The Harvest Moon Consortium

VERY IMPORTANT: READ POINT 3# BELOW!!!!!!

Many of you have been patiently waiting for the CTP to see the light of day before making your modules and PW's. This post is to let you know how you can start building today and still use the CTP in the future.
To begin with, the CTP is an expansion of NWN, like Shadows of Unrentide and Hordes of the Underdark. In that sense, it will offer you new tilesets to use and will add content to existing tilesets already provided by Bioware (i.e. City Exterior).

So, in order to pre-build before the CTP, decide which of the categories you fall into and follow the instructions for that category:

1) Builders starting from scratch on a new project.
2) Builders wanting to use the CTP on a pre-existing project with no tileset related hak packs.
3) Builders wanting to use the CTP on a pre-existing project with tileset related hak packs.

The answer is simple for all three categories: just go ahead and build, build, build. You thought this would be a long boring post, didn't you?

The CTP is being designed with customization in mind. This means that hopefully, no matter which category you fall into, you should be able to use the CTP in some fashion within your PW or module.

However, we would like to offer you some tips on how to maximize your use of the CTP:

1) Try to steer clear of tileset related haks for now. If you have already incorporated tileset related haks into your module or pw, that is fine. You can still use everything in the CTP even if you do have tileset haks associated with your PW or module. However, there are drawbacks to using your own tileset content. For one, you may find that it exists in the CTP as well and therefore is a wasted download for your users. For those long-established PW's with a loyal player base already this is a moot point however as the players already have the download.

Note: CODI and DLA are expansions in their own right. So the above advice does not apply to them. We encourage you to use their content.

2) New Builders: build the world that you imagined and just keep the CTP in mind. With the CTP, you will be able to add more content to those areas later. You will also be able to add new areas from new tilesets. The CTP should be viewed as a tool to enhance your world. We like to imagine that the CTP is not a world building tool in and of itself but rather an enhancing tool. So please go ahead and build your world and when the CTP comes out, give your world a boost.

3) MOST IMPORTANT: You're going to see screenshots and get other information from us along the way before we release. Many of those screenshots are going to be of tilesets that you will recognize from the Vault. I'm sure there will be temptation to download the tileset from the Vault comfortable with the thought that "I can use this tileset because it will be in the CTP". Well, you're wrong. We have made extensive modifications to many of the Vault tilesets. Please do not anticipate any of the CTP content. I can offer you one guarantee here. I guarantee that you will not be able to use that Vault hak as a pre-substitute for the CTP tileset. So, if you want to use a Vault tileset hak in your world, feel free to do so. However, it won't be convertible to a CTP tileset.

Annoyingly, I am a category #3 builder, though my current project only uses TCC Interior and will eventually add a handful of custom made-to-order tilegroups to that. I guess I must learn the arcane secrets of ITP and SEt editing eventually. No worries

[QUOTE=Dradjeel]Annoyingly, I am a category #3 builder, though my current project only uses TCC Interior and will eventually add a handful of custom made-to-order tilegroups to that. I guess I must learn the arcane secrets of ITP and SEt editing eventually. No worries [/QUOTE]

Actually the precise point of this post is to let you know that you shouldn't be annoyed. You can use the CTP the same as folks in the other two categories.

All you have to be aware of is that, if you use tileset custom content, you will not be able to convert any areas made with it into the CTP.

In other words, whatever tileset you use, the CTP will not enable you to remove it.

In your case, if you are using TCC Interiors in your pw, your players will always have to download that hak to play in your world. But I imagine at this point many already have so there is little to worry about.

To clarify a certain point on which I wish there to be zero ambiguity: I have nothing at all to do with PWs. I do not build any, I do not play on any, I do not consider them worthy of my time and consideration.

Now, the TCC interiors thing is a a minor annoyment at best, since the set is tiny. Unfortunately, I'll need to add a half a doxen prefab areas that use custom tilegroups in the City Interior set. I suspect any kind of merge to be directly out of question, and each of these prefabs is hand-crafted to the point that trying to remake them would be a fool's errand. What that boils down, of course, is having to overwrite any alterations you make to the Interior tileset, at the very least, which vexes me.

