Elven quarter - Mansions

[Amnesy]

Hello,

Let me start by saying how amazing it is to pull so much from good old Aurora editor where it comes to the Guldorand City.
Realy above and beyond.

Now that I had a few days to settle with a property, I would like to make a few comments on elven noble estates.

Once you enter you are greeted by a HUGE hallway, which really makes that *Omph* punch. Going up the stairs you have 3 options:
Left - Small library.
Right - Small rentable rooms.
Front - antechamber with another 3 options:
--Left - Kitchens with a follow-up into storage (pantry).
--Right - large baths.
--Front - banquet hall.

With the room size, the largest except the entrance hallway are baths and banquet hall.
All 3 estates are done more or less the same way.

I found it quite challenging to actually add a theme into the interiors.

It would be nice if there were room for customization - as if one wants the estate to be turned into a militaristic HQ, an arcane laboratory, a small private museum, a small theatre, or anything themed there is not much space for it.

Perhaps some of the, already made, rooms could be slightly altered?
Small library - Made into one open room that could serve as the living room, or that could be turned into the library using fixture bookshelves, or made into an office.
Large baths - baths could be made a separate, small room and space freed reused to place another empty room that could be customized. Or baths removed altogether and public bathhouse introduced at a later stage.
The stairway at the banquet hall could lead into a loft that could introduce a small inhouse garden (#elves)

The principle is to give more freedom for the houses to add their theme onto the property and made rooms that could be used in RP and use more frequently than some of the pre-defined rooms which are there already and might not be even used at all.

Thank you!

[Rex]

The AMAZING Kalliope here!

Let me chip in.

Swimming pool area : Cut it in half with a half-wall to cut off the other side, as symmetrical and cool as it looks we're unlikely to use that room very often. It could be a lot more interesting if we got some customizable area in there. As example: Religious Shrine.

Living room : The house lacks a living room imo. Compared to anything else in the mansion that'd be a nice addition while it not being just the bar area at the quarters (It's very small for a potentially larger visit, and compared to most much cheaper houses) I'd like to see it slightly barren with maybe some cool banners and a furnace, so we got a room to place our fixtures in.

The Mansions are really awesome. Legit some of the best build areas I've ever seen in nwn, but with 185 fixtures available there's very little room to use it. A guild can end up hitting 10+ players, who got their own theme so it'd be nice if we got a chance to custom it a little, atm. the houses are bound to be very similar which is a little sad seeing what great potential it got.

Example from Rp: We're hosting a ball but there's only the banquet hall to stay in, a living room I'd attatch maybe right to its side to leave a bigger area for people to dance, or use without being forced to sit 15 players in a tight area. It'll help the dialogue box as well.

All in all: Add living room, use the swimming pool area more efficient.

Hope I'm not offending anyone it's only a suggestion!

[Irongron]

I'm not planning on revisiting these right now, as very much taking a break to play. The tileset is nice, but somewhat limited and hard to work with (large open spaces aren't really possible due to the pillared archways).

If I find the time/will I will add a transition to a ballroom using a more suitable tileset.

[FallenDabus]

I love the estate homes in the elven quarter. The one my characters holds looks absolutely fantastic and the layout and atmosphere is terrific. I also adore the large bath as it feels very spacious and elven.

The only issue I have is with the banquet hall due to the way it's tile group mesh is set up. The characters float above the bench in a sit animation because of it.

I suspect the problem is that the banquet hall tables and benches are part of the tile group and actually have a walkmesh attached to them, so they act like a floor. Aka the problem is with the hak, not the way the area is done in the toolset. The result is that the interactable invisible PLCs placed on the benches with the "sit animation" script attached to "on use" cause the characters to not sit on the bench. Instead, they sit on an invisible chair above the bench. So their bum floats a good foot or two above the bench mesh. If you then exit the sit animation with your character, you often get trapped standing on the table and at times even on the bench.

Given the size of the estate, not being able to make use of the banquet hall is kind of a minor issue and not a huge priority, but it is still a pity. It looks gorgeous and it would be great to have bards be able to perform on the balcony during some feast events.

What I would offer, as not to add to the pile of wonderful work you folks are doing, is that I can easily do an update to the tileset hak for you. If the tileset hak does not have any custom edits done by the arelith team, a link to the tileset suffices and I can make an update for it easily and then upload it for you. Else someone from the dev team could extract the .set file for me, and from there I can tell them which mesh models I would need for them to extract for me (banquet tilegroup) and then I can remove the walkmesh in a matter of minutes in blender, save and export. Voila.

I am not really looking to get back into model creation atm, but given how easy it is I might as well fix that the water surface in the pool tiles that turns the character invisible beneath the surface, and make an empty version of the banquet hall so that it could be used for a ballroom like Rex requested or a library, living room, lab, or what ever else the current / future owners might fancy.

I could also add floor terrain type so that larger halls without pillars obstructing it are doable. That is actually a bit of work, but given how much I enjoy playing on the server I'd be happy to do it. That way the tileset is a little more flexible for future projects the arelith area designers might want to use it for.