The Harvest Moon Consortium

[raven280]

Hi Guys,
I have been thinking about asking this for awile, but didnt want to pose it till I knew I could spend some time working through it. The military is giving me a few weeks off for the upcoming Christmas holiday, and I want to work on my PW a bit while I have some free time. Just a background, but my PW is over 1000 areas, and 100MB is size. I stopped working on it basically because it got to the point where if I added even so much as a rock or tree on any one tileset anywhere in the game, the game would not load anymore. Obviously I have exceeded some kind of limit in the game. I know it is not the 50 haks limit, as I only use CTP, CMP, and an older CEP (I think 1.2). I want to continue to add new things to my PW, especially from the upcoming CTP tilesets, but seem to be stuck. I remember Bannor telling me awile ago that is is possible to build a hak of areas? I think the newest CEP is like 600+ MB, so that tells me that a hak can be considerable larger than my existing PW. My question is two part then. Can I build an area hak pack that will allow me to continue to add to my PW, and if so, how do I go about building it?

[Bannor Bloodfist]

area haks are easily generated, but I don't think that's going to help you.

It sounds as if you have too many placeables in your mod already.

Open your mod, as it stands now (the working one), while it is open in toolset, go to windows explorer and look in the nwn\modules\temp0 folder and see how many items are in there.

-------------

To add an area hak, first create the area in a different module, then use nwexplorer to export the area files from that mod. You take those exported files and drop them into a hak, add the hak to whatever other mod you wish, and you instantly have that area added. Be warned though, that you can not save ANY changes AT ALL to that area when you add one via .hak, it's permanent, in whatever form it is stored in the hak.

[OldMansBeard]

It is possible to put areas in haks but it probably won't help you. The main drawback is that they become totally static.

Why not split the module into several modules, run them as separate instances on the server with different ports and provide portals between them (using the ActivatePortal() scripting command) ?

(edit - added) Sorry, I was evidently typing at the same time as Bannor. But I agree with what he said.

[Winterhawk99]

You may have run out of resources. theres many ways to cut down on resources via makeing npcs on the ground instead of on the pallette and makeing custom items in stores is one way to cut resourses. theres also many other tricks of pw building that can help you.

I dont know exactly what it may be but thought that i might be able to help?

[coolmac55]

Greetings;

Open your mod in the toolset. Go to your NWN dir; under modules and you will see a temp0 dir. Check how many files are in there when your mod is open and that is how many resources your mod uses. There is a limit; it's around 16k I think. You can take off thing you have on the palette (that you don't need) to remove extra resource. You can also add those things to haks. That is why CEP offers erfs. So you don't go over the limit; they put most palette items in haks to reduce resources.

CoolMac

[Winterhawk99]

yes and once your done with an encounter blueprint toss it you dont need it anymore.

[raven280]

Ok, found the folder(s) in question.... I actually have a temp0, temp1, temp2, temp3, and temp4 folder inside the modules folder. Folder temp2 had 16,340 and temp3 had 16,412. I guess I have exceeded that 16K limit, lol. The multiple instance idea from OMB sounded good, so how does that work? I thought a server could only host one module at a time?

[OldMansBeard]

You can run several instances of nwserver.exe on the same physical machine and if you allocate them different ports they run just the same as if they were on different "servers". Then you can load different (tolerably-sized) modules on the different instances. If you put transitions in the modules with the right scripts on them, players can "walk" between the "servers".

[raven280]

You can run several instances of nwserver.exe on the same physical machine and if you allocate them different ports they run just the same as if they were on different "servers". Then you can load different (tolerably-sized) modules on the different instances. If you put transitions in the modules with the right scripts on them, players can "walk" between the "servers".

Thanks for the info OMB, is there a walk through posted somewhere that explains in detail how that works? I had also thought about doing a module specific Hak, but with everything going, I am not so sure that is such a good idea right now.....

[Christopher]

Ok, this is a cut and paste....

Going from memory, StartNewModule() shuts down the current module the server is running and loads the new one and transports all players to the starting location in the new one. You specify what module to load like so, using the name of the module:

NWScript:
void main()
{
StartNewModule("Module Name");
}

ActivatePortal() just jumps the PC using the transition to the module running on the specified server (usually another computer). I forget the parameters.


*********************

ok, i got the script to work here it is

void main()
{
ActivatePortal(GetLastUsedBy(), "IP address here", "Password(if any) here", "waypoint if needed", FALSE(should be true if but does not have to be));
}


Thats the script, put it in the on used of a portal(be sure that it is usable) and it is done

I do have a problem however, i have two mods, one is a tradeskill mod, and the other is a PvP mod. Here is my problem, i host both on the same computer and i think only one appers in game spy, the first, so no1 will join the second if i do this, how can i fix this. Maybe i could have it hosted on a site?


****************************

Okay, a question for all, and an answer for jonthemage.

My question is can the ActivatePortal function by used with a dns name? Anotherwords, must I use the numeric IP in it, or could I target "somenwnserver.dyndsl.com" and have that work? The reason I ask may be obvious to some, as I mentioned dyndsl... I have a dynamic IP address, but dyndsl could offer a name that is constantly updated to reflect my current IP. Thus a user can always use the name dyndsl gives me, and get to my server. I haven't tested this, but I think it would work for nwserver. If so, can the ActivatePortal function be used to link from someone else's server to mine using the name instead of numeric format?

My answer for jonthemage(hopefully) is that you should run the servers on two separate ports, and then both will show up on gamespy. I often run a test server on my server machine, concurrently with my main server. I can see both in gamespy. Make sure that both ports are forwarded to that machine if you are behind a firewall. I have assigned 5123-5130 to my server machine, and can thus run 8 servers at once, and have all show up. Granted, I've only run 2 so far, as my duron 800 would probably croak if I tried, even though I'm running linux:). I have also run 2 servers at once on my windows machine(before I had the linux box) and both appeared, as long as they were assigned separate ports, and both ports were forwarded from my router to that machine.

or this bit

Command to portal out to another server(and therefore, module)

ActivatePortal(oPlayer, "192.168.0.25:8000", "secretpassword", "wp_arrival", TRUE)

Also, the current word is that there is no way to determine if the player character came
from another module or simply used the "DIRECTCONNECT" multiplayer feature to directly
connect to your 192.168.0.25:8000 server.

Just some scraps i have collected.