Tint walls and floor - How?

Because I always use Properties in a New Window I couldn't find how to tint walls. If you select the interior Tiles you wish to colour you can look in the Properties window itself to change the colour of the walls.

BUT so far, changing the colours for the floor, let alone the promised texture changes (promised pre-release) doesn't work at all.

Floor workaround - I chose a floor placeable, resized it to fit the whole floor of the area, and tinted that in the usual way.

ALTHOUGH I had problems getting it to sit on the ground! Fixed that by changing the last parameter of its 'Position No Snap' to zero. IMPORTANT - after doing this set position and height lock to True!

SIDE NOTE set this last height param to 0.01 for carpets that sink into the floors particularly with the castle tiles.

There is also a placeable called a floorprop - initially at least a giant orange swirly tiled thing, but haven't really investigated its potential.

Even friendly encounters must be hostile

You can have an encounter spawning lots of lovely grannies or doggies, but the encounter itself must be set to Hostile, or to a faction hostile to the player.

New Lines

Hold SHIFT or CTRL when pressing enter to enter line break in module description, journal entries etc.

Trouble with conversations

Conversations - inserting reference lines correctly - counterintuitive but this is how:

1. Right-click the destination NPC line and click ‘Set Link Destination’, then
   
2. Right-click the PC line that should point there and select ‘Insert Link’.
   

The same text is inserted automatically cast in grey, to signify that it’s just a reference. If you change the dialog text of the original line, it will update all references that point to it.

Taken from Conversation Tutorial By Justin Gattuso

Easy change NPC's clothes

Took me ages to find this. In Properties window for your NPC select the tab called 'Armor Set' and change the Variation box to another number. You can see the result if the Preview button is down.

Toolset - lost Blueprint/Terrain window

Lost the main Blueprint/Terrain/Tiles window. Nothing I did could bring it back. Using the View/Options/Windows/Reset, although it had worked in the past, no longer worked.

Solution: Delete/rename the file in your 'Documents and Settings//Local Settings/Application Data\NWN2 Toolset\en-GB' folder called WindowConfig.xml

Local Settings is a hidden folder so make sure (for XP anyway) that you tick the box called 'Show hidden files and folders' in Explorer the Tools/FolderOptions/View.
You may also need to UNTICK the box called 'Hide Protected Operating System Files'.

The Walkmesh

The 'Baked' toggle button shows you the current state of the terrain bake. Turning it on and off will show the changes that you made.

To make any changes to a walkmesh first turn off the "Baked" toggle. Make your adjustments, then rebake the level before running.

Lighten the load

Lighten the load on your PC by converting placeables to mere environmental objects. The engine does not calculate collision with these for either the characters or the camera and does not cut the walkmesh, so that fewer calculations have to be made in-game.

Convert rocks, even buildings beyond your interactive zone, and things that are purely there for decoration, not to be interacted with, and you will help your module run faster.

One caveat: Remember to cut the walkmesh out around them or you can walk through them.

Creating and using Groups

Create groups by using Shift click to select the various bits. Right click and select Export.

To use these files, simply unpack the .pfb files into My Documents/Neverwinter Nights 2/Override folder. Start up the toolset and they should appear under Blueprints|Prefab Groups.

Hmm. This works, but there is no Name field. Don't know how to make this happen.

Apparently to make sure they show up with a Name, you have to export them, then move them into override, then name the files, then re-export them. Oh how ridiculously convoluted.

Nope, doesn't seem to work.
unsolved
Tried allowing editing of blueprints by changing the value of
View/Options/General/Advanced/AllowEditingGlobalBlueprints
to true. And then using the plugin UniversalBlueprintChanger. But am getting crashes when try to load values for any prefabs at all.


Aha, know the answer to this now i think. I have not got the patch on my machine, and this was a problem fixed in the patch 1.03.

Q. Is there a way to create groups as we had them premade in Neverwinter Nights 1?

A. Select the objects you've placed, right click them and select Group. Name them. Right click them again and select Export. Save them into your modules directory inside the current temp folder you are working with (the module name will be at the end of it). Restart the toolset and open the module, you will see your grouped prefabs in the Prefab tab. You will have to rename it and classify it to get it organized as you want.
Source: Neverwinter Night 2 Toolset Guide

UPDATE: Got the patches, but still can't rename these things. STill don't know how to in spite of various advice I've found online.

Using Height lock with placeables

Getting placeables to do what you want can be very tricky. The arrow keys move placeables about, use Ctrl as well to rotate them. Page Up/Down adjusts the height of your placeable.

Height lock (‘Z’) locks the placeable in place. Use to fix its height in absolute terms. You can use this to get bridges to stick where you want them for instance. And useful for 'mixing' into terrain if they otherwise look too stuck on top of the terrain.

Terrain - use Flatten Smooth and Noise

Flatten is your friend. Keep the levels simple at first. Raise a test section in one corner out of the way to the level you want, then use the Flatten button and the eyedropper to select that height and paint away at the terrain you want to raise to that height.

For water, use a lowered not raised section in the same way then fill with water. Experiment with the water level, try -1 say. Use the eyedropper again to fill your sunken areas with water.

Smooth will rather obviously smooth out any jagged irregularites and give a more natural look. Noise will add 'noise' ie random irregularities again for a more natural appearance!

Stackables or placing things on tables

You can now stack placeables. This requires only changing Stackable under the miscellaneous properties to TRUE.

Change the default Stackable to True for the item, such as the bowl of fruit, which can be easily placed on top of say a table. This really works, see screenshot.

You can even stack several things, like baskets. A stack of three of the flatter baskets looks good.

OK, it is sometimes easier than other times. Use the arrow keys to fine tune your placing. And Ctrl arrow to turn it around.

What this is for