The master Hak file of a open-ended multiple Hak series called The Monstrous Hakendium. This file will hold all the 2da's to run the other Haks and will be updated for each new Hak or add-on changes.
Posted by Amazing Al ( ..xxx.xxx ) at 2003-08-08 14:11:00
Hi Kansas,
I posted on your message forum a short while back but im still having trouble with the complete set (1-13) installed). can you post the master hak as tested and compliant with the whole set installed as opposed to me messing about opening every single hak and extracting the 2das as i am obviously missing something .. loads of SOU objects just vanish .. ladders are a particular annoyance!
Al
Posted by Kansas Dark ( ..xxx.xxx ) at 2003-07-30 21:48:00
Great news from Accerak, he's been testing the 1.31 beta on a mod with the full Hakendium in place and has mentioned that the 5 to 7 minute waits for the Hak to load have been reduced to 10 seconds :-)
Posted by Kansas Dark ( ..xxx.xxx ) at 2003-07-21 18:17:00
My next release, Volume 12 will have updated 2da's for
Appearance, Placeables and Portraits with the Bioware
specified padding in place, sorry for any inconvience this
may cause but hopefully will be the best choice in the long
run.
Posted by Kansas Dark ( ..xxx.xxx ) at 2003-07-20 08:21:00
Hi Gandalf....I'm glad you like the series. Even though I built with myself in mind it's very nice to see others in the community finding a use for it as well.
The CEP is a good idea but I decided on going the other way with my Haks. Their Haks will be smaller DL's with some great hightech content I'm sure but my path was a different one. Bigger Haks yes but I was aiming for the large selection that as a builder I would want. By not slowing my selection system down with deciding just what should go into my haks I increased the time available to troubleshooting any glitches and coding the hak.
I am also a solo design memeber on my Haks. Design teams add a great deal to any project and I believe strongly in the exchange of ideas, but they also contribute to slowing the system down, and being net based that can be a major issue.
I actually think instead of a CEP, a CAP(Community Assistance Project) would go over better. There is content out there that help explains each step of the custom design process but it is few and far between and some is dated. Instead of building a hak that will help some of the community why not gather or create a series of tutorials cover all the aspects of Custom Design from mod and hak building right on up to model and script creation. Gather those that lead in their respective fields and pull together the different community created programs that assist( the viewers, ITPtools, Hakedits etc). From all this experience begin a series of tutorials covering Custom Work, a FAQ, a helpline directory, live workshops, online Q&A, and set up a server world to tie it all together in one accessible place. A lot of it is already out there, why not organize it in one easy to find spot. The saying goes, 'Give a man a fish and feed him for a day, teach a man how to fish and annoy his wife for the rest of her life .... errrrr.... lol....well you know.
I have the Arctic Bugbears now Gandalf....they are queued for vol 13.....the creature update got pushed back a vol when I moved Tilesets up. Volume 12 will focus on items.
Splicing Tilesets was quite the challenge, common 2da's with Tilesets I worked on were dorrtype, doortypes, genericdoors, loadscreens and placeables. The doors were the big challenge for me, hobbit doors in particular, no matter what I tried I couldn't get them to appear....I checked help sources on the net and checked and doublechecked my code. It turns out I was doing it right when I discovered the source of my problem. I originally padded the doortype.2da to BW specs. I jumped the lines though from 150 or so and started at 300 for the custom doors leaving a blank between. I do this with appearance, placeables and portraits and till now has worked fine. Can't do that with doortypes though. No jumping, each and ever line has to be in the padding or the system will not find the model. You will even find the custom doortypes available as generic doors, though I didn't test how well they work. It was one of the few workarounds I was testing.
It's a nice selection of 12 tilesets that I will find a use for in my Waterdeep project and hope others find them useful as well. It may be a while before I tackle another Tileset Volume....lol....though once I figured the 2da problem out things ran very smoothly.
Thanks for troubleshooting my Haks and the input you have given. There are a few outstanding issues but nothing major so far. The first issue has changed btw....the Green Beholder showed up in the toolset but didn't in the game. Checking it a few days ago I notice it does show up in the game now but as a Manticore.....grrrrrrrrr. There was an issue along these lines with the original Hak but I haven't been able to track down the fix or the exact problem yet. On my to do list :-)
Posted by Kansas Dark ( ..xxx.xxx ) at 2003-07-19 22:00:00
Darian mentioned in a post the effects a large multi-hak might have on a PW a few days back.
I just finished volume 11 Tilesets tonight and ran a barebones test on the effects of my complete Hak on a server. Mind you this is far from scientific or conclusive.
