Haks

[Nitro]

I am glad that Arelith is and will remain hak free. Downloading haks may not be a huge pain, but it's one that I'd prefer to avoid if possible, and when they have to be updated semi-regularly I'm likely to just drop the server that requires them, it's the main reason I've stuck to Arelith all these years, I can take a little hiatus if I want to and still be able to just launch NWN and play without any additional downloads.

[Cihparg]

There are several problems with issuing client-extensions to Arelith, least but not worst is keeping them up to date.

The problem isn't that people don't know how to install them.
The problem is how unintuitive it is to update server files in a regular basis.

And let's say you stop playing in the server at some point?
You probably want to clear out those files, which if you've also played on multiple servers and wish to continue playing on those, will most likely require you to reinstall NWN (Unless you made another copy of NWN, which takes considerable amount of space).

Now, there are ways to deal with this. One such example would be a launcher that downloads the necessary content, doesn't mess up your install directory, and starts up the game with the necessary files to proceed to the server that requires them.

[Ork]

.hak can add whole new base classes to nwn. New spells. New abilities. It is phenomenal what the dev have accomplished without, think what they could do with!

[High Primate]

Can we at least have a glued-on chainmail hak? Come on...

[Stath]

Tbh when i say haks i mean it solely in relation to additional head/armour/weapon appearances. But the Devs have spoken and they've clearly thought about it more thoroughly than everyone else.

[Endrak]

My two cents.

My immersion breaks a lot when I see everybody running around in the same outfits, because those are the only things that look good. Female torsos on most armor types look incredibly ridiculous and/or expose a lot of skin. There are no hats of any kind; only helmets. Making your character look the way you want them to look is a vital link in playing that character well, and other people will pay more attention to characters who look good.

Most of the opposition to Haks seems to be regarding the installation. I admit it's a pain, and I'm good with computers, but it's only a pain because it's not organized or efficient. Amia, for example, has something like 10 different downloads spread across almost as many forum posts written by multiple people, and the installation instructions are not formatted or even written clearly. But people do it, because Amia has so many cool options that Arelith lacks.

Arelith does so much via scripting that we wouldn't even need all that much Hak content, and it could be organized into a relatively small and simple download. If the DMs managed to make it work, we'd stop hemorrhaging newbies to Amia when all they want to do is wear something different than "Trench Coat" and "Slightly Different Trench Coat".

[With The Sky Below My Feet]

Most of the vanilla NWN annoyances can be fixed with overrides (which are optional). I have only one annoyance with vanilla NWN, and that's female outfits.

Why does this question even keep coming up?

Haks are not going to happen.

People should always be able to just login without any prerequisites.

99% of haks look horrible anyway, and really how about we focus on the quality of RP tools (which are here, without haks), not b4d455 and diversified looks.

[Septire]

Haks are not likely going to happen on Arelith. I wouldn't hold out for it.

This here caught my attention https://xoreos.org/about/index.html. If this project comes to fruition, I'd be keen on playing around with an open-source implementation of the NWN engine. Getting around hard-code would be as good as NWN 3 in my books. NWN might even get a second wind if made open source, hard to say.

An optional override (replacing existing game assets, nothing additional to the base game) is more likely to happen at some point. To date, I have not seen an HD reskin of the NWN armors or helmets (there was one good helmet re-skin I saw in all my searching). I have seen a decent weapon reskin, updated weapon visual effects, better base heads, and some tileset improvements. Plenty of creatures and placeable texture upgrades as well. Someone with talent would need to update armors, and I don't see any takers. It is a lengthy process to update every model for male and female, to the tune of 120 armors. Let's not forget about robes either. If anyone here is good with Maya or 3DSMax or whatever other tools are used for content creation, be my guest, I personally would love to see them and use them.

Still, it's a pretty low priority for me. It's one of those things I want to get around to, but I am a complete noob when it comes to content creation and creating hakpacks. For Arelith, I'm more interested in how the game plays and feels. Things like PvE feeling more balanced especially for the in-between levels, looting chests (not sucking), re-playability... less of a grindy feel would all be welcomed changes I think. The updated armors thing would be something I'd love to delegate to one of NWN's more reputable content creators.

There's so many haks out there... and almost no overrides to give the base game a much-needed facelift. It would be wonderful to see something a player could download to make the game look better, while keeping it consistent with the base game, that could be taken anywhere to any server (or even just playing the singleplayer game with better textures/models). I don't think I'm the only person who would download such a compilation.

[RamblerTeo]

You could even just slap an additional mirror into the Entry and allow us to pick NPC heads instead of the PC ones?

[Mr_Rieper]

I could see this happening if somebody designed a launcher for Arelith that handled most of the little details. Though, I'm not even sure that's possible for Neverwinter Nights.

