"NWNX2 Script hooks added" with patch 1.05

[Larnak]

Anyone know what this means to us?
http://nwn2forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=550131&forum=109
_________________
Adventures in the Shining South PW

[Senalaya]

Chrismas and Eastern have fallen on the same day! Hell froze over!

That's actually very good news. Papillon had asked Obsidian to assist NWNX with clean hookpoints, etc.

[Papillon]

I've been discussing with OE since late 2005 about how they could improve multiplayer and persistent world support by supporting NWNX. After throwing some thoughts around (and most of them away), we came up with a simple method: We add some special script functions for NWNX that do exactly nothing when called on a server or single player client without NWNX installed. But if it is installed, it hooks those special functions and does it's thing. With this change, the SetLocalString function that I have been using in the past no longer needs to be hooked, which should improve NWNX's performance and versatility.

If the approach turns out to work well, more functions might follow.

One of the nice side effects of the new functions is that I can do away with the column buffer which provides space for NWNX to copy it's answer to NWN into. Also, it will be possible to read native types like integer or float directly, without converting to and from strings on the way.
_________________
Papillon

[TroveLord]

Does this mean we can get rid of the madCHook library?

[Grinning Fool]

I have to wonder, if they're willing to go to this length to assist -- why wouldn't they have just supported a more direct interface? i.e., the server itself can load plugin DLLs, and make those functions available through a scripting interface.
_________________
Khalidine, a NWN2 persistent world

Looking for volunteers.

[Papillon]

That's a good question. This was among my suggestions, but the idea did not make it. I guess it's because they would actively support loading DLLs by doing so, and this a totally different thing to just adding some bogus functions that more or less do nothing until NWNX has been installed by the enduser. I guess it all boils down to support requirements and zots.

But, let's not forget they offered to help, and they did. That's the main point.

Oh and no, hooking is still necessary, though madcodehook might not be my first choice for the next version.
_________________
Papillon

[Gryphyn]

Happy dance...

I hesitant to speculate on what this involves, but I gather it's something like Obsidian creating a SQLExecute(string s) scripting function - which does nothing unless you have NWNX4 running. To enable NWNX4 to use it Obsidian are 'exporting' the function calls in a type library (or something similar)

@Papillon,
Could you perhaps elaborate on what these initial functions will/could be?

Cheers
Gryphyn

[GodBeastX]

[Demetrious]

Is anyone here running 1.05 beta?

I had code using NWNx and the Chat Plugin all up and operational in 1.04 but it didn't seem to transfer to 1.05 beta.

Is this expected with the OEI changes?

[Papillon]

No, this should not happen. In fact, it works for me. Do you get any log files ? If so, please post their contents into a separate thread.
_________________
Papillon

[Demetrious]

I'm pretty darn ignorant within NWNx - trying this for the community with really no personal interest. I can send you the module that functions in 1.04 but does not work in 1.05beta.

[sweetcornminer]

I was just wondering if anyone knew what the 1.05 functions actually did?

For example:

void NWNXSetString( string sPlugin, string sFunction, string sParam1, int nParam2, string sValue );

What are all those parameters?

Its a bit of a mystery.

[virusman]

Hm, interesting.
Is there a "Get" function?

[sweetcornminer]

yup. Tell you what, I will list all of them:

float NWNXGetFloat( string sPlugin, string sFunction, string sParam1, int nParam2 );

int NWNXGetInt( string sPlugin, string sFunction, string sParam1, int nParam2 );

string NWNXGetString( string sPlugin, string sFunction, string sParam1, int nParam2 );

void NWNXSetFloat( string sPlugin, string sFunction, string sParam1, int nParam2, float fValue );

void NWNXSetInt( string sPlugin, string sFunction, string sParam1, int nParam2, int nValue );

void NWNXSetString( string sPlugin, string sFunction, string sParam1, int nParam2, string sValue );

[sweetcornminer]

Theres no documentation in the toolset
(that I can find), perhaps when the final 1.05 comes out we might get some.