Neverwinter Nights Airships! v1.1 Mod

This Mod includes 18 airship tile groups.

Airships!
some_ux [at] yahoo [dot] com
April 19th, 2004

version 1.1

Tested with HotU version 1.62 (with SOU)

First of all, I'd like to thank the folks at CODI and DLA. I could not have
made this hak without their help.

The idea of making airships was something that poped up in the community IRC
channels, and I decided that given my past experience with ship models (the
Caravels and Longships haks) this ought to be fairly straight forward. Boy, was
I in for a surprise.

The basic design did indeed take fairly little effort to make and was done in
about 10 hours or so. Slicing and Porting the the model a couple of hours more,
an extra week or so to do all the tileset variations and maybe another day for
the mini-map icons. I was sitting comfortably and ready to start QA on the
thing, I figured 'well, shouldn't take more than a day or two'. By this time, I
was fairly familiar with the game engine's shadow casting quirky behavior
(having done the previous two tile haks). But I could not have seen what was
coming. For all my efforts, I could not make the night-time shadow casting
system to work properly. I must've wasted weeks on it, trying hundreds of
solutions, dozens of permutations for each, and still the accursed thing wasn't
right.

Why am I bothering you with this ? partly to blow off steam (the regular
non-gnome way) and maybe to issue a word of warning for complacent folks out
there. Modeling stuff for games can be very frustrating.

A whole bunch of weeks later (and a little less hair in my scalp) I came to the
conclusion that I was right all along and that the problem was probably a Shadow
casting issue I had nothing to do with (or do anything about for that matter)
since it was most likely a game Engine flaw.

What's then the moral of this rather tiresome story ? well, Eat more turnips !
no wait, It's that you shouldn't give up. Although I may have wasted weeks with
this futile exercise I did learn one importat lesson: life sucks !



Content

The Tile hak (airships.hak) includes 18 airship tile groups (16 models): Three
for the rural tileset, Three for the city exterior tileset, Two for the Forest
tileset, Three for the Rural Winter tileset, Two for the Desert tileset, Three
for the Underdark tileset and Two for the Frozen Wastes tileset. And Each is a
3x1 tile-group.



Installation



- Extract the airships.hak file into your "Hak" folder, inside your NWN
directory.



To add the airships into a new module you create, go to Edit > Module
Properties, then over to the Custom Content tab. Choose the "airships" hak, and
click Add.





Airship technical specifications



Size: big.

Weight: less than you would expect.

Powersource: unknown, or very unreliable gnome tinkering stuff.

Armor: wood.

Boarding technologies: a rope hanging down.

Flight operation: depends on the capability of your mage to control the
weather.

Range of operation: Till you get sick of turnips or until the ship falls
apart.





Tile group Notes



The Airship tilegroups include several "Animation Loops" that can be enabled
and disabled within the toolset.



The Floating Versions have the Following Animations:



Animation loop 1: Controls the propeller blades' animation. On - for turning,
off - for static.

Animation loop 2: Controls the Hind Steam Exhaust port. On - to make the
Exhaust appear, off - to shut down the iris and retract the exhaust apparatus.

Animation loop 3: Controls the the Steam emitter at the Exhaust port. On - to
start the steam animation, off - to stop it. (notice, that if you apply this
without animation loop 2 being on, the exhaust apparatus will be extracted to
let the steam out, overriding animation loop 2)



The Docked Versions have the Following Animations:



Animation loop 1: Controls the Hind Steam Exhaust port. On - to make the
Exhaust appear, off - to shut down the iris and retract the exhaust apparatus.



Both Docked and floating versions have day/night window animations.

Known Issues

*

Avoid large crowds onboard, this is likely to produce severe path-finding
problems. Also the ramp at the back side of the ship will require manual
maneuvering (if you wish to get behind it).
*

There are some shadow casting issues mostly during nighttime, especially
if you walk around with a torch or a light spell. There is a way around it, if
you turn area lighting to Interior dark you can simulate nighttime dynamic
shadow casting (aka moon-shadows), This however will not turn nighttime
animations on (the window will not switch to nighttime setting). Unfortunately,
there is little to be done about it, (unless BW update this particular bug).
*

Clipping may occur when moving close to the ropes, side railing, ramp or
deck-cabin. Fixing this issue would have hampered path-finding even more, so I
had to compromise.
*

In General, this is a relativly high polygon model, so you should
probably not use a 32x32 city exterrior area with 100 airships :)



Credits:

Here is a list of those who had helped, but by no means a complete list. I
apologize if someone was left out.

· Batinthehat

· ThriKreen

· Dradjeel

· Soopaman

· Jupp

· Velmar

· Sneakster

· Steel_Wind

· gribo

· Necronada

· Zedium

I would also like to thank again all the members of CODI and DLA for their
help, and of course, a special thanks for Bioware for creating the game.



Shameless Self-Promotion

Check out some of my other NWN custom content on the vault.

Medieval Non-gunpowder siege artillery - Want to pound your enemy's defenses to
dust ? use siege weapons !

Longships! – Need more ships ?

Caravels! – Still need more ships ?

And lastly, if you are to distribute any of the content included in this
package, in any form, modified or not, I ask that you include documentation
that clearly expresses credit to me where such credit is due.

Thanks.

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