in Toolset
                up to my 2 non-plot el_* portraits
                    all full display in left panel
            Then dwarves, gnomes, humans, etc.; ends with
                my 2 he_* portraits and
                my 3 non-plot hu_* portraits
                    all full display in left panel

        (Cancel and back to Race)

        Race: Human
        Portrait:
            Starts like Human in Toolset
                up to my 3 non-plot hu_* portraits
                    all full display in left panel
            Then dwarves, gnomes, elves, etc.; ends with
                my 2 non-plot el_* portraits and
                my 2 he_* portraits
                    all full display in left panel

        (Cancel and back to Race)

        Race: Half-Elf
        Portrait:
            Appears to be exactly the same as Human (chargen).

    Cancelled all screens and exited game; started the Toolset again.

I then went back to the Toolset for some additional tests:

Toolset:
    * Characters and Creatues
        Gender: <unchecked> (for all these tests)

        This time I'm just working through the races.
        I'm mostly interested in how they display in the left panel.
        I tested about half a dozen of each race
            - male & female randomly selected.

        Dwarf:      dw_* - full display
        Elf:        el_* - full display
        Gnome:      gn_* - full display
        Halfling:   ha_* - full display
        Half-Elf:   he_* - none found at all
        Half-Orc:   or_* - full display
        Human:      hu_* - full display
        Aberration: named - partial display
            I went through a lot of these.
            All were named (e.g. Horror_, Wererat_, etc.)
                except Drider and Wemic.
            All had partial display
        Drider:     dr_* - partial display
        Wemic:      wm_* - partial display

After all of that, my conclusions were:

It looks like specifying a Half-Elf portrait is somewhat problematic. This may explain why none of the henchmen (in the OC) were half-elves: all the other races (Dwarf, Elf, Gnome, Halfling, Half-Orc & Human) were represented. Were there half-elf NPCs at all in the OC? I don’t recall any.

How would a portrait, specified as a Half-Elf, affect the Character Sheet?
Would PCs and/or NPC companions only have a partial image?
Are other displays, for non-companion NPCs, affected?

It may be best not to specify that race for portraits: if the picture appears elven, pick Elf; otherwise, pick Human.

So, it would appear we’re on the same page with this. I won’t make any more po_he_* portraits; instead making them Elf or Human depending on how the character looks. Thanks again for your feedback: it’s good to know I wasn’t completely barking up the wrong tree (which I thought quite likely as I’ve never created portraits, edited a 2DA or made a hak pak before).

[pturner20]

Howdy fella,
Well, I suppose that’s that, then! Mind you, if you’re dead set on wanting “true” half elf portraits, you could make your own by taking various (non-drow) elf portraits and messing about in such things as photoshop or paintshop pro. You can erase the elongated ears, fill in any deleted background, and then use a clone brush (carefully) to copy bits of hair to overlay the tops of the ears. It’s quite a learning curve if you haven’t done such things before, but a very good skill to learn - I don’t use half elves in my campaign at all, but all of my elves are elemental-based and so I had to do loads of portraits of elves with coloured skin and hair to account for the wood, fire, air and ice varieties! Took ages, but I learned a LOT about graphics programs!!
Cheers and good luck,
Mr T