I took a bare mod, 1 area nothing else, and gathered a couple stats of it as follows:
Player Access
Time to Vault: 2 secs
Vault to Game: 7 secs
DM Access
Time to Vault: 2 secs
Vault to Game: 5 secs
I then added my complete series to the mod including vol 11. That's a total of 13 Haks, 1420 megs uncompressed(607 compressed in RAR). Even though after exporting the 2da's to master and BMU's to Music Folder you can strip out the 3 music volumes I left them in for testing. Here's what I got:
Load Time: 2 mins 58 secs
Build Time: 1 sec
Save Time: 1 sec
Server Load Time: 4 secs
Player Access
Time to Vault: 2 secs
Vault to Game: 9 secs
DM Access
Time to Vault: 1 secs
Vault to Game: 10 secs
The only noticeable effect I've seen is the time to load the mod in the toolset and actually, I've noticed longer load times with even non-hak mods to the toolset since I installed Shadows of Undrentide.
If anyone has run the series in a mod with a full server and noticed any performance issues I would like to hear about it. Thanks :-)
Posted by Kansas Dark ( ..xxx.xxx ) at 2003-07-17 13:53:00
Yes....with each Hak I include the 2da's affected by that Hak in particular...then you have two options.....if you are using the main series you add the 2da's to the Master Hak replacing any that prompt.
If one decides they only want to use a single Hak....each will work as a stand alone Hak...the only thing about this method though, for example you only want to use the second Hak Vol 9....you can use is a standalone hak but because the 2da is/are modified to be included with the first Placeable Hak....some model names will show up with no model to match the entry
to answer your questions directly Gandalf...
Yes use the appearance, portrait and placeable 2da's in the Placeable Hak by importing them into the Master Hak and overwriting any prompted files already there...which should be all three and if you want to use Hak 9 as well add it as above after Hak 8.
No 2da's need to be merged the Placeable.2da for 9 includes the updated 2da off 8. All 2da's found in every hak in this series should be imported to the Master Hak in the order of the Haks release
Posted by Gandalf Istari ( ..xxx.xxx ) at 2003-07-17 08:07:00
A little confused about your Readme for your placeables haks. Should I simply replace the appearance, portrait, and placeable 2da's in your Masterhak with the ones from the placeables hak? And if I want to use both of your placeable haks, do I just use replace the 2da's in the Masterhak with the ones from the Vol.9 placeables hak?
Or is it the case that the 2da's from the placeable haks need to be merged together, and then that 2da needs to be merged with the Masterhak 2da's?
If its a simple matter of copy...paste...replace, great that makes it very easy. If its a matter of having to merge 2da files together thats ok too, I'm just a bit confused from your Readme instructions...
Posted by Kansas Dark ( ..xxx.xxx ) at 2003-07-16 04:00:00
Ho Gandalf...
I am enjoying building these haks as much as I am gonna, using them. Leaving out a Vol on Tilesets is like printing a set of encyclopedia's but leaving out volumes I to L. I like nice complete neat looking packages so will add tilesets if only just for my own use ;-). By checking out the CEP threads, it also seems the most wanted items for a Custom Expansion is tilesets.
The music files all come with a ReadMe that includes the playing list in the Acknowledgements, creator's name plus music files used.
What's in the Placeables? Hmmmmmm.....at a total of 1700+ Placeables I would reackon almost everything is, or at least a good chunk of everything. I never change any 2da or filenames so all are still named under original creator's system. Either scan the 2da for a listing of what's available or load your Placeable 2da in a test mod replacing my 2da file in my Placeable volumes and edit a placeable to see which one's of your 2da show up when used with my Haks, easiest way to check how similar your Hak is to mine.
You have to remember, the main focus of this series is to give me a complete system of haks for my future mods. I have not built this with the intentions of using any other Haks in my mods other then my own. It's great others are finding a use for this series and I will help with any problems that arise from these Volumes if I can, in a timely matter if possible. I will not work my Haks around other non-MH Haks though because I never intended to use other outside Haks in my mods.
What these Haks do offer anyone in the community though are a few things:
1. A complete series of haks for mod work that will be constantly added to in updates with help support if I can answer the question and troubleshoot the glitches. In a timely manner, if possible. Still a couple outstanding issues.
2. With the exception of Vol 1a and 1b, which work together as one, all volumes should function as a stand alone Hak. This isn't an all or nothing Hak series. If one does not want custom loadscreens or music, skipping those Vol's should not effect the overall performance of the rest of the hak. I offer all that I will use but that doesn't mean everyone will be required to use it all.