Discovery Freelancer is quite comfortable to set up and get working, as an example. The download isn't too big and the launcher helps manage updates and hotfixes, as well as player accounts. It added a much needed facelift to an old game.

But yeah, launcher. Forum threads with zip file downloads would be a step backwards and would create a very large headache.

[Liareth]

I could see this happening if somebody designed a launcher for Arelith that handled most of the little details. Though, I'm not even sure that's possible for Neverwinter Nights.

Discovery Freelancer is quite comfortable to set up and get working, as an example. The download isn't too big and the launcher helps manage updates and hotfixes, as well as player accounts. It added a much needed facelift to an old game.

But yeah, launcher. Forum threads with zip file downloads would be a step backwards and would create a very large headache.

It is possible to make a launcher(I actually have a prototype stored away somewhere) but that isn't something that would impact our decision at all. Any solution which requires players to download extra content isn't something we're going to go with. Players should be able to grab a vanilla install and connect to the server immediately with zero hassle and zero fuss.

[Griefmaker]

The sad thing is that in general, the critical build is more of a hassle to find and install than most haks are. And that is required to play.

[Ebonstar]

I could see this happening if somebody designed a launcher for Arelith that handled most of the little details. Though, I'm not even sure that's possible for Neverwinter Nights.

Discovery Freelancer is quite comfortable to set up and get working, as an example. The download isn't too big and the launcher helps manage updates and hotfixes, as well as player accounts. It added a much needed facelift to an old game.

But yeah, launcher. Forum threads with zip file downloads would be a step backwards and would create a very large headache.

It is possible to make a launcher(I actually have a prototype stored away somewhere) but that isn't something that would impact our decision at all. Any solution which requires players to download extra content isn't something we're going to go with. Players should be able to grab a vanilla install and connect to the server immediately with zero hassle and zero fuss.

i know of an existing server that uses haks after they were hak free for over 10 years, and they have a launcher that does all updates and installs everything in its proper place. only the initial one took about 10 minutes, afterward it was a few seconds to run the updater and your in game.

now they are a low level low magic server and they have their hard core group still playing, hell i played there for many years until i couldnt handle the politics that Arelith avoids easily.

just have to put in the char creation area a npc with the activate the haks and a mirror to adjust heads.

we would have to add a sign to let people know to check the forums if they dont already as the team can make a run your updater post when new content goes live. Like i said to run it take less time then to grab a drink and come back and your in game

[Iceborn]

One little observation:

There's the illusion going about that playing in Arelith is "click-play" and be done with it.
That's not true. It simply isn't.

Everybody tweaks their game. Some out of comfort, some out of impending necessity.
1) Get the game.
2) Change CD Key (and request it if you just got it from GOG)
3) Get the Critical Patch.

That's the mandatory part.
If you have a specific issue, which with the advance of OS and hardware are becoming steadily normal, then that's another twist that would take additional download.

You can play like that, but a grand majority of the players will opt to tweak further:
-Add a launcher for direct connection.
-Enable the windowed mode.
-Get rid of the Master Server authentication.
-Slap Stath.
-Slap in a few prettifying overrides.

To get the game running for the first time is anything but simple.
Only after that, I see Arelith and I wonder where's the difference.
But I already said that I wouldn't argue, and I won't.

In any case, ideas like an auto-updater seem... interesting.

[Liareth]

One little observation:

There's the illusion going about that playing in Arelith is "click-play" and be done with it.
That's not true. It simply isn't.

It is. There is no need to download the patch if you bought the game from gog. Contacting gog for a cd key is straightforward; many players would feel more comfortable with it than downloading a random executable from a random server. And you're assuming players bought the game specifically to play on Arelith. Many new players to Arelith are existing NWN players looking for a new server for whom connecting to our server is only a click away.

[Iceborn]

The critical patch doesn't come by default with GOG's version (in my case, I can't play the game at all without the patch since all my models are reflective like Metal Mario).

There are virtually no HAKless servers around beside Arelith (I think?), so the opposite works. A player who comes from another server already has the game set up for playing - if anything, they often have to remove all HAKs and overrides so it doesn't kick (or worse, ban) them.

While I don't argue that many players would feel more comfortable with the simplicity (irrational as it may be), I would argue that there's no true best answer either, and I would always opt to play with HAKs and have to "endure" one download-a-month with some files to enjoy a good RP session without having to correct somebody that X kobold is armored and not using the half-naked default model.

It's my take on it.

[Mr_Rieper]

The critical patch doesn't come by default with GOG's version (in my case, I can't play the game at all without the patch since all my models are reflective like Metal Mario).

Can confirm that the GoG version does not come with the 1.69 rebuild pre-patched, you have to get it yourself and patch it. If this forum didn't have links to it, I would've struggled finding it from another source. I had to instruct a friend on how to install, forgetting to patch and trying to connect to the server wasted several days worth of time trying to figure out what went wrong.