Recommendations for getting started using CEP assets:

Neverwinter Nights 1
1

So, if someone were new to module design and were seeking to add custom resources, say from the CEP, what would be the best way to preview some of that content?

Would you just add a hak to a test module and look to see what’s new in your toolset that you might be interested in? Use NWN Explorer to browse through the assets of a hak file first?

I’m just wondering if this is how these decisions are made by experienced designers. It seems a very manual sort of process from an outside point of view, and I am saying that with great admiration and appreciation for the HUGE amount of time that goes into the collection, organization and creation effort to make these resources available.

Still, if there is an easy way to pick through resources, I’m all ears (eyes, in this case).

2

I would download some modules using CEP and open it is the toolset and look around. Or better yet run it as a dm and teleport to each area.

Alangara uses CEP and is a freely downloadable module.

Or log on and check out The Easting Reach if you want to see some of the finest area design (excluding some of the newer PWs, but they have their own assets far beyond CEP).

CEP has a ton of content, it’s not all or nothing, but it’s pretty significant.

Did you plan on a single player module? A PW server?

NWN discord for screenshots: Discord

3

As a member of the CEP 2.x team, I remember going through a learning curve initially, which pays off over time.

I’d recommend two complementary approaches: Story-Driven and Familiarisation.

Story-Driven ignores CEP2.x until your story needs something - a well, perhaps, or a goblin.

Chances are that CEP2 has variants of both.

We try to organise creature and placeable appearances in a hierarchy that makes things reasonably easy to find. Editing the appearance, typing “w” or “g” then scrolling will soon find wells or goblins.

For convenience, some appearances are grouped in categories - “Farm”, for example - which can make some things harder to find. Extract appearance.2da and placeables.2da so that you can text-search them. That way, you don’t need to know the taxonomy.

Familarisation involves scrolling through all the content just to see what’s there. For example, if you edit a creature appearance in the toolset, you can preview them all very quickly using down-arrow:

appearance
appearance790×569 93.3 KB

When I see an especially cool one, I save a copy in an inaccessible area of my module, which holds nice stuff that might conceivably be useful one day.

Familiarisation with the classification can come from browsing the 2da files to see how things are organised.

Much the same applies to other CEP 2.x content, though the creatures and placeables are the most daunting - more choice means more effort, unfortunately.

For example, tilesets can be browsed by creating an area for each option on the dropdown, then placing some tiles (Familiarisation) or you can just wait until you need a swamp (Story Driven) then text-search the tileset manual.

1 Like
4

I believe it’s pretty all or nothing though for collections like this (Q too). There are a few opitonal haks but generally you will add the cep top hak and all the required haks. Otherwise you will have a lot of dangling references from the 2das etc. You aren’t going to be able to just add one cep hak and see what you get.

There is or was a demo/base module for cep which had a lot of stuff on display (but by no means all).

@proleric’s suggestions are, as usual, good too.

Also since there is sooo much in cep (and Q) some people, often those going with the story approach, will cherry pick the pieces they want from the larger set and just add that to their custom hak(s). That’s a lot more work and takes a bit more skill and can get messy…

5

I was just working on a pet project single module. I’d like to use story lines from Memories of Ice. It has some great lore, unique creatures, diverse environments and an incredible background story. I’ve always wanted to see it in game format.

I’ve been scripting out each scene and collecting voice overs for the characters for a couple of years. I looked at various toolsets, and Aurora seemed like head start compared to the others. I thought about the Neverwinter 2 Electron toolset also, but I like the simpler interface of Aurora.

Thank you for the link and advice. I’ll definitely be checking those out.

6

I’ll definitely be using a story driven model, since the story is mostly written in Memories of Ice, from which I’ve drawn all of my scenes.

I appreciate the direction. I recognize this will be a difficult task, but I’ve already invested a couple of years extracting scenes and voice overs for a couple of years, so I have the patience to learn the tools.

Thanks again for all of your input.

1 Like