3. Any builders out there looking to put there own Haks together. The one's here can be dissected with access to many models, or screens or music or whatnot, all in one place. I will spend a great deal of time helping in this manner but it is an option available.
This series is similar to the ideals of CEP but was never intended to be used by everyone, just me, and that is how I continue to treat it. The idea of standardized Haks is a good idea and I can see the benfits from it. The needs of the individual are also important and each Hak in the community is a reflection of it's creator, containing exactly what they need and how they need it.
Thanks for supporting my project Gandalf, and everyone. As always, still more to come :-).
Posted by Kansas Dark ( ..xxx.xxx ) at 2003-07-15 16:22:00
I do know with all Haks installed in a mod it takes the toolset a few extra seconds to open up completely.....but once open the Build doesn't seem to take any longer then it normally would.
As far as a PW....my own testing will begin to take shape after the Tileset Hak. We'll see how it goes.
Posted by Darian_DelFord ( ..xxx.xxx ) at 2003-07-15 04:06:00
OK I have to ask this
First off this is by far the best series to date bar none especially since its SOU compatible :>
My question is, Right now this series is up to about 700 megs give or take a few. Can a PW actually support that kind of a hak system?
I have seen some PW's that are close to 300 megs on their haks but I have not seen to many above the 300 limit. I know that the Dial up people will complain but that is ineveitible. I am just wondering if anyone has tried a PW with that big of a hak?
Posted by Kansas Dark ( ..xxx.xxx ) at 2003-07-14 17:01:00
My next volume in the series(Vol 11) will be a Tileset Hak...I hear they are the trickiest to make so should be fun...I'll be starting it this weekend. I have noticed that the CEP project has restarted back up and I'll be watching to see how well they do and how they do it.
I read in a post that some low-end PCs have trouble opening large Haks in the Hak Editor. Has anyone else heard of this prob. If it is a big prob I will start including my 2da's as seperate files outside each hak they are intended for. That way the large Hak never need be opened in the editor just added to the hak folder and the 2da can be added to the much smaller Hak Master which shouldn't be a prob to open at all.
Volume 12 which was intended to be a creature update has been moved back to Volume 13 and Volume 12 will now be an item Hak.
Posted by Kansas Dark ( ..xxx.xxx ) at 2003-07-13 07:01:00
About the Brownies Gandalf...I've always been a big fan of the movie Willow. Kinarr's Brownie reminded me of the Brownies in Willow in that they can be customized for unique looking Brownies. Will probably add the standard Brownies in Vol 12. Can you post a link to them for me please.
Posted by Kansas Dark ( ..xxx.xxx ) at 2003-07-13 06:45:00
Hi Gandalf.....no worries with the comments...lol...keep them coming. Why not post the creatures you have on your harddrive here as a hak...just comment these aren't your creations and give credit where due and reintroduce them to the community and I'll grab them to check out.
If HoU overwrites my 2da's I'll fix them where needed asap trying to minize the impact as much as possible. With everything slaved to a Master Hak it shouldn't be too much trouble.
I did overwrite a couple creatures in the beginning :-(....was learning as I went. Terminator and the Zombie Minotaur I think but have learned to avoid overwrites now....I hope...lol.
Keep troubleshooting my Haks I didn't do exhaustive testing on each one in the beginning.
I started this series to support my Waterdeep Mod I'm working on but am glad it's proving helpful to some in the community and will continue it.
Posted by Gandalf Istari ( ..xxx.xxx ) at 2003-07-12 19:01:00
Hope you're not getting sick of my comments...they are meant entirely to be constructive.
Sorry about a few of those creatures I posted as not being in your hak. I went back through and found a few of them like the goatmen and the razorback demons.
I could try and email you the zip files on those Arctic Bugbears. I think they were a really good reskin of the original ones and would work great for a winter setting. I did a search here for them after checking the model haks and not finding them. It seems that the creator of the hak updated them but used the wrong email or something and then couldn't repost them because of a password conflict.
As for the Blood Minotaur, I went back and checked and it seems that the model replaces one of the Bioware models, so that one is out I guess.
Snow Ettin I didn't "think" was a replacer. I have it on my hard drive, but I don't see a link for it anywhere now. It was a reskin of the original ettin, didn't look to bad though. I could send you the zip for that one too if you like.
A suggestion would be to put the other brownies in as well, just for variety. The one thats in there is kinda plain looking (no offense to the original creator). This is just a suggestion though, and I understand if you decide to go without it.
Tis a shame about the Night Crawler, its a nice model. Is there some way to fiddle with it, and some of the others, to get them to not replace existing models?
