Deployment and Installation of Custom Content in NWN2

Heed submitted a great walkthrough of how custom content should be installed and deployed in NWN2.

There are several ways to get custom content into the game, but not all are equal. Some have advantages over others and some can actually break your game install making you unable to patch your game. This document will describe various methods and highlight best practices.

Head over to the Vault and give it a read:
http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NWN2Tutorials.Detail&id=56%3Cbr%3E

Using hak files

Hak files are the preferred way to distribute and use custom content.

Use the tools listed below to create hak files for NWN2.

Adding music to your module

A lot of people have been asking about this and I found a post here:

http://nwn2forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=526432&forum=115

Maria Caliban has the following advice:

How To...
Add music to your toolset

There are three parts to this:
1. Placing and labeling your music
2. Editing dialog.tlk
3. Editing amdiantsounds.2da

EDITING YOUR MUSIC FILE

1) Find the folder entitled 'Music' in your My Documents/Neverwinter Nights 2 directory
2) Rename it to fit the naming convention, which is mod_mus_[title]. For instance, for my Company of Blasphemous Ravens mod, I'm using Brunete's Amicus Meus, which was originally Brunete-Amicus_Meus.mp3. I change it to mod_mus_amicus.bmu
3) Change the .mp3 file to a .bmu. I use this utility: Click Here

EDITING DIALOG.TLK
1) Open the dialog.tlk directory of Neverwinter Nights in your install directory with a tlk editor, I use this one: Click Here You'll need to update your browser to Java 5 to use it.
3) Scroll to the bottom and find the last number used, in my tlk file that's currently 184757 but yours may be different. Click on EDIT -> RESIZE TABLE.
4) Add one to whatever number appears and hit 'ok.' This should create a blank line at the bottom.
5) In this line, type in the name of song as you want it to appear in your toolset. I put in Amicus Menus
6) Hit save. (Make sure your toolset is closed when you do this) You can exit now but remember the number of the row you typed the title in.

EDITING YOUR AMBIANTMUSIC.2da

1) Open up your toolset, at the very top is a menu item called VIEW. Click on VIEW and then 2DA FILEs...
2) A list of your 2DA files pops. Scroll down to the one called AMBIANTMUSIC and open it.
3) Scroll down to the last, unused row.
4) In the first column, place the number from the dialog.tlk file that you created earlier. In the second, place the name of the music file without the extension. So I would enter and 184758 in the first column and mod_mus_amicus in the second.
5) Hit the 'Save' button for this file. (It's the one near the 'Add Row' button)

I'd like to add a note to the above post. It gives instructions on how to do two things one should rarely do. First, it tells you to alter the dialog.tlk in your install directory. This is typically a bad idea as most patches will overwrite this. For the majority of your modifications, you should copy your dialog.tlk into your My Documents/Neverwinter Nights directory and edit that one. Secondly, it's typically best to add a new row to the bottom of a .2da file instead of overwriting padding, however, I found that caused an error with amdiantmusic.2da.

>>

There's also been talk concerning the issues with importing voice over and music files in 1.02 that are supposed to be addressed as of 1.03.

Anduraga's guide to adding a custom mountain placeable

Anduraga recently posted an excellent guide to creating a custom mountain placeable for use as a background element in a module on his blog. Here's a quick teaser:

We'll be creating a two-dimensional backdrop of a mountain for NWN2. This placeable will be no different than the Tree Cards in the toolset. Throughout this tutorial, I will be saying Photoshop and Max. If you're using a different program, then Once you have those programs (Photoshop and Max installed), we can finally begin making our textures.

Read the full post here:
http://thayviannights.blogspot.com/2008/12/from-image-to-nwn2-mountains....

It's a long post but a great read if you are interested in exploring custom placeables or need a specific placeable like this. Thanks Andurag!

Loading screen tips

WhoIsEvilTurnip posted this explanation of how to add custom tips to the loading screens:

I figured this out a day or two ago. There didn't seem to be anywhere it was actually written plainly.

First make a custom TLK. It should start with StrRef numbers 0, 1, 2, etc. Make it as long as you like with custom strings in each one.

Next, either make a new nwn2_tips.2da from scratch or copy the default one. If you copy the default one, go ahead and delete all of the lines except the first one.

I don't know why the nwn2_tips.2da has two "Row No." columns, but it works. Change the String for row 0 to reference 16777216, and set row 1 to reference 16777217, and so on, for as many random tips as you want.

Stick your custom TLK in your main NWN2 directory, the same one that the dialog.tlk is in.

You can put the nwn2_tips.2da in a custom hak if you like. I used TlkEdit to make my hak and put it in the My Documents\Neverwinter Nights 2\hak directory. Then go ahead and open your module in the toolset, and in the module properties, add your custom hak, and set your custom tlk as the one this module uses. Save the module, and try it out. When changing areas, your custom tips will appear! For some reason, when you are entering the module for the first time, the default tips show, but every area change after that brings up a custom tip from the custom tlk file.

Hope this helps. I looked for a long time for straightforward instructions for noobs on this subject before using trial and error to get it to work.

See the full thread here:
http://nwn2forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=596848&forum=115 

Prestige Class Creation

ladydesire posted a great tutorial on how she made custom prestige classes for Waterdeep.

Check it out here:
http://nwcitadel.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1138

Also, you may get some benefit in Kaedrin's post where he was exploring this issue:
http://nwn2forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=596753&forum=115

Rogue Dao: Custom Terrain Types

Montgomery Markland over at Rogue Dao Studios has posted some great information concerning custom terrain types:

I've been playing around with terrain textures, learning about how to properly format them with all of the assorted miscellany that's required.

I didn't know a .dds from a dvd until a week ago, so take all of this information as an exploratory process. Also, feel free to add your own comments.

Read the full post here:
http://www.roguedao.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=1428#1428

TLK files

There is currently a stickied post the official forums concerning tlk files:

Current word from Obsidian programmer Erik Novales is:

Custom TLK support in the toolset will be in the next patch. In addition, specifying string refs as hex values in 2DAs will also work. This works similarly to how it did in NWN1 -- flipping the high bit on a string ref signifies usage of the module-specific TLK.

The talk tables are indeed UTF-8.

pfb files

These are prefab files. Place them in your overrides directory.