I currently build prefabs and assist with scripting on several PW Projects. I also build modules for a couple of gaming groups for DMed Sessions. I have only recently started to use custom content in these DM Session modules. It's going to be extremely handy to have several environments all in one standardized hak. Before the beginning of this year, I stuck to prefabbing and scripting, but have recently begun to dive into combining haks to make these DMed modules in environments close to what is written up for the campaigns.

Which category builder am I?

I'm category 1, 2, and 3. I build projects from scratch, I build prefabs for pre-existing modules that use haks, and I build prefabs for pre-existing modules that do not use any haks. As I build now, I always have in the back of mind that I wonder what these modules and prefabs would look like with the CTP installed. I had the same train of thought just prior to the CEP release, so this is nothing new for me. I won't stop building, but I may revisit projects I've done once the CTP is released and make them a more visual representation of the module documentation.

That being said, I think it's important to once again address the point # 3 in the tips below. When you see the screenshots of the content and tilesets for the CTP project. If it looks familiar, you think you've found the tileset at the vault, and you assume that you will have no problem removing that hak from your building project and importing the CTP Haks in, thus substituting this vault downloaded hak for the CTP Hak, don't be surprised when there are conflicts, missing tiles, corrupt areas, missing palette items, etc.

Quite a few builders experienced this during the release of the CEP Project. There were even a few, myself included, who were beta testing the near finished CEP product and decided to begin building with the pre-release haks. We found out once the CEP was finalized that alot of resources we had used were missing, corrupt, or otherwise invalid.

If I had any piece of advice for builders, I'd say, keep building (never stop), but keep the CTP project in mind. If you plan on eventually using CTP when it's released, plan accordingly, but realize if your using haks currently and wish to continue using them, you may need to learn to use combining tools, and you may need to redesign a few areas of your module after importing the CTP.

Thanks for repeating point #3. It cannot be said enough. I know that there are going to be a fair amount of builders who are going to miss that point entirely and it will come back to bite them. You just have to keep on repeating it in as many places as you can.

I "think" from Drajeel's post that he may not entirely understand. Drajeel, you will have to completely rebuild areas that you want to use CTP content for. This isn't altering or tweaking areas. This is completely rebuilding areas.

And this is specifically for custom tilesets. For our bioware expanded tilesets, you can build with the bioware tilesets and add our expansion later. However, if you have your own custom content in the bioware tileset, you could have problems.

Aye, I reckon it's not worth trying to retrofit my project for a use it is ill-suited to. Besides, the mod is not that good, so me losing my head over some niggling details of it would be ill-advised at best.

From my point of view, it is much more important that you know what to expect from the CTP even if the news might not be so good.

False assumptions don't help either one of us.

I also belong to group #3 and I wonder what kind of problems I'd have using the CTP. I'll have to test it out.

[QUOTE=Elgyth]I also belong to group #3 and I wonder what kind of problems I'd have using the CTP. I'll have to test it out.[/QUOTE]

Well, for custom tilesets, the CTP versions of the tilesets are incompatible with any other version out there. So if you downloaded tileset A from the vault and used it in your mod and tileset A was in the CTP, you would either have to:

1) Remake the areas with the CTP version of tileset A
2) Keep your vault version of tileset A as a required download for your users.


With bioware expanded tilesets, with a gff editor and/or set and itp editing, you can manage to fit your custom content with the CTP custom content. Its basically the same principle as adding two rural haks to your mod. Say coast and hills. You would have to either make them seperate tilesets (i.e. have a rural coast and a rural hills tileset) or you would have to combine the set and itp entries.

For pre-exisitng areas, you could use the gff editor to change the tileset that a specific area uses.

Important: None of the changes mentioned above would be made in the CTP files. Any changes or customization that you would do would be placed in a seperate hak above the CTP haks in the hak list.