Neverwinter Nights Installation Tool

[jayhova]

NWNIT or NIT is a thing I recently ran into while re-exploring NWN. The reason I bring it up here in the forums is that it is a tool created to handle the large number of mods available for NWN. It is fan-created and the most powerful and useful tool I have ever seen for this purpose. The tool allows you to install a mod simply by pasting the webpage URL of the mod on NWN vault e.g.(https://neverwintervault.org/project/nw ... -horrors-0) into the tool and clicking the [Retrieve] button. The tool then does all the heavy lifting. It installs the mod, downloads any dependencies and installs them, creates an uninstall file and helps the user organize his new mod.

I was thinking man this would be great for DFU.

[Jay_H]

I was thinking man this would be great for DFU.

Though I'm always pleased with creativity and efficiency, this is compatible with a storage system that isn't Nexus. I consider it really, really unlikely anyone's going to make an API that'll access Nexus' file storage without their permission. Nexus already has Vortex (which seems to cause more problems than it solves among DFU users) to do the manual work of downloading and placing mods.

My personal best experience with a mod downloader was Doomseeker, which automatically queries multiple storage sites, runs checksums, unpacks the files for you, and saves them for future use with a single click. Watching the server download 10 dependencies automatically and sort them out with no effort on my part was a magical thing.

[jayhova]

Though I'm always pleased with creativity and efficiency, this is compatible with a storage system that isn't Nexus. I consider it really, really unlikely anyone's going to make an API that'll access Nexus' file storage without their permission. Nexus already has Vortex (which seems to cause more problems than it solves among DFU users) to do the manual work of downloading and placing mods.

I am not sure that it employs an actual API. My thought is it uses a scrape method to get file downloads etc. I have to assume the DLs conform to a standard format. The real beautiful thing is the automated loading and installation of dependencies. I see this as a future problem for DFU. Eventually, an adventure module (I'm hoping we get to the point where we have these things) will require that certain other things be installed. Of course, any tool will need to check and update the existing mods (removing/replacing obsolete files, etc.).

As it stands the format of mods is already pretty standardized. A sort of registry of mods with the essential info would be helpful. Essentially point the tool at the registry (if it is not already in the tool), the tool then looks at the registry, takes action to update installed mods, check dependencies, etc., and lists changes and new mods.

P.S. If anyone has Neverwinter Nights installed check out this tool and see what I mean.

Spoiler!