Post by addicted2rpg on Feb 19, 2004 20:57:41 GMT
Here is the concept behind CEP.
It essentially takes pulls what they feel is the 'best of the best' in custom graphics material (the hak pak), and lots of equipment. Thus, a person planning to create a new NWN module doesn't have to make a lot of items, they can just begin immediately populating the game with the gear, as well as scripting resources and the custom tilesets.
The Achilles Heel of all hakpaks has been that if I want to play your game, I need to have the same hakpak. Not even that; I need to have the same VERSION of your hakpak.
A hakpak can be up from 4 to 15 megabytes big in my experience. I am a player who has played on many hakpak requiring servers. On one server, I had to update it far more often than I wanted each time I played or they made a change.
The concept behind CEP is there isn't changes. They give you a good working thing and you shouldn't have to keep re-haking the mod. They are assuming, or hoping, that if all the players in the NWN community download the CEP package, then every mod can use it because no one will be isolated from playing by not having it. The proof of this concept, or the odds of Fredian using it, will most likely depend on how well CEP takes off.
Trying new servers:
I have got to great lengths to get server passwords, hakpaks, you name it, to go in and find a really crappy server that is poorly ran or poorly designed. If you are using dialup and download a 15 meg hakpak to play a piece of junk, when is the next time you are going to try out a new hakpak just so you can play a new server?
For us and our motivations is that we want people to have an easy time to login and get going. The whole world is modeled around it. West Styne containing all the shops, the thorough journal information and the small map it is on, the high XP from the fire beetles in the cave near by and the instant accessiblity to the majority of the world's features. The idea is to get a new player on the ground and going without hassling the poor guy anymore than absolutely is minimumally necessary.
I'm guilty of this myself, but if I login to a server and rest twice and can't do it in the same 60 seconds, I logoff and never come back (its my quick-HCR checking trick). There are some great games that do have rest restrictions, but my 2 year old attention span is not going to let me get passed that small barrier. The listings for games are enormous and people just fly from server to server looking for that fast setup. Especially working/busy people.
This is why CEP would be bad for us. However, if the Bioware updater included it in ALL hotu going players, then any server could use it without worrying about a compatibility problem....
Bioware would also be responsible for its fixes and making sure it works too, without any additional incindent crashes. I think we would require that kind of support for them (or from the CEP team), but that universality has to be there.
It essentially takes pulls what they feel is the 'best of the best' in custom graphics material (the hak pak), and lots of equipment. Thus, a person planning to create a new NWN module doesn't have to make a lot of items, they can just begin immediately populating the game with the gear, as well as scripting resources and the custom tilesets.
The Achilles Heel of all hakpaks has been that if I want to play your game, I need to have the same hakpak. Not even that; I need to have the same VERSION of your hakpak.
A hakpak can be up from 4 to 15 megabytes big in my experience. I am a player who has played on many hakpak requiring servers. On one server, I had to update it far more often than I wanted each time I played or they made a change.
The concept behind CEP is there isn't changes. They give you a good working thing and you shouldn't have to keep re-haking the mod. They are assuming, or hoping, that if all the players in the NWN community download the CEP package, then every mod can use it because no one will be isolated from playing by not having it. The proof of this concept, or the odds of Fredian using it, will most likely depend on how well CEP takes off.
Trying new servers:
I have got to great lengths to get server passwords, hakpaks, you name it, to go in and find a really crappy server that is poorly ran or poorly designed. If you are using dialup and download a 15 meg hakpak to play a piece of junk, when is the next time you are going to try out a new hakpak just so you can play a new server?
For us and our motivations is that we want people to have an easy time to login and get going. The whole world is modeled around it. West Styne containing all the shops, the thorough journal information and the small map it is on, the high XP from the fire beetles in the cave near by and the instant accessiblity to the majority of the world's features. The idea is to get a new player on the ground and going without hassling the poor guy anymore than absolutely is minimumally necessary.
I'm guilty of this myself, but if I login to a server and rest twice and can't do it in the same 60 seconds, I logoff and never come back (its my quick-HCR checking trick). There are some great games that do have rest restrictions, but my 2 year old attention span is not going to let me get passed that small barrier. The listings for games are enormous and people just fly from server to server looking for that fast setup. Especially working/busy people.
This is why CEP would be bad for us. However, if the Bioware updater included it in ALL hotu going players, then any server could use it without worrying about a compatibility problem....
Bioware would also be responsible for its fixes and making sure it works too, without any additional incindent crashes. I think we would require that kind of support for them (or from the CEP team), but that universality has to be there.
I'd rather use a mac than a windows machine anyday...
"There are only three sports--mountain climbing, bullfighting, and motor racing--all the rest being games." Ernest Hemingway 
. It would be great if we could use some some stable elements though. 
