Custom Content, Hakpak merging

Got started late again last night - weekdays are just not really ideal for getting any work done. By the time I get home and eat dinner, it's already late, and I'm usually kind of worn out by then. I really didn't do any work on the module. Instead, I just messed around with various haks. My original intention was to try to keep the custom content in my first module down to a minimum, but I started rethinking that yesterday. Partly that's because I'm playing two modules - Almraiven and Blackwall Keep - which both make effective use of a lot of custom content. Blackwall Keep uses a custom tileset to create a swamp that's better looking than any other I've seen. It also has custom items and custom rules for eating, drinking, resting, climbing, and fishing. Almraiven uses colored spell icons and custom rules for spell components, potion brewing, and money. It's also the most visually stunning module I've ever played (not that I've played a lot, but still). The use of custom placeables and the incredible attention to detail are just amazing, and it makes the game incredibly immersive - I just want to stand around and look at everything. My own efforts seem crude and feeble in comparison.

Playing these modules, and reading the comments on them (as well as from other things I've picked up) made me realize that players - especially veteran players - like custom content and are willing to download large haks. Aside from this, there are a number of haks that I'd like to use in this module. For instance, this ogre, and these fantastic dynamic goblins, which I had a lot of fun playing with last night (in fact, now that I've discovered dynamic creatures, I want to use them as much as possible) - they're definitely going in, as the Bioware models don't even come close. I'm also unhappy with the orcs in the game. The CEP does have a bunch of custom orcs, but most of them are modifications to the standard model, while the really cool ones are basically Uruk-Hai (right down to the white handprints), and I don't want something that obviously comes from LOTR, since the module isn't set in Middle-Earth. I tried using a custom orc hakpak, but I couldn't get it to work. So I might just go with these hobgoblins instead.

So in order to try and make this work, I decided to try to learn how to merge haks last night. Specifically, I tried to merge the DLA Ogre with the CEP, because I knew that they had conflicting 2da's, and I knew I'd have to learn it eventually. I read two tutorials on the subject, but they were somewhat confusing, and I didn't feel like I knew what I was doing. I found the non-matching lines, but I was sure what to copy into what and then what to do with it and so on. Ghostdreamer sent me a link to this utility, which makes 2da merging easier, but I'm still kind of shaky about the whole process.

As it turns out, I might be able to put much of this off for now anyway: it looks like CEP 2.0 is going to be coming out any day now, and it looks like they're going to be including a lot of the content that I either wanted to use in this module or in the future, including the DLA Ogre, so I won't have to worry about merging it. Not that this gets me off the hook entirely - the dynamic goblins work fine with the current CEP, but it's possible they might conflict with 2.0, and the Hobgoblins don't work with this version. So for now, I think I'm going to put off working on the module for the most part, until CEP 2.0 comes out. Then I'll see what new models are included, and from there I'll be able to decide what else I might want to use. Until then, there's still plenty I can do: I have a lot of scripting to do - specifically, I need to see if I can figure out how to make certain things work. My module is getting cluttered with scripts, many of which aren't currently in use, so I need to clean that up. I need to see if the custom tilesets I want to use are going to conflict, and if so, I have to merge them, and I still need to learn how to merge haks in general. And finally, I have plenty of reading to do as well.