What tools are the CTP using?
Many tools have been made by community members or 3ds plug-ins made available on the net. Reference to those can be found here and how to use them.

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Guest

What tools are the CTP using?

Post by Guest »

I see you guys advocating compiling models at several places. Are you guys using Torlack's nwnmdlcomp? I just discovered that it doesn't support Self-Illumination Colors. Eek. And from past experiences, models that work fine in ASCII form rarely end up corrupted after getting compiled by it. The version I have says the last update was 08/31/2002. Which is rather ancient considering there have been many changes since then. Is there some newer tool around somewhere I'm unaware of?

And since I'm already asking... :) Which set editor are you guys using? Jlen's?

QSW
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Post by QSW »

At the top of this forum is a link to 'Links' in there are a whole bunch of links to stuff concerning Custom Content tools etc.

http://www.nwnctp.com/index.php?categor ... ectionid=3 Outdated Link

I can't tell you exactly what CTP use, but I am betting what they do use in the links section of this forum :)

Guest

Post by Guest »

[FONT="Courier New"]I have tested all community utilities that deliver a service of comp/decomp, and they all use the same algorithm, hence producing identical files both in ASCII and binary format. Which is a shame, as nwnmdlcomp definitelly isn't accurate enough even for vertex conversion (often, non-sparkling bioware's models generate sparkles after decompiling). I have also heard of additional problems like the ones you mentioned (the CTP crew might give you more details on that).

If by "Jlen's" you mean Set Editor 0.85, then I actually recommend its use, it has a lot of functions and its very very reliable. I can manage any tileset editing or creation from scratch without ever getting any bugs. Only case you should be careful, is when the mdl's or wok's have an internal name error. In that case I found out that when using Set Editor to rename the tiles (actually a prefix changing feature), it might not rename them properly. But it's not Set Editor's fault, and I advise to always run lok internal renamer (which you can find at www.landsofkray.com) before handling any tile files.
[/FONT]

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Christopher
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Post by Christopher »

Most of the tilesets were already created when I came on board with the CTP in Aug. of 2004. You cannot imagine the kind of woes that comp/DeComp has created for us. We are only now recompiling sets that we have corrected only to find more issues. Not sure how that is going to pan our for us...

I use TSC 2.04 for a lot of my .set changes. It only runs in 3dsMax5+ versions and I also use NWmax v0.8 b60 + VelsTools 1.23. They have treated me well. Other then that it's just renaming tools and text editors. The LOK internal renamer is a MUST. I run it before and after all of my work on a set.

mobyksu
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Post by mobyksu »

i've only done minimal "fixing" work so far, but mostly i've used notepad. low tech, definitely not sexy, but it works.

OldMansBeard
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Post by OldMansBeard »

gaoneng wrote:I see you guys advocating compiling models at several places. Are you guys using Torlack's nwnmdlcomp? I just discovered that it doesn't support Self-Illumination Colors. Eek.
Actually, nwnmdlcomp is correct and nearly everything else is wrong. :(

It does correctly support self illumination (I used it to compile the generic doors and they have self-illumination on the "sam" rectangles) but the correct name for the self-illumination parameter is "setfillumcolor" (that's set with a T) and if the ascii file contains this, it will compile correctly with nwnmdlcomp.

Unfortunately, somewhere in the past, someone started mis-spelling it "selfillumcolor" (with an L instead of a T). This mis-spelt version is meaningless as far as the BW engine is concerned and the compiler correctly throws it away.

NWMax tolerates either spelling for import but only exports the broken one. If you ask it to compile an exported model, it will first export the wrong spelling and then the compiler will throw it away. It is NWMax that is wrong, not the compiler.

NWNExplorer correctly decompiles BW models that have this parameter but only displays self-illumination correctly in the model view if it is given an ascii model with the parameter mis-spelt.

It's a mess.

What I do, is to edit the ascii files to replace "selfillumcolor" with "setfillumcolor" globally before running them through the compiler.

OMB

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Christopher
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Post by Christopher »

OMB... Thank YOU! That is one very, very useful peice of information. Will keep that in mind going forward with sets and look over the ones I have already worked on.

Thanks!

Guest

Post by Guest »

[QUOTE]OMB

It's a mess.[/QUOTE]Oh dear. Indeed.

Good to know there's a fix. Are there other such "bugs" that I should know?

EDIT : What do you mean by the "mis-spelt" version being meaningless for BW engine? It does work as far as I can tell.

[QUOTE]Lord Rosenkratz

If by "Jlen's" you mean Set Editor 0.85, then I actually recommend its use, it has a lot of functions and its very very reliable.[/QUOTE]Yeah that's the one I use for everything too. A lot of nice functions. There are two bugs that need to be fixed though. First there's the automatic addition of Raise/Lower, which is a nuisance, but nothing major. When you see a tileset on the vault with Raise/Lower that does nothing, you can almost be sure the author used Jlen's Set Editor. :D Then there's the 6 million doors bug that causes lockup when adding doors right within the editor, nothing really major either, but would rather it not exist.


@ QSW
Thanks for the link. Can't believe I didn't see that.

@ Chris
The internal renamer sounds sweet. Goodie. I've been doing those stuff manually all these while. :p

@ mobyksu
Hehehe. Must say plain text editor is good enough for a lot of things though.

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Christopher
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Update to Torlocks CompDeComp app.

Post by Christopher »

During a chat with Joco, CTP staff convinced him to take a look at Torlack's code and correct the mispelling!
:_thumb:

Here is an updated copy for you use.

Estelindis
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Post by Estelindis »

Lord Rosenkrantz just pointed out this compiling tool to me: NWN Carottes

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