Strange Saving/Custom Portrait Bug

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I've just started mucking around with the game with a view to playing multiplayer online. Consequently I've been making up new characters and testing them in the game. Being me, I've also made up some suitably slappy like custom portraits. The problem is that the game is locking up when I try to save or move through an auto-save area.

I've done some testing (though it's late so I might have missed something) and this is what I've got:

- I've installed all the latest patches.
- The game saves ok for normal characters and custom characters that use standard portraits.
- The Portraits themselves match the sizes and file formats specified in the make your own portrait guide (though I could recheck the bit size again).
- The main large portraits load and are visiable and working during normal game play (of course you don't get to see the tiny & small portraits unless you are a henchman or in dialogue so I can't vouch for them).

I've searched the forum here and at Bioware but can't find any similar problems (it's not the corrupted save file bug). Has anyone any ideas other than 'don't use custom portraits' that could help me? Also has anyone else tried running the game with custom portraits, is it just me having the problem? Thanks.

 

I've tried a couple of custom portraits and didn't have any problems - yet One portrait was downloaded, so I didn't create the actual files. The other, however, was (pain-stakingly) put together by me, and again no problems. I seem to remember reading somewhere that the compression settings used in creating the targa image format might have an effect on overall stability (hence, game saves). IIRC, it affected the bit size which was too large for the game. Just can't remember where I read that. Did you create the portraits using Photoshop or Praintshop? For some reason, that comes to mind for this particular problem.

 

SEE BELOW

OK based on Gnolyn's advice I've been investigating the file sizes and trying out some downloaded portraits. The downloaded portraits seem to work which suggests my files are at fault. I've followed all the instructions in the guide and exported the files as TGA Truevision Targa 24 bit (which appear uses 38pix/cm) using Photoplus 8.0. According to Microsoft paint my files are the same size as the downloaded ones that work but according to Microsoft explorer there is a slight difference (see below). It could be this difference causing the trouble.

As I have set everything to save as per the required format I can see no reason for there being a difference. The only thing I can think of is the guide also mentions TIFF files for Infanview. Perhaps this is a slightly different format (Gnolyn mentioned possible problems with other paint packages). Does anyone know?

Finally, I tried using the quick method, which is to use the console command 'ConvertPortrait file' from within NWN. This just gives me an error message saying I am not following the correct useage (I've quadrupled checked the format and my typing and everything is as it's supposed to be. The only thing I can see being wrong is I'm not installed in the default Crogramme Files/NWN directory as I'm using a separate file partition). Anyway, anyone have any more ideas before I get really pissed off. (opps too late )

File sizes for 'Huge' portraits.

393,260 bytes file size for correctly working file according to windows explorer
393,216 bytes file size for correctly working file according to Microsoft Photo Editor

393,234 bytes file size for not working file according to windows explorer
393,216 bytes file size for not working file according to Microsoft Photo Editor

EDIT - I've found some stuff on the official forum about this. They reckon the probelm was solced by changing the way that the black border is created. However, as you'll see from my post there, I'm not convinced. Anyway, for details look here:

http://nwn.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?forum=49&topic=129434

EDIT UPDATE

The problem appears to finally be fixed. I got confused as I had been using the Covert Portrait command (which seems to produce incompatible files) and rediting exisitng portraits with PaintShop Pro. It turns out that PaintShop pro produces a slightly different file size again but one that does work. So I could do a batch convertion to PaintShop Pro TGA and they 'seem' to work . Shame the official programme to create portraits doesn' though.

[ September 01, 2002, 18:34: Message edited by: Slappy ]