Tchos' placeable variety pack

[Tchos]

I guess I'll be calling this "Tchos' placeable variety pack". I'm still planning to release this once the module's done, but I've been adding some items that I'm not actually using in the module. I wanted to show them somewhere, and they didn't fit in either the module's thread or the Witcher placeable thread, so here's a new thread.

First off, here's the latest material: Cellar doors. You know how some of those house placeables in the game have these external cellar entrances, with the slanted doors leading underground? I've thought sometimes it would be nice to be able to make them active for a quest somewhere, like finding what someone's been hiding in their cellar, or offering a way to break into a house. You could of course use an invisible collision box over that part of the house, but then you wouldn't get the highlighting of the object.

So here are some tintable cellar door entrances. You can just put these against any house, or you can slightly enlarge them and put them on top of the attached ones on the houses that have them, and then use your favourite placeable-to-area transition method. Or, of course, you could just use them as non-interactive decoration on houses that don't have them. One of these has wooden sides, and the other has stone.



This is a cellar entrance with and without a roof surrounding it. I should have just made the roof separate, because this way the whole thing would highlight if you make it usable. On this one, only the roof tiles and side plaster are tintable.



An exterior chimney. Not sure how useful this would be, since I don't know if there are any house models that don't have attached chimneys, but on the other hand, I think most of the houses have only one chimney despite the large number of fireplaces I often see inside.



There are also some windows from the buildings I can extract.

[Tchos]

Excellent work, as always.

 

I'm using the collision box approach to entering a cellar in a module I'm currently working on. Having a separate model would certainly make things easier, and allow you to attach cellars to building types that currently lack cellar doors. I don't think you can lock a collision box either - I've had to do lock-picking checks via a conversation. You're making all my work-arounds redundant!

 

Animated doors that open and close would be the cherry on top (but probably difficult to create, since you'd have to mess around with skeletons and animations).

 

I'm also using circular hut placeables with Mulsantir chimneys. Some more chimney options would certainly be good - especially since the chimney you've pictured matches the standard rural house chimneys (which I'm using side-by-side with the round huts).

 

Yes, animation is currently beyond my abilities, but it's on my wish list.

 

I have a script I wrote for a locked trapdoor transition placeable to bar entry to the player unless they first unlock it with a key, but I haven't yet included functionality to allow lockpicking with it. Should be possible without needing to give it an inventory. Not sure.

 

Anyway, I'm glad to know that people ARE doing things that would suit these placeables! Here, Dann, take these and make good use of them!

 

Those trap doors also make nice entryways to below deck areas of ships, as well as mine tunnel entrances, secret forest bunkers...the list goes on and on.

 

Ooo, secret forest bunkers... I love that idea, Mokah. Everyone is of course welcome to use them, not just Dann, which I hope was implied by my posting it publicly here.

 

It's like christmas in May! Thanks, Tsanta. http://social.bioware.com/images/forum/emoticons/smile.png

 

Hiding a cellar entrance around the back of a building would be a great way for canny rogues to enter houses if the front door proves too difficult to unlock, or if there's a guard posted out front. You could even have it start out as non-usable, requiring a successful search roll to find it so you can interact with. One advantage of conversation-based skill checks is that you can expand the number of possibilities for opening things (pick the lock, force the lock without destroying the placeable, pour acid into the lock, etc).

 

One of the main reasons I moved toward placeable doors rather than actual door objects is as you mentioned, how you can change placeables between usable and non-usable, unlike doors. And you do make a good point about the expanded possibilities offered for dealing with a door through conversations.

[Tchos]

And now for some rocks.





The one on the left is the first attempt, which isn't that good, using Gmax's distortion tools, but for the second one I used a free sculpting program called Sculptris. Need some better texturing, but I can make a few large rock variations, of the flatter kind rather than the tall pointy kind NWN2 mostly has. The second rock has 645 faces. Again, not sure if that's good or not.

[Tchos]

Do they have bottoms?? Rocks with bottoms are a must.

 

Hmm, I specifically removed the bottom of the second one, since I didn't think anyone other than me would have a use for it, but I may have kept an earlier version before I did that. Let me see.

 

Yes, I kept it. Rock with bottom = 660 faces. I'll restore it, and leave the bottoms on future ones as well.

 

Congratulations. You've managed to both excel yourself AND hit 'rock bottom' all at the same time. That's no mean feat.

 

Placeables with bottoms are in short supply, and can prove handy in many instances. There is an unused log model in the game (the MDB is actually named as a bench) that I've used to span across a creek bed, so that players can walk underneath it. Models with bottoms are also useful to use as spell projectiles that tumble while in flight. You can create some interesting shooting/falling effects by creating dummy spell entries with custom projectile models - you can even have the impact script create other effects when the projectile lands, so that the impact effects are always timed perfectly regardless of the distance the projectile travels.

Rocks with bottoms allows for area design such as this:

 

 

 

One mans junk is another strumpets treasure...

 

Okay, then, all new placeables I make will have bottoms, unless they're edits of stock resources that don't have bottoms in the first place (though if it's easy enough to add one, I will).

 

Here's your rock bottom. Any trick to getting the camera to look up in the toolset? This is the best I could manage, so I also added a shot of the bottom in Gmax.

 

 

The area I have pictured has three floating islands, each are at different levels giving you views of the other two as you explore the one you're standing on. I used TerraCoppa and some toolset bugs to achieve the effect. Raising things high enough allows you to see the bottoms.

 

I saw those creative screenshots in your Jabberwocky thread, too. I'm looking forward to that one.

 

I'd also really like to see what can be done with projectile effects with any of these bottom-included items.

