Hello. CEP from my perspective.

Hello, I am Chief DM/Builder/Scripter for The Vast, which is a PW Role-Play server based in the Forgotten Realms. We originally launched out of beta at the beginning of 2003 (January if I remember correctly), and ran for
several years 24/7; after 2007 it had its ups and downs, and in 2012 we got to missing the server, and brought it back to life. Back in the heyday of NWN, we had maintained a policy of no HAKs in an effort to keep the place easily available to the constant influx of new players who were trying out NWN for the first time.

After the relaunch, we looked into CEP figuring that most players in the community probably already had it, or were very familiar with HAKs and wouldn't have any trouble downloading and installing it to play on our server. There were many features that I liked about CEP, including all the creature appearances and new weapons, but the thing that really made our decision were the additions to the old NWN tilesets - specifically the Forest and Rural sets. The ability to modify all of our existing forests using raise/lower and slope and adding all the new tree tile options (denser trees! real firs and pines!) was too much to resist.

Add to that the basic forest tiles added to the Rural set, which allowed us to add true fringe-like forest transitions where rural areas adjoin forest areas (we use a seamless transition system on most above ground areas, so we have a lot of 16 x 16 areas where you can travel directly in most directions) and the slopes for existing raised terrain, and NWN was like a whole new thing again.

Since we are running a 24/ PW that dates back to the beginning of NWN, it is the ability to really dress up and modify our areas that use the original tilesets without completely rebuilding all of those areas to use new tilesets that we want the most. CEP offered a lot of great landscaping options in that regard.

Now that I've said all of that, I would like to say that is exactly what we hope will come with the next version of CEP - even more options for the existing tilesets. I'll make some more detailed posts in the suggestions section, but some of the things we would love to see include some sort of "half-raise/lower" tool with slope options for forest and rural to make smaller rises that can transition into full height cliffs.

The ability to make slightly uneven ground, even just as Terrain tile options like you see with the uneven ground Terrain mesh used in the Frozen Wastes tiles, would be really great, especially for open field areas in Rural. Rural has the "Gentle Slope" listed under Terrain, but it produces an unnatural-looking pyramid shape that is still fairly tall, and not a feature I'll be using as I continue to revamp the old PW.

Adding some of the trees from Forest into Rural as "esc/shift/right click-through" Terrain tile options would be another fine addition; for instance, using some of the tall pines there would be really fantastic.

I have a lot of other suggestions, but will move to the proper forum sections to make more specific posts for those.

There are also a couple of tile bugs that I've talked with Toro about, and he's made a fix for one in your bugs section already.

Anyway, that's who I am, and the angle from which I am approaching CEP. It's nice to be able to post here.

*** Edited to add: I put a link to this forum from my forum. You weren't easy to find initially.