Speaking of replacing existing models, the Terminator model seems to be overriding one of the standard human mercenary models. I'm going to go back through the toolset again and check all the models in there to see if this is happening with any others.
Hope you don't mind me going through your pak like this. My hope is merely to help you troubleshoot. :-)
As far as padding out the 2da lines, I think I see why Combine 2da was messing up. My thought is that NWNHak and Combine2da has a different formatting for the columns, and that is what is generating there errors...
In terms of padding the lines to what Bioware has listed as "safe lines," thats a rough one. I can imagine how much work it would take to redo the hak with enough lines to "be safe," hehe. You might want to seriously consider it though with the appearance, placeable, and portraits 2da's, as HoTU will most likely (in my guess) encroach on those files somewhat (especially the placeables one).
I'm going to keep playing around with your hak, and I'm going to dig around as well and see if there is some way to get those replacing models to stop replacing so they can be used. There aren't many of them, but a few of them are pretty nice.
Thanks again for your timely responses and for the work you've put into this, it's saved me boatloads of time!
---Gandalf the Wizard
Posted by Gandalf Istari ( ..xxx.xxx ) at 2003-07-12 12:27:00
Hmm weird, now the Cyclops model you have in your hak is showing up again in the toolset.
Posted by Gandalf Istari ( ..xxx.xxx ) at 2003-07-12 10:48:00
By the way, if you aren't using Combine 2da to merge all of your 2da files, what are you using?
Posted by Kansas Dark ( ..xxx.xxx ) at 2003-07-11 18:35:00
hmmmm....I've never used Combine 2da.....what kind of errors is it giving you?
There is a 1.1 update for Combine 2da does it update the prog to 1.30 compatible or does it matter?
I have another creature update volume started...new released models will be in it...what older models have I missed? Drop some links and I'll check em out.
Glad you like the hak.
Posted by Gandalf Istari ( ..xxx.xxx ) at 2003-07-11 16:54:00
Greetings!
I love this hak you have posted. I can't begin to tell you how much time this has saved me! THANKS!
However, I am experiencing an error when I try to load your MHMaster 2da in Combine 2DA. I was going to try to add a few creatures you left out of your pack (a few older ones and some new ones), but whenever I try to load you master 2da files in the Combine 2DA Utility, I get a bunch of errors and the 2DA file never loads up. This is keeping me from adding to your hak pak.
I realize I'm being lazy in simply not just creating my own hak, but I figured I could benefit from the fruits of your labor and save myself some time...
Any info on this error would be appreciated. Thanks again for putting this hak together.
---Gandalf the Wizard
Posted by Kansas Dark ( ..xxx.xxx ) at 2003-07-07 04:29:00
I have double checked the numbers on the Green Beholder and everything seems in order Hak wise but I experience the same problem as you Darian. I can set it to the palette and place it in the mod except the model won't show when played...not sure why...sorry. Did not build the model so not sure about how to go about opening up the mdl and tga files to look at or what I would be looking at if I did as far as any conflicts go. Any ideas anyone?
Posted by Kansas Dark ( ..xxx.xxx ) at 2003-07-07 04:04:00
I'm not sure why....does anyone else have an idea why or a workaraound to get custom models showing up using the unique power function?
Posted by Darian_Delford ( ..xxx.xxx ) at 2003-07-06 21:54:00
Question for you. I have DL'ed this and I love it.
My only problem is I can set all the critters on a triggered or set spawn and they show up great.
However If I use the Unique power function to summon some a model will not show up at all. Such as the Goblin riding the worg, or the goblin riding the spider. They both show up for triggered spawns but every time I try to summon them the modle just does not show up.
Also the "Green-Beholder" does not see to actually be visible in the game if you use it in the toolset.
And no its not a scripting malfunction on my end. The scripts are intact... but they just won't summon them for some reason .
Posted by RealmForge ( ..xxx.xxx ) at 2003-07-02 18:10:00
I think I found them, actually. They were all located in Part 2. The PC/NPC model parts. As well, I simply deleted a few entries, specifically the "topless" centaurs and succubi, from the appearance.2da to take care of the non PC models.
Posted by Kansas Dark ( ..xxx.xxx ) at 2003-07-02 17:11:00
Hi and ty, glad I could help save time and work. Email me the names of the models you want to remove and I'll track them down. It'll require pulling the appearance.2da from the Hak and removing the model lines. A note, they are only models and have not been assigned as creatures in the palette and will only show up through the Creature Wizard so you won't have to change the palette.
Posted by RealmForge ( ..xxx.xxx ) at 2003-07-02 13:14:00
You have saved me a LOT of work. Thank you.
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