Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 - The Modding Dungeon Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Modding General NWN2 modder questions

Hi all. I am planning to do a campaign like the one I am currently working for NWN2 and I'd like some basic information before I start reading/watching the guides

If a person who already modded for NWN2 could answer these, it would be great.

1: What is the equivalent to .2da and .tlk files, if any? Can I edit such files?
2: Are there action and condition scripts for conversation nodes?
3: Is there script assist like in NWN2 where I can filter functions and globals with key words?
4: I already checked that I can rotate placeables around the Z axis. Does that mean we have a Z axis? To elaborate, can we walk on bridges AND under them? I can't recall anywhere in the game where this happens.
5: What is the equivalent to onDamaged, onDeath etc events of creatures? Does it work the same way? Do we just write scripts and attach them to creature event slots? Same question for areas.
6: How are events like conversations fire? Is it trigger based or perseption? To elaborate, will creatures talk to the PC once they see him/her, or once the PC crosses trigger?

These are some very basic questions of course that I would like to know before building. Thanks for the help. Also, I am planning on keeping notes as I do things and release them along the way. rjshae did the same for NWN2 and his notes were extremely useful to a lot of people.

1. Don't know what that is.

2. yes

3. yes

4. You cannot walk under anything you can walk on top of. Design around this limitation (pretty easy to do if you start out knowing that IMO) or you can get cheeky with teleports like a hole you can climb through to the other side or something.

5. This all sounds like stuff you can do in D:OS to varying degrees but I'm not exactly sure how about it worked in NWN. You can definitely attach scripts to creatures though and there are many events like ondamaged and ondeath.

6. You could do it either way, but in Divinity it's not particularly common for NPCs to start the conversation. There are built in systems in the story editor for something called "oneshottriggers" or "oneshotdialogs" (I forget which, might even be both) that will start a dialog in a trigger and not allow it to do so a second time. You could manually create this yourself as well if you don't like the behavior of it.

It is possible to start dialog when NPCs "see" the player but it's a little convoluted given all the externalities involved, sneaking, sight/hearing levels, invisibility. I've done it both via trigger and sight and I've generally been happier with the triggers.

Thanks a lot for the answers.

The 2da files in NWN2 are just table files (imagine excel), where information about stuff is stored. For example feat.2da contains information about the feats. Which icon they have, which bonus they give if any, and a reference to a tlk file.

The tlk file is also a table file with just text. For example the row referenced by the feat.2da will contain the name of the feat and its description.

So basically, we used them to add things to the game like feats, placeables etc.

5/ You can attach a script to character, items, and so on in D:OS2 engine. Then on this script, you can call events, like on use, on equip, and so on. But you don't have those nice usefull simple slots, only one script.

However, I am currently working on this,
for example:
http://larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=620653&gonew=1#UNREAD

and some effects require osiris to function.
Overall, I find D:OS2 engine, so far, to be more limited and bulkier, as far as scripting is concerned, than The aurora toolset. However, keep also in mind that I am only getting used to it. But I miss the NWN2 way to do stuff...

You can attach more than one script to a character/object though. Maybe the slots you're talking about are something different.

For things like onDeath, you don't necessarily need to use scripts attached to characters at all. The story scripts grab most of that if you setup an event for it. They do it all the time for the basic systems included in the SHARED scripts.




I'll also add the same advice I tell everyone about using the D:OS editor. The D:OS editor is really made to make Divinity games. Within that context, it does a pretty good (and fast) job once you get to know it.

Brushing off some NWN2 cobwebs, I would say:
The "Translated String Editor" is the equivalent of the .tlk files. It's the place where things like new book entries, tooltips, tags and many other string references are stored. You can edit this from within the editor. See the wiki page for some more info.

I think most of the content that could be found in NWN2 2da files would translate into lsx and lsf files, or stats files that end up as generated text files. These all get packaged up into *.pak files. The editor provides a user interface for modifying many of them, but not all. For those that need to be edited outside the editor, there is a pak extractor that can extract them and/or create new packages. This isn't my area of expertise, but I think it's roughly equivalent.

One item of note is that DOS2 handles merging multiple mods better than NWN2 here, since there is no need to merge 2das of the same type when wanting to run with multiple mods (multiple HAKs in NWN2 terms). The only time there is a conflict is if you are actually modifying the same named entity in two mods, in which case whichever one is loaded last wins.