Neverwinter Nights For Players CEP Community Expansion Pack Team Profile

Community Expansion Pack Team Profile

Profile by Jay Watamaniuk,
February, 2004

The Community Expansion Pack (CEP) was masterminded by the CEP Team. Thanks to their hours of finger-breaking and eye-straining labour, strong commitment to detail and quality, and focused vision, the CEP is an exceptional NWN must-have add-on. Following is a BioWare interview with the team to get their thoughts and opinions about the CEP.

Introduce yourselves and what your involvement was on the Community Expansion Pack (CEP).

Eligio Sacateca: I first authored the original Custom Content Guide based on my own forays into the black arts of creating custom weapons and other items for NWN. I was excited by the original announcement from DLA and CODI that they were looking at building a Community Expansion Pack. When the idea languished unfulfilled I took up the reins and organized the project that you are now seeing - no longer a pipe dream.

As for my role, I have tended to be a meddler in the affairs of other wizards, getting my hands dirty on everything from creatures to Baseitems and placeables. Hence, the title project manager and chief bottle washer.

Devon_v: I'm Charles Faraone, (un)known online as Devon_v or sometimes Sejanus_DwB. (Hi guys!) I've been testing the CEP since before beta 1, and later got added to the team as an internal tester and 2D artist. This will prbably be the only question I get to answer. :P

Kephisto: My role on the CEP Team came about after I utterly failed my first few assignments. In the same eight hours it took me to compare the differences between a dozen models the CEP Heavy Hitters were comparing, editing, upgrading, and retexturing a hundred of them!

Thankfully, Eligio allowed me to work on things I believed I could do a better job of, such as web design, PR, making and sending out CEP CDs on a limited scope (worldwide, but only about 300 of them), and sharing my 2 cents with the rest of the team on how to improve all aspects of CEP.

Everyone on the team is constantly firing off great ideas and everyone is multi talented, so I try to play the behind the scenes role of "creative consultant", warmly suggesting little details we should decide upon asap and pointing out possible pitfalls and "what if" events to stay clear of.

All of us get along amazingly well and we're having a blast making CEP!

Loki Hakanin: Well, I'm Loki Hakanin...the Loki bit is an old appellation based on personality traits (*smirk*) and preference for archaic mythology and the like. The Hakanin...well, that came from someone signing me up for a travel agency under that name.

I came into the project in the summer of 2003. At that time, like Eligio had felt before, I was getting frustrated with the custom content situation in NWN. Basically, we had multi-hakpak support, but each module still seemed to need its own haks because there was no standard. There were lots of multihaks out there, but a lot of them seemed to be a total grab-bag in terms of content quality and QA. So, I had started compiling a list of my favorite PC parts haks, all to be padded in 2DA for compatibility so they could be used with a simple 2DA master hak. I heard about the CEP and contacted Eligio to ask what the CEP was planning on using for anatomy indexing to work around that, and he offered to bring me on the team.

I came in as an anatomy grunt doing basic work. Sadly, the then-head of Anatomy development had to leave us very early in the development process due to real-life time constraints. I have been running and organizing anatomy since then. So, if you don't like the clothes, send me your hate mail. Which I will ignore. :) Alternately, send me offers of help to improve, which I will happily accept.

SBird: Who am I? Well, I go by the handle SBird, which is the result of a decade-old kinda dumb inside joke. So, wondering about its origin is probably a waste of your time. :)

In RL, I'm a grad student at the University of Washington who's hoping to be able to get out of school and into a real job before he turns 30. Somehow, I've managed to become a geneticist working in a metallurgy and ceramics department on nanotech. Still not entirely certain how that happened... Hopefully, I'll be wrapping my degree up this summer.

I'm responsible for the placeables in the CEP, so any complaints about those should be directed at me.

When not working on the CEP or at work (a distressingly small fraction of my time these days) I'm playing in/running PnP RPGs with my gaming group that has been together for something like 5 or 6 years now. Right now, we're pretty much exclusively on DnD 3rd Ed but we've played a ton of Call of Cthulu (best RPG system, ever, IMO), GURPS, and Floating Vagabond. My 3rd Ed game is winding up, having taken a set of characters from 2nd level to almost 40th level over the last 2 years. This has taught me that you should NEVER EVER let a player double class in monk and druid--unless you want a character with an AC of 92, that is...

Beyond that, I love to hike, ski, mountain and rock climb, and mountain bike. Lately, I've also been thrashing around with my old classical piano training with some friends playing jazz 'n blues to make something that vaguely resembles music.

 

When did you start this project? Where did the idea come from?

Team: The idea for the CEP first came from DLA and CODI over a year ago. At that time, the original intent was to put the best of the NWN community content into a single patch (.bic file) although this goal was made somewhat obsolete when Bioware added the ability to include multiple hak paks into a module around v1.28. Multiple hak paks, however, did not completely solve the problems people were having with adding custom content to their modules, namely quality, integration, and accessibility.

Eligio: I restarted the CEP project back in June of 2003, kicking ideas around with Luna_C before the latter was eaten by Real Life^TM. The team went public shortly after, brought on a series of new members, and got down to work. It really has been a group effort, driven by a vision that we put together and posted early in development. I think it turned out to be a lot more work, hard work, than any of us originally expected. Like other voluntary development projects, we have had people come and go, but the core team has been with us through the bulk of it. If you have good things to say about what we've done, thank the team. If you have complaints, you can aim them at me as being responsible overall for the whole mess.

SBird: I started in the CEP team back in July or August 2003, not really knowing too much about custom content or 3D modeling or much of anything, really. In the months since, I've been on a crash course on every conceivable property and nuance of placeables. Hopefully, the results are to the public's approval.

Credit for the completion of CEP really has to go to Eligio. The CEP was a project that was started then dropped by some of the other custom content luminaries about a year ago when ther original purpose (putting Community Content into an patch .bic file) was made obsolete by the ability to add multiple hakpacks. However, that did not completely solve the problems people were having with adding custom content to their modules.

Therefore, Eligio restarted the CEP sometime about 6-7 months ago. While all of us have put in a lot of hard work and lost sleep, Eligio's really the one to thank/blame for CEP being completed. I honestly don't think it would have happened without him at the helm and if it had, it would have taken twice as long and been half the quality.

Kephisto: I was accepted into the CEP Team back in October 2003, and I'm truly honored to work with these amazing Heavy Hitters.

Devon_v: "Gee, time's a blur. It was back around September '03, I guess, that I first signed on for the baseitem beta. That was when I found all the screwy icons and had the funny idea that I'd fix them. About three weeks later, I think it was the topic of the then secret portraits pack came up, and I offered to work on it. Next thing I knew I was a member."

Loki Hakanin: I came into the project last summer in 2003 as an anatomy grunt, doing basic work. Sadly, the then-head of Anatomy development had to leave us early in the development process due to real life time constraints. He asked me to take over. I accepted and have been running/organizing anatomy since then. So, if you don't like the clothes, send me your hate mail. Which I will ignore. :) Alternately, send me offers of help to improve, which I will happily accept.

 

In brief, what is this massive thing you have created and what does it mean to the average NWN player?

Team: Massive barely fails to do the CEP justice! Last time we checked, the internal file structure of the CEP contained over 26,500 resources files! This is by far the biggest and most complicated thing we've ever worked on. In real life, for example, SBird works on a multi-million dollar, international research project and it doesn't even come close to the sheer mass of the CEP.

To get back to the main question, the CEP will provide both module builders and players with integrated, high-quality, and accessible custom content for the NWN game.

Let's talk about integration for a moment. Currently, if a module builder puts CODI's Gelugon and h2orat's Cave Goblins in their module, you have to download a hak pak with those monsters in it to play the module. Another module builder might also want to use these monsters but, because they add Brent Anderson's Giant Ants, you have to download a whole new hak pak with almost the same content. The builder has to know how to integrate all of these things together. The player has to download the same things over and over again in different formats. It is a lot of work for everybody. The CEP, with its integrated content, avoids this problem. One set of haks to download and you are done--for both player and builder.

There is also no quality control on NWVault. The result for module builders is a harrowing search for content to put into a module – some of which doesn't even work properly. Players face the same problems. Furthermore, when Bioware updates the game with a new patch, the patches sometimes break existing modules which use custom content (this is unavoidable because of the way that custom content works). The Vault is filled with excellent, older modules that are no longer playable since the author is now inactive or too busy to go back and update the module (a technical and very daunting task at best). With the CEP, we have already reviewed and filtered the content for equality, we have updated broken content and we will maintain compatibility so that you don't have to. Any module that is "CEP v1.0 Compliant" (the version number might change with new patches) will work if you have the CEP on your machine - no further fuss or muss!

Finally, there is the issue of accessibility. If a builder makes a module that is CEP compliant, you will be able to count upon having a large user base that doesn't have to download a hak pak to play it. This will take some time to establish but we are confident that we will get there. And it is easy to use. Installation is a two-step process for players (download and run the executable to install). For builders who want the flexibility to do things on their own, we have an install-it-yourself version that does not require running an executable on your machine. The content itself shows up in your custom palette automagically – you don't have to load unwieldy .erf files or anything.

 

It has been a long haul to get this completed - is there anything you would have done differently if you had to take another run at it?

Eligio: As the project manager, I think I would have bitten things off in smaller pieces. At the time we started this, anatomy, creatures, placeables, and baseitems seemed reasonable for a first release. We deferred some of the big ticket items like tilesets because we did not have a tileset expert on board and that would have pushed us back a while longer. But it has been 8 months since we started and it is hard to keep momentum up over that period of time and we've dealt with the usual problem of people coming and going.

I probably would also have put a version control package in place much earlier in the project – most of the overall build and integration duties fell into my lap and managing the version control process by hand has been painful. But we have one now and it is starting to take hold. Now if I can just get SBird on board with it. :P

Devon_v: If I had a time machine, I'd go back and show myself all the bugs ahead of time so that the guys could fix them faster. Naturally, if I did that, then I wouldn't need the time machine, so I wouldn't go back, which would mean that I WOULD need it, which would mean I WOULDN'T, and timespace would break down and become trapped in an endless loop, so I think I'll answer "no" to this question for all our sakes.

Kephisto: It might be hard to believe but for me I wouldn't change a thing! The various issues we've had to deal with weren't to anyone's advantage at the time but they did teach us some things. I'm sure if I did something differently then another unexpected obstacle would have suddenly appeared before us, hehe.

We're in uncharted territory either way.

Loki Hakanin: Well, had I known about how some things would work out in my real life, I might have timed my work a bit differently. But really, no, I think things worked remarkably well, all things considered. Anatomy had remarkably few issues (probably due to the sadly small percent of qualifying content...I hope to greatly expand this in R2).

SBird: Not much. It's been a tremendous amount of work and I've learned a stupendous amount about creating custom content by tinkering with several hundred examples made by other people. It's been a great learning experience in managing large amounts of information.

If I could change one thing I would have started using Eligio's approach of making databases in Excel to manage stuff. I'm a bit of a Luddite and was using good 'ol pen and paper to track my changes up until fairly recently. Unfortunately, paper doesn't auto-update or let you do filter searches, which are essential when working with 1400+ placeables. If I had started using Eligio's approach 6 months ago, I probably could have saved myself 100 hours of needless work.

 

What do you hope CEP is used for?

Team: Anything and everything! We want to see PW servers with tons of custom content and players that don't have to wonder if their character's head will show up on another player's screen. We also want to see the average single player module use all kinds of great new monsters and placeables without having to worry about whether people will download a 30 megabyte hak pak just for their module.

In short, we would like to see the CEP become ubiquitous, that is, to have it installed on everybody's machine and used in a module just as if it were official Bioware content. You no longer have to be a custom content expert to build a module with this material, nor do you have to know anything about hak paks if you are a player and want to use it.

 

Be sure to check out the features and view screenshots to find out more about the Community Expansion Pack.