 

Boulder throwing giants. nwvault.ign.com/View.php

Cowtapult (plus crateapult, barrelapult etc) nwvault.ign.com/View.php

 

That's a good thing you are doing Tchos,

 

Personally I like a nice bottom and it is not often you see one on these forums.

 

PJ

 

I agree, PJ -- we should see more bottoms on this forum.

 

This one doesn't have one, I'm afraid. But it is by request. Not sure if something like this already existed, but if you need a rustic toilet, here you go.

 

[Tchos]

Thanks for the toilet that will be useful ...

 

The forum may be short of bottoms but it has had a few a****s in the past

 

PJ

 

Also, knowing how you want to use that chimney, Dann, I plan to add a back face onto it soon.

 

That would certainly be appreciated. For now, I've dropped it slightly below ground far enough for the gap not to show above roof level (I'm using the round hut placeables from the Vault). A bit of creative scaling has helped as well.

 

With a back face the chimney placeable could also be used to create ruined houses, with nothing but a chinmey and some low broken walls and stone rubble. That'd make a great camping spot in a wilderness area - you could light a fire in the intact chimney and rest in between the wall rubble.

 

http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTKCqyiap2hKNVFCB0mq-zf5gIZevd5_OXmnYjR354UtUaxFPj3z4L4K4iaDw

 

Definitely. I love ruins like that.

[Tchos]

A rack of pamphlets, for your offices and shops. Filling all your informational and propaganda needs.

 

I added a back face to the chimney. Or would you call it a front face? At any rate, it has an opening for a fire. Now this can be used without having to hide any missing sides...except for the bottom.

 

Here's a little look at something else I'm working on. Some of it has immediate utility to what I'm doing module-wise, and others came along for the ride because they were related.

First is something I'd been meaning to do for some time -- doorframes. I made a lot of these out of spare parts for the main BSoCC campaign for use with the placeable-based interiors I built, but I wanted some that weren't just wooden boards, so I stripped these out of placeable buildings and tilesets. As a bonus, these also have hook points, so you can snap standard doors into them.

http://s14.postimg.org/gib9sud1p/doorframes1.jpg http://s9.postimg.org/tnn74ydu3/doorframes2.jpg

There are still many others that can be extracted, but I wanted the arched doorways especially for now. Useful if you want your interior door to look like the exterior door, if you happen to use a building with an arched doorway. I don't recall any tileset interiors that have arched doorways.

I also did some subtle retexturing of the stone doorframe from the standard castle set, relaxing its normal map somewhat, so it doesn't look so much like it's spent a few thousand years exposed to harsh weather.

Also note that the doorframe on the far right in the first picture is a bit messed up in its UV mapping, but I left it like that for now because I intend to remap it to a higher resolution texture.

Visible in these images are a couple of new floor sets. These are sized to fit standard tiles, which are 9 m on a side, or 81 m². They can be fitted together numerically to exactly cover the standard tile floors. These are based on the floor tiles on the maps in some of the official D&D modular map-making materials. In those maps, 1 tile = 10 feet, one of the standards for D&D grid-based maps since 1st edition (the other standard being 5 feet). Of course, the difference between that standard and the NWN2 9 m tile size has resulted in some greatly enlarged interior maps for NWN2 conversions of pen & paper modules, since 9 m is almost three times as large as 10 feet (it's 29.5 feet).

So here, I did a few calculations and ended up with this scale, which has the width of 2 tiles equalling about 5 feet, or 4 equalling 10. This will provide me with a useful measurement guide when I build my areas. I made them rather glossy, which can be toned down by tinting. The tint maps are pretty flexible, with red controlling the overall colour, green controlling the grout and highlights of the main tiles, and blue controlling whether a checked pattern appears (and the tint thereof).

Next, we have some elven-style windows. I took these off of the Sunken Flagon, which although it's never mentioned I believe is an elven-style building. This is based mainly on its appearance, which is very much unlike any other buildings in this city, and it also happens to be owned by a half-elf. The windows also resemble known elven windows I've seen in other official D&D material.

http://s9.postimg.org/82i4hch3f/elf_windows.jpg

First I extruded them since they were only flat planes. I also improved the illumination map, completely remade the x-barred round window since the texture was far too small, made them tintable (even the glow itself, to an extent), and added a few strategic polygons to the rounded arches, which were quite blocky. In this image, I tinted the frames green for a sort of nature feel. I made them grey by default for better tinting.

Also visible in this picture is another floor tile. This time it's a very shiny marble floor, which I made primarily to be tinted black, which was based on a description of an evil temple floor in one of the old pen & paper modules. Here it's not tinted black, but it's darkened somewhat and the glossiness isn't necessarily very evident due to the viewing angle.

Here, however, it is tinted black and you can see it from a higher angle, where it catches the lights better. As with the other, this is also sized to 9 m x 9 m.

http://s2.postimg.org/4iahzxgwl/floor1.jpg

I also want to tear some of the pillars out of the standard tilesets to use as placeables, again for my interior-building efforts.

[Tchos]

Those floor placeables you could also add to the tile textures.

 

Indeed, I could. I would have to make variations of the tiles to account for the different specular settings, though, which would be a pain.

 

Is there a link to this set Tchos. I'm sure I don't have the windows and I've lost the toilet model.

 

PJ

 

Not yet, but I'll make a proper package and post it with the latest items.

[PJ156]

Good to see this thread again. Looking forward to this but Kamals project could potentially cross over with this in many places so it's worth checking that out before hacking too many other stock models apart.

 

PJ

[Tchos]

I haven't seen where this would cross with anything I've seen Kamal doing, but if he's taking apart stock placeables, I'll stick with the things that I'm not making that way.

[PJ156]

That's pretty much what he has done. It's a huge set of bits ripped off stock models, lots of cool bits like your cellar entrances.

 

PJ