NWN Explorer

NWN Explorer is a Windows tool used to load game BIF files, extract files from them and in some cases display some information about them.

It is an older tool so don't expect the world from it, see the Usage tips below.

Download

The latest versions are now on Github here: https://github.com/virusman/nwnexplorer/releases

Finding your Installation Folder

The tool does attempt to find your installation. If it can't then direct it to the root install folder, eg it could be D:\Steam\steamapps\common\Neverwinter Nights\ like the example below. The Texture search path doesn't matter for EE since it doesn't use texture packs.

Usage

The interface is generally mouse and keyboard driven, you can drill down into individual BIF (which essentially are like hakpacks but used for default game data), HAK, and override/development and other individual files in folders (music, ambient folders etc.). The tool will categorise files it finds in general terms.

You can open a file by double clicking on it (or open it by single click in the options). Note due to how some files will crash NWN Explorer do play safe if you're only looking to export.

Useful Shortcuts

Search

Search is done, bizarrely, with CTRL + S as a little popup box in the bottom left. Press it again to search again. It doesn't support star search, but does do partial matches (eg; "_h.tga" finds everything ending in _h.tga, but "*.tga" won't find anything).

It can commonly crash when searching larger hakpacks (it goes through them last) or sometimes just in general - since it opens quickly it is recommended to just force close it if it hangs.

Export

You can export an entire BIF or Hakpack to a folder, or an individual file out, with the right click menu. There are some issues with this:

• Newer file formats the game can use may not be recognised and may not properly export
• The "Export to ASCII" for MDL files only supports the 1.69 MDL format - but this is sufficient for most base game resource that don't have baked tangents/normals. You can also use Clean Models EE to decompile which may have better/worse results depending.
• Do not rely on it for exporting newer file formats (eg; JPG, MTR) since it may mangle the filename or extension, instead use neverwinter-nim tools.

A recommendation when exporting folders - the selector cannot create folders, so pre-create the folders you want to export to before you do so.

Viewer

You can open several game files in the viewer - these include:

• General text - 2da, nwscript scripts (NSS), ini, txt, SET, SHD, TXI
• NWN resources:
  • DLG - Dialogue files
  • GUI - GUI definition files
  • MDL / WOK / DWK - only the older NWN 1.69 or earlier models. NWN:EE includes new information that crashes the viewer. It has a basic 3d viewer that is also buggy, but can do in a pinch.
    • NOTE: The "Export to ASCII" is for 1.69 models as noted above.
  • NCS / NDB - Compiled NWscript - although newer NWN:EE scripts may not load and be viewed properly
  • SSF - Soundsets
  • UTC, ITP, etc. - Blueprint files
  • PLT - PLT textures
• General formats:
  • TGA - Graphics file
  • NWN DDS - specifically the weird old DDS files that are weird, modern DDS is not loaded
  • DDS - Standard EE compatible DDS cannot be viewed but can be exported
• With addons:
  • MP3 (WAV) - With the fmod.dll in the program directory, it can load sound and music files and play them

It can technically load anything else (eg; MTR, JPG, etc.) but usually displays them as binary and may mangle the file extension it doesn't recognise.

Options

There are a variety of options - many of which are outdated or don't really work.

Look in the following NWN Directory: Should be the root path of the game, eg D:\Steam\steamapps\common\Neverwinter Nights\

Texture search path options are no longer used in NWN:EE and can be ignored.

Open resources in a new tab by default can be useful if you're comparing files, but otherwise you can open things in new tabs when you right click them and the program may be prone to crashing if too many are open anyway.

Open resources from tree view can be useful for loading aspects more easily then double clicking but since opening certain files can crash it it's probably better to leave off.

The model viewer is the rest of the options and contains many which don't do much, if anything, but these may be useful:

• A good changes may be to alter the background (in the example set to green, like a green screen)
• You may want to toggle the Alpha and Image Alpha settings in some cases where it appears as if the entire model is see through (PLT based models especially suffer from this).
• The final one to enable may be the Prefer DDS over TGA textures on models since DDS is loaded above TGA, however of course it can't load normal DDS files so newer content might fail to load/crash.