CoPaP

I have noticed at least two or three current NWN CoPaP PW's that seem to be planning a NWN2 PW (Avlis, of course, is one).

So, I'm wondering who all out here is doing that, and if you already have forums or anything set up. Anything we can look at or get involved with?

viewtopic.php?t=1534

This might provide some usefull information for you and might help answer one or two of your questions.

I'm currently working on a PW for NWN2 but if I understand Orleron's words correctly that CoPaP is for NWN projects and not going to be NWN2. If a group wish's to develop a CoPaP style NWN2 project then good for them.

I'm not sure it would be best to advertise on this forum as this is a CoPaP NWN website for NWN servers.

Themi I think is offering some web space on his server and might be interested in developing a CoPaP style for NWN2 projects but he has'nt decided weather to develop a PW for NWN2.

Best talk to him

Xeo

as stated before... The Hala team intends to make an NWN 2 world and if the potential to link is there, we do plan on starting up a CoPaP 2, likely under a different name. I have been in talks with other worlds who may be interested in doing so. Keep on the lookout for future news regarding this.

Greyhawk is also creating a NWN2 server.

I have no definite plans to make an NWN2 persistent world at this time. I will not make such a decision until the final game is released and we can actually test in the real world what the bandwidth requirements will be like, and how best to handle the walkmesh issue.

If a 16x16 area walkmesh is 28 megs baked, and each CoPaP2 world had 100 exterior areas, and there were just 5 CoPaP worlds, players would have to have 13.67 gigabytes of walkmesh data to be able to visit every world.

Now I am not saying those numbers are exact. I do *not* know the exact size of a single baked walkmesh for a 16x16 area. I haven't tested it myself.

Little bit of info on walkmeshes.

I've done a bit of research and come up with the following:

A module containing merely a 16x16 area (outdoors) with placeables, came to 24 mb in size. The two main files causing this size were a .TRX and a .TRN file.

Apparently the .TRN file is the terrain data used only by the toolset, and the .TRX file is the 'baked' walkmesh/terrain data.

Only the .TRX file will need to be distributed to players (apparently).

The file for said 16x16 area was 11mb in size.
Compressing it does produce a noticable effect, reducing the size to 1mb.

Hence a 100 area module would need a roughly 100mb download by the player for walkmeshes.

Seing as several haks already being used (see cep) are in that kind of file size 100 area PWs look viable.

Of course, this does not take into account the memory footprint that is feared might cause much more drastic issues.

Found this quote somewhere and unfortunately can not recall who it was from.

Shane was explaining the progress made on multiplayer NWN2. Apparently multiplayer was awful. The big change there and why the game got an extension is the development of better multiplayer functionality. Walkmeshes will download on attachment to a PW or module. If you have the 200 or so meg down load of Walkmesh for a PW you do not need to down load the full Walkmesh again upon revisit, you just down load any new or changed areas Walkmeshes. So – instead of a 10 min AT between areas you have something similar in time to NWN – ONCE YOU HAVE THE WALKMESHES. The game keeps track of these and changes and automatically sends them as needed upon initial server connection. This is a good thing for PWs and Multiplayer modules.

Hope that helps a few people maybe.
Jay

EDIT: Er.. not trying to disparage your remarks Themi I swear!

What is a "Baked" area?

when you finish making an area in the toolset you have to bake it...what it does is convert the entire area into tiles and make the walkmesh...and a few other things as well..it's like compiling the area

No worries, you've provided the detail I knew I was missing.

But my concern remains. Not over the download size, but over the disk space used on user's machines, since the game will not load a compressed baked mesh, AFAIK.

terryrayc wrote:when you finish making an area in the toolset you have to bake it...what it does is convert the entire area into tiles and make the walkmesh...and a few other things as well..it's like compiling the area

Kinda like scripts in NWN. There's the NSS file that you actually work with in the toolset, then when it's compiled it is a NCS file.

Ahh.. makes sense now.

Tanks