PW Builders Guidelines

Areas and Walkmeshes

 * Keep external areas small (max 16*16, prefferred 12*12 or less)
 * Give the NPC room to walk. ( less way finding problems )
 * On exterior areas, doublecheck the baked walkmesh. If it looks messy, try to simplify it with manually painting walkable and non-walkable sections to make it simple and smooth.

[quote]It has also occurred when a group traverses a transition together when, on the other side of the transition, the walkmesh surface area is small. Therefore, I think players might be getting 'bumped' into non-walkable portions of the walkmesh and thus crash out.
 * Large enough transistion points

I was witness to this when a player transitioned with a group and he began to crash out repeatedly during multiple login attempts after the initial crash. As he logged in the final time but before he physically appeared, I grabbed him in the Chooser and Jumped him to my Avatar, which allowed him to finally log back in successfully.[/quote]

any 1 X interior will crash clients running ATI cards [/list]
 * No 1x1 interiors

Objects and Placeables
triggers with 100+ vertice points have been proven to cause problems. Though having six or twelve vertices is probably ok (no need to have only triangles or squares).
 * Minimize trigger vertices
 * In order to prevent any of your placeables, doors, etc form being bashable, set the Plot flag wihtin the properties of the object to True (plot items can not be detroyed by any means disposable to an ordinary PC).
 * Don't use to much placeables. ( better loading times ) Just enough to get the point across.
 * Set placeables to environmental objects whenever possible, especially in non-walkable parts of the area.
 * If you stack placeables, set them to env. objects and use a walkmesh cutter.
 * Way points (from area transitions) should be in large clear walkmesh areas (not too close to edge, not in narrow areas, not near many objects)
 * Minimize Number of Tree Seeds
 * Early on in NWN2, Obsidian had recommended not to exceed a total of four seeds The definition of a seed being the type of tree (example, a fan palm and coconut palm are already two, not one just because they are both palms) AND a seed number. Perhaps since initially prescribing that guideline, Obsidian has made improvements to their engine so that number has increased.


 * Minimize use of grass
 * As grass flows with the movement of the wind, it is relatively very resource consuming. Use sparingly.


 * 6 placeable limit on each tile

Monsters and NPC's

 * not to many NPC in the same area at the same time. ( I try to keep the NPC amount below 20.)
 * Keep the number of active creatures (incl. the players) below 20 per area, if possible.
 * Avoid spawning more than 2-3 creatures near eachother. Their OnPerception events will go berserk.
 * No creatures near transition targets!

Lights and Shadows

 * Go easy on the number of point-light sources.
 * Almost every light to Cast shadows? = False
 * (unless it is a very bright light in an area with a background where shadows should be obvious),


 * Set most placeables and environmental object to Don't Receive Shadows = True
 * (especially in the maps I am working on more recently, in Underdark where its already so dark anyways, or, if the object is already very dark in color so shadows wouldn't be real noticeable anyways).


 * Area properties, I set Directional Light Casts Shadows? = False. In underdark maps, I'd like to actually set it Has directional light = false, but that resulted in graphics errors (Obsidian Bug at least as of 1.06.980). Well, this is also great for interior or underdark areas, though probably not good on your current map since its in a desert, but good to keep in mind for future maps (and maybe even a good idea to bring all existing maps to some standards like these?).