Accueil Espace joueurs CEP Community Expansion Pack v2 is (almost) Released!

Community Expansion Pack v2 is (almost) Released!

Profile by Jay Watamaniuk

The most popular Neverwinter Nights add-on is the Community Expansion Pack, or CEP for short. Far from being a one person effort, the CEP is a collection of some of the best creative content to enhance your Neverwinter Nights experience as a player and as an adventure builder. CEP's impact on NWN cannot be understated - it is a big reason why this game is so popular. While the CEP team has changed and morphed over the years, the core idea of delivering all this content to the avid fan is still the same. With the release of CEP v2 we see even more exceptional quality community content crammed into an easy to install package. BioWare thanks the CEP team for their long hours and hard work spent bringing CEP v2 to life. We spoke with CEP Project Overlord and PR Mastermind, Kephisto, about what we can expect in CEP v2.

Is there a website where I can grab the new CEP?

Kephisto: CEP is a free download that's available soon on the Neverwinter Nights Vault, which is the best place to find just about anything for Neverwinter Nights. There's no need to sign up for an account, or any other requirement, because you won't need one to get CEP.

Usually referred to as the Vault, this world-renowned website is run by none other than Maximus_IGN, a long-standing and well-respected member of our community. He and his staff continue to improve the way the Vault serves all of us by providing the latest news, files, articles, adventures, surveys, and far more, concerning Neverwinter Nights. If you want to find new ways to improve your game, you'll find it on the Vault.

When the new version of CEP is made available to the public it will also be located on the Vault. In fact, you can visit the Vault for all your Neverwinter Nights needs.

Who is responsible for bringing this to light?

Kephisto: Although members of our community custom made each and every item in CEP, our team was responsible for the mountain range of work to gather thousands of individual items and get them to all work together at the same time in one massive package. This was nowhere near as easy as it sounds because we had to fix the textures or animations or scripts of most models, and even then most content caused severe conflicts with others.

Helpful members of our community provided suggestions and beta tested CEP during its development, but our team had to do the vast majority of the work on top of making sure everything was well documented. A daunting task for only four people.

We are extremely thankful for Eligio_Sacateca, who is the founding visionary and original team leader of the CEP project. Under his leadership we established our guiding principles and set the standards by which we operate, even to this day. There were others on the original team, including: Devon_v, Kephisto, Loki_Hakanin, Ninjatroll, SBird, and Seryn.

Of the founding members of the CEP project, Kephisto is the only one still on the project and has served as the team leader since late 2004. The other active members of the current CEP Team are: Harley59, Shadow_Weaver_VIM, and TheExcimer-500.

These four people worked for almost a year (daily) to create this new version of CEP. We hope you enjoy it.

What are some of the things we can expect to find in this latest CEP?

Kephisto: This new version of CEP combines all the great custom content from previous versions, and introduces many of the greatest and most recent contributions to the Vault - all of which have been playtested, and in many cases repaired. You can use all of the CEP content easily and in addition to what is already available in Neverwinter Nights.

CEP brings together some long awaited features to Neverwinter Nights, which includes rideable horses; backpacks, satchels, and sword scabbards that players can wear; arcane and emitter based shields; hundreds of new monsters and creatures; and over a thousand items ranging from gothic furniture to room sized piles of gold to represent a dragon's horde.

Other features include the ability to put a ceiling over an area; place sections of fog, smoke, water just about anywhere; thousands of components to make your weapons and armor unique; 121 new portraits for players and NPCs; boarded doorways; dozens of aged and weathered weapons; pressure plates with letters on them; alphabet letters that can be placed on floors and walls; musical instruments; and far more.

Part of what we mean by "far more" includes dozens of wings and tails, including VFX wings and tails that players and creatures can use; new and awesome CODI placeables and creatures; more VFXs; and tons of other amazing content.

What were some of the challenges you encountered during the development of this?

Kephisto: There were countless challenges our team faced during the development of the CEP.

Working on CEP goes above and beyond merely editing 2da files or simply merging a couple haks together for one-time use in a single module or persistent world. Our work includes fixing model textures, animations, and scripts; establishing file naming conventions; discussing and testing new ideas and content; replying to forum posts and e-mails; writing manuals for installing and using CEP; and dozens of other activities.

Just one of our major tasks for creating CEP v2 was to devise a way to streamline over 51,000 files and organize them, by category, across a small number of haks, while at the same time making sure to cross-reference them to remove any duplicates, and to rename and renumber those that might otherwise cause conflicts.

In case you might wonder about this, as I first did, "rename and renumber" means editing the individual code of the files, not just renaming the filename. We had over 51,000 files.

Right now our active team members are TheExcimer-500, Shadow_Weaver_VIM, Harley59, and myself (Kephisto). Two other members of the team are Doorman1970 and Maximus_IGN. Although they are very talented and influential, they are not active on a weekly (or even monthly) basis.

Besides struggling with our workload, our day jobs, and repeatedly trying (often in vain) to sneak away long enough to enjoy some real-life activities, each of us on the team could probably spend several pages answering this question. However, I can say the following on behalf of the team:

There was intense pressure spending a year devoted to a single cause, while at the same time some people demanded instant answers and attention from us on each and every detail of the project at each step of the way. A daunting task for only four people.

TheExcimer-500 has done most of the overall work on CEP and he should take most of the credit, team-wise, for making this new version insanely great.

Unfortunately, one of the biggest challenges we encountered was losing Doorman1970 due to an intense, life changing crisis. In terms of the project, he was chiefly responsible for beta 1's content and kept most of his own notes and plans for the project. While he and Kephisto constantly made backups, the most recent revisions were all lost along with everything else.

Natural disasters such as hurricanes and fires have a way of doing that.

At that time TheExcimer-500 was working with Doorman1970 providing some model, texture, and animation fixes for the beta 1 and original CEP bugs. So, he was brought into the team full time to replace Doorman1970 as our main hak-man. Not only did he fill the position and take on the vast majority of the workload and responsibility, but he also brought his excellent ideas and creative energy to the team and re-energized the project.

Although four of us managed to overcome the many challenges we faced for making CEP v2, we hope to find more talented people willing to join the team as we forge our plans for the future of CEP.

All for the greater glory of Neverwinter Nights.

How do I install this new CEP?

Kephisto: The good news is that our CEP Wizard will install CEP for you. All you have to do is download the file (cepv2_wizard.exe), double click it, then follow a few on-screen instructions. It will do all the work from there and within minutes you're ready to go.

Please note, when you visit the Vault and click "Download the CEP," make sure that you get CEP v2, not the previous versions, such as v1.53.

We give a warm thanks to Selanit, who is an active member of another great project named Alpha World Enhanced. He provided us with helpful insight and the software script to improve the CEP Wizard so it properly places CEP inside your Neverwinter Nights folder, regardless of where it is located.

Unfortunately, the CEP Wizard only works on Windows based computers. Those with Mac or Linux have to download the CEP Package (in zip or rar format) and manually install CEP. Those with Windows computers can use either the Wizard or the package.

We want to thank the 7,000 (plus) people who downloaded CEP v2 (beta 2), and particularly those who submitted feedback on that release.

Does CEP have any plans for Neverwinter Nights 2?

Kephisto: We've been so busy with making this new version of CEP that we haven't had much time to talk about and consider making any plans for Neverwinter Nights 2.

What are some of the major improvements that Builders will enjoy in this new version of CEP?

Kephisto: One of the major improvements is that we've changed the structure of the CEP haks themselves so that builders can now use CEP the way they want to use it. This new version of CEP remains easy to use for new builders, yet offers increased power and flexibility for experienced builders who want to further customize CEP.

Builders get to pick and choose exactly what custom content and features they want to appear in their toolset and in their modules. This means, for example, that if you don't plan on using specific CEP creatures, weapons, placeables, or other items, you can simply remove them from your custom palette. Now your toolset will only list the CEP content that you prefer to use.

In other words, if you don't use undead creatures you can easily just remove them from being listed in the creature's custom palette. If you don't use certain types of furniture you can easily remove them as well. In all cases, however, regardless of what you remove from your toolset's custom palette, this does not actually change your version of CEP, so your players won't need to do anything extra to play your adventure.

The improvements don't stop there, because once you spend the time and effort to refine the custom palettes so they match your preferences, you can save (export) your personalized list of CEP content so they can be used (imported), modified, and shared with others that use CEP. This should make it easier for groups of builders to further customize their custom palettes to complement the adventures they are working on.

All of this was done by first separating all the models, textures, sounds, portraits, etc. (the guts of CEP) into their own core haks. Then we placed all the 2das and itps into a single TOP hak. Furthermore, we removed all our previous CEP based scripts and blueprints and now present them as either an additional hak or as an importable erf.

What the previous (and slightly technical) paragraph means is that this new version of CEP makes it easier for builders to mold CEP to make it work the way they want it to and provide options for how CEP content is added to your module or persistent world.

We're also very happy to present the first of what we hope to be several additional new content haks. We start with Phenos1, which has been named for phenotypes. When CEP v2 is released Phenos1 will contain phenotype and scripts for rideable horses, which is one of the most requested features for us to add to CEP. After CEP v2 is released, we have plans for introducing and improving more dynamic races and phenotype'd creatures.

In short, CEP v2 has many options builders can use to further customize their game and make it more suitable for the adventure or persistent world they want to create.

CEP is the most downloaded mod to Neverwinter Nights. How awesome is that, exactly?

Kephisto: It is amazing to know that over a million people are now using CEP. However, one of our guiding principles is that CEP becomes a standard for great custom content, not a barrier to it.

We have always encouraged others to continue making great custom content. Regardless of any one person's skill at making game content, everyone, without exception, was first an amateur at doing it. There is great satisfaction for making your own portrait, weapon, creature, loadscreen, or anything else in the game, and that becomes even more rewarding when others enjoy using what you've created in their own adventures.

Greater still is getting e-mail, a private message, or a comment posted in a forum thanking you for what you've created. We hope those who use CEP consider browsing our extensive list of credits, the custom content creators that made the countless items in CEP, and from there visit the Vault and leave great comments for how much they liked any author's content.

That is a great way to thank those truly responsible for making CEP.

Want to comment on this article or read what others have to say about it? Join the